Now Eligibility Test For Lawers

Common Entrance tests are conducted to select few from a large pool of candidates. But, the purpose here is not to select a few candidates. The government is considering the policy to allow foreign law firms to practice in Indian courts. This would lead to corporatisation of legal practice making the access to law and justice much more difficult and prohibitive in terms of cost. There are fears that the proposed test is aimed at benefitting foreign law firms by restricting the entry of people into legal practice.

The Bar council of India has decided to conduct an eligibility test for law graduates to certify them for legal practice. At present any law graduate can register with Bar Council of India to be eligible for practicing in any court. Now, the lawyers had to undergo a screening test to be eligible for legal practice.

Infact, no such test is conducted for doctors to enter medical practice or engineers. The medical graduates passed out from colleges abroad have to pass a test to be eligible for medical practice in India. The Indian Medical Association conducts this test because the curriculum in foreign universities need not necessarily be in tune with the requirements of our country.

But, surprisingly, Bar Council of India is now decided to conduct test for law graduates passing out from law colleges recognized by Indian universities and Bar Council of India. All this is done in the name of maintaining standards in legal practice. The mushrooming of law colleges has certainly diluted the standards of legal education. But, such an eligibility test does not in anyway induce standards but infact would only burden the fresh law graduates and make the law degrees illegitimate.

Surprisingly, the task of conducting this test is given to a private agency. This private agency has the background of giving coaching for five year law course especially in National Law schools. Instead, government should make apprentice compulsory and financially support these junior lawyers as it does in the case of junior doctors. The Bar Council can also devise a method for financially supporting junior lawyers. This would encourage more and more young men and women to take up law courses as their career.

There should be an extensive debate on whether and how the test should be conducted. If at all such attest is conducted, it should be conducted by a competent authority. It should be modeled after GRE to be attempted anytime and any number of times in a year so that fresh law graduates need not waste the time before they join the legal practice. There are many problems to grapple with in the legal profession such as the dearth of para legal staff, widespread consternation in the country over judicial corruption, inordinate delay in the cases, and lack of proper supervision over the standards in legal education. Improving the quality of legal education rather than reducing the number of advocates by conducting a screening test is the real solution for the malaises plaguing legal practice. A mandatory apprenticeship with stipend would attract the cream of the talent into the legal education.