Legal education is an important field as it prepares and guides individuals to learn the concepts of legal philosophy, the gambit of important domestic laws, the art of drafting and prepares them to practice law.
In the sub-continent, legal education and training based on English law started in 1857 when law colleges were set up in the port towns of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. A decade later a law college at Lahore was also established in 1866. These colleges offered law education to the students who were interested to learn the concept of the English law. However, no practical training was given at those colleges.
After graduation, the graduates used to learn the intricacies of the English law as interns with senior lawyers. The leaders of the profession emerged from those who stood trained in England as Barristers. Some big names in this regard include M.A Jinnah, M.K Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.
The system of legal education in England is based on two tiers namely, Barristers and Solicitors. Students after the completion of their high schools or A-level certificate can be admitted in law colleges to obtain an LL.B degree. To complete the education, for to become pleaders, one has to enroll at the leading Inns, which are the institutions of legal training, to become Barristers.
In British system, a client or litigant can approach a solicitor only who after examination of his case would approach a Barrister who can argue the case before the courts. A student can take the bar examination after two years of experience and can be admitted to the Bar. In the UK there is no explicit regulation in respect of law degrees, apart from the joint statements on the qualifying aspect of degrees and courses reviewed by the quality assurance agency for high education which examines all degree courses including law. For LL.M and research degrees in law, there is no professional review. The UK, therefore, falls within a polycentric model of education and training as do a number of other Commonwealth countries.
In the US, the system of legal education and training is a mono-centric system. The American Bar Association (ABA) is authorised to accredit and approve law schools and to regulate them through the US department of education. ABA accredited law school graduates are eligible to sit for the Bar examination anywhere in US. Thus law schools in United States are categorised as 'Professional Law Schools' for conferring advance degrees on research students, ie, PhDs. Admission to law schools requires completion of four years BA and a good score on law school admission test (LAST).
The US and the UK forms of legal education represent the extreme forms of the polycentric and mono-centric scales. Australia and Canada follow elements of both UK and US.
After 1970, Chinese legal education has really become more advanced. LLB degree is of 4 years duration and LL.M degree is a specialised degree and their orientation is global.
In 1988, India established National Law University system and its Bangalore campus offers more globalise education. Another institution in Delhi namely, Jindal Global Law School, is another example of global education.
The law practiced in continental Europe is different as it is based on Civil Code. The European countries believe that they produce more qualified and professional law graduates. However, recently their focus has also changed and France and Spain have started to focus more on the global orientation of their law graduates.
The legal education in the world is being affected by globalisation and technology. After the Second World War there have been fundamental changes in the global economies. The emerging phenomena can be termed a neo-liberal agenda movement. The changes have given rise to supra-national Institutions such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation, the European Community, and the European Court of Justice.
There have been institutions to arbitrate commercial and investments disputes such as ICSID, ICC arbitration, New York convention, and English Law based arbitration in London. In this manner private ordering in the world has developed. Accordingly law firms have started to restructure themselves on a global basis. These law firms are capable to articulate normative orders based around the construction of agreements and contracts that are accepted throughout the world. Resultantly, organisations like international swaps and derivatives have come into existence.
The global law firms have accordingly grown rapidly, and this broadening of global approach revolves around the New York state law and the English law.
Generally, the corporate hemisphere is dominated by elites while the individual is populated by lower status lawyers, both in terms of perceived quality of law school and level of qualifications. There are overlaps and crossovers when corporate lawyers might undertake some individual-type work such as obtaining immigration permits for corporate executives, but on the whole the hemispheres are separate and the two mingle only little.
From the perspective of legal education, globalisation is an emerging movement which contends the emerging changes within the new order to stay ahead. Aggressive moves are being made by the US, Australia and even some continental European countries and China towards building a bigger share of law graduate in the emerging global legal market. It is important to distinguish between the ranges of first degree in law - often the qualifying law degree for practice and the LLMs on the offer.
Legal education in the context of globalisation falls into three main categories.
1. Importing foreign students to home law schools for LLM and research degrees.
2. Exporting domestic law schools' programmes to foreign countries, sometimes in conjunction with a host institution.
3. Creating global law schools that attempt to appeal transnational.
The Peking University School of Transnational Law is such a venture. The school is Chinese but the bulk of the programme is American in teaching, language and substance with students expected to graduate with both an American JD and a Chinese Juris Master. Formed in 2007 the idea is to produce a cadre of transnational lawyers capable of functioning in any legal or business environment.
The second major shift in this period has been the rise of technology and its impact on the practice of law. Futurologists have prophesied that the end of lawyers may be on the horizon. While this is speculative, certain fundamental changes are taking place. The clearest evidence is in the rise of commoditization and the outsourcing of legal services to countries like India where the legal process outsourcing industry has grown enormously.
The underpinning for this move can be seen in a speech given by Mark Chandler, general counsel of Cisco, in 2007. He argued that his company's motivations and that of law firms' are "orthogonal" to each other, ie they diverge. Cisco reduced its costs while law firms raise their fees. Much of law firm work-routine document production, for example, can be slotted into technological knowledge management systems thus reducing law firms' spending. For Chandler lawyers' addiction to maximising revenue per partner has to be reined in to become a "normalised" business model. Increasing use of outsourcing and paralegal work leaving highly trained lawyers to concentrate on difficult legal issues is, to Chandler's mind, a better use of scarce professional resources. The answer is for lawyers to use more technology in their law practices.
Legal practice has become highly fragmented and disparate. The difference between criminal and civil work is almost unbridgeable in a modern legal practice. Not only is the content radically different but the administrative facilities required to conduct these practices are dissimilar. Taking corporate legal practice as an example the compartmentalisation of practice and law firms is such that departments within firms that tantamount to a species of firm themselves. Compartmentalisation, however, requires efficient intra-departmental communication and inter-departmental communication through different means such as email and instant messaging. Maximising utility of lawyers in departments requires a sustained level of standardisation through the use of boilerplate documents.
Outsourcing, which depends on technology for its success, is already having an impact on legal practice and will eventually reach legal education. Although outsourcing is usually associated with off-shoring to India, depending on economic circumstances and the changing economy of the legal market, it is beginning to signify more on shoring than otherwise. Companies that have begun in India or employed Indian lawyers are setting up offices in the UK and the US.
These are the new directions which are affecting the legal education and the profession of law.
(The writer is an advocate and is currently working as an associate with Azim-ud-Din Law Associates Karachi)