Daily Times

LAHORE: The new rules and regulations imposed by Pakistan Bar Council for legal education would not only hurt the legal education system across the country but would also reduce the number of graduate lawyers lower than the market needs.

PBC, earlier this year, introduced new legal education rules to improve and revamp the standards and quality of legal education in Pakistan. However, these rules forced the educational institutions to offer five-year LLB programmes instead of three years, besides bounding them to reduce the number of admissions and graduating students to only 100. By imposing these rules, PBC might deprive hundreds of students across the Pakistan of law education.

Meanwhile, according to the new rules, postgraduate legal education offering institutions are required to take permission from PBC and Higher Education Commission. This act of PBC may arise further controversy between the two authoritative bodies.

According to PBC Legal Education Rules 2015, a person having passed the examination of higher secondary education shall be eligible for admission to 1st year of (5 years) LLB programme. Clause 5 of the rules stated that the total number of students admitted in 1st year LLB in any case would not accede 100. Clause 6 stated that the duration of course of LLB programme would not be less than five years provided that all the universities/degree awarding institutions/law colleges shall discontinue the present three years LLB course within three years after enforcement of these rules. Similarly, for postgraduate education, including LLM and PhD, it was stated that a university/degree awarding institution, intending to impart legal education at the level of LLM, would have to seek prior permission and approval of the PBC and HEC.

All these rules imposed by PBC are widely criticised by the lawyers and teachers, and also created panic and tension among students who are already facing shortage of available seats in government sector degree programmes.

Meanwhile, according to data available with Daily Times, there are around 1,000 students currently studying in Punjab University Law College in different degree programmes but after implantation of new rules by PBC, the number of students to be admitted this year would be reduced to only 100, which means that PBC has dropped the admission ratio to 10 percent as compared to the previous numbers of seats.

Interestingly, there are around 30 number of colleges affiliated with Punjab University across the province and if there are around 100 students enrolled in every college, it means that after five years there would be only 3,000 lawyers available in the market.

Pakistan Bar Council member Chaudhry Ishtiaq told Daily Times that the council had reviewed all positive and negative aspects of the rules and regulation before deciding its imposition. He said that PBC had tried to convert LLB from a profession by chance to profession by choice by increasing the tenure of LLB and reducing the number of seats.

Talking about the need to increase the number of years, Ishtiaq was of the view that PBC in 1992 increased the course from two years to three years in order to update the LLB programme. Similarly, after 24 years, there was definitely a need to revamp the legal education system as per the current market and educational requirements, he added.

He said, “By increasing the number of years from three to five years, we have tried to make legal education stand with MBBS and engineering programmes, as after intermediate, students have to choose their professional field.”

Replying to a query regarding private colleges and reduction of seats, Ishtiaq explained that there was mushroom growth of private law colleges across the Pakistan, as 163 franchises were working in Punjab alone.