Bar council must enlarge scope of legal education: SC judge

Madras high court Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul inaugurates 
administrative block in Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry
 building on Saturday (Photo: DC)

DC CORRESPONDENT | November 09, 2014, 06.11 am IST

Chennai: Supreme Court judge Justice F.M. Ibrahim Kalifullah on Saturday asked the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry (BCTP), regulating legal education in the state, to enlarge its scope at the global level.Inaugurating the new BCTP building on N.S.C. Bose Road, Justice Kalifullah said the bar council has to focus on four mandates: legal education, enrolment of advocates, supervision of professionals and protection of lawyers.

 

The bar council would have to maintain the standard of legal education which had grown phenomenally in the global context, he pointed out. “The time has come for it to see that legal education’s standards rise to the highest level,” he added.He said it should adopt the 184th Law Commission report, which suggested how legal education could be improved. “Today, strategies are not restricted to the domestic level, but include the international.

 

We have intellectual property rights issues, arbitration and commercial litigations. Foreign investments are being poured in. We have some very good law institutions. Why not every institution impart legal education to match that standard and produce law graduates who can maintain standards when they join the profession? If private institutions can maintain standards, why can’t the bar council do the same with the standard of education. Once the bar council sets the standard, automatically all fake institutions and lawyers will get eliminated,” Justice Kalifullah said.

Earlier, Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Chief Justice of the Madras high court, said legal education had to be improved in India. “We have a paucity of good professors. Eminent lawyers should supplement their role. There should be periodic checks by the bar council to verify the standard of law institutions functioning in the whole state. Faculty should be verified.

 

Continuing legal education should be provided and senior lawyers should impart it. The younger generation is the ‘aspiration generation’. The bar council must pick up ideas and issues and teach these to young lawyers. Legal education should be given at the initial level and, thereafter, continuous legal education should be given. The bar council can then achieve its objective,” he said.