Legal Education in Bangladesh

Legal education in Bangladesh is in a pitiful state and needs immediate and serious attention
By Dr. Uttam Kumar Das

I am concerned with the quality and standard of the legal education in Bangladesh.

The low and sub-standard legal education, which is not comparable in a global or even in a regional context, contributes to producing graduates with skills below the expectation and requirements of the day. These people are joining the legal profession, the judiciary and other services. How can we compete at a global level with such legal professionals?

This does not apply to legal education alone. The same goes for other disciplines as well, with a few exceptions. But our concentration here is on legal education.

According to renowned Indian legal academic, Professor NR Madhava Menon, law as a discipline is to play multiple tasks in a society, and lawyers are expected to act as change agents and social engineers in governance and development of a nation.

In a recent discussion, a former Judge of the High Court Division (who now heads a constitutional body), wondered about initiative from the Bar Council or the Supreme Court Bar Association which has produced lawyers like Dr. Kamal Hossain, or Barrister Amir-ul Islam, with regard to our legal education and future of the legal profession. The District Bar Associations also could be blamed for such failure.

According to him, the legal profession should not be open for all but for those who are graduating in law and have adequate legal knowledge, and are sufficiently skilled and conversant with the norms, etiquette and ethics of the profession.

Again as Professor Menon who pioneered to evolved and brought global-standard legal education through establishment of the pioneering institute National Law School of India, University in Bangalore, observes that the goal of the legal education is to provide: (i) sufficient competent lawyers, prosecutors, and judges to administer the judiciary, (ii) well-trained law personnel for providing legal services to the government departments and corporate institutions, (iii) legal researchers and academics for legal education, legal reform, good governance, and (iv) disseminate legal knowledge and culture conducive to the Constitution, rule of law, good governance, human rights, and democracy.

If we look into the existing legal education and research in Bangladesh the scenario would be frustrating.

We all are talking about bringing a culture of respect for human rights, rule of law, and democracy; however, we are not paying any attention to the basis of it - legal and human rights education.

Donor agencies, which have been partnering for or with the so-called awareness and training programmes, are not paying attention to the root of the issue - legal and human rights education. With regard to training, NGO initiatives are also not sufficient due to deficiency in their own capacity and expertise, lack of continuity, presence of corruption, and other factors.

The desired legal education, as envisioned by Professor Menon, should be of problem solving which would give opportunities to students for legal analysis and reasoning, research and writing, investigation and marshalling facts, communication, negotiating, counseling, alternative dispute resolution (ADR), and litigation. The graduates are expected to manage efficiently the legal work and will have right attitudes to the dignity of the profession of law and justice. They would nourish and fight to protect professional values and integrity, and to promote and practice fairness and freedom from bias.

How close or far away are we from those?

Recently I attended a seminar on the Alternative Dispute Resolution jointly organized by the Law Commission and the South Asian Institute of Advanced Legal and Human Rights Studies (SAILS) in Chittagong. The issue of the pitiful condition of legal education came in the discussion.

The Chairman of the Law Commission, Justice Abdur Rashid warned all of us if we don’t pay immediate attention to standardize the legal education then we have to pay for it in future. There is no denial of this.

The existing scenario of the legal education has been documented by Professor Menon in a study almost a decade ago commissioned by a donor agency. He also come up with a comprehensive set of recommendations and plan for streamlining our legal education. However, there had been no headway so far.

Professor Menon had piloted the plan of Bar Council of India for a world-class legal education through establishment of the National Law School of India and a University in Bangalore. The same model has been replicated in other parts of India over the years; there are now more than 15 Law Universities in India. Their courses are devoted to law, justice, human rights, governance etc. Even, Kathmandu Law School in Nepal has earned fame for its quality curriculum, teaching methods, research and publications. Unfortunately, we are far behind until now.

