Bar Council of India (BCI)
The Indian Corporate Counsels Association (ICCA) has proposed eight weekly meetings between various stakeholders in the legal services liberalisation discussion, in order to prepare a status report on the points of consensus and disagreement between them.
The Bar Council of India (BCI) has invited the Society of Indian Law Firms (Silf) to help it fine-tune its proposal to the Law Commission, which was called upon by the Supreme Court to take a comprehensive look at the role of the bar councils’ “failure” and “inaction” in regulating the legal profession.
The Bar Council of India (BCI) has proposed to tighten its control over the legal profession by assuming more than a dozen new functions, statutorily recognising bar associations, formulating new governing rules for law firms and foreign lawyers, and enacting more stringent standards of professional qualification and conduct.
The Supreme Court today told the Bar Council of India (BCI) that state bar councils should hold elections, even if the BCI’s verification drive had not yet been completed, ordering the BCI to frame guidelines to conduct elections and relax its certificate or practice rules if required to allow elections, reported Bar & Bench.
The Bar Council of India (BCI) has backtracked on its earlier full-throated support of liberalisation of the legal market in a six-page letter, saying that it had encountered “strong opposition” from state bar councils and was therefore withdrawing its earlier draft rules to allow foreign lawyers.
The Indian Corporate Counsel Association (ICCA) has produced draft of a Foreign Legal Practitioners (Regulation of Practice) Bill 2016, which it will present at today’s meeting with ministries and stakeholders at 17:30 in Delhi.
The Bar Council of India (BCI) has asked the Supreme Court, in an affidavit filed in the challenge to conduct of the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) that was filed by Shamnad Basheer and others, that it be allowed to conduct the CLAT in future.
The posts of chairman, secretary and Bar Council of India (BCI) member at the Punjab and Haryana bar council (PHBC) remain ambiguously occupied after turf wars resulted in a police complaint, an allegedly forged resignation letter, rebukes and intervention by the BCI, an allegedly improper election and allegations of goons attacking the state bar council office.
The Bar Council of India (BCI) delayed a lawyer’s practice certificate by four years, and has now been ordered by the Madras high court to make it available to the lawyer as soon as possible, as first reported by Live Law.
The Indian National Bar Association (INBA) has weighed into the legal market liberalisation debate, coming up with a proposal that would see foreign law firms entering by the end of this year, with “complete liberalisation” proposed to happen by the end of 2019.
LLB aspirants’ upper age limit of 20 years for entry to the five year LLB program and 30 years for the three year LLB is back as per the Bar Council of India’s (BCI) latest circular sent to law schools and now uploaded on its website, as first reported by Bar and Bench.
Most of the “errant” Maharashtra government law colleges have now been cleared for admissions, by the Bar Council of India (BCI), reported the Hindustan Times confirming Legally India’s report from last week.
Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra has sent an email today to Legally India editor Kian Ganz, which he has requested we publish in full.
The Bar Council of India’s (BCI) proposed delegation of 12 BCI members and “accompanying members” to Washington DC that would have cost more than Rs 48 lakh according to our report on 6 September, is now apparently cancelled.
At least 11 state bar councils and their representatives to the Bar Council of India (BCI) are now continuing in their posts despite their terms having ended, in some cases for nearly two years, including in Delhi, Maharashtra, Bihar, Rajasthan, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka bar councils.
The Bar Council of India (BCI) resolved to fly 12 of its members, by business class, to Washington DC this month to attend the International Bar Association’s (IBA) annual conference, which the BCI had missed for the last five years “due to inadvertent on the part of the [BCI] office”.
The Bar Council of India (BCI) and Maharashtra State Bar Council has cleared GLC Mumbai and all the other Maharashtra government and aided colleges that were under embargo against taking admissions. As per the minutes of Saturday, 3 September’s BCI meeting the colleges can take admissions for the academic year 2016-2017.
The Bar Council of India rejected Maharashtra’s request for time to meet its Legal Education Rules on infrastructure of government and aided law colleges in the state, with the result that those colleges will not be able to take admissions this year, reported the Times of India.
Just FYI, more than one month after a CBI court convicted three Bar Council of India (BCI) members to jail and after a PTI report on the judgment, The Hindu on 25 August 2016 is now the only mainstream media outlet (other than http://www.livemint.com/Politics/oS1IH3Hf1bc5dSMmD4fYVP/Bribery-case-exposes-the-rot-in-legal-education.html Mint) to have done a news story:
The Bar Council of India (BCI) has stayed its order of 24 July that had suspended, without notice or due process, 126 Tamil Nadu advocates who had allegedly been involved in the strikes against the Madras high court’s controversial new disciplinary rules.