CJ Sivagnanam says lawyers' regulatory body can provide for updation of curriculum

Kolkata, Aug 28 (PTI) Maintaining that the rules of the regulatory body for lawyers can provide for updation of curriculum, Calcutta High Court Chief Justice T S Sivagnanam on Thursday said that as judges, their learning process has not stopped.

He said that in this competitive world, everything from a passport to a driving license needs revalidation, "except the profession of law”.

Speaking on a stamp release programme to mark the silver jubilee of National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS) at the Town Hall here, CJ Sivagnanam complemented the vision of Professor N R Madhava Menon, the founder vice-chancellor of the prestigious law school in Kolkata, for his vision of modernising legal education in India, making it competitive globally.

He said that right from the civil judges at the lower courts to the high court judges, "we are being trained." The CJ said that when a civil judge passes the examination and gets selected, he has to go through a year-long induction training.

"We high court judges go to the National Judicial Academy at Bhopal where we get a lot of resource persons from doctors, chartered accountants, economists to journalists, authors, psychiatrists and psychologists," he said.

Maintaining that learning law is not confined to the four walls of a classroom, CJ Sivagnanam said there are many challenges to be faced in the real world of the legal profession.

"Nobody imagined 35 years back that the study of law will be a priority; this has led to the introduction of the CLAT (Common Law Admission Test)," he said.

In a lighter vein, the CJ said that earlier it used to be a common perception that somebody who would not get admission in any college for a graduation degree would opt for going to the law college.

This view of the CJ was shared by Justice Soumen Sen, who said in his address at the programme that there was a time when people used to consider that someone who could not do anything else would go for the legal profession, holding that this view has undergone a transformation for the better.

CJ Sivagnanam said that there has been a sea change in perception about law students and graduates, with the parents proudly announcing that their wards are students of a prestigious law school in the country.

"Earlier, there was a time when a person, from his/her birth to death, would not need to consult a lawyer; times have changed, law has become an integral part of every man's life," the CJ said.

Holding that the NUJS has turned out to be a premier educational institution in India in its 25 years of evolution, CJ Sivagnanam said that though the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) ranking has placed NUJS in the fourth position among law schools in India, in his evaluation, the Kolkata-based law school should have got the pole position.

Speaking on the occasion, Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty said that with the advent of globalisation, legal education in the country has embraced sweeping changes.

"The spectrum of legal education has widened a lot," he said.

West Bengal Law Minister Moloy Ghatak said that the state government has been providing financial grants to the premier institution. PTI AMR NN