The Worth of an Indian LL.M.: Possible Solutions (Part II & Concluding Part)

The previous post in this blog dealt with the problems that beset the LL.M. programme in India. This post proposes certain solutions in addressing the problems identified therein. It may be noted that the solutions suggested are tentative and a lot of further research and experimentation is required to test the applicability of these solutions in various contexts.

Solutions

Changing Goals of the LL.M. Programme: There has been a marked change in the way in which institutions view the LL.M. programme in India. Gone are the days when LL.M. was viewed as an entry point for law teaching. Even in 2001, the Curriculum Development Committee of the UGC felt that a thorough knowledge of a particular field of law was the purpose of the LL.M. programme, irrespective of whether the students opt to study it for “teaching, practice of law, administration of justice or management of legal counseling in a firm”. The NKC WG (Working Group of the National Knowledge Commission) recommended that there was a need to introduce internship programmes at the LL.M. level. The UGC Guidelines give scope for practical training at a postgraduate level. The said Guidelines insists that the courses offered in the LL.M. programme shall have “practical training and research” and that the students should be evaluated for grades based on their performance in these aspects. At p. 8, the UGC Guidelines mandates in respect of the courses to be undertaken in the LL.M. programme the following: 

“Each of these courses will have a practical training and research component for students to perform on which evaluation for grades is determined.” (emphasis mine)

Considering these aspects, it would not be wrong to conclude that the shift in the goal of the LL.M. programme has taken place even at the policy level. Consequently, Universities/ Institutions cannot simply stand by the orthodox position that the goal of LL.M. programme is only to equip students to teach law. Even for the traditional notion of LL.M., internship and other means of practical training will only help postgraduate students become better law teachers. Further, with the changing landscape of Indian legal profession and the opening up of the Indian legal sector to foreign players in the near future, continuing with the orthodox view of LL.M. would be to do disservice to the students and the legal sector. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that Universities/ Institutions expand their vision of the LL.M. programme and not constrict its ambit to merely being a factory for law teachers.

Change in Dogmatic Approach of Law Faculty: A related aspect is that there should be a drastic change in the teaching methodology to the postgraduate students. Universities/ institutions imparting legal education and regulators/ quasi-regulators of legal education such as the Bar Council of India and the University Grants Commission stress on practical approach to legal education both at the undergraduate and the post-graduate level. While Universities/ Institutions these days insist on compulsory internship, there is hardly any focus on practical approaches to law at the Masters level. While it is true that at the LL.M. level, a theoretical approach should be the foundation, theory unsupported by practice becomes irrelevant [see, Jayanth K. Krishnan, Professor Kingsfield Goes to Delhi: American Academics, the Ford Foundation, and the Development of Legal Education in India, 46 American Journal of Legal History 447-499, 474-475 (2004)(noting how American law professors presented practical dimensions to “even the most doctrinally-based courses”)]. Besides, in order to afford a critical approach to law, learning law from a practical standpoint becomes indispensable. For this purpose, it becomes important for the faculty members to have in-depth knowledge of law-in-practice in the course which they propose to teach. The means of acquiring such in-depth knowledge is the challenge to the legal education sector in India.

Student Quality: In order to address the problem of failure of students to match the rigours of the LL.M. programme, the following measures are suggested:

• One way of dealing with this problem is to have an entrance exam with high standards and keep a relatively high cut-off so that only students who are able to cross the threshold are taken. This is already in existence, However, there are a few problems with this approach: For instance, fixing a high cut-off may not work in the current format of Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) as the choice of the institution depends predominantly on ranking of the applicant in the exam. Another problem is that this may eliminate candidates who are otherwise proficient but are not able to do the entrance well for reasons extraneous to their knowledge or ability. 
• Another method to ensure better quality of students is to make the students shortlisted for admission attend rigorous pre-admission orientation. Courses in these pre-admission orientations should be similar to crash courses but should be based on subjects such as constitutional law of India, jurisprudence, basic legal research methodology, international law, etc. This will provide a stronger foundation to enable them meet the standards of the LL.M. programme.

Improving Quality of Legal Research at the LL.M. Level: Another contributor to the dismal state of the LL.M. programme in India is the lack of incisive legal research at the LL.M. level. The previous Part of this series identified the lack of training in legal research at the undergraduate level as a chief contributor to this state of affairs. Institution offering LL.M. courses could improve the quality of research skills by making submission of research work a part of evaluation in each course. In fact, The UGC Guidelines contemplate a research component in each course offered in the LL.M. programme that would be one of the bases for evaluating the students’ grades. Another way of improving the quality of legal research is to make publication in journals/ law review compulsory in the LL.M. programme. At present, this is done at the research degree level [Rule 9.4, University Grants Commission (Minimum Standards and Procedure for Award of M.PHIL./PH.D Degrees) Regulations, 2016 reads: “M.Phil scholars shall present at least one (1) research paper in a conference/seminar and Ph.D. scholars must publish at least one (1) research paper in refereed journal and make two paper presentations in conferences/seminars before the submission of the dissertation/thesis for adjudication, and produce evidence for the same in the form of presentation certificates and/or reprints.”].

