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Dr.Rajendrakumar
Hittanagi,Assistant
Professor,Govt Law
College Hassan Karnatak

Problems and Challenges before Law Teachers in India
Source : http://www.legalserviceindia.com
Author : rajendrakumar
Published on : March 06, 2013
Problems and Challenges before Law Teachers in India
Abstract:
A law teacher plays a vital role in establishing sound legal
education system in a country. The law education did not receive
much needed support from the policy makers of India in the post-
independence era. It is high time to ponder over the present
problems and challenges of legal education. In the light of global
competition, the existing legal education system needs to be
revamped. The focus of the paper is on the challenges faced in the
teaching and learning process in the Law Colleges/Schools. So far
the Law Colleges/Schools have not emphasized on educating the
practical skills of the students. There is a trend to increase teaching
practical skills to law students. The important skill necessary for
the students is to enhance the ability to learn new knowledge. The Law Teachers tend to focus on
assessing a final product instead of focusing on how do they get to end product. The Law
Colleges/Schools could improve their students learning by implementing good practices to assess
that learning. The Law Colleges/ Schools can do this by critiquing students and providing them
feedback through effective assessment methods. Introducing self assessment techniques can help
the students to improve their skills and at the same time it can provide the teacher with more
information to assess their students learning. By introducing and continuing the students with
training in skills and using more effective assessment techniques, the teacher will improve the life
long learning skills of law students and make them expert learners. The main focus of a legal
education should be to make the students expert learners.
There is a general feeling that legal education is in peril and law teachers have failed to focus on
adequately preparing the students for the practice of law and the lawyers role in society. Indian
Legal Education system has not focused on practical skills and effective assessment models to
make law students better prepared for the practice of law. In this context, this article tries to
analyze the problems and challenges before law teachers in India. The legal education in India is
regulated by various authorities namely: Bar Council of India, affiliating university, State
Government, and University Grants Commission. The problems and challenges facing law teacher
in India have been time and again studied. Law Commission of India 14th Report (1958) and
184th Report (2002), National Knowledge Commission Report in 2007 and National Legal
Knowledge Council (NLKC) and the observation of Supreme Court in BAR COUNCIL OF
INDIA v BONNIE FOI LAW COLLEGE & ORS, apart from other decisions, have some
relevance on the problems and challenges of law teachers. There are various institutions imparting
legal education in India namely: private law colleges, private law colleges coming under grant-in-
aid, government law colleges, National Law Universities, Deemed Universities, private universities,
Global Universities etc. I have rendered service as a whole time law teacher in a Private Law
College and National Law University and now serving in a Government Law College. In my
personal experience, the problems of law teachers can be broadly divided into two groups namely;
4/22/2014 Print Article : Problems and Challenges before Law Teachers in India
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one relating to service conditions and other benefits, and other relating to teaching and learning
focusing on the role of legal education in improving, legal profession, legal system, and society.
The social setting for law teaching and research in India
According to Prof, Upendra Baxi, the generally known facts concerning legal education are these.
First, there has been a phenomenal quantitative expansion of entrants to legal education. Second,
the bulk of LL.B and LL.M education is not whole-time but part-time. Third, the bulk of LL.B
education is imparted by law colleges, with poor teaching and library resources. Fourth, the
number of university departments in law, although on the increase, is comparatively smaller than in
other social science fields, and the law departments are generally low-priority items for funding.
