Category: Litigation

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Human Rights Law Schools Litigation

Those who can, teach – How law teaching builds bridges and fosters intellectual arenas

AtreyeeMajumder_CraftingLawCareersLaw is a difficult thing to teach. It requires the teaching of large concepts that vastly influence how governments and authority work or should work. Skills needed for the application, implementation, and adjudication of legal provisions are important and need to be taught as well.

The law classroom, I had felt, was less effective in teaching law than the practical experience of having to work out a legal argument to fit a real-life situation. This slipping on of the real-life shoes however, is not possible without a basic skill-set, one that is complex and diverse. Different law-teaching systems have had different visions about this skill-set.

The four legal professionals who have featured in this series so far have all had some teaching experience. Usha Ramanathan has, during the course of her career, taught at the National Law School of India University (“NLSIU”), Bangalore, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and at the National Law University, Delhi. Arvind Narrain has taught, among others, courses related to human rights and illegal citizenship at NLSIU and several ad hoc courses on human rights, gender, and sexuality for non-law students. Harish Narasappa has taught short courses at the Indian Institute of Management and at NLSIU. Amba Salelkar takes classes on disability law at Vidya Sagar, a Chennai-based non-profit organisation.

Building bridges to law

The challenges of teaching  feature amidst the larger practice of being publicly engaged lawyers. Students from non-law backgrounds, both Salelkar and Narrain say, are not daunted by the law. People in non-profit organisations in particular, where the knowledge of law can significantly reorient practice, seem to come at it with enthusiasm. Narrain has experienced great fortitude among college students coming at judgments on sexual violence containing disturbing details. He says he found in the classroom, key allies for the campaign against Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. People who were intrigued or interested came forth and became involved.

Many law teachers find themselves delivering bridges to the world of law to students of politics, economics, management, and development studies. Sudhir Krishnaswamy, who has taught at several law schools and has designed and taught a law and governance concentration in the development masters programme at Azim Premji University, is immersed in this exercise. He says that his primary learning from the programme was that students of non-elite backgrounds were grappling with their first encounters with the law in ways very similar to first year law students. The challenges they faced, too, were similar to the ones faced by law students – in learning to work with law and fact. The diversity of material he used has expanded considerably. For instance, he engages more thickly with legal history, using literature from colonial and post-colonial history in general. These are materials he read himself, but didn’t use in law school classrooms. Krishnaswamy’s long teaching career has shaped his belief that law as a discipline, actively straddles the domain of social sciences and humanities, especially as it concerns questions of language and cognition.

Teaching law without the intention to teach

Law teaching can be seen, thus, along three major lines – teaching in a law programme, teaching in a non-law programme, and teaching law outside the university set-up. It helps me to elaborate on the third aspect first. Law arrives at the ears of lawyers through courts, judgments, other lawyers – seniors and peers, and in the classroom. A good part of the teaching can and may occur without the intention to teach. The professional architecture places some people in pedagogic positions with regard to others. Many in the litigating field would say the senior advocates they worked for, were their teachers or gurus. They did not teach the disciplines of law in the packaged form that is usually delivered in a classroom. Skills and intuitions about what the law can offer in a given situation, and how best to use this avenue to one’s advantage, might however, be best learnt and taught through everyday interactions. Many say they learnt a lot of law listening to court proceedings, especially as interns.

I am surprised at this as court proceedings occur in fragments where the issue at stake may not be clear to a bystander who does not have access to the relevant case file. Matters quickly transition into the next matter of the day, one realm of law to the next. If a bystander – a litigant, a journalist, or an intern – learns from this, it is not intended teaching that she derives from. It is a kind of learning by immersion – osmosis, perhaps. Languages are learnt often by immersion in the social milieu where the language is spoken. Can law be learnt and taught in the same way? Some say it is an effective way.

The other method of ‘unintentioned’ teaching and learning of the law, more predictably, is through books. Law reporters, treatises, newspaper articles, and the Internet are ways in which a legal topic or idea can be learnt and disseminated. There is a vast difference of course between reading a thick tome on jurisprudence in a dark library and opening several news websites at one go and consuming some update on a legal matter as one of the many things the Internet offers for consumption. The written word is common to both modes of communication and receipt and the latter is often an effective way for a non-legal audience to learn about the law. Undergraduate students’ interests are often piqued by legal domains being involved in a matter of contemporary news – for instance, land acquisition in recent months, because of the amendment bill. I continue to learn about the law (being no longer in practice) talking with friends and colleagues who are experts in legal fields, and from the media, especially from commentaries and editorials written by practicing lawyers like Indira Jaising and Flavia Agnes.