But, if legal research in India is to be improved, this drastic measure has to be introduced even in the LL.M. programme. At least one publication by each student should be made mandatory. This will make students undertake serious legal research.

Another hindrance to learning legal research skills in the LL.M. programme is that the unimaginative syllabus of the course on legal research methodology. The legal research methodology courses are offered based on text books/ reading materials that either borrow heavily concepts of research methodology from social/ physical sciences or do not reflect the latest practices in legal research. It is time that legal research methodology courses taught in India reflect the current trends in legal research. This includes introducing the students to advanced research avenues like empirical legal studies, statistics-based legal research, and so on. Further, it is important to bring out course content at a national level on legal research methodology that would equip students to undertake legal research, understand concepts of legal research and learn the latest developments in the field of legal research.

Making Internships/ Training a part of the LL.M. Programme: As stated previously, UGC Guidelines contemplates practical training in law as a method of evaluating performance of students. Institutions/ Universities could offer or support various types of internship/ training programmes such as internships in Non-Governmental Organisations, law firms, offices of advocates, corporations or even in educational institutions in the form of teaching internships. These could be made a compulsory part of the LL.M. programme so that students are well-equipped to have a practical perspective of law and, possibly, apply their research skills in the legal domain in which they undergo internship or training. This will go a long way in equipping them to apply their legal research skills in the legal domain in which they would work after passing out from the LL.M. programme. 

Often, academicians think that a practical training of law is irrelevant to post gradute courses on law such as LL.M., M.Phil, etc. This is an unfortunate trend. If academicians are unaware of how law works in practice, how would they perform their primary duty of undertaking legal research for proposing legal reforms?

Comprehensive Ranking of Institutions offering LLM Programmes: In order to jumpstart the reforms in the LLM programme, it would do good to introduce a comprehensive methodology based ranking of the institutions offering LLM programme. This would benefit the students at least in two ways: one, a proper methodology-based ranking would foster healthy competition between institutions in making the LLM programme more attractive to the students. This would results in one institution trying to better the other in order to attain better rankings. The second benefit is that it would aid the students in choosing an institution which offers the best value for their time and money. At present, there are no such comprehensive rankings for institutions offering LL.M.

Conclusion:

Of all, two crucial challenges face postgraduate legal education in India at the Masters level. The first challenge is the dearth of student quality. This series of posts argued that one of the ways of addressing this problem was by selecting only the most serious students through a rigorous entrance examination. Pre-admission orientation programmes with rigorous training of students who are to attend the LL.M. programme was another way discussed to counter this problem. It is suggested that these orientation programmes would be a better bridge to reduce the gap between institutional expectations and student quality.

The second important challenge is to address problem that permeates not only the post graduate legal education but also legal education in general- the disconnect between law as taught in law colleges and law-in-practice. The chief contributor to this state of affairs is the way in which legal academia is structured. Either the faculty members are not adequately equipped to deal with the practical aspects of a particular law course or even if they are, they are not able to devise teaching methods which will enable them teach both theoretical and practical approaches to law. This is especially true in LL.M. where specialised courses are studied. Often Universities/ Institutions hold the view that for an LL.M. course, there is no need to teach law from a practical stand point. This is a misconception even for those institutions which hold the orthodox view that the LL.M. course is to train law teachers. Even in that case, the prospective law teachers would not be adequately trained in a practical approach to law thereby furthering the disconnect between taught law and law-in-practice.

At present, there seems to be no fool proof method to address the second challenge. Universities/ Institutions either recruit full time law faculty members who are academicians through and through or practitioners as part-time faculty members. Once the former begin their career as academicians, they are hardly trained on the practical aspects of law. The latter give least importance to the theoretical aspects of law while the former do stress mostly on theoretical aspects of law. The possible way to address this problem is to invite committed practitioners/ industry experts to take up law academics (research and teaching) full time with attractive salaries. At present, except in certain rare cases in National Law Schools, University/ Institutional regulations do not systematically address this aspect. As a consequence, several industry experts have either shifted to foreign universities or have gone to elite private law schools which provide attractive salaries and also offer adequate facilities for research or otherwise.

Real reforms in the LL.M. programme in India would be possible only if these two fundamental problems are addressed.

(Many thanks to Ms. Smitha Poovani, Ms. Madhavi Nalluri, Mr. MLS Kaarmukilan, Mr. J. Ravichandran, Ms. Jasmine Joseph and Dr. Ananya Chakraborty for their inputs on the subject).