Abstract
The access to justice crisis is severe in India and Bangladesh. Both of these countries have enormous unmet legal needs. To ensure access to justice, three components need to be fulfilled: The existence of a legal institutional framework, awareness among citizens regarding this framework and its processes and citizens’ effective access to them. The state is obligated to ensure that there is access to justice, especially for the poor sections of society. Law schools have an important role to play in providing solutions to this crisis. Clinical legal education (CLE) programmes in law schools, with their mission of providing skill-based training to law students, and legal services to underserved communities are well positioned to respond to the needs of access to justice. This article examines the challenges to social justice lawyering and community empowerment in India and Bangladesh and compares the status of CLE’s response to them in both countries. It recommends three solutions for ‘socially relevant legal education’ and to resolve the access to justice crisis. First, the institutional support for CLE programmes needs to be improved. Second, sustained sources of funding are imperative for the development of such programmes. Third, the regulators of legal education should take serious measures to bridge the gap between academia and practice in the legal profession.
Introduction
Human rights are widely considered to be inherent to the dignity of every human being. 3 Despite widespread acceptance of human rights norms by the states, their application remains elusive for many, especially for those living in poverty. 4 Poverty is closely associated with a denial of the right to rights. 5 Legal systems across the world discriminate against individuals that are illiterate, lack influence and cannot afford effective and competent legal representation. 6 This is particularly true for South Asia, which has 25.2 per cent of the world’s population and is home to almost half of the world’s poor people living in inhuman and deplorable conditions. 7 South Asia, with a substantial population, is considered as multidimensional poor. 8 There are more than 500 million poor people in South Asia earning less than $1.25 a day. 9 Countries in South Asia, in particular, India and Bangladesh, are facing not only serious infrastructural challenges related to food, shelter, clean drinking water, sanitation, education, healthcare facilities and malnourishment but also the denial of access to justice. 10
The pervasive denial of access to justice to millions of people across the world is appalling. 11 The access to justice crisis is severe in South Asian countries, such as India and Bangladesh. Both of these countries have immense unmet legal needs and are undergoing an access to justice crisis. While India is ranked 79th in the world Rule of Law index, Bangladesh is ranked 127. 12 To ensure access to justice, three components must be fulfilled, the availability of legal institutional framework, the awareness of institutions and processes, and accessibility to institutions and processes. 13 While the primary obligation to provide access to justice to poor people lies with the government, 14 law schools have a duty to provide solutions to the access to justice crisis. 15
Stephen Wizner suggests that there is a vital connection between legal education, the practice of law and the functioning of the legal system. 16 Deborah L. Rhode suggests that lawyers have a professional responsibility to provide pro bono legal services, and law schools must prepare future practitioners to fulfil this duty. 17 For legal professionals to work towards public interest, it is imperative for law students to learn that they have a social and professional responsibility to challenge injustice and promote social justice. 18 Clinical legal education (CLE) programmes in law schools, with their dualistic mission of providing skill-based training to law students and legal services to underserved communities through legal aid clinics, are well positioned to provide a solution to the access to justice crisis. 19 Law school–based legal aid clinics are best suited to impart clinical values, such as empathy and lawyering skills to law students to prepare them for social justice lawyering. 20
CLE was introduced at least as early as in the 1970s in Indian law schools. 21 Initially, it was a voluntary activity in law schools. 22 It was not until 2009 that CLE was formalized in Indian law schools through the Bar Council of India (BCI) directives. 23 The introduction of CLE in Bangladesh in the mid-1990s was made possible largely due to the efforts of legal academics and students owing to the need for experiential learning in law schools. 24 Professor Mizanur Rahman, the torchbearer of the CLE movement in Bangladesh, was invited by the legal education committee of Bangladesh to make changes to the curriculum of legal education in order to make it more practical. 25 Thereafter, CLE started gaining momentum in Bangladesh. 26 The purpose of CLE in both the countries has been to impart lawyering skills and to promote the social justice mission of law. 27 However, despite the efforts of various stakeholders, CLE has not reached its potential due to several challenges. 28
In this context, this article examines the challenges to social justice lawyering and community empowerment in India and Bangladesh and compares the status of CLE in both countries. The reasons for choosing these two countries for a comparative analysis their shared colonial history, the legal tradition of common law system, similarity in terms of socio-economic conditions and problems faced by the larger populace. 29 However, there are several differences in the current status of legal education in these countries. The legal aid system, development of CLE and the challenges for social justice lawyering are equivalent in both countries. Thus, it is beneficial to look at both these systems in exploring the directions for the future.
