<%-- Page Title--%> Law Education <%-- End Page Title--%>

May 9, 2004 

A brief appraisal of the legal education in Bangladesh

Sheikh Hafizur Rahman Karzon

Legal education of any country is inextricably related to the legal system of that country, because it caters to the personnel, who run the wheels of the administration of justice. The future lawyers, judges, academicians and law officers are being given the basic lesson of law and are being trained up through the institute of legal education. In this era of globalization a fairly sound legal system is sine qua non for achieving sustainable development. Legal education, as part of broader legal system, then becomes significant as it shoulders the sole responsibility to educate and prepare future law incumbents.

Objectives of legal education
If you ask any law student about the purpose of legal education, simply s/he will answer that the purpose of legal education is to make the students conversant with the substantive and procedural laws. Now the question is should we be confined to so narrow a space, or should we look at the issue from a broader point of view?

Dr. Shahdeen Malik rightly points out that legal education in Bangladesh primarily aims "at familiarizing students with main provisions of law and explaining doctrinal foundations of legal regulations of society." Barrister Amir-ul Islam, Vice-President of Bangladesh Bar Council, observed that, "besides helping the students to master the lawyering skill, legal education must be able to help develop inter-disciplinary approach for building the personality to understand the society and the human situation in a changing social order." When giving views on the legal education of Bangladesh, Professor Jay Erstling made such a conspicuous observation, which covers almost all the aspects of legal education. Jay Erstling, Professor of St. Thomas University of Minnesota, USA, went writing"[a.] Legal education must inform students about crucial social issues, including poverty alleviation, the role of women, the environment and human rights........ legal education must not teach students simply what the current law says, but rather it must provide students with vision and skills to make the law more responsive to the development needs of this country. Put simply, it must train students to be social engineers.[b]. Legal education must not only teach students about legal theory, but must prepare students to engage in the practice of law or law-related professions. Students, therefore, must learn not only how to be outstanding lawyers but also outstanding members of the judiciary, government service, NGOs or industry. To accomplish that goal, legal education must impart skills in research, drafting, oral communication, interviewing, interpreting, and advocacy...."

The objectives of legal education, therefore, should not be confined to the pedagogy of mastering the student lawyering skills and the techniques of how to be a good judge, as the law students need to dispose of social engineering role. Keeping this view in mind, legal education should be orchestrated not only to meet up the existing needs, but also the progressive demands of the society. The existing legal education in Bangladesh is an utter failure in fulfilling the changing needs of society, as the subjects included in the curriculum are inadequate to cover international trade and commerce, information technology, e-commerce, finance and banking, foreign investments, international and municipal corporate matters, community rights, environment, sustainable development etc.

Nature of legal education
What should be the nature of the legal education? Should it be fully academic or fully vocational or combination of both the two? Legal system of Bangladesh pertains to the common law brotherhood, so its legal education is greatly influenced by the academic character of British legal education, though dichotomy between academic legal education and vocational legal education still persists in England.

There is continuous debate on the issue that to what extent the two should be combined to prepare the students for encountering their future professional challenges. In spite of British College and university legal education being predominantly academic in character, they have sufficient vocational program to train up the students to become members of Bar.

North American concept of clinical legal education has become prominent in recent time. Clinical legal education not only teaches substantive law, the essence of this education is 'learning through doing'. This pragmatic approach of legal education is very spectacular because it prepares the students to shoulder social engineering role with their firm conviction to ensure greater social justice. Elements of clinical legal education can be summarized as lawyering, legal aid, ADR, public interest litigation, public legal education, law reforms and professional ethics. Law faculties of Dhaka University, Chittagong University, and Rajshahi University have already introduced clinical legal education for fourth year students of those institutions. These are some endeavors to infiltrate vocational program into the predominantly academic legal education structure of three public universities.

Legal education in law colleges
Present condition of legal education imparted by the Law Colleges is grossly disappointing, as the drop out people, who do not have the quality to avail any satisfactory occupation, gather and get themselves admitted into the Law Colleges. There are extensive allegations that they do not require to attend the classes and they pass the examination by copying erroneous note books. After getting the approval to become a member of the Bar, finally they appear in the role of pettifoggers.

All the Law Colleges are now affiliated with the National University, which without having any teaching stuff of its own exercises academic control over these colleges, prescribe curriculum, conduct examinations and awards degrees. Graduation from any general college is admission requirement to Law Colleges, no admission test is held, and there is no limit to the number of students admitted. Two years course has been divided into two examination years, preliminary and final examinations, passing of which qualifies the students for the award of LL.B. degree. Law College students have to sit for the examinations of 13 theoretical papers. There is no viva voce, no tutorial, no practical course, no mock trail and moot court. Stuffed by part time teachers, most of the Law Colleges hold their classes at evening. Law colleges have mushroomed all over the country, and most of them do not have their own building and sufficient library facilities.

Legal education in public universities
The standard of legal education imparted in the public universities is much more higher than that of Law Colleges, nevertheless public universities lag behind not only international standard but also South Asian standard. In spite of many limitations Dhaka University has been playing the pioneering role in imparting legal education in Bangladesh, and trying to maintain some standard, which is reflected in the expanding demands of law degree, as this year around 150 candidates sat in the admission test against 1 seat of the Law Faculty of Dhaka University. Law Faculty of Chittagong University, after its establishment in 1992, earned some reputation, obviously credit goes to Professor Shah Alam and his dedicated young colleagues. In addition to Dhaka and Chittagong, Law faculties of Rajshahi University and Kushtia University are also awarding law degrees.

I want to identify some of the gray areas of public university legal education for which it is lagging behind international standard, those are: (i) age-old curriculum; (ii) traditional teaching methodology; (iii) lack of accountability of teachers; (iv) confusion regarding medium of instruction; (v) absence of evaluation of teachers by the students. There is no disagreement that the age-old curriculum of public universities cannot fulfill the changing demands of society and international community. The university law faculties should immediately review their curriculum and introduce new subjects to meet up national and international needs. Dhaka University Law Faculty has already taken initiative to review their existing curriculum.

Time has come to review the traditional teaching methodology for verifying how far it is effective to impart quality legal education. The state and university should provide sufficient fund to train up the teachers to enhance their academic excellence, it may be by sending the faculty to any international training program or it may be arranged within the country. Assuming the teachers to be self accountable, the University Order did not provide rigorous provisions for the accountability of teachers, but time has become ripe to review the old provisions and devise some mechanism to ensure true accountability of teachers.

Confusion persists, even after 32 years of the independence of Bangladesh, about the medium of instruction, and all the universities keep both Bangla and English open for both the teachers and students to follow. Without undermining the role and status of Bangla, I want to propose, which is my firm conviction, that English should be mandatory for legal education. The lectures should be given in English, the students should be accustomed to a system where they will speak, write, and even think in English, otherwise we cannot elevate our standard to international level. The teachers of public universities should think of introducing evaluation of teachers by the students, or at least there should be a system where the resentments of students will be ventilated in a written form and that should be taken into consideration to minimize the present anomalies of legal education.

Concluding remark
We are looking forward to establishing an effective legal system and egalitarian social order, overhaul of legal education and its reconstruction may usher in new hopes and prospects.

Hafizur Rahman Karzon is a Lecturer, Department of Law, Dhaka University.