Lessons NOT taught in Law Schools

Law is a rewarding career option. With the establishment of premier law schools and NLUs (National Law Universities), law education has attained new heights [A1] in India. This is the main reason why the number of students aspiring to become lawyers is increasing exponentially. Statistics show that in the year 2017, about 41000 students appeared for the CLAT (Common Law Aptitude Test), while the number increased to 56000 in 2019. This is a rise of approximately 40 % in just two years.   

Law Schools in India provide a 5 years' Bachelors' LLB program. Some law schools also follow the old curriculum where students enrol after graduation. Still, some other law schools have an integrated program integrating arts, commerce, or an engineering course running concurrently with law teaching. Law schools regulate their curriculum under the broad guidelines of the Bar Council of India and teach students a variety of different laws ranging from general Civil and Criminal and family laws to specific IPR, taxation, and maritime laws.  

Law students have to appear for several exams and are also required to submit projects from time to time. Currently, law students are also required to attach themselves as interns to law firms or legal departments of corporate houses. [A2] This is supposed to provide them with some “hands-on experience” in the administration and implementation of the law. However, as interns they generally end up doing research work, finding precedents or compiling documents. In their final year, law students are also mandated to participate in moot courts and visit courtrooms to see how a trial is conducted. After completion of their law degree, lawyers who graduate are required to appear for a Bar council Exam which has some practical law subjects. However, even after preparing themselves as lawyers for five long years, giving exams, submitting projects, and doing internships, a majority of newly qualified lawyers quit their dream law firm jobs in less than three years of joining and the ones opting for litigation struggle to manage the bare minimum of the profession.[A3] There is much disillusionment and dissatisfaction.[A4] This high attrition rate of newly qualified lawyers and the struggle faced by fresh litigators indicates that something is missing in their legal education. I have penned below some of my thoughts on the reasons for this disconnect and my suggestions to remedy the situation.  

 1.  Law Schools don’t prepare students to face failure. 

A lawyer’s profession is different from others and so are the profession’s intricacies. The success or failure of any case is often not dependent on the lawyer’s skill; rather it depends on the specific circumstances of a case, the frame of mind of the litigants, the precedents which the judge deciding the case refers to, the subjectivity of the judge, frequent change of judges because of the roster system and frequent transfer of judges, sheer pendency in the courts and multiple other factors.

Hence no matter how diligently a lawyer prepares himself/herself for a case and for its arguments, and in spite of the strong grip he/she has over the subject, and how winnable he/she perceives a case to be, a lawyer can still lose an argument or a case at one stage of the proceeding and at the end of it he/she does not even understand why the argument did not sink and the case is lost and he/she sometimes thinks that it is the end of the world and beats himself/herself up and thinks that he/she did not do the job properly . 

Law students should be sensitized to the ground reality that sometimes even the best case may be lost or the trial and the judgment in a case may be indefinitely delayed. In the game of law, there are only snakes, no ladder. A case may even reach the final judgment stage and the case will be swallowed by a snake when the judge is transferred and the case has to go back to the tail of the snake and the lawyer has to start arguments all over again before a new judge. Nothing in law school prepares a lawyer for this disappointment. A lawyer, therefore, must be sensitised during his/her law education that the lawyer may win or lose some cases, although the lawyer gives his/her best and at the same time a lawyer should not be disheartened when the lawyer has to argue the same matter over and over again. Even seasoned lawyers are often disappointed by this turn of events.

 2.  Law schools don’t teach articulation 

A lawyer needs to put across his or her arguments clearly and succinctly. The lawyer also has to be persuasive. Articulation is a form of clear and distinct sounds in speech to improve its clarity and the linking of a statement with the one following it. Articulation helps a person in being understood by another and involves slow and measured thinking. This is a skill sadly lacking in most newly graduating lawyers and is a skill not taught during the schooling process, imbibing the skill will make better lawyers in the long run.  [A5] 