For the purposes of this article, Professor Mizanur Rehman was interviewed in order to understand his experiences of playing an instrumental role in introducing as well as developing CLE in law schools in Bangladesh to examine his perspectives of hurdles to social justice lawyering in Bangladesh and possible solutions to overcome them. 30
This article is divided into four parts. The first part discusses the development of CLE in India and Bangladesh adding some relatively new and notable developments that need to be documented. The second part examines the challenges to social justice lawyering and empowering communities in both countries. The third part carries the recommendations. The fourth part concludes the article.
Evolution and the Social Justice Orientation of CLE in India and Bangladesh
India
Legal aid is a fundamental, constitutional and legal right in India. 31 The legal aid movement gained momentum in the 1960s. 32 The integration of legal aid activity in law schools was propelled by the legal aid and legal education reform movements. 33 Several stakeholders, such as the state, regulators, lawyers and civil society, believed that law schools are obligated to play a significant role in rendering legal services to fulfil the unmet needs of the poor and marginalized sections of society through the establishment of law school–based legal aid clinics. 34 In the absence of the integration of legal aid activity in law schools, it was considered that legal education, law schools, law students and ultimately the legal profession would largely suffer. 35
The law school–based legal aid clinic is a departure from the Langdellian method of teaching law in law schools. CLE is a methodology to impart interpersonal aspects of lawyering and make students aware of their professional responsibility. 36 In these clinics, students are positioned in such a manner that they are bound to learn lawyering skills, and clinical values, such as empathy, become aware of their professional responsibility and are better oriented towards social justice lawyering. 37 The clinics run programmes that involve community members and act as a bridge between the government and the rural citizens. 38 When students apply law in real-life settings impacting individuals in meaningful ways, they learn through experience and imbibe skills and values that cannot be taught in traditional courses offered in law school classrooms. 39
In the initial years, law school–based legal aid clinics were established by Indian law schools on a voluntary basis. The establishment of clinics witnessed unprecedented enthusiasm from faculty members and students alike. Students joined clinics in large numbers, even though they did not receive any credit for their work. Despite not receiving any reduction in their workload, clinical faculty members lead the design and implementation of clinical programmes. 40 They were instrumental in motivating students to devote their time to legal aid activity by participating in clinics. 41 Some of the institutions, which established legal aid clinics early on, include Delhi University, Benaras Hindu University, Aligarh Muslim University, Renukacharya Law College, Bangalore and Government Law College, Calicut. They largely focused on organizing legal literacy camps and Lok Adalats. 42
Several committees on legal education reform, such as the 1973 Expert Committee on Legal Aid, Proecessual Justice to the People, Report of 1973, the Committee for Implementing Legal Aid Schemes (‘CILAS’) and the 1994 three-member Committee on Legal Education, emphasized the importance of ‘experiential learning’ in legal education. 43 In part, the formalization of CLE in India began with the circular issued by the BCI in 1997, mandating law schools to introduce four practical papers from the academic year 1998––1999. 44 After the introduction of mandatory courses, BCI allowed for considerable flexibility to each university and law school to devise teaching and evaluation methods employing local resources and suited to regional conditions. 45 Thereafter, in the year 2002, the Law Commission of India, in its 184th Report on the ‘Legal Education and Professional Training and Proposals for Amendments to the Advocates Act, 1961 and the University Grants Commission Act, 1956’ recommended that CLE must be made mandatory in law schools. 46 The introduction of CLE in law schools in India has had significant successes. Several law schools have established legal consultation clinics offering valuable and free services to the communities and giving students the much-needed opportunity to develop their lawyering skills. 47 Students offer paralegal services, such as drafting affidavits, assisting community members to fill out forms for social welfare benefits, file public interest litigations on significant issues and others. This creates a sense of social responsibility among students. Clinical programmes in law schools perform a very important function of informing communities about their rights and duties. Students engage in carrying out street plays, skits, public performances for legal literacy dealing with issues such as domestic violence, untouchability and environment. These activities are also a way of informing the larger public about the free legal services offered by law schools. 48