The classroom as an intellectual arena

Sudhir Krishnaswamy (left), Amba Salelkar, and Arvind Narrain.

Sudhir Krishnaswamy (left), Amba Salelkar, and Arvind Narrain.

The classroom though, remains an important space. What is its specific role from the point of view of legal professionals who have multifaceted careers? A classroom offers the possibility of a dialogic space. Facts and ideas may be taught and disseminated there. But if the teacher is attentive, it can unfold into a  democratic and dynamic intellectual arena. Like Narrain’s experience where students became long-term associates, for many teachers whose interest in the law is motivated by possibilities of change, the classroom should be an important space to invest in. Salelkar has found the need to press a certain literacy of law, especially constitutional law, to be important in her classes on disability law. She finds it a challenge to veer between giving activists too much hope and too little. Many, she finds, enter the domain of law with great wonder and energy. Krishnaswamy found it a place to toy with law’s relationship with the broad spectrum of social sciences. I have found the acquaintance of teachers who create longer paths of learning to often begin in the classroom discussion. The discussion itself may be of lesser importance but the dialogic space it affirms creates intellectual alliances that might have long-term implications for both parties. The importance of law teaching grows with the possibility of law creating a democratic space in addition to the ones already available in civil society.

(Atreyee Majumder is an anthropologist. She teaches at the School of Development, Azim Premji University.)

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Corporate Litigation

How the proposed commercial courts will speedily resolve disputes in high-value commercial transactions

PraptiPatelIn 2014, the World Bank ranked India 142nd out of the 189 countries investigated for the Ease of Doing Business Report, slipping further from the 2013 rank of 134. One of the biggest factors behind India’s reputation as a bad place to invest is the length and cost of litigation in the country and the proposal to introduce “commercial courts” has therefore been amongst the most important. These commerical courts or commercial divisions in high courts would be fast-track courts with hi-tech infrastructure for compulsory e-filing, digitising of documents, and case-management conferences. They would resolve disputes in high-value commercial transactions in a speedy and efficient manner.

History of the commercial courts proposal

In 2003, the Law Commission of India’s “Proposals for Constitution of Hi-Tech Fast Track Commercial Divisions in High Courts” were accepted by the Union Cabinet and introduced in the Parliament as the Commercial Divisions of High Courts Bill, 2009. It was approved by the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha’s Select Committee made changes, but the then Union Law Minister felt the need for further changes and referred it back to the Law Commission. Later, the 20th Law Commission prepared two discussion papers and after circulation in the Expert Committee, in January this year, prepared the Commercial Divisions and Commercial Appellate Divisions in High Courts and Commercial Courts Bill, 2015 (“the Bill”) and released it in the form of its 253rd Recommendation.

Constitution and jurisdiction of commercial courts

The constitution and jurisdiction of the proposed commercial courts in India is slightly complicated. Since the aim is to ensure that commercial disputes are quickly resolved, the commercial division of each high court in the country would need to be the court of first instance for such disputes and must necessarily enjoy ordinary original civil jurisdiction. However, only 5 of the 24 high courts, that is, the High Courts of Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, Delhi, and Himachal Pradesh, possess ordinary original civil jurisdiction. When the High Court of Judicature at Hyderabad is not invested with ordinary original civil jurisdiction therefore, the commercial division of the High Court will be able to exercise such jurisdiction.

Justice (Retd.) A.P. Shah is the Chairman of the Law Commission of India.

Justice (Retd.) A.P. Shah is the Chairman of the Law Commission of India.

Due to such differences in jurisdiction, the Bill proposes to constitute a commercial division for those high courts which possess ordinary original civil jurisdiction and for those without the requisite jurisdiction, to constitute commercial courts in that state or union territory.

