LLM Foundation Course Legal Education and Research Methodology 2022 Question Paper with Solutions

Its defects are well documented and should be set out before the reforms. The whole assessment rests on three hours, so illness or nerves outweigh a year's work. The student receives no feedback while learning is still possible. Guides and question banks displace the prescribed reading, because they are the rational response to the incentive. Marking varies between examiners and is unmoderated. Questions repeat, so selective preparation succeeds. And the format cannot assess a skill at all, which matters because four of the papers in the Indian curriculum are skills papers.

The standard against which reform must be measured is what an examination in law ought to test. A law graduate should be able to find the applicable provision, construe it, apply it to a set of facts, identify and deploy the authorities, argue a position, and produce the documents a lawyer produces. Almost none of that is tested by an essay written from memory, which tests recall, writing speed and the ability to predict the paper.

Problem based questions. The paper gives a set of facts and asks for a reasoned conclusion rather than an exposition. This alone changes what a student does with the year, because a problem cannot be answered by reproducing a note.

Open book examinations. These test the use of material rather than its memorisation, and they correspond to what a lawyer actually does, since no lawyer is ever asked to state a section from memory. They require questions that cannot be answered by copying, which is why they are harder to set than to praise.

Practical papers assessed on performance. The Bar Council of India introduced four practical papers in 1997, now carried by the Bar Council of India Rules of Legal Education, 2008: moot court and trial participation; drafting, pleading and conveyancing; professional ethics; and alternative dispute resolution. Marks attach to work done, that is to the moot performance, the drafts produced and the internship diary, and this is the single largest structural change in Indian legal assessment.

Viva voce. An oral examination tests whether written work was understood and is the only cheap defence against contract cheating.

The obstacles are the reason the reforms are only partly effective. Internal assessment is open to inflation and to favouritism, and where every student receives near full internal marks the whole exercise loses its discriminating value. Open book papers need questions that reward judgment, and setting them takes more skill than setting the traditional kind. Continuous assessment raises workload in institutions that are already understaffed. Moderation costs money. And practical papers examined by written paper, which is common, defeat the reform while formally complying with it.

The external audit, and the one reform that costs nothing

The strongest argument for examination reform in Indian legal education is no longer pedagogic; it is that somebody else now marks the same candidates.

Of all the measures, one costs nothing and should be named as such. Continuous assessment needs staff time; open book papers need better questions; moderation needs money; performance assessment of the four practical papers needs supervisors. Setting problems on unseen facts instead of essay questions needs none of those. It requires only that the paper-setter give a set of facts and ask for a reasoned conclusion with authority, and it changes what an entire class does with the whole year, because a problem cannot be answered from a memorised note. Any institution that says it cannot afford examination reform can afford that one.

Two further points show why the rest have not taken. Internal assessment is open to inflation, and where every student receives near full internal marks the reform is worse than useless, because it removes discrimination without adding information. And the four practical papers, introduced by the Bar Council in 1997 and carried by the Rules of Legal Education, 2008, are skills papers: examined by written paper, as they commonly are, the reform is complied with in form and defeated in substance.

Difficulty of question setting defeats open book and problem based reform. An open book paper answerable by copying is worse than a closed one, and a good problem takes longer to write than three essay questions, so wherever paper setting is treated as an administrative chore the reform quietly reverses.

Absence of quality control over teaching and assessment defeats all of them, because nobody discovers that a paper is badly set. Structured student feedback, peer observation and training in assessment design are ordinary in other disciplines and rare in Indian law colleges.

Two further measures belong in a complete list and are usually omitted. Moderation and double valuation, with central assessment programmes, address the inconsistency between examiners that makes a single script's fate partly a lottery. And a blueprint for every paper, fixing in advance how many marks test recall, how many application and how many analysis, prevents the drift back to essay questions that occurs whenever a paper is set in a hurry.

Conclusion. Examination reform in Indian legal education has produced the right list of measures, semester examinations, continuous internal assessment, problem based and open book papers, performance assessed practical work, viva voce and grading, and has implemented them unevenly. The reason is not that the measures are wrong but that every one of them costs teaching capacity, which is the same constraint that limits every other reform of Indian legal education. The most useful single change available is also the cheapest: setting problems instead of essays, because assessment determines what students do with the whole year, and a student assessed on application will prepare by applying.