In this world of endless corruption and crimes, it is important to have a nation that follows a good law. Also, the lawyers must be well trained to cope up with any struggling legal situation in the country. It is a fact that legal education, law, and development are quite interrelated in this society. This is because many developing countries are trying to balance the socio-economic status of the people in various peaceful ways. So it is quite important to produce the lawyers by imparting proper legal education to develop the country with the right social vision.
Improvements to be made in legal education
At present, there are flaws in legal education in most of the nations and some improvements must be made in the areas like:
- Syllabus
Legal education must be given where it should be practical and action-oriented. Also, the syllabus must be revised annually.
- Teaching quality
It is advisable to release the teaching videos by subject experts. The queries related to the videos can be cleared by the local teachers then.
- Continuous learning
All the lawyers must take a refresher course annually which makes them aware of current law.
- Practical assessments
Practical sessions must be used for knowledge evaluation.
Legal education in India and the USA
The Socratic method is the method followed by law schools in the USA. Seminars would be interactive yet questions creep in somehow. Thus the students are forced to get updated with the recent trends if in case they got to answer the questions. Whereas in India, the education is mostly the lecture style, where the aspirants hear what the lecture says and clears the doubt by raising hands. Mandatory participation in the seminars is not followed. In the US, participation is mandatory and may be randomized. In India, the practical sessions and mandatory participation in seminars are included in the final year.
While coming to teaching pedagogy, the Indian system follows a memorizing method. The case names and landmarks are important here and these will be asked for the exams too. To know the section numbers is regarded as a professional style in Indian legal circles.
In the USA, the students must defend the opponent with the reasoning and the lecturers are least bothered about section numbers or the statute. Indian law focuses on the rule and the American low focuses on the analysis. This makes a major difference in the law system in India and the USA. By simply reading the law and the case studies, the professors in India help the aspirants to be problem solvers.
Repairing the cracks in the legal education system
It is high time to repair the cracks in the legal education system. “It is important to make new changes in the law education system by meeting new daunting challenges. It should also reach the internationalization in which the nature of the law practices must be amended,” says Justice Pattnaik, the former judge of the Supreme Court of India.
The main issue pointed out by him is that the colleges are not aware of checking the eligibility of the students before entering them to the law colleges.
Also, the teaching facilities and the method of teaching is just the same as before. There is no improvement with the old Degree of Law by simply adopting the education structure of reputed universities. Above all, there are less qualified teachers too. This must be changed at the earliest and research scholars must be in Law must be encouraged to publish more papers in Law schools. This helps out to bring out an intellectually vibrant environment.
It is the need of the hour to make the legal education a pre-requisite one even in developed nations by improving the standard by conducting training in teaching methods and techniques monthly.
Final thoughts
Law is one of the most important factors to be followed in the society as it states the rule of conduct for the entire nation. A tailor-made legal education system makes the students perfectly law-abiding citizens and these students can change the world to a better place.
