Teaching Professional Skills and Values in India: Challenges and Roadmap for Future

Date01 July 2017
DOI10.1177/2322005817712375
AuthorAnirban Chakraborty
Published date01 July 2017
Subject MatterArticles
Article
Teaching Professional Skills and
Values in India: Challenges and
Roadmap for Future
Anirban Chakraborty1
Abstract
Educating law students in fundamental professional skills and values has become an integral part of the
modern legal education curriculum. ‘Clinical legal education’ (CLE) is the instructional method used for
teaching professional skills and values. CLE aims to impart training of professional skills and values by
engaging the students with legal aid activities and using that experience for the teaching–learning process.
In the United States, credited for developing CLE, law faculties involve students to represent cases of
indigent clients under their supervision and use that experience to teach legal skills and professional
values. But with the global expansion of CLE, along with the US model (client representation clinic),
many innovative alternative models have evolved, primarily due to local diversities. Therefore, in
jurisdictions where ‘client representation clinic’ is not suitable due to local restrictions and resource
constraints, new models such as ‘Street Law Clinic’, ‘Externship Clinic’ or ‘Law Reform Clinic’ have
successfully evolved to be CLE model. Although regulatory bodies of Indian legal education have made
CLE a mandatory part of the curriculum for over two decades, its implementation has been negligible
and ineffective. Lack of proper training of faculties, absence of guidelines on CLE practice and procedure,
financial constraints and legal restriction on faculties and their students to represent in courts are
some of the reasons highlighted for the same. This article argues that legal education is inadequate and
increases the gap with the legal profession, if professional skills and values are not imparted in a proper
manner. In order to overcome the current inadequacy, effective integration of CLE is the call of the
day. The article explores two alternative clinical teaching models namely ‘Street Law Clinic’ and ‘Law
Reform Clinic’ and provides means to overcome the existing bottlenecks in implementation of CLE.
It narrates the experiences of functioning of these clinics at West Bengal National University of Juridical
Sciences (WBNUJS) and apprises how these models can be replicated for effective clinical teaching,
suiting Indian conditions.
Introduction
Good advocacy is a combination of several different skills and values. Firstly, it involves good analysis
of legal rules and fact, using logical reasoning, legal research and good negotiation skills. Secondly, it
requires lawyers to understand the forms and requirement of different legal materials, typology of forums
1 Associate Professor of Law, National Law University, Nagpur, India.
Asian Journal of Legal Education
4(2) 116–126
© 2017 The West Bengal National
University of Juridical Sciences
SAGE Publications
sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/2322005817712375
http://ale.sagepub.com
Corresponding author:
Anirban Chakraborty, Associate Professor of Law, National Law University, Nagpur, India.
E-mail: anir_chak@yahoo.com

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