Daily Times

Educational institutions must be, as proposed by the great historian Ibn-e-Khaldun, industries where human minds are manufactured. Our leadership needs to examine the extant state of affairs of that system of education which is directly linked with our justice system. Have our law schools have been able to achieve the goal of training human minds in the field of law and jurisprudence? The answer comes to ‘no’. If we try to paint the picture, it will be bleak and miserable.

Legal Education, inter alia, includes syllabi, method of teaching, system of examination, availability of requisite infrastructure in law schools, faculty members’ adequate education and necessary training, their attitude, behaviour, skill and knowledge. Another dimension of legal education is training of new entrants for enrolments as lawyers and bar examinations etc. Yet another facet of legal education touches upon those who opt to join judiciary as Judicial Officers.

No matter how many law schools we have in the country regardless of their affiliation with any university, what matters most is their inability to impart quality legal education. The bar examinations for enrolment of lawyers are highly criticised in many respects in terms of quality control. Ever since independence, our leadership did not at all bother to pay the requisite attention to improve the syllabi, teaching standards and system of examination including the method of bar examinations for enrolment of lawyers.

Lawyers being benefactors of a society are supposed to be knowledgeable, well-groomed, professionally sound and mentally alert. Shifting LLB from 2-years course to 3-years after graduation or 5-years course after intermediate could not successfully work as a solution to the problem for a very simple reason that the syllabi which law schools had adopted in early 1950s is being consistently followed till date with no noticeable and healthy change. Things have changed and society has become so complex that the existing contents of courses being taught at law schools are inadequate to meet the challenges of time.

A coterie enters the noble profession of teaching law, adorning the bar and gracing the bench which overburdens the system with inefficiency and intellectual bankruptcy

Non-practicing lawyers teaching at law schools focus on purely theoretical aspects of law without any insight into practical aspects of legal profession. Adverse is also the case with practicing lawyers whose teaching revolves around very stereotyped practicing aspects having no tinge of insight into juridical aspects of legal education. There is no food for thought at both ends for students at law schools.

The role of two important bodies, elected bodies of lawyers, that is to say, Pakistan Bar Council and respective Provincial Bar Councils cannot be underestimated in the whole context in two major respects: firstly, there is no statutory regime with corresponding accountability mechanism to bind lawyers or law firms to give proper training to their trainees during apprenticeship period; and secondly, bar exams for enrolment of lawyers are not conducted on merit basis.

System of examination at law schools is so weak and prone to incompetence that the students making use of ‘guides’ and ‘solved exam paper of previous 5 years’ instead of studying text-books and relevant case-law successfully get through examinations of LLB. The result is that they lack not only adequate understanding of basic law but have no idea of legal research and critical thinking. This phenomenon keeps their talent, if any, dormant and adversely affects their attitude and critical thinking in the long run, a sine qua non for a successful lawyer. After graduating, they undergo a training which is known as apprenticeship but this is another ugly face of the whole system.

The casual and vocational approach of law schools, faculty members and Bar Councils as aforesaid, has the direct effect of bringing into the legal profession, whether at law schools or at the bar or bench a lot of persons who lack in attitude, knowledge, legal acumen, understanding of basic law, legal ethics. As a result, a coterie enters the noble profession of teaching law, adorning the bar and gracing the bench which overburdens the system with inefficiency and intellectual bankruptcy.

These flaws, as pin pointed, give rise to two way traffic, as trickle-down and bottom-to-top adverse repercussions cause colossal damage to knowledgeability, professionalism, and ethical values of noble profession, viz, faculty, lawyers and judges.  Inefficient, non-professional and ethically unsound people make way to prestigious positions like faculty members, advocates, judicial officers, advocates-general, attorneys- general and principal law officers in public sector institutions as well as private sectors organisations.

The most critical aspect of this scenario is its effect on system of administration of justice. If a presiding officer is inefficient, justice becomes a farce. The net result is the flawed dispensation of justice.

It is high time for our policy makers, educationists, bar councils and high ups at judicial academies to rise to the occasion and diagnose not only the exact causes of this malady in legal education but to come up with an advanced model based on international standards so that system of legal education is adequately reformed to produce able, efficient, well-groomed and skilled professionals.

The author is an Islamabad-based lawyer and partner at UMR Practice

Published in Daily Times, January 26^th 2019.