India needs to rethink its legal education system

A realignment can ensure that our law graduates wear the gown not merely as a credential, but as a commitment to constitutional stewardship

During recent proceedings in Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay v. Union of India, a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court offered an observation that could redefine the future of Indian legal training. Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant called upon the Union government to establish an independent National Legal Education Commission. This judicial impetus marks a crucial transition for India, which hosts one of the world’s largest legal workforces.

The Supreme Court has acknowledged that contemporary legal pedagogy requires dedicated, multi-disciplinary governance rather than piecemeal administrative adjustments. (HT Archive)

Moving away from decades of judicial hesitation, the Supreme Court has acknowledged that contemporary legal pedagogy requires dedicated, multi-disciplinary governance rather than piecemeal administrative adjustments.

To understand why the CJI’s intervention is both timely and necessary, one must look back three decades, to a foundational milestone in Indian legal reform. In October 1995, the International Commission of Jurists convened a landmark conference in Bangalore, inaugurated by the then CJI, AM Ahmadi.

The resulting Bangalore Declaration and Plan of Action confronted entrenched formalist myths that had long isolated law schools from socioeconomic realities. The assembled jurists warned that legal education could not remain a closed theoretical exercise; it had to cultivate a legal imagination capable of enforcing economic, social, and cultural rights for vulnerable populations.

Yet, Indian legal education remains trapped in a structural paradox. Under the Advocates Act of 1961, the Bar Council of India (BCI) bears a statutory dual mandate: disciplining the practising Bar while regulating academic standards across more than 1,300 law colleges. Overburdened by administrative work, BCI has struggled to enforce quality, update syllabi, or align legal training with broader national reforms like the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. While the NEP promotes flexible four-year degree frameworks, BCI has maintained a rigid status quo, resulting in systemic regulatory deficits in academic variance, pedagogical inertia, and policy disconnect.

From a constitutional law perspective, Upadhyay’s comparison between a BTech and an LL.B — contending that if engineering can be mastered in four years, legal study requires no more — must be evaluated with critical nuance. While framed as an equivalence, it serves primarily as a pragmatic policy argument against delayed workforce entry and economic inefficiency rather than a direct pedagogical match.

Unlike purely technical disciplines, legal training requires cultivating professional identity, ethical judgment, and constitutional stewardship. Nevertheless, the petition successfully highlights an indisputable reality: BCI has allowed Indian legal education to drift away from mainstream higher education reforms.

This growing divergence between the NEP and professional legal training underscores the need to examine the historical precedents that have sought to realign Indian legal pedagogy over the past three decades. Resolving this crisis requires rethinking not just how long law students study, but how the foot soldiers of our Constitution actually learn. Complete legal preparation requires seamlessly integrating three formative apprenticeships: intellectual doctrine, practical craft, and professional identity. Indian legal education heavily over-indexes on doctrinal lectures, treating practical skill and ethical formation as post-graduation afterthoughts. The infusion of AI in legal education, practice, and even judicial work is posing a relentless nudge for much-needed change.

Some experts have proposed a compelling solution: a 4+1 model. Under this blueprint, the five-year degree is restructured into four years of intensive academic instruction followed by one compulsory year of court-supervised apprenticeship in trial courts, high courts, and judicial chambers. This model directly addresses the friction around judicial service entry (after All India Judges Association v. Union of India, 2025). It ensures every graduate gains hands-on experience in docket management, drafting, and cross-examination before entering legal practice. Transforming this blueprint into national practice demands an independent National Legal Education Commission. Working alongside BCI and UGC, such an expert commission could standardise clinical education, drawing on comparative, globally benchmarked frameworks. Parliament must constitute the proposed body as an independent, multidisciplinary statutory authority comprising eminent jurists, legal academics, practicing advocates, social scientists, and judicial officers. Modernising law school syllabi is crucial to combine rigorous doctrinal analysis with mandatory active learning, formative assessments, ethical AI use, and interdisciplinary courses in policy, technology, and economic regulation.

By establishing an independent Commission and restructuring the law degree around integrated academic study, intellectual relevance, and compulsory court apprenticeships, we can ensure that our legal institutions produce ethically grounded, skilled, and public-spirited advocates capable of upholding the rule of law. A realignment can ensure that our law graduates wear the gown not merely as a credential, but as a commitment to constitutional stewardship.

Ashish Bharadwaj writes on higher education, technology, and patents. Insiyah Vahanvaty is a socio-political commentator and author of ‘The Fearless Judge’. The views expressed are personal