Report of the Legal Education Review Committee

Finally a copy of the report is out. While one should appreciate the academic initiatives suggested in the report including increasing work efficiency, which aims at improving the standard of legal education, and has some stains of a genius mind working on it, when one reads through the other suggestions, including the draft bill, it reminds of the story of a hard working ant forwarded to me by a friend.
The story goes like this:
Once there was a hard working ant which was working very productively without much supervision.The owner of the factory, lion was very happy with ant's work and thought that if the ant can be so productive without supervision, how much more productive she can become with a little supervision. So lion recruited a fox to supervise the ant, whose first task on the job was to get a posh office for herself.Fox was very good in preparing reports and making presentations, and hence started demanding from ant all types of reports to be forwarded to lion. Ant got depressed in her work as more of her time was devoted to preparation of reports and less on productive things. When the reports become numerous, fox appointed a secretary, then a work flow manager and purchased several computers to analyse the work. It was revealed in the reports that the factory has suddenly become un productive and the company decided to appoint a commission to enquire into the reasons for unproductive work. The commission identifies one employee as the root cause for the loss, as she was a low motivated and an un productive employee- guess who was recommended for termination-----the ANT.
Well, till I read the report, I thought this story was just a fiction,and it cannot affect me. Now I understand that the Legal Reform Education Committee has just done the same- Dismissing the ant called Government Law Colleges.
What I decipher from the report is:
The major maladies that face the law education in Kerala are:
1. Government Law Colleges- so reduce them as Undergraduate institutions!
2. Law Students- so make them pay higher fees and throw them out!
3. Law Teachers- Dismiss them-er abolish the posts! or be a slave to the principal(Director) of the law college!
The result will be:
Only people who have money need study law- (when you have cake why should you eat bread!)
Law teachers can be selected by Principal- (Well relatives of Politicians and Principal's children should also live and eat!)
Law teachers would have to work like slaves of Principal, or Members of the Board of Legal Education- (Well lawyers should not have ego and so law teachers, should not have back bone!)
Establish a legal education board- (Well some secretariat employees, who joined as assistants need a deputation posting at a convenient place to rule over law teachers!)
While I do not question the stature of the eminent members who were members of the commission, including my teachers, what I do not understand is: Why has the Government not included a representative from Government Law College as all the previous governments did, when a commission to reform the legal education sector was constituted? Or was the Government also wanted to do away with the law colleges in the government sector?
Secondly, when the commission is assuming that most of the law college teachers would join the Board for better emoluments, why was not there a single question in the long questionnaire prepared for teachers, whether they are willing to opt for the alternate service?(Obviously to avoid conflicts in the commission sittings!)
After reading through the entire report, what I feel is that the commission has utterly failed to discharge its task in understanding the problems faced by legal education infrastructure in Kerala in its socio- political and economic context. If one reads the entire report, it can be seen that the report has not mentioned how it has come to the conclusion that the present method of appointment of law teachers through Public Service Commission and their functioning as government servants is the reason for the low standards of legal education. It has also failed to note that the students who are joining the elite institutions like National Law Schools are selected by a national level test and interview, by law teachers themselves under the guise of CLAT, there are no quality checks for the standard of questions or chareterists tested through the questions prepared for Kerala LLB Entrance. I am giving an open challenge- give functional autonomy to Government Law Colleges including conduct of examinations, give us the students selected in CLAT, and give us four year-we can show how cost effectively we can improve the quality of law colleges!If you have good students, and a good infrastructure with committed non teaching staff, we can show how far better we can make our students than any student of National Law Schools. Instead of concentrating on the issues of functional autonomy and student development what the commission did was to concenrate on closing down the Government Law Colleges and throwing out government law college teachers and that too without even asking a single question to law college teachers on the acceptablity of serivce conditions. The whole report is made on a misconception that Government Law College teachers have a different scale of pay and they do not get the UGC scale of pay, while the reality is that there is no real pay scale difference, except in some fringe benefits, which would otherwise be available in their status as government servants. So the bottomline is- while it is undisputable that Shri Madhava Menon is a doyan of "Indian elite legal education" what the Government Law Colleges is planning to do in the country is to provide accessible legal education to all, which objective was never seen by any member of the Legal Reform Committee. In fact if the committee had reported regarding the change in curriculum, increasing the new subjects, making Kerala Law Colleges globally competitive, all the while making it less expensive by allowing private participation in specific projects, and taking up consultative arrangements for private enterprenuers, and giving incentives to faculty members who would actively participate in the income generating projects, without sacrificing academic duties, it would have been much more acceptable. But perhaps that is more acceptable to level headed people- but may be not to those people who want to head the "Legal Education Board" and ensure that all the teachers bow before them!! What every one is forgetting or failing to forget is that if one takes the list of best law colleges in the country, Government Law College, Mumbai stands prominently and without losing any government character! So the bottom line is- it is not the government character, but the curriculum and initiative for teachers and students to indulge in academic activities is much more important in developing a global legal educational standard. The bottom line there fore is that the part of the report regarding changing the government nature of Government law colleges and making law college teachers bow before The so called under ground players who want to get into plum postings in the board, is thoroughly misconceived.