 3.  Objective Thinking 

In my interaction with fresh graduates, this is something that I found universally common with their approach : whenever they are asked for an opinion, or to answer a query, or a client wants an issue to be resolved, fresh graduates, forget that the client has come to them for a solution, and they start reciting law sections without contemplating the fact that the client is solely interested in the solution and has little or no interest in hearing the details of the law surrounding the issue or the knowledge or erudition of the lawyer. Another important issue is that law schools train a student to memorize the provisions of the law including sections and rules, the whole focus is on the memory of the student on the letter of the law rather than his /her understanding of its spirit. This prevents objective thinking and critical analysis. [A6] The examination process should change. When I was a law teacher in Durban South Africa, the questions that I would set in my question paper were based on real life problems and the students were required to provide solutions based on their objective thinking and critical analysis. I was able to train better lawyers in the process. They were even allowed to bring all books and even their notes during the examination. In a real life situation a lawyer who is faced with a case will always have access to law books and judicial precedents during the preparation of a case to find a solution. Why should this not be available during the student years?

 4.  How to get work

This is again something that needs to be taught at law schools. Fresh graduates coming out of law schools have little or no idea of how to get work and are therefore largely dependent upon senior lawyers and law firms for starting their legal careers. The art of building a practice includes connecting with prospective clients, understanding their requirements, and delivering them the required service. This can be said to be the main reason why fresh lawyers struggle in their initial years even after excelling in their subjects. Law schools should adopt ideas similar to management schools where they are taught to set up meetings, give presentations, negotiations, client consultation, and other such skills that will help them in getting work independently. Students, during their internship period, should also get actively involved in the business development exercise and even firms should encourage their participation. At least one or two internships in the business development department should be made mandatory for a law student. 

 5.  Following proper Code of Conduct in and outside the courtroom.

A lawyer is a lawyer inside a courtroom as well as outside the courtroom, law students are taught that they need to wear black and white, respect the courtroom and the judges, but that’s not all. There are multiple conduct norms which a lawyer needs to follow, in, and outside the courtroom. Professionalism is of the utmost necessity; there are ample examples where fresh graduates show a lack of professionalism in how they act and how they perform their tasks. The liberal environment of the law school encourages this amateurism and ham-handedness. More than 60-70 % of project submissions are plagiarized[A7] , reframed to counter the plagiarism checkers, and last-minute preparations for exams. The legal profession demands dedication, research, and perseverance, which is a rare commodity in law students these days. 

The UGC and various other journal publishing committees like the COPE[1] and the WAME[2] have specific prohibitions against unethical practices like plagiarism, duplication, redundant publications. Law schools also need to incorporate similar ethics committee that would ensure that special emphasis is provided on building up ethics in students. Stricter measures to counter plagiarism, duplicate submissions, salami slicing, and other such shortcuts should be implemented. Deviations should be penalized.  

 6.  How to Build Relationships

A lawyer grows up with his/her contacts and hence building a relationship with clients, staff, seniors, juniors, and co-professionals is something that he or she must know. Law schools propagate more competition than compassion, and as an outcome, a fresher comes out alone, with fewer or no friends. New lawyers struggle at building relationships with anyone they come across, as they are always interested in prioritizing their interests above everything else. This behaviour can be emotionally expensive for their seniors, their colleagues, their friends, and most importantly their clients. The secret of building a practice lies in building relationships, you take care of the old client first and then think of fetching new ones, not the other way round. Prioritizing the interest of stakeholders above one’s own is something that law schools don’t teach. [A8] 

 Team activities are very helpful in building healthy relationships amongst students. It increase compassion, improves communication, and helps an individual to prioritize team interest over his personal interest. Law schools should encourage group activities in between competitions like moot courts which only promote self-interest above others. 

 7.  Respecting the privacy of clients information

The relationship between a lawyer and his/her client is a fiduciary one. This is something every law student is taught but what is not taught, is respecting the privacy of the client’s information. Consequentially, young lawyers are seen gossiping about the private information of their clients, which was provided to them under confidence. This information is shared with their friends and family. This is something that students needs to learn during their schooling. A fresh graduate needs to understand not only the worth of the client but also the worth of the client’s information. The lawyer must be taught that he/she is under an obligation to protect the client’s privacy and that the lawyer is entering into a profession where even the Court of Law or a government authority cannot compel the lawyer to share or disclose the clients information. 