In our country, we have four streams of legal education. There are law departments in four public universities. Around 35 private universities have law departments or schools. There are 70 law colleges under the National University all over the country. There are external programmes of few British universities as well.

The curriculum and teaching methods are mostly outdated (with exceptions of a few courses in few public/private universities). Very few institutions have schemes to engage students so that they could learn legal research, presentation, analysis, argument, and writing skills with regard to a social problem.

The law schools, both public and private, also follow a faulty selection process for teachers. There is no faculty tenure, service conditions, evaluation processes.

Professor Menon rightly observed, years of experience do not make a good law teacher, unless the experience is grounded on experimentation, endeavour, and creativity.

In the United States, law schools provide extra credits in selecting faculty members to those who have experiences in research works, publications, advocacy and doing pro bono work, and working experience for international and national legal or human rights organizations alongside the academic excellence.

Here in Bangladesh, the volume and standard of research and publication is far away from the expectation. Though some of the law schools/departments have their “journals” (not regular in publication), those follow the rule of “limiting the knowledge.”

In case of public university, “articles” from respective faculty members are only accepted (but no question about independent review and competitive selection process). Those publications are also not available for public, even with payment.

Bangladesh Bar Council, the statutory body to look after the standard of legal education and ethics in legal profession has been failing to play its due role. It has reportedly no activity with regard to research and experiment on legal education, curriculum and related professional issues and endeavours.

According to some observers, the Council has turned into a place of “clerical works” for issuing licenses to Advocates and a “political platform for a section of lawyers” to compete each other. The standard and method of examination for enrolling law graduates as Advocates has come under serious criticism. The process is also not free from the accusation of corruption.

The Council has no innovation and creativity with regard to academic and research activities for quality legal and judicial education and related matters for legal profession. It has no regular research projects and publications as well. And it should be above and beyond political divisions and wrongdoings.

The Judicial Administration Training Institute (JATI), the training center for judges has also failed to explore its full potential in terms of judicial education, training and publications.

Given my recent experience in the United States, I found that an NGO like the American Bar Association (ABA) is serious and devoted to development of the quality of legal education, research, publication and above all quality of the graduates coming out of the law schools.

There, the Bar Examination Board and respective State Supreme Courts are the authority to evaluate fresh law graduates and to issuing license as an Attorney (Advocate in Bangladesh). However, the law schools have to have accreditation from the ABA, which inspects law schools on a cyclic order. State and County Bar Associations also have lot of activities for the professional development.

Recently, I had had separate discussions with Professor Mizanur Rahman, Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, and Professor M. Shah Alam, Member of the Law Commission. I have an active professional connection with Professor Rahman. Professor Alam had been my teacher at the University of Rajshahi (before he had moved to establish the Department of Law at the University of Chittagong).

I find the same concerns as of mine in both the Professors. They are worried with the quality of legal education and absence of initiative its improvement. Both of the seasoned legal academic expressed their anguish given no headway from the related ministry and others concerned in this regard.

They had been commissioned by a donor agency almost a decade ago for two studies on the legal education and clinical legal education in the country. Following that the Law Commission (Professor Alam was then a Member as well) has submitted a completed proposal for streamlining the legal education to the Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs. However, there is no progress in this regard so far. There is no vision and direction on legal education in the newly adopted Education Policy as well.

How we would get skilled personnel to compete and negotiate in a globalized world in government’s dealings, trades and business?

I wondered, given a good number of our policy makers having background in law and being in legal profession, how come the matter has been ignored for years?

This is the high time for us to move on and take up the issue immediately. Otherwise, our dream for a pro-active and pro-people legal and judicial system would be a distant dream.

We should aim to make the “legal studies intellectually stimulating, socially relevant and professionally significant,” as Professor Menon observes.

udas1971@gmail.com

*Originally appeared in the PROBE News Magazine, Dhaka, 1-14 October, 2010; link: http://www.probenewsmagazine.com/index.php?index=2&contentId=6407.