Daily Times

It is true of all professions that real professional training, is not your academic credentials but what you learn on the job. For the longest time, the profession of law did not require an academic degree or formal education in law. It was rather learnt by apprenticeship of sorts with established legal practitioners. Take Abraham Lincoln for example. Before he rose to be one of the greatest presidents of the United States of America, he rose to the pinnacle of legal profession in Illinois. He did not have a law degree.

Most of the countless barristers we know of who participated in the Indian Independence struggle did not have an LLB or a JD. Neither Jinnah nor Gandhi had formal university education, say what the Wikipedia might. Jawaharlal Nehru did have a university degree but it was in natural science. These three giants of South Asian history became barristers by taking the requisite exams and enrolling in, Inns of Court where they learnt the law from benchers. Of the three Pakistan’s founding father was the one who rose to the heights of the profession. Be coming one of the most successful lawyers in the British Empire in his day. When one goes through his pleadings or his speeches in the assembly however one finds that he was able to quote obscure legal texts, principles, precedents and political concepts with an ease that we associate with top-notch university education. He was however entirely self-taught spending hours in the reading of British Museum’s reading room and attending theatre at the Globe.

There are three real pre-requisites to being a good lawyer — the ability to speak, to reason and to write cogently and clearly. Any lawyer’s training should comprise these three essential ingredients or else that lawyer cannot be said to be a competent professional. Legal education in Pakistan unfortunately does not equip lawyers with these essentials. There is of course the London University external program and while their quality is significantly better than the local alternatives, the truth is that; in terms of practice in Pakistan the academic content is of little value.

Local education system with annual examinations are designed well to train the lawyers in a well-rounded view of Pakistani law, its origins in common law, an introduction to English jurisprudence, British, American and Pakistani constitutional systems as well as some rudiments of the Islamic jurisprudence as well. Universities such as LUMS, UMT, International Islamic University and Bahria University etc have done well to adapt the same Pakistani curriculum to an American style approach to academic learning in law. LUMS especially has done well in training its students in the art of speaking and writing. However not everyone can go to LUMS and we need an overhaul of the main legal education system in Pakistan. That would be an undertaking of gargantuan proportions which is unlikely to happen any time soon, though the current Supreme Court has made efforts to ensure that some order be brought to the chaos that is our legal education system.

The foremost thing that can be done, however, is to create a system inspired by the Inns of Court system in England and Wales. Every city should create specific training academies, which should provide 6 months post-LLB training to lawyers, which should focus solely on advocacy skills, legal writing in English, ethics and client dealing.

It is often said that jurisprudence from Indian superior courts is significantly better and more cogent than jurisprudence emanating out of our courts. This is because Indian lawyers and judges generally are better equipped in law

These training academies, which we might as well call Inns of Pakistani Courts, should then take a bar exam that should not be based on academic content but rather these essential subjects. Every lawyer passing out from these academies should be called to bar at the relevant Bar Council. The term “barrister” has become synonymous in our parts with lawyers who have trained in London, but it is time that we use the term as it is commonly understood — a lawyer called to bar in any jurisdiction having rights of audience before courts and tribunals. Legal practitioners in the US for example use the term attorney (a term which actually was the original term for “solicitor” in England and Wales) but barrister still has currency.

A restaurant in Princeton New Jersey calls itself Alchemist and Barrister because two friends, one a chemist and another a lawyer got together and entered into the restaurant business. Harvard Law School has an annual Barristers’ ball open to all lawyers who have graduated from Harvard. Not far from Harvard which is in Cambridge Massachusetts, in the adjoining town of Somerville, stands a historic building called Barristers’ Hall, a meeting place once for local lawyers. Indeed Harvard for the longest time had its society of lawyers called Lincoln’s Inn inspired by the most historic and oldest of British Inns of Court. A similar tradition can be started in Pakistan, which will help us adapt the finest English common traditions to the country and its unique environment helping us train our future lawyers better and without any discrimination on the basis of financial background.

It is often said that jurisprudence from Indian superior courts is significantly better and more cogent than jurisprudence emanating out of our courts. This is because Indian lawyers and judges generally are better equipped in law. As a significant effort has been made to maintain highest standards vis a vis advocacy training, writing and ethics. This is precisely why none of the top lawyers in India today were trained abroad but were in fact trained right at home. Top amongst them is the National Law School of India University in Bangalore. Many of the top LLM candidates at Harvard, Columbia and Stanford from India are from these schools.

I have never met an Indian student who took the London University external exams. Back in 2007, Pakistan attempted to follow suit by setting up the National Law University in Islamabad aimed at producing top class jurists and training them adequately for this purpose. I am sorry to say that the admirable initiative was brought to a halt by none other than one of our fellow lawyers, Dr. Babar Awan. It is said that Babar Awan during his tenure as Minister of Law and Justice ordered the scrapping of the entire project for reasons best known to him. A golden opportunity was thus lost because of this gentleman’s personal dislike for the idea of NLU. There was no protest from any quarter.

This country was founded by one of the greatest lawyers in history. Yet it does not produce top quality stuff when it comes to lawyers. External programs and foreign legal education can at best be a stopgap solution. Pakistan is no longer a part of the British Empire governed by acts of British Parliament. It has its own constitution and a legal history post-1947, which though rooted in English Common Law fully is nevertheless uniquely Pakistani in substance.

We need a legal education that is cognizant of Pakistan’s own unique legal challenges and situation. We need more universities like LUMS, IIU, UMT and Bahria. This should then be coupled with Pakistani Inns of Court in every provincial capital and the Federal Capital. The defunct NLU project must also be revived. Our lawyers should be the best jurists in the Anglophone world. That should be the objective. The present government has made a lot of hue and cry over one system of education. That is an unworkable objective but for now there is a possibility of creating a solid local legal education system. Is the honourable Law Minister listening or will he and Prime Minister Imran Khan repeat what Babar Awan, then in PPP, did 10 years ago? Let us hope not.

The writer is practicing lawyer and  was a visiting Fellow at Harvard Law School in Cambridge MA, USA. He blogs at http://globallegalforum.blogspot.com and his twitter handle is @therealylh

Published in Daily Times, September 8^th 2018.