 8.  Understanding the psychology of a person.

Advocacy requires that a lawyer must have a strong grasp on psychology. This includes study of body language and face language. Sometimes clients don’t disclose the complete information, and alternatively, clients may also not tell the truth. It is important for the lawyer to listen attentively and visualise acutely the face language and the body language of a client or a prospective client. The lawyer needs to mentally analyse the expressions and gestures and the tone of voice to come to the conclusion whether the person is telling the truth or deflecting. This applies to witnesses too, particularly during cross examination. Moot court competitions are more in the form of a soap opera, where the judges are sitting on the dais for grilling the student lawyers as if it is an audition for the show. Also I find that the topics selected for this competition are nowhere close to reality. Many of the problems relate to public international law where the kingdom of Ping invade the kingdom of Pong and the students have to debate whether Ping was right or Pong was right. Even if witnesses are called it is more of a performance rather than a real life situation. In my opinion practical psychology, reading of body language and face language are tools every law student must learn.[A9] 

 9.  Actual Hands-on experience

As explained in the previous paragraphs Moot Courts and Trial Advocacies are very far from the actual on-ground realities. Resultantly, law students have negligible experience of the actual on-ground reality, except the few who land fruitful internships. Institutions should back students and motivate them to take up pro bono work. There could be at least one real case in a year where students can develop their research skills, survey skills, drafting skills, oration, and articulation. In the last few years, there have been few examples where students have filed a PIL on major public issues, like one student from NLIU Bhopal who filed a PIL in the Madhya Pradesh High Court seeking an amendment in the MP Motor Vehicles’ Act, to make helmet compulsory.

 10.     How to conduct research, surveys.

The need for conducting research is indispensable for lawyers, regardless of the area or type of practice. Every lawyer requires research for handling their complicated legal cases and helps them in strengthening their arguments for their case. Similarly, surveys are essential for lawyers involved in public interest litigation and policymaking. Law schools do teach research and survey methodology, but there is a complete lack in implementation of the same by the students in their project and reports submissions[A10] . Consequentially fresh graduates struggle in doing research and are dependent on law firms and senior lawyers to teach them researching. Hence institutions need to emphasize more on devolving research skills amongst law students. Some law schools have cells/committee on ‘environment ‘, ‘gender justice’, ‘cyberlaw’, ’IPR’ where professors teach students how to pick up a ground-level issue, survey, and draft policies regarding it. They also have their publications. Such committees should be made in all law colleges, so that the law students get a chance to actively participate in surveys and law-making. 

 In my career I have had the opportunity to meet several recently qualified lawyers. I hired several of them but I was sad about many of them. Although they had an adequate knowledge of law, I found them deficient in several of these points that I have mentioned above. I am sure that with proper schooling in these areas they would have come out as better lawyers, and I hope in the future that their curriculum includes at least some of these subjects.

 I wish all law students the very best in this hard and unprecedented times. [A11] 

[1] Committee on Publication Ethics

[2] World Association of Media Editors

 [A1]If possible, could you please elaborate on this? Can you please consider explaining here how NLUs transformed legal education?

 [A2]Please consider citing the BCI rules regarding the same.

 [A3]It would be very great if you could kindly cite this statement, and mention the source of this statement.

 [A4]Please cite this too.

 [A5]If possible, could you please mention the reasons why law schools fail to teach this skill of articulation?

 [A6]If possible, could you please explain why, in your opinion, law schools fail to focus on objective thinking and critical analysis, and instead focus on memorizing provisions?

 [A7]Please consider citing this statement.

 [A8]Considering that law is all about the relevant stakeholders, in your opinion, is there any particular reason why law schools do not teach prioritizing the interests of stakeholders?

 [A9]It would be very helpful if you could please explain as to how students can be taught practical psychology and body language tools? Should it be in the form of courses conducted by expert litigators, or psychology courses? It would be great if you could please mention your opinion on this.

 [A10]In your experience, are there any particular reasons why law schools fail to implement these research and survey methodologies amongst students? It would be very helpful if you could please mention this.

 [A11]The paper satisfies NLSIR’s criteria of sentence construction, grammar, and identification of issues. However, the author could consider elaborating on some of the points mentioned in the paper. For example, why law schools fail to focus on objective thinking or why law schools do not teach prioritizing of the relevant stakeholders. Elaborating a bit more on these points could give the readers an idea of the issues plaguing law schools and why these issues exist.