Fifth, mass education in law has meant decline over control of admissions, decline in standards of
teaching and evaluation, and a pervasive demoralization of full-time law teachers, whose number is
still smaller than that of part-time law teachers. Sixth, the expansion of legal education has brought
with it the adoption of regional languages as medium of instruction and examination in the LL.B
and even LL.M level. In the present context, some of these facts have changed. Most of the law
teachers complain that substantial time is spent on class preparation and other administrative
works and they do not get adequate quality time for research to do publication which is essential
for promotion, if already appointed and if not, for appointment as whole time teacher. According
to Prof,Upendra Baxi, the role of law teachers in India are,
i) A group of law teachers feels that the primary role obligation of an academic lawyer is to
renovate and restructure Indian legal education.
ii) Some law teachers feel that their primary vocation is to teach well, to be good teachers.
iii) A section of law teachers includes those who believe that good teaching entails research and
writing effort. Teachers who so believe combine teaching with research by writing treatises and
papers in the field of their teaching.
iv) There are a few law teachers who feel their primary role obligation is to specialize in one
subject-area, and to contribute substantially to scholarly literature in their subjects over time.
v) A handful of law teachers exposed to overseas influence, especially American law schools and
scholarship, believe their role requires pedagogic innovation as well as off beat, non-traditional
legal writing.
Making law students expert learners
The law colleges have failed to train students to be expert learners. In order to better prepare
students for the practice of law, a more effective formative assessment in doctrinal courses,
lawyering skills courses and clinics may be used. A law teacher can use the formative assessment
process to improve the meta-cognitive skills of law students so they can transfer their learning to
the new and novel situations they face in the practice of law. The goal of formative assessment
should be to move legal education away from a focus on an end product to the underlying process
of developing these products.
To make law students practice-ready, most law teachers would agree that graduates need to leave
law colleges with some minimal competencies, including critical thinking, problem solving, legal
analysis, legal research, writing, and communication. The students come from a wide range of
learning experiences and educational backgrounds, with most having little or no experience or
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skills in those minimum competencies. Law colleges need to teach them how to continue to draw
upon their learning experiences during the practice of law to new situations they will certainly
encounter. This requires that law colleges move the students from novice learners to expert
learners.
For lawyers and law students, being an expert learner require that they know what knowledge
they have, what knowledge they lack, what they will need to learn, how to obtain that knowledge,
how to apply that knowledge, and how to know that they are getting the right knowledge. These
are all meta-cognitive skills. It is the process of "thinking about thinking" and the ability to self-
regulate one's learning with the goal of transferring learned skills to new situations.
The Carnegie Report emphasizes the need to make students better self-regulated learners and
suggests improving teaching of metacognitive skills
when it states:[P]rofessional schools cannot directly teach students to be competent in any and all
situations; rather, the essential goal of professional schools must be to form practitioners who are
aware of what it takes to become competent in their chosen domain and to equip them with the
reflective capacity and motivation to pursue genuine expertise. They must become "meta-cognitive"
about their own learning. One way to improve the meta-cognitive strategies of students is to attack
and critique their learning processes instead of simply assessing the end product. The most
effective way to attack the process is through the formative assessment process.
In doctrinal classes, many professors use some form of what is known as the Socratic Method or
Case Method with the hope that the students will eventually mimic the reasoning and analytical
skills developed through the questioning inherent in this method. The students frequently do not
know that the questioning is meant to develop their synthesis, analogical, inductive, and deductive
reasoning skills. Because professors do not usually detail or explicitly discuss the goals of this
method, they are engaging in implicit teaching-the students are simply expected to understand the
types of reasoning without the professor ever telling them what they are doing.
Formative assessment is specifically intended to provide feedback during the learning process to
improve the students' learning. Formative assessment tools used in law colleges/schools include
mid-term exams, feedback on drafts of student papers, and short reflective papers throughout the
course. No assessment is beneficial to the student without quality feedback from the professor.
Simply stating that something is correct or incorrect is insufficient without providing some
information on how to correct the mistake, the reason for the mistake, or a good example of what
was expected. Research suggests that feedback should be given in a timely manner, detail the
strengths and weaknesses of the students' work, offer suggestions for improvement, and involve
praise and constructive criticism. Law teachers can use the information taken from the formative
assessment to self-reflect and self-assess their own teaching. If students successfully complete an
assignment but arrive at the end product improperly, the students are not likely to correct the
learning process that led to successful completion. Without understanding the internal thinking of
the students, the professor is unable to correct any process errors. One way to understand
students' thought processes is to ask process questions as part of the assignment. These formative
assessments of students should be made throughout the year.
