LLB to have flavour of science and management

LUCKNOW: In a bid to make law graduates globally competitive, the Bar Council of India (BCI) has decided to make legal education inter-disciplinary from the next session. At present, legal education is dominated by the students of arts but from 2009-10, legal educational institutes would be free to offer five years integrated courses with specialisation in science, commerce, management and engineering along with law. The BCI is also contemplating to discontinue the traditional three years Bachelor of Law (LLB) course from 2012 because its popularity is declining. Further, all law colleges and traditional universities offering legal education have been asked to conduct entrance examinations for admissions as it has been done by National Law Universities (NLUs) by introducing Combined Law Admission Test (CLAT). Chairman BCI, Suraj Narain Prasad Sinha who was in city on Saturday, told reporters, that BCI had approved the proposals which would now enable all the legal education institutions in the country to introduce interdisciplinary courses like BSc-LLB (science with law), BCom-LLB (commerce with law), BBA-LLB (management with law) and BE-LLB (engineering with law). The traditional BA-LLB would also continue. Such interdisciplinary courses are already being run by few NLUs and IITs in the country. While NLU, Jodhpur, is offering bachelor degrees in LLB and BBA-LLB, NLUs at Patiala and Gujrat are offering bachelor degrees in BCom-LLB. IIT-Kharagpur has already started BE-LLB and IIT-Kanpur has applied for the same. BCI gave approval to these courses as pilot projects. IITs, in fact, are also contemplating to introduce MBBS courses. "But now we have adopted it as a policy. Universities and colleges teaching legal education would be free to offer interdisciplinary courses, if they fulfil all the requirements," said Sinha. "This provision would be optional for the legal education institutes. Course and curriculum has already been designed and would be offered to students from the session 2009-10," he added. Students qualifying entrance test would be given the option at the time of counselling on the order of merit to join interdisciplinary course of their choice. At present, there are 12 national law universities and over 600 law colleges in the country with over two lakh students on rolls. The decision, said Sinha, has been taken to produce law graduates specialising in different fields competent enough to compete globally as Government of India is seriously considering proposal of allowing foreign law firms to practice in India. Three years LLB course, Sinha said, would be phased out by 2012. "Thereafter only five years integrated courses would be available to students. This means that after 10 plus two, a student would have to make up his/her mind about pursuing law," he said. Prof Balraj Chauhan, vice-chancellor, RML National Law University, said, "Today a lawyer becomes specialist of a particular field by practising law for many years but through interdisciplinary courses we would be able to produce specialists directly from campuses. "It's also logical because now we need lawyers specialising in cyber laws, space laws, forensic laws, medical laws, engineering etc apart from traditional criminal and civil lawyers," he said. He also suggested that BCI should allow students studying law to assist lawyers in courts for arguing cases as it is being done in Philippines and USA.

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