Disclaimer: Please note that the views expressed here in are not meant to hurt any one, including Dr Menon and other members of the Legal Education Reform Committee, whom I consider as my teachers and honourable persons, and this blog is intended just to kick off an academic debate.

Legal Education in Kerala

Yesterday I just sketched the facts relating to the place where I am teaching. I didnt leave any remedies, because I dont have any panacae for this state of affairs. I am aware as any one else who is genuinely interested in bettering the state of affairs that it won't be possible for any single person with a majic wand to change the state of affairs in a day. I am fully aware that it will take at least a full academic year to at least move things in the right direction. Within the short span of 6 months, I think that we were able to take at least some priliminary steps towards this goal.

As mentioned in my previous post, we have been blessed with the whole hearted co operation of the teachers in improving the situation. One of our teachers have successfully conducted at least 3 seminars which got great attention of the students. Next semester onwards a compulsory seminar class is proposed for all classes. We are also proposing to conduct an international Seminar in Banking Law, so that students can get a feel of what is evolving in these fields.

While trying to work out a mutually profitable solution, there is one aspect which is worth noting. One of my collegue who had been a teacher for last 14 years had commented that ever since Kerala Government started conducting entrance examination for admission to 3 year LLB course the quality of students deteriorated significantly! Common entrance examination was intended to find out students with the right attitude and aptitude so that they undergo the 3 or 5 year course with the right set of mind. I am also not ignoring the fact that the Common Entrance Test for 5 year LLB courses have helped to identify some students with right potential, the experience with 3 year LLB course is entirely different.

For the readers from other countries, India has three (or four or more) types of LLB courses. While there is an integrated BA LLB(Hons) in National Law Schools, other law colleges follow a 3 year LLB in 10+2+3+3 model and 5 year LLB in 10+2+5 model of higher education. Some universities even now call the law degree as BL (Bachelor of Law)while most others have renamed the degree as LLB(LLegum Baccilareum). Some IIT's have recently started MBA LLB and B Tech LLB, which as the name suggests integrates Master of Business Studies and Bachelor of Technology(Engineering Degree) with Law.

Now going back to the old story- what ails the 3 year course? To understand this we need to first understand the age factor of the students undergoing 3 year LLB course as compared to those undergoing 5 year course. While most of the students who had been undergoing 5 year LLB course are of the age group 17-21, the age of a student undergoing 3 year LLB course earlier used to vary from 21 to 61 or even greater! But now a days, you seldom find an aged person in the LLB course as compared to those good old days!

Now what is the problem? As I see it, we need to distinguish 3 year LLB course as a finishing course compared to 5 year LLB course as a professional course. Earlier many elder persons who were genuinely interested in pursuing Law used to joing LLB course. Now since many do not want to go throught the ignomity of writing an entrance examination along with their children, such persons have stopped coming to study law, even though they have a genuine interest in the subject. As a result the number of students appearing for entrance examination is very low and inorder to fill the available seats, it is said that even those who get 0 marks in entrance examination are given admission! Now how can you expect those 0 marks students to have the right aptitude?

When I joined teaching, I had in mind the standard of students who had interacted with me during my college days and professional days. During the past 6 months I have tried to make my students speak up.! To my astonishment I have found that many of the 3 year course students are unable to properly express their thoughts even in their mother tongue.A hand full of answer papers valued were so pathetic that even Samuel Johnson would wonder about the language!!