Several law schools, for example, National Law School of India University, Bangalore (NLSIU), 49 V. M. Salgaocar College of Law, 50 Jindal Global Law School 51 (JGLS) and others have contributed to the development of CLE in India. As early as the 1990s, NLSIU conducted refresher courses on CLE in collaboration with the University Grants Commission (UGC). 52 These courses eventually resulted in the publication of a handbook on CLE in the year 1998. 53 In 2005, delegates at a conference on CLE, which was sponsored by the V. M. Salgaocar College of Law, decided to establish the Forum of South Asian Clinical Law Teachers. 54 The clinical programmes at JGLS made a shift in emphasis from legal awareness to legal empowerment. The ‘Good Rural Governance and Citizen Participation’ model implemented by JGLS in rural communities in Haryana lays emphasis on the need for citizen participation to bring about good governance, vibrant democracy and rule of law in order to address the disconnect between the promise and reality of law. 55
Most recently, the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) 56 set up a committee with the objective of including ‘Clinical Legal Aid’ in the curriculum of law schools. 57 The committee in its first meeting on 10th October 2019 deliberated, discussed and debated the issue with the representatives of the BCI. 58 During the meeting, a subcommittee was constituted to recommend changes to the law school curriculum. 59
The subcommittee recommended the inclusion of ‘Legal Services and Legal Aid’ as a compulsory undergraduate course for all centres of legal education. 60 This course is intended to not only motivate students to provide free legal aid to marginalized communities as a part of their social responsibility but also to strengthen the objective of NALSA, which is ‘Access to Justice for All’. 61 The report submitted by the subcommittee consists of a draft paper, evaluation scheme and the distribution of marks. The subcommittee recommended that legal aid clinics in law schools should be integrated with the ‘Legal Services and Legal Aid’ paper. Marks are to be awarded for research reports, internship, legal aid clinic work, attendance, presentations and viva. 62 The report was submitted to the BCI for its consideration. 63
CLE programmes, though widespread in Indian academia, are still in their nascent stages of development and have not reached their desired potential due to several challenges. 64 CLE programmes are not considered mainstream within the Indian legal education system. India has not made law school clinics, the preferred mode for access to justice programmes. Instead, the state’s efforts in this direction are more oriented at the ‘legal services authorities’ organized at the national, state and district levels. 65 The BCI legal education rules, 2001 do not allow the provision for ‘supervisory attorneys’ or ‘staff attorneys’, who would supervise and mentor law students, when they make an appearance before tribunals and administrative authorities. 66 This means that students have limited opportunities to work with courts and other forums. However, the law school–based legal aid clinics have made a significant impact in legal literacy or awareness programmes with a focus on empowering communities. 67
Bangladesh
The right to equality before the law 68 and the right to a fair trial are guaranteed under the Constitution of Bangladesh. 69 Despite these constitutional guarantees, the justice system remains largely inaccessible to the poor and marginalized sections of society. 70 It was not until 1994 that the state intervened and took serious measures in the form of introducing the ‘legal aid fund’ to provide legal aid and increase access to justice in Bangladesh. 71 In 1997, the government established the National Legal Aid Committee to effectively realize legal aid. 72
The Legal Aid Services Act (LASA) came into force in the year 2000 in order to provide legal aid to persons unable to seek justice owing to poor socio-economic conditions, financial insolvency, destitution and helplessness. 73 The National Legal Aid Services Organization was established to carry out the purposes of the LASA and to perform functions, such as making legal aid schemes, undertaking activities to create public awareness of legal aid, and supervising the activities of the district committees. 74 The LASA is instrumental in creating a nationwide network for the administration of legal aid services with national and district level committees. 75
The integration of legal aid activity in law schools in Bangladesh began in the mid-1990s, when three major public universities started clinical programmes with the sponsorship of the Ford Foundation. 76 Professor Mizanur Rahman is credited with the introduction of CLE programmes in law schools in Bangladesh. 77 He worked in close association with Professor N. R. Madhava Menon, the founder of National Law Schools in India. 78 Professor Mizanur Rahman, in his interview, explained at length his arduous and exciting journey of introducing CLE in law schools in Bangladesh. 79
In the mid-1990s, the legal education committee of Bangladesh invited Professor Rahman to design and implement practice-oriented training programmes known as ‘continuing legal education’ for new lawyers. Simultaneously, a few law students approached him to share their discomfort of learning law in traditional classrooms. 80 This reinforced the need for experiential learning in law schools in Bangladesh.