The other issue is that pecuniary jurisdictions differ among the high courts. The proposal is for all commercial disputes with a value of over Rs. 1 crore to be heard by the commercial divisions of high courts or the commercial courts. The pecuniary jurisdiction of the Bombay and Calcutta High Courts is 1 crore. In the Madras High Court, it is Rs. 25 lakhs, in Delhi, it is Rs. 20 lakhs, and it is Rs.10 lakhs in Himachal Pradesh. In order to maintain uniformity and more importantly, to pass the constitutional test of non-discrimination, the Bill proposes to raise the pecuniary jurisdiction of the Himachal Pradesh, Madras, and Delhi High Courts to Rs. 1 crore and only then constitute a commercial division within them. In other states and union territories, commercial courts will be constituted with the requisite pecuniary jurisdiction.

Appointment and training of judges

Judges in the commercial divisions of high courts and in commercial courts are proposed to be nominated by the chief justice of the respective high court, having regard to their expertise and experience in commercial litigation. Since commercial disputes, for instance, those relating to intellectual property laws, are highly technical in nature and require specialist knowledge on the subject, the Law Commission also recommended that such judges be regularly trained to impart knowledge on the latest trends and global good practices in commercial transactions.

Role of judges

While the introduction of commercial courts in India is a positive step for reducing the backlog of cases and ensuring the speedy redressal of disputes, there is a need for a more fundamental modification to the litigation culture in India. At present, adjournments are granted without any consequences, litigants regularly indulge in delaying tactics, and judges take far too long to deliver judgments after arguments have ended. The pace and intensity of litigation is decided by the litigants, which is a dangerous practice because it means that the country’s dispute resolution is litigant-controlled, instead of judge-controlled.

With the institution of the commercial divisions and commercial courts, judges must take a more active role in the resolution of the dispute; they can no longer be playing the role of a supervisor, rather they must be the manager or moderator. In this regard, an important provision in the Bill is that of “case-management hearings”.

Recommended by the Law Commission after examining the practice of holding “pre-trial conferences” in Singapore, case management hearings are held within four weeks of the institution of the suit to examine the possibility of a settlement and to ensure smooth conduct by litigants. For this purpose, the judge may frame the issues for and between the parties, fix dates for evidence to be recorded, and set time limits on the oral arguments of the parties.

Another provision is to award judges with the power to order an increase in court fees as a result of an increase in the number of hearings taken up, or the number of adjournments asked for, by the parties. This also widens the control that the judge has over the proceedings, besides ensuring the quick redressal of the dispute.

Definition and monetary value of “commercial dispute”

The definition of a “commercial dispute” in the Bill is very wide with enough scope for future additions. It covers more or less every kind of commercial transaction of interest to foreign and Indian investors.

As discussed before, the value of a dispute must be not less than Rs. 1 crore to qualify as a commercial dispute for the purposes of the Bill and in order to be tried in the commercial divisions and commercial courts.

Procedure

The Bill also provides for amendments to the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 to apply to the commercial divisions and commercial courts in India and make the resolution of commercial disputes faster and more efficient. These include directions for filing written statements and documents within a specified time period, a stricter court fees and costs regime, time bound oral arguments and delivery of judgments, and a new procedure of “summary judgment”.

Appeals

The 2009 Bill provided for appeals from the commercial divisions and the commercial courts to be heard by the Supreme Court of India, but the Law Commission found this provision to be ill-advised. Turning the Supreme Court into the court of first appeal for every commercial dispute will only add to the already existing backlog of cases as every party involved in a transaction valuing 1 crore or more will necessarily have the means to appeal. As such, the overall time taken to resolve the dispute will increase, defeating the very purpose of the Bill.

Instead, the Law Commission has recommended the constitution of commercial appellate divisions within the high courts, which will be empowered to hear appeals from orders of the commercial divisions and the commercial courts.

Infrastructure

iLaw_InternationalCoursesThe Law Commission has also recommended that when constituting the commercial divisions of high courts, they should be situated, wherever possible, in the same building as the high court itself. The states and union territories which will establish commercial courts may do so in buildings different from that of the high court of the state.

Once established, the courts must be equipped with facilities supporting video-conferencing, e-filing, computerisation of evidence and audio-visual recording of proceedings, among other global best practices. This will ensure that the evidence is well-managed and the general conduct of proceedings is regulated.

