Law schools

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has responded to common queries and concerns about the bar exam, explaining that the BCI is discussing options to ameliorate lot of 2010 batch graduates, that legal challenges will cause no shift in timetable, and that the Rs 1,300 test fee is reasonable, answering questions relating to Rainmaker's appointment to assist in the exam.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has set itself less than five months to kickstart the overhaul of Indian legal education, beginning with a revised accreditation requirements for law schools, phasing out three-year LLBs, introducing benchmarking of colleges, standardising the academic calendar, creating a new national curriculum and improving teaching and continuous education.

A group of law graduates from Delhi University have invoked the Supreme Court’s writ jurisdiction under Article 32 of the Indian Constitution as two students of the NUALS Kochi have filed yet another petition before the Kerala High Court against the all India Bar Examinations.

A High Court bench in Maharashtra has ordered the petitioner students of Manikchand Pahade Law College to join the Bar Council of India vs Bonnie FOI Law College and Ors proceedings to set aside their grievances against the all india bar examin while it is understood that the BCI has written to the CJI to seek transfer of such pending petition to the Supreme Court (SC).

"I don't think students are against the exam, only against the waiting period," says solicitor general and Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Gopal Subramanium, who is the architect of the proposed all India bar exam. The exam remains controversial because this year's final year students would not be able to practice law until 2011. Legally India asks the BCI chief some of the questions that have preoccupied students.

Allen & Overy's (A&O) best friend Trilegal's international finance course at NLSIU Bangalore has this year also invited 40 students from other national law schools and will be held at Nalsar Hyderabad next year, being set to rotate between law schools year-by-year.

The law ministry, law firms Krishnamurthy and Co, Trilegal and Wadia Ghandy, CLAT coaching institute IMS and law schools NLSIU Bangalore and NUALS Cochin have pledged financial or other support for NUJS Kolkata professor Shamnad Basheer's project to increase diversity in the legal profession, which visits poorer rural secondary school students to train and encourage them to apply to top law schools.

A 2010 Nalsar Hyderabad graduate yesterday challenged the six-month gap between bar council enrolment and passing of the proposed all-India bar exam, which would give litigating lawyers a "right to practice" only months after they graduate.

The bar examination has faced further hurdles in a fourth court case by a Karnataka student, while a group of protesting final year students representing a number of law schools met law minister Veerappa Moily last Monday evening, calling the exam an unfortunate decision taken in haste that could cost jobs.

Indian weekly magazines India Today and Outlook India have both ranked NLSIU Bangalore and Nalsar Hyderabad as India's top law schools, while NLIU Bhopal and ILS Pune occupied third place in each respective ranking and NUJS Kolkata found itself in sixth and fifth place.

A Chennai advocate and a retired mechanical engineer from Ahmedabad have independently filed two further writ petitions claiming that the Bar Council of India (BCI) is violating the 1961 Advocates Act and India's constitution by holding an all-India bar exam.

Six law graduates have filed a writ petition challenging that the Bar Council of India's (BCI) proposed all India bar exam should not prevent them from practising in courts.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) is in talks with government agency Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) to automate BCI internal processes and design cost-effective or free anti-plagiarism software for law schools and other legal writers.