The need for introducing experiential learning in law schools in Bangladesh made academics and students at Rajshahi University and Chittagong University initiate ‘Law Review’, a student-led organization to organize events to gain knowledge about CLE and its methodology. Soon after, two organizations, namely the Asia Foundation and the Ford Foundations, provided funding to introduce CLE in law schools in Bangladesh. The country representatives of both these organizations took serious measures and personal interest to introduce CLE programmes at Dhaka University. 81
Due to the encouragement, support and funding received from the Ford Foundation, Professor Rahman was sent to Bangalore, India, to meet Lt. Prof. (Dr.) N. R. Madhava Menon and learn about CLE in India. He also travelled to the United States to gain an in-depth understanding of CLE in the law schools there. 82 During the initial stages of introducing CLE in law schools in Bangladesh, Professor David Macquid Mason from South Africa visited Bangladesh and trained the law students on street law, which was later transformed into street law programmes for schools and other vulnerable communities as a very important part of CLE. 83
In the words of Professor Rahman, the goals of CLE are: (a) to familiarize students with the lawyering process and develop advocacy skills; (b) to instill a sense of social responsibility amongst students for professional work; (c) to make students aware of the limitations of the legal system, to explore alternatives, such as alternative dispute resolution mechanism; and (d) to provide training in professional ethics. 84 Stephen Golub suggests that legal aid clinics in law schools in Bangladesh aim at imparting lawyering skills to law students to provide free legal aid services to poor persons through collaborations with non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Exposure to ground realities, at the formative stages of their career, makes law students aware of the social issues, which many of them are likely to be unaware of owing to their privileged backgrounds. Working with NGOs may create a ‘pipeline effect’ to transform the students into social engineers, and they grow with this influence in their professional career. 85
To further the CLE objectives, Professor Rahman, along with some dedicated law students, started the ‘Empowerment of law through common people’ (ELCOP) in 1999, which adopted a bottom-up approach to connect law students with the communities. 86 ELCOP has been instrumental in the development of CLE and in making ‘rebellious lawyering’ popular in Bangladesh. In the words of Professor Rahman, ‘[R]ebellious lawyering includes several aspects of the collaborative and client-centered lawyering, but it goes further in describing the role of lawyers in community development and empowerment of the poor’. 87
Rebellious lawyering concerns black-letter law and focuses on legal outcomes, but its most significant emphasis is on the process of law and its various dimensions. 88 Rebellious lawyering intends to empower subordinated clients and raises questions such as the need for legal intervention for the client’s interests. 89 Collaborative and facilitative lawyering are essential components of a rebellious lawyer. 90 Collaborative lawyering acknowledges that lawyers are outsiders for communities and their status may interfere with client autonomy. 91 Lawyers must attempt to become one with communities. 92 Facilitative lawyering encourages lawyers to work on client-defined issues. 93 It recognizes that the client might not want the lawyer to do anything more than offering legal advice. 94
The rebellious lawyering platform developed by Professor Rahman is based on a few assumptions: (a) law is equal and is applied to unequals in society; (b) law reflects the will of those who are of the dominant class in any society; (c) traditional legal education ought to be replaced with people lawyering; and (d) communities should be organized for pro-poor laws. 95 ELCOP started to execute the idea of ‘rebellious lawyering’ through three key programmes: (a) human rights summer school (HRSS); (b) community law reform (CLR); and (c) street law training. 96
In recent times, law schools in Bangladesh have established legal clinics and moot court societies, where law students are able to learn lawyering skills. 97 Most of these law schools are dominated by the alumni of the HRSS of ELCOP. 98 Most of the universities have integrated law courses on technical skills for the third or fourth year of the bachelor’s in law degree to impart legal skills to law students. 99 However, the situation is not so promising in law colleges, which still follow traditional models of legal education. 100
Challenges for Social Justice Lawyering in India and Bangladesh
There are numerous challenges for the full integration of CLE in the legal education systems of India and Bangladesh. There are similarities and differences in the hurdles to the development of CLE in both countries. The challenges could be broadly understood from an institutional, financial and regulatory perspective.
Institutional Challenge
The 1997 directive of the BCI mandated law schools to teach four compulsory clinical papers. 101 In 2002, the Law Commission of India recommended making CLE mandatory in law schools. 102 In 2009, CLE was formalized in India. 103 However, despite these measures, most Indian law schools do not run CLE programmes. 104 The law schools that have ‘legal aid cells’ remain largely unsupervised. 105 In 2011, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) conducted a survey of 39 law schools with legal aid cells (UNDP study). 106 The survey was instrumental in revealing that 82 per cent of those schools had faculty supervision for legal aid cells. 107 Moreover, 63 per cent of those schools did not reward students with credit for their participation in clinics. 108 Students lack the necessary motivation to participate in pro bono work and are lured by more lucrative opportunities such as moot court activities, which they perceive as being more beneficial for their future careers, particularly as corporate lawyers. Consequently, CLE is far from reaching its full potential in India.