Commercial courts in other countries

England and Wales: There are two established commercial courts in England and Wales – the Commercial Court and the Technology and Construction Court, both of which are divisions of the Queen’s Bench Division of the high courts in the country.

In order to dispose cases expeditiously and efficiently, the procedural law in the country includes the provision of “overriding objective.” This gives the courts the power to initiate settlements, issue directions regarding the timely production of evidence and completion of arguments, and order either party to pay costs to the other, if it has breached procedural rules or taken undue advantage of the court’s time and resources.

France: In France, commercial disputes are heard in the Tribunal de Commerce or TDC; a court specialised in commercial litigation. Judges of the TDC are normally lay judges, but have extensive training in the law relating to their respective fields.

In order to maintain efficiency, if a dispute is one of great urgency, or there is danger of irreparable harm, or the issues of facts and law are clearly in favour of the moving party, an expedited proceeding or référé may take place in the TDC. In such a proceeding, a judgment may be obtained in a matter of days or a couple of weeks. The French judicial system also does not award large-scale punitive damages or allow class-action suits, both of which limit the exposure to liability of companies doing business in the country.

However, the lack of strict case-management practices means that despite hearing only commercial disputes, the TDC takes on an average 1-2 years to dispose off a case.

Germany: The citizens of Germany repose great confidence in their judicial system, mainly because of the Advisory Council’s many efforts to make the system quick, efficient, and modern. The country does not have specialised commercial courts; the judicial system constitutes three separate court systems: the ordinary courts, the specialised courts, and the constitutional courts and within the ordinary court system, the Landgericht courts serve as the court of first instance for commercial cases above DM 10,000. The judges in the Langericht courts usually comprise of a professional judge and two lay judges nominated from the private sector.

These courts have been successful in contributing to the swift clearance of cases, mostly because of the strict enforcement of procedural time limits.

Singapore: With the advent of new institutions and judicial procedures over the last few decades, Singapore has quickly emerged as a dispute resolution hub. A unique legal culture exists in Singapore which the Law Commission’s 253rd Recommendation has very rightly taken inspiration from: the right to bring a legal action in court carries with it the strict duty of respecting court procedure and time.

In 2002, specialist commercial courts were set up in Singapore: the Admiralty Court and the Intellectual Property Court, which are presided over by judges with expertise in maritime law and intellectual property law respectively. Singapore also established the Singapore International Commercial Court in 2015 to cater to high-stakes, cross-border commercial transactions in the region and the rest of the world. These courts, combined with a practice of strict case management, make Singapore a haven for international and domestic dispute resolution.

The new government of India has promised to make India an attractive place to invest and one of the ways to do so is to set up robust infrastructure for the disposal of commercial disputes. While it is clear that the Indian judicial system can only benefit from instituting separate commercial divisions and commercial courts, they must be backed by a more fundamental change to the litigation culture, strong case-management practices, and a commitment by the litigants and judges alike, to deliver disputes in an efficient and time-bound manner.

(Prapti Patel is a student of the Indian Law Society’s Law College in Pune.)

Categories
Human Rights Litigation

Arvind Narrain and Usha Ramanathan – an uncertain unfolding of professional destiny

AtreyeeMajumder_CraftingLawCareers

Modern India has witnessed many public lives arranged around the vocation of a lawyer. We find repeatedly that many people with strong public voices within native debates about social reform and in striking conversation with imperial forces are lawyers.

The lawyering profession has had several new influences in the current socio-economic milieu in India, not least significant of which has been the opening of the economy in 1991, and the emergence of a range of collaborative lawyering firms and other institutions that assist that range of new private enterprises. A large number of young minds are directed to legal education and the lawyering profession to enter these channels of lawyering services to assist the expanding business arena.

Exploring the terms on which the vocation is practised, I reached out to four legal professionals who have run very different combinations of litigation, advocacy, research, and teaching in their professional lives. These were professionals who obtained their law degrees before and after the cusp of 1991. Harish Narasappa and Arvind Narrain got their degrees in the mid and late 90s, and Amba Salelkar got hers in the 2000s. The three of them got their degrees at the National Law School of India University, which led the trend in producing five-year-law graduates who penetrated the new avenues of the legal profession in the post-1991 era. Usha Ramanathan took her law degree in the late seventies in Chennai, followed it up with an LLM in Nagpur, and found herself visiting the Supreme Court and Indian Law Institute regularly, in the early eighties.

