Bring all Law college sat par with NLUs

Let us first talk of reforms in legal education. The 1200-odd Law colleges in the country are in a pathetic state. There is an urgent need to bring them at par with National Law Universities. Admission to all Law colleges should be based on CLAT. As part of their social responsibility, Law schools should be asked to adopt at least one Law college every year and give training to their teachers and help them in building libraries.

Law Schools are ‘islands of excellence’ and therefore, just like IITs should be directly funded by the Ministry of HRD. Due to the small number of students, the quantum of fee collection is very small and the government has to give generous grants to these institutions to keep them functional. If the government agrees to fund liberally, then the fees would be automatically reduced.

When we talk of unique practices, NALSAR is the only university, which is offering a number of elective courses of varying credits by regular, adjunct and visiting faculty and giving option to the students to study the courses/subjects of their interest.

The curriculum and teaching methodology at NALSAR aim to equip students with research and writing skills through different kinds of projects assignments such as: newspaper discovery; film reviews; conducting of live interviews; creating moot problems; drafting petitions; book reviews; case comments and research papers.

As a part of the study programme and in order to provide the students an opportunity to look at the practical problems and observe social realities, the university provides internship training for all its students during the semester break viz. from first week of November to middle of December every year.

Even as the university encourage research and writing skills through projects, it allows students to explore other co-curricular routes such as moot courts and essay competitions. The
large repository of elective courses, the varied project assignments and different learning techniques are efforts at recognizing multiple intelligences and providing space for the strengths of all kinds of students.

NALSAR is also the only Law School in the country, which runs a specialized MBA programme. The course aims to curve out future managers having cutting-edge knowledge and expertise in management and Law. In view of the need for preparing professionally trained Court Managers to put in place an efficient Court Management System, the university is integrating Management with Law and offering Court Management as one of the major specializations in MBA. Similarly in today’s complex globalized business world, carrying out business or running a corporate without adequate legal skills is a very risky proposition. The Business Managers need to know the legal environment and therefore MBA (Corporate Governance) and MBA (Financial Services and Capital Markets) are going to be accepted by the corporates without any difficulty. 

The legal profession has significantly changed from the time when I studied Law. The establishment of National Law School, Bangalore and other NLUs has brought in a paradigm shift. The demography of Law Schools and colleges has completely changed and Law is a preferred course today.