Law schools

Exclusive: Contradicting earlier Bar Council of India (BCI) claims, the lawyer of one group of petitioners challenging the all India bar exam said that a large number of students had not yet received their study materials, following an adjournment of today’s Bombay High Court hearing to 23 February.

Five NLSIU Bangalore students with their Legal Services Clinic have filed a consumer complaint against Pepsi Co alleging “unfair trade practice” and “cheating” for higher and varied maximum retail prices (MRP) on beverages.

Herbert Smith partner Chris Parsons and Oxford Professor and law faculty dean Timothy Endicott will kick off a now-annual lecture series at NLU Delhi followed by five days of lectures at NUJS Kolkata with plans to hit Nalsar Hyderabad next year.

Only 377 applicants out of 22,267 have not completed their bar exam forms correctly, while only 38 have not received their study materials, according to Bar Council of India (BCI) records released today.

Exclusive interview: HNLU Raipur vice-chancellor Paramjit Singh Jaswal of less than three months formally announced to students that he would join RGNUL Patiala as its new vice chancellor for personal reasons. He told Legally India that he would continue being part of the HNLU family and would face new challenges at RGNUL.

Breaking: The Bar Council of India (BCI) said yesterday that all 22,267 applicants for the all India bar exam have been sent their preparation papers and that the first exam go ahead as planned by 6 March 2011.

HNLU Raipur’s students will try to convince vice chancellor professor Paramjit Singh Jaswal today to stay at the college, after he was appointed to join RGNUL Patiala as its new vice chancellor after less than three months into his new job at HNLU.

Jindal Global Law School (JGLS) and US Michigan law school have held a virtual classroom hosted in India, with “seamless” state-of-the-art video technology allowing students to participate in real time.

Outlook India defended itself against the criticisms in last year’s complaint by NUJS Kolkata professor Shamnad Basheer and two students against Outlook and India Today for publishing allegedly error-riddled and misleading law school rankings. Outlook revealed the details of its complex weighting system of ranking but declined to publish further information, in what the NUJS complainants called a ‘lackadaisical manner’.

Exclusive: The Bar Council of India (BCI) has again declined to disclose detailed information in respect of its contract with the company running the postponed all-India bar exam, following an appeal to an earlier right to information (RTI) request.

However, the BCI has now reversed its response to the original RTI and claimed that it did in fact solicit tenders from competing service providers - Tata Consultancy Services, Sify and Imaging Solutions - before it awarded the contract to Rainmaker.

Law minister Veerappa Moily said the government had finished a Bill to set up a new National Commission for Higher Legal Education and Research, which would replace the BCI as the regulatory body responsible for legal education, recognition of law colleges and a unified law school curriculum.

NUJS Kolkata has announced the 2011 CLAT (Common Law Admission Test) with radical changes, including distribution through the Indian post office network and the ditching of static general knowledge and legal knowledge questions. Meanwhile, the law school diversity project IDIA has pledged to fund admission fees for all students in need.

Colleagues, students, friends and family are mourning the tragic loss of recent Nalsar Hyderabad graduate and legal campaigner Fatehpal Singh who passed away on Friday following a road accident last week.

Nalsar Hyderabad has proposed a regular full-time course for paralegals to widen the scope of legal education to include non-LLB professionals for imparting functions of mediators, conciliators, negotiators and counsellors.