(Clockwise, from top) Amba Salelkar, Usha Ramanathan, Arvind Narrain, and Harish Narasappa

A most senior law researcher

I find it instructive to use Usha’s legal biography to sketch out the contours of what it might mean to be a lawyer by vocation, in India, across the last two decades. We know that a large number of professional channels are now open for people with law degrees to pursue in the shaping of a career – between corporate firms, tradition court practice, tribunal practice, NGOs, policy think tanks, and in-house legal work within companies. Having begun at a time where most of these institutions were absent or present in smaller scale, Ramanathan found herself hovering around a range of judicial spaces in Delhi in the eighties, waiting for her ‘impulse to settle’. She turns a combination of humility and curiosity into a toolkit.

Her first job is as a copy-editor at the Eastern Book Company in Lucknow. She edited Upendra Baxi’s books Indian Supreme Court and Politics and Crisis of the Indian Legal System. She interacted with Justices Krishna Iyer and Bhagwati and read indiscriminately at the Indian Law Institute. She joined a team brought together by Professor Chhatrapati Singh from the Indian Law Institute that travelled through Tamil Nadu collecting data on wastelands. As a by-stander in a child rights case, she helped put together a report on children of prostitutes which was submitted to the chair of the court-appointed committee. She went along with a group comprising different civil society actors to Uttarkashi after the earthquake of 1991 and helped put together a report. These were vastly different issues. Over time, the overarching question that came to inform her work was about the nature of poverty and impact of legal institutions on it. Thus, slowly acquainting herself with the skills of law-informed research, she shaped a profession that she has come to call ‘law researcher’ – someone who collected facts, reported back with data and insight to judicial and administrative bodies, and discussed these insights in the public domain. Along the way, she collected a Delhi University PhD, but still, does not consider herself an academic. Her colleagues joke with her saying at least she should call herself a ‘Senior Law Researcher’.

Ramanathan’s more recent writings and energies have been around the Unique Identification Number and reflections on the thirtieth anniversary of the Bhopal disaster. She is clearly one of the most energetic legal intellectuals of today’s India, someone whose thought and writing forms an important bridge between the theory and the practice of law. She remains steadfastly distant from institutional folds though, in an attempt to conserve her freedom.

Court work, public engagement, and fact-finding

We find the other legal professionals who start their careers a decade or more after Ramanathan, also making creative endeavours to juggle various institutional roles. Narrain came back from Warwick after a Masters, and got involved with founding the Alternative Law Forum in 2002, on the heels of the Gujarat riots. Initially an inchoate space where public interest law would be practiced and researched, an incident of two sex workers being picked up by the police in Bangalore on New Year’s Eve, propelled him and his colleagues to appear in court and argue a bail petition — quite a different route into courts from the usual ones taken by young lawyers to learn courtcraft. His work veered into the realm of sexuality rights and eventually the long drawn judicial battle over the constitutional legitimacy of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. A political stance, a legal skill, and the presence of a professional and intellectual space lent to the emergence of this wide public and judicial debate over sexuality rights. Narrain cites the example of Gandhi’s lawyering to show the main tenets of human rights law practice – courtwork, engagement with the wider public, and fact-finding activities.

I find it important to see Narrain’s and Ramanathan’s sensibilities in consonance – the attempt to create and retain an inchoateness in their early career. Both are convinced that they wish to intervene in the legal domain, in public interest, but the exact methods and content emerge over a set of serendipitious meetings and events (though in Narrain’s case the organisational initiative was an important milestone). It is their patience and ability to handle an uncertain unfolding of a professional destiny that should be valuable for young lawyers and law students to learn from, if not emulate. In a series of essays over the next few weeks, I will juxtapose these four legal personalities to show the different ways of crafting one’s presence and influence in legal arenas – in courts, in the public domain, in advocacy with governments, in academia.

(Atreyee Majumder is an anthropologist. She teaches at the School of Development, Azim Premji University.)

