legal regulation

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has been a victim of the “sinister game” of a “mischief doer” who forged the BCI’s ‘LIFT’ restrictions notice that went viral on Saturday, BCI chairman Manan Kumar Mishra told Legally India via email.

In November 2013 the Bar Council of India (BCI) amended its Legal Education Rules 2008 and, for years following that (as reported by us last week), has been sending repeated letters to law schools, telling them it was obligatory to buy lakhs worth of products of the All India Reporter (AIR).

There are now “about 20 lakh” lawyers in India, according to Bar Council of India chairman Manan Kumar Mishra. The BCI’s data on lawyers’ verification has revealed that Delhi has the maximum number of “fake” lawyers.

Justice N Kirubakaran of the Madras high court passed radical directions on a petition asking the court to curb entry of persons with criminal antecedents into the legal profession and to maintain purity of law courses.

Two weeks after Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra had said at an event that 30 per cent of lawyers were "fake", held "fraudulent degrees" or were "non-practising" but still on the rolls, the government's Press Information Bureau (PIB) reported yesterday that the BCI told the government that "the number of fake lawyers cannot be exactly ascertained by now".

Kian Ganz looks into the BCI’s latest claim that 30 per cent of lawyers are not really lawyers and asks, how the BCI knows.

Ashok Parija suggests 5 simple ideas that would go some way to curing the Indian legal profession and regulation of many troubles.

Bar Council of India (BCI) chief Manan Kumar Mishra said in a conference hosted by the American Bar Association yesterday that the BCI, in the second week of March, would “pass a resolution to amend Rule 36 in Section IV of the BCI Rules to allow lawyers and law firms to have their own websites”, reported Bar & Bench.

In 2010 the Delhi bar council vowed to crack down on law firm websites but quickly backed down from the proposal. However, in 2008 the Delhi bar council had allowed law firms to have websites within the existing restrictions on advertising. The amendment stated that advocates would be allowed to furnish “website information as prescribed in the Schedule under intimation to and as approved by the Bar Council of India”, which permits little more than publishing advocates’ contact details, qualifications and areas of specialisation.

Research and a column published on Legally India in 2012 pointed out most law firms and their websites were in “blatant violation” of the BCI’s advertising rules.

Either the Bar Council of India (BCI) should censure dozens of law firms for their singing and dancing websites, or it needs to be realistic and relax its strict advertising restrictions, argues Raghul Sudheesh.

Mint’s Nikhil Kanekal argues in today’s edition of Mint that the Bar Council of India (BCI) should be stripped of most of its powers and replaced with an independent regulators who can better oversee legal education and the noble profession.

Madras advocates have called for abstinence from court work today (10 December) to protest against the Legal Practitioner Bill 2010 citing the Advocate Act’s efficacy to deal with issues of client protection and regulation of the legal professions.

The proposed Legal Services Board has elicited mixed reactions from legal practitioners on CNBC-TV18’s The Firm last week, with Rajiv Luthra noting that state bar councils do need tighter regulation in some manner, Lalit Bhasin and Karan Bhosale arguing that the existing regulators can already do the job and MP Bharucha predicting that it could facilitate the entry of foreign law firms.

The Government is planning to set-up a super-regulator to wield control over all quasi-judicial authorities functioning in India.

The law ministry has proposed a new statute that partly supplant the functions of the Bar Council of India (BCI) with a new super-regulator called the Legal Services Board that will oversee the regulation of legal practice, client service, legal education and make it obligatory for lawyers to provide free legal aid.