Most recently, in 2022, JGLS conducted a study of 8 per cent of Indian law schools (JGLS Action Research Draft Report). 109 The analysis presented in the draft report is based on responses obtained from 100 representatives of law schools spread across the country. 110 Seventy-six per cent of the respondents indicated that a functional legal aid clinic is present in their respective law school. 111 Fourteen per cent of the respondents participating in the study suggested that legal aid is a mandatory course for students and has academic credits attached to it. About 10 per cent of the respondents in the study denied providing any incentive to students for their participation in legal aid work. Around 30 per cent of the respondents indicated that the students involve themselves in legal aid work solely out of self-motivation. 112
In Bangladesh, the system of legal education is significantly defective. The reason is that there is no mandatory practical training or the institutionalization of the legal aid services delivery in the legal education system. 113 Legal education in Bangladesh, especially in private law schools, has been routinely criticized for the lack of quality and producing inefficient lawyers who lack practical legal skills. 114 The Law Commission of Bangladesh in its 2009 report recommended making CLE mandatory in law schools with the purpose of providing pro bono legal services to the poor and needy sections of society. 115 However, no action has been taken by the regulators. 116 In the absence of institutionalization, centralized planning and coordination, clinical work is undertaken voluntarily by students and faculty members. 117 Students lack the motivation and service orientation to engage in pro bono work. They are more interested in working towards building careers in corporate law. 118
Financial Challenge
In India, the BCI has made it mandatory for law universities or colleges to set up legal aid clinics, wherein student and faculty members provide legal aid services to the poor and marginalized sections of society. 119 Most law schools are worried about securing funds for their clinical activities. 120 Funds are required for paperwork, transportation, organizing legal literacy camps, paralegals, stationery, postal expenses and others. 121 Legal aid clinics collaborate with NGOs, District Legal Services Authorities and panchayats to organize programmes, bring several stakeholders together, and for resource persons. 122 However, the collaborators rarely provide funds for such programmes. 123
The sources of funding for legal aid clinics include ad hoc grants from the UGC, the National or State Human Rights Commissions, students’ development funds and public-spirited lawyers. 124 Despite the availability of funds from several sources, it has been observed that most of the legal aid clinics in law schools rely on their own funding. 125 Only a very small number of law schools receive any kind of external funding for legal aid activities. 126 They receive no financial assistance from outside sources. They are usually completely voluntary in nature and are run by motivated, enthusiastic, service-minded and public-spirited faculty members and students. 127
In Bangladesh, LASA does not have a specific provision in order to integrate legal aid services in the law school curriculum. 128 The UGC and the Bar Council of Bangladesh have not taken any measures to make the setting up of legal aid clinics mandatory by law schools or colleges. 129 This stands in stark contrast to the progressive measures and the mandate of NALSA and BCI when it comes to compulsorily setting up legal aid clinics by law schools or colleges in India. 130 Thus, so far as the integration of legal aid activity in the legal education system is concerned, India seems to be far ahead as compared to Bangladesh. 131
In 1992, the Ford Foundation helped Bangladesh’s three leading law schools, Chittagong, Dhaka and Rajashahi, to start CLE programmes. 132 Initially, these legal aid clinics focused on skills-oriented training. 133 Later on, these clinics organized activities to engage students in fieldwork and court procedures. 134 Such opportunities included internships with Ford Foundation and NGOs. 135
Students and academics shared that most of the legal clinics are heavily dependent on short-term funds for which there is no sustainable source. 136 The law clinics of the law department at the University of Dhaka are not fully functional for every batch and every student due to inadequate funding. 137 As a result, selected students get access to CLE for a very brief period of time which is sometimes not enough. 138
Regulatory Challenge
In India, according to the Advocates Act, 1961, and the rules thereunder, full-time faculty members cannot practise law. However, a law professor may seek permission in order to appear in certain cases and file public interest litigations. 139 This is a huge hurdle to the development of CLE in India. 140 The situation is similar in Bangladesh. According to the cannons of professional etiquette for lawyers, a full-time law faculty member has to suspend his law practicing licence while being employed at a university. 141
Prohibiting law faculty from practising in courts of law is harming the legal system as well as law teachers that are important stakeholders in the legal system. 142 This is a huge setback for the law students. 143 Law teachers can contribute in meaningful ways to the legal system. India is in dire need of litigation lawyers, and there is a substantial need to bridge the gap between the theory and practice of law. 144 Law students and the development of CLE are going to benefit from teachers visiting courts from time to time. 145 Allowing law teachers to practice in the court of law is required to maintain close ties between academia and the profession. 146
Recommendations
There is a need to make the study of law more practical, public spirited and humanistic, through the full integration of CLE into the legal education systems of India and Bangladesh. This is possible by way of orienting law students towards ‘social justice lawyering’ with a focus on communities. The authors of this article offer three recommendations for socially relevant legal education and to achieve ‘equal access to justice for all’ in India and Bangladesh.