Categories
Human Rights Litigation Uncategorized

Court (2014) is a searing look at courts but might as well have been based on a theft case

Mansih_myLawCourt (115 min, English/Marathi/Gujarati/Hindi, no subtitles; dir: Chaitanya Tamhane)

A sewage worker’s dead body is found inside a manhole in Mumbai. An ageing folk singer performing an anti-caste composition is arrested and bizarrely accused of performing an inflammatory song that may have incited the worker to commit suicide. The trial unfolds in a lower court, where the hopes and dreams of the city’s ordinary people play out. Forging these fates are the lawyers and the judge, who are observed in their personal lives beyond the theatre of the courtroom. Touching on a wide range of themes from poverty, caste, and power inequalities to antiquated laws and judicial reform, Chaitanya Tamhane’s Court has all the elements of a great plot, but falls well short of being a great film. Too many issues are unsatisfactorily dealt with, leaving the viewer deeply disappointed.

We are introduced to Narayan Kamble, a rousing Dalit folk singer who moonlights as a tuition teacher to earn his living but for the most part, goes around the city’s Dalit chawls with his troupe singing the compositions of Sambhaji Bhagat. Halfway through his performance, a group of police land up and arrest him. Kamble’s role in the film, for the most part, ends here: the rest of it is centred on a criminal court, and its three main actors. We are introduced in some detail to Kamble’s lawyer, Vinay Vora, a genteel Gujarati criminal defence advocate who shops for wine and cheese, hangs out at nightclubs and listens to jazz in his car. Opposing him is Public Prosecutor Nutan (whose name, strangely enough, we don’t learn till the closing credits), a middle-class Maharashtrian who juggles her job with managing two kids and a diabetic husband, commuting by the local train everyday. Mediating these sometimes-comical interactions between the two in court is the razor-sharp Sessions Judge Sadavarte, who is a stickler for procedure even at the cost of efficiency – and in a way, also symbolises everything that is wrong with the judicial system.

Court_ChaitanyaTamhane_poster

Through these three characters, the film gives us a searing look at the everyday life inside a courtroom. Kamble’s trial and tribulation is an incidental vehicle. Class, language, and caste collide in sometimes-violent ways: the English-speaking Vora versus the chaste Marathi-speaking Nutan; the Dalit chawls versus the posh residences. Several problems of the judicial system are also showcased extremely well, with the focus on Vora’s frustration as he struggles to extricate his client from jail, despite the prosecution’s case crumbling further after each hearing. The personalities of the three characters play out in ironic, nuanced contrast. Vora, despite his high-flying lifestyle, is the saviour of the oppressed, visiting Dalit chawls, and speaking at Leftist seminars defending civil liberties. Nutan, despite her seemingly mundane, ordinary background, is a cheerleader for the kind of xenophobic rhetoric that would make Bal Thackeray proud. Sadavarte, for all his acumen in court and faith in legal procedure, is revealed to be a very different kind of believer in private. Tamhane develops the flaws in each character rather well, and by the end it is hard to decide whom to love – or hate – more.

Court won the Best Debut at the Venice and Mumbai Film Festivals – and it is easy to see why. The film is well made, with good dialogues, screenplay and editing. The long shot is used liberally and to good effect, and the de-glamourised colours create an effect of everyday Mumbai, as opposed to a “filmy” setting. Refreshingly, the film also manages a fairly accurate depiction of the judicial process, steering well clear of the tiresome “tareekh pe tareekh“ trope. As a story, though, it fails: one is left wondering why the director chose a very powerful background without any intention of developing it. In the end, even the theme of legal or judicial reform is not taken beyond a point. The disappointment could best be summed up by the comments of a lady who sat in front of me at the screening at the Dharamsala International Film Fest: “What was the point of choosing a political story? They could as well have used a common theft case to illustrate the point.” Go and watch Court for the film as a cinematic experience, but if you’re looking for a story or the treatment of an issue, you’d be better off watching the likes of Anand Patwardhan’s Jai Bhim Comrade.

(Manish is a legal researcher based in Ahmedabad.)

Categories
Litigation

These qualification rules from other jurisdictions will make you will feel better about the Bar Council’s new practice rules

PraptiPatelEarlier this month, the Bar Council of India came out with the new Certificate of Practice and Renewal Rules, 2014 which mandate that an advocate must complete at least two years of practice before the trial courts or three years before a high court in India if they are to be eligible to practice at the Supreme Court. These new requirements of course, are in addition to the requirement of having an LL.B degree and then passing the All India Bar Examination (AIBE). India is not alone in requiring graduates to fulfill some more conditions before they are allowed to become full-fledged lawyers. Let us look at a few other jurisdictions.