In traditional law colleges this kind of continuous evaluation is hardly done. But in National Law
Universities this kind of assessment is carried out effectively. In conducting such assessments the
teacher has to face some kind of unwanted influences.
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The legal research and writing instructions and technology
The course called Legal Method is not introduced in 3 year law course in some of the
universities. But in all the 5 year integrated law courses, this course is compulsorily taught. This
course instruction needs to be improved. The changes in legal research methods and instruction
will certainly come with the increasingly rapid acceleration in the amount and kinds of legal
research materials being produced. Another reason to anticipate significant changes in the way
legal research and writing will be taught is, of course, the development of computerized legal
research such as LEXIS and WEST LAW. A number of law colleges have obtained access to
LEXIS, and this has already substantially altered their research and writing programmes. In
majority of the private law colleges, access to such paid online legal data base is not available. But
now it is compulsory for all colleges to have internet connectivity under the scheme provided by
the government in association with BSNL.
Should law teachers be allowed to practice?
This question is still a controversial one. There are arguments which support and oppose this
demand. Some literature is also available on this debate. One group argues that law teachers
should be allowed to practice so they can better prepare the students for law practice. A whole
time law teacher with law practice is better equipped to train the students. Other group argues that
the whole time teachers may not be interested or comfortable with law practice that is why they
have joined teaching profession. But it is high time to think over this issue and arrive at right
decision for the establishment of quality bar and bench. It is submitted that a law teacher may not
be forced to practice but at least he should be allowed to carry out some kind of alternative
practice engagements like legal consultancy and clinical practice.
Conclusion
It is generally believed that the law colleges and law teachers have failed to better prepare the
students for law practice. Some have questioned the role of law colleges in the sense that the law
colleges are not confined to prepare students for law practice. The main aim of the legal education
is to spread legal awareness and establish sound legal system along with quality bar and bench.
The law teachers have been neglected by not even giving benefits on par with teachers belonging
to other subjects. National Knowledge Commission has recommended for improvement of service
conditions of law teachers. The authorities have to seriously implement these recommendations.
The law teachers can positively respond to the general criticism by improving teaching and learning
process. By making the law students life long expert learners, teachers can help students to
transfer learning experience to face new and novel situations. In the end one should keep in mind
the statement of Dr Radhakrishnan that one who dares to teach shall never cease to learn.
___________
*** Dr Rajendrakumar Hittanagi, Assistant Professor of Law, Government Law College, Hassan,
Karnataka - rajesh.hittanagi@gmail.com
References-
Baxi Upendra, Socio-legal Research in India-A Programschrift, 2nd Edn, ILI, New Delhi, 2001,
at p.644.
ANTHONY NIEDWIECKI, TEACHING FOR LIFELONG LEARNING: IMPROVING THE
METACOGNITIVE SKILLS OF LAW STUDENTS THROUGH MORE EFFECTIVE
FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUES (available at (http://heinonline.org)
EMILY ZIMMERMAN SHOULD LAW PROFESSORS HAVE A CONTINUING
PRACTICE EXPERIENCE (CPE) REQUIREMENT? ( available at
http://ssrn.com/abstract=2165551
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Robin K Mills, Legal Research Instruction In Law Schools the State of the Art, 2nd Edn, ILI,
New Delhi, 2001, at p. 633.
# Paper presented by the author at International Conference on International Environmental Law,
Trade Law, Information Technology Law and Legal Education on March 2-3,2013, organized by
Faculty of Law, BHU,Varanasi.
# Special Leave Petition (NO.) 22337 OF 2008
Theauthorcanbereachedat:raj endrakumar@l egal serv i cei ndi a. com