First, the institutional support for CLE programmes needs to be improved. In India, more clinical courses should be designed with a focus on communities, students should be awarded credits for their participation in clinical work, and faculty workload should be reduced to encourage the faculty to think and act dynamically and beyond mundane and routine teaching. In Bangladesh, there is a need to make CLE mandatory in law schools. Pursuant to this, clinical courses can be designed on similar lines as in Indian law schools.
Second, owing to a lack of sustained sources of funding, CLE programmes face severe limitations. One of the approaches to secure sustained funding for the legal aid clinics in law schools could be to collect membership fees from all law students or to collect a certain amount as a part of the yearly law school fees. This amount could, then, be deposited in a separate bank account. Auditing of the account could be done on a yearly basis. This will ensure that the students and the clinical faculty members are free to decide the agenda of the clinic without any need to fulfil the objectives of a donor agency. They could work towards the social justice mission of legal education without feeling pressurized to arrange funds for their activities. 147
Third, the regulators of the legal profession and legal education should seriously reconsider the prohibition imposed on full-time faculty members from practising in the courts of law. They should make amendments to the current laws and rules thereunder. This will be a huge step in the direction of breaking the wall between legal academia and the profession. With law professors appearing before the courts of law, law students are bound to gain more exposure to the practice of law. It will bridge the gap between the theory and practice of law, and the legal profession, overall would benefit from such changes in the law.
Legal aid work should not be considered a stand-alone initiative in law schools; instead, it should be integrated within the law school programme. More specifically, a ‘nation-wide legal aid impact assessment committee’ consisting of several stakeholders should be formed and convened by NALSA in order to learn from the legal aid initiatives of various law schools. There is a need for a ‘Collective for Social Justice’, based on the initiative and efforts of civil society, government and academia to improve India’s performance across social justice indicators. Collective action for the transformation of CLE into a movement that brings people together, while empowering them is the plausible way forward. 148
Conclusion
The mission of legal education is not only to train law students for the legal profession but also to transform them into social engineers and champions of justice in society. 149 The broad aim of legal education is to achieve social justice. 150 More specifically, in countries with a colonial past, legal education should endeavour to develop the potential of engineering social justice and fostering respect for human rights. 151 Modern legal education, which is imparted in law schools, should be able to train law students to provide free, competent and accessible legal services to the poor and marginalized sections of society to strengthen justice delivery mechanisms and to contribute towards the legitimacy and credibility of the institutions of justice.
Law schools play a role in not only training law students to ‘think like lawyers’ but also inculcating the values that guide their professional behaviour. Law school graduates are most likely to occupy positions of power, by way of becoming politicians, bureaucrats and leaders of the bar. In these roles, they routinely create legal rules and apply them in real-world settings. The practice of law is about continuously acquiring knowledge, further developing one’s legal skills and exercising power. Law schools have a special duty and are obligated to teach students about their social responsibilities towards society. 152 Since most law school graduates do not choose to become full-time public interest lawyers, it is even more important to teach them to act on the professional obligation of offering free legal services to the poor. 153
Although efforts have been made in the past to integrate the social justice mission of law by way of introducing and developing CLE in both India and Bangladesh, fully institutionalizing social justice–based legal education in both of these countries remains a distant dream. 154 Measures to reform legal education are crucial towards achieving the social justice mission of legal education. Only socially relevant legal education will be able to produce law graduates that have the vision of working towards an equitable society, where the rule of law prevails, and human rights are respected in society. Law teachers, judges and lawyers have a duty to make legal education in both countries socially relevant, aimed towards achieving the ideals of liberty, equality and justice for all its citizens.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.