The Law Ministry is proposing the conduct of a qualifying Bar Exam before any law graduate can get licence to practice in the Courts. Your views sought on this Govt. proposal.
I am not in favour of the qualifying bar exam for the law graduates before getting the advocate's licence for practice. There are two points that I find for not being in favour of this proposal and they are:
1. The government does not trust the quality of law education being imparted in its own Govt. universities which are under its control. The LLB admission eligibility, syllabus, exams, attendance and other aspects of doing law are strictly followed in accordance with the guidelines laid down by the Bar Council of India. The government does not trust the quality parameters set by the Bar Council of India. It is really sad.
2. The law graduates after having worked hard to study and pass the law course for 3 years would be again made to sit for the proposed qualifying exam which would further delay their joining their profession. This qualifying exam would further involve fees and I am sure there would be many coaching institutes which would come up for this purpose further putting the students under financial burden. It is really sad that the govt. instead of simplifying the entire process is bent upon making it more complicated and cumbersome for the students and law aspirants.
If the Govt. is serious about improving the quality of the legal system in India, instead of making it difficult for the law graduates to enter the vocation, what the govt. should do is to weed out the corrupt practices in the legal profession. Every second day we get to hear some senior Judge embroiled in misuse of position for his/her personal gains. There have been various instances reported in the media wherein the lawyers sell out themselves to the opposite parties of their clients. The Govt. should instead plan to take some action on these malpractices instead of targetting the law profession aspirants.
Really unfortunate. The Govt. expects the students to keep giving one exam after the other - first the law entrance exam, then the semester-end/annual exams and other exams and now another qualifying exam. If they are trying to follow the foreign examples, they should follow other good examples also from the west which include more facilities for the practitioners of legal profession. And why just target the legal practitioners for this arbitrary decision, the practitioners of other professions like medicine, etc, should also be subject to such qualifying exams for them to get registered with the MCI.
Very arbitrary decision of the Law Ministry which should be opposed tooth and nail and also if need be challenged in the Courts.
Your valuable views sought!!!
Abhay.