United States of America

In the United States of America, each state has its own rules governing the admission of advocates to the Bar. Generally, one must obtain a bachelor’s degree known as a Juris Doctor from a law school approved by that state or complete an approved law clerk programme, also known as “reading the law”. Thereafter, except in some states, candidates must pass the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE), which covers the professional responsibility rules governing lawyers. Connecticut and New Jersey waive the MPRE for students who receive a grade of C or higher in their law school professional ethics class.

After this, they must give the state bar examination, which differs from state to state. As of this year, fourteen states have adopted the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE), which in turn consists of the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE), a standardised test consisting of 200 multiple-choice questions covering six key areas of law, the Multistate Essay Examination (MEE), a uniform test that examines a candidate’s ability to analyse legal issues and communicate them effectively in writing, and the Multistate Performance Test (MPT), a “closed-universe test” in which each candidate is required to perform a standard lawyer’s task, such as draft a memo or brief.

After clearing the requisite bar exams, the candidate must be certified by the state bar association as having “good moral character” and “fitness” to practice law, after which they can apply to the state authority for a license and a certificate of admission.

The American legal system does not require its candidates to undergo a formal apprenticeship or training after they obtain a degree or take the bar exam. The two exceptions are Delaware and Vermont, where prospective advocates must serve a clerkship under a lawyer admitted in that state for at least five months (in Delaware) and three months (in Vermont).

Canada

In Canada, one must complete an undergraduate degree in any discipline and then a graduate law degree (LL.B., which lasts three years or B.C.L., which lasts four years) or Juris Doctor (three years). The applicant must then successfully complete the bar exam for that jurisdiction and complete the Professional Legal Training Course.

Thereafter, the applicant must complete an apprenticeship referred to as “articling” under a lawyer for anywhere between nine to fifteen months, depending on the province or jurisdiction within Canada.

England and Wales

In England and Wales, unlike India, the professions of solicitor and barrister are different. One must obtain an undergraduate law degree (which lasts three years), or complete the Common Professional Examination or a Graduate Diploma in Law (which lasts one year after completing an undergraduate degree) to be either a barrister or solicitor.

Those who want to be solicitors are then required to complete the Legal Practice Course which lasts one year and then a two-year apprenticeship under a training contract, during which the trainee solicitor has to complete a Professional Skills Course.

Those wishing to practice as barristers must usually complete the one year Bar Professional Training Course, followed by a year of vocational training known as ‘pupillage’.

Pakistan

In Pakistan, one must obtain a graduate degree, followed by an LL.B degree (lasting three years) from a recognised university in Pakistan or any other common law jurisdiction in the world.

Thereafter, they must undertake apprenticeship or training under a senior lawyer for one year after which they must take the Bar Exam and give an interview with a committee of lawyers. After that the respective Provincial Bar Council may grant him or her rights of audience in the lower courts.

The advocate will earn rights of audience in the high courts of Pakistan only after two years of practice in the lower courts, at the end of which the advocate must sit for another professional exam and give an interview with a judge of a high court.

After ten years practice in the high courts, the candidate must sit for another professional exam and give an interview with a judge of the Supreme Court to be given the rights of audience in the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

Australia

In Australia, students must first obtain an undergraduate LLB degree or a graduate JD from any recognised university. After that, they have to complete an approved practical legal training under a senior lawyer. This is usually called “articles of clerkship”.

After the clerkship is complete, the candidate is granted admission to the state bar and a person holding such admission certificate from any Australian jurisdiction is entitled to practise in other jurisdictions without gaining admission in that state bar.

Singapore

Persons seeking admission to the Singapore Bar must obtain a law degree of at least three academic years from an approved university, which is either an LL.B. or LL.B. (Honours), depending on the university, or a J.D. (from any of the four approved U.S. universities or Singapore Management University). Candidates must then sit for the Singapore Bar Examination, which consists of a written examination and a five-month practical course. They must then complete a six-month Practice Training Contract before they can be called to the Bar as advocates and solicitors of the Supreme Court of Singapore.

(Prapti Patel is a student of the Indian Law Society’s Law College in Pune.)