Navigating Growth: The Challenges of Maintaining Legal Education Quality in India's Expanding Law Schools
This paper addresses the pervasive "crisis" and ongoing "reform" discussions surrounding legal education in India, underscored by the Bar Council of India's (BCI) three-year moratorium on new law school approvals. While the BCI, as the statutory body regulating legal education, has overseen a significant increase in law schools—particularly in the 2010s—this proliferation, though improving access, has often come at the cost of quality.
To delve into this complex issue, this paper presents an ethnographic study of 15 law schools in Haryana, a northern state in India. The research includes interviews with students, faculty, and administrative staff, alongside primary and secondary source analysis, to understand law school culture, classroom engagement, and the student journey from admission to graduation. The data has evaluated key parameters of quality, including teaching patterns, student engagement, and the availability of essential resources like moot courts and job placements.
The findings reveal a distinct trend: the rapid increase in the number of law schools across the country has indeed broadened access to legal education, but concurrently, it has exposed numerous unfulfilled gaps in quality. By zooming into a specific set of institutions that emerged during this period of expansion, the study traces their current functioning and effectiveness. The paper details the history and statutory powers of the BCI and trends in law school establishment. It then elaborates on the case study methodology, presenting collected data on enrollment, evaluation methods, attendance, law school culture, and graduate outcomes. The subsequent part analyses these data trends, supplementing them with anecdotal insights from the field. Concluding, the paper offers a nuanced perspective on the current state of legal education in India, contributing to the broader discourse on its "crisis" and potential pathways for "reform."