Exploring Alternative Solutions to the Three Year Law Practice

**Mansi Pathak and Tanu Priya

Introduction

Recently in the case of All India Judges Association vs. Union of India (2025), Supreme Court mandated a minimum three years of practice at the bar in order to be eligible to appear for the examination of Civil Judge (Junior Division). This is not the first time that the Supreme Court has given such a mandate. In All India Judges Association vs. Union of India (1993), popularly known as “Second AIJA Case”, Supreme Court considered the recommendations of 117th Law Commission’s report and prescribed the practice of three years at the bar as an essential qualification to appear for judiciary examination. Thereafter, in 1999, Shetty Commission Report recommended that if intensive training is given to young and brilliant law graduates, it may be unnecessary to prescribe three years practice in the Bar as a prerequisite for entering the judicial service. Pursuant to which, the “Third AIJA Case” of 2002 eliminated the compulsory practice and allowed fresh graduates to appear for the judiciary examination directly. Now it is this AIJA decision which was reversed by the Court recently that will place a host of judiciary aspirants at a disadvantaged position. The rationale of the Court behind this  judgement was that exposing potential candidates to the legal system in the form of mandatory practice will significantly improve their understanding of complex legal issues which will further enhance their efficiency. Fresh graduates often lack this understanding and therefore, they cannot handle the matters efficiently.

Challenges faced by Students 

The three years of mandatory law practice as a prerequisite to sit in judicial examination comes with a bag full of problems. Typically, NLUs total cost for five years ranges from Rs. 6 lakhs to 23 lakhs and in private law schools it is around Rs 2 lakhs – Rs 20 lakhs. Some of the reputed private schools charge around Rs 20 lakhs to Rs 40 lakhs. Students from middle and lower middle class have fewer financing options like family, relatives and  educational loans to fund their education expenses. A majority of them rely on informal loans by family, relatives and friends. A 2014 survey indicates only 7% of the students studying in NLUs opt for educational loans. However, there are no statistics available for students in private law schools or recent data for NLUs. With this as the backdrop, if we consider tens of thousands of students appearing in judicial examinations, financial security becomes, no doubt, one of the strongest motivations for them. Delaying their participation with the eligibility requirement of 3 years law practice would increase the hardships for the students, especially for those coming from economically weaker sections and marginalized sections like SC/ST. It can negatively affect the total number of appearing students as their attention would now shift on other competitive examinations or professions in corporate, litigation, teaching, alternate dispute resolution, academics, consultancy, etc. Another important category which would be at extreme disadvantage is women. Recent data have shown that women participation in district judiciary is 38.3% and it has increased around 8% since 2018. Most women are aged 27 years when they appear for the exam which is nonetheless an adequate age for getting married. Many of the female judicial aspirants are not inclined towards law practice since it is still considered to be a male-dominated field, where systemic barriers prevent the entry of women as against the direct entry into judiciary through a merit-based, standardized exam, limiting female participation in judiciary. Also, compulsory practice alone can not ensure the quality of judges, since it is not difficult for a candidate with strong connections in the field to arrange a duplicate certificate from a senior advocate. Therefore, this recent decision in the All India Judges Association does more harm than good.

Two perspectives to overcome the challenges

The potential solution to enhance the quality and efficiency of judges can be understood from two dimensions. First, from the perspective of enhancing the system of legal education in India, i.e. the duration of the law course can be shortened from five years to either three years or four years and combining it with practical knowledge, including mandatory regular court visits, compulsory internships,etc. The structure of the law courses and curriculum are not standardized throughout the country. NLUs teaching curriculum, academic calendar and syllabus differ from that of other law schools and universities. Most universities offering five year law courses in India include studying subjects like social sciences for four semesters with a view that social sciences build the foundation required for understanding complex legal concepts. This view is supported by Lord Denning in one of his quotes wherein he says that “A lawyer with knowledge of these subjects is an architect, and one without is a maze.” But then India has a 3 year law course as well, which allows graduates from any stream whatsoever to study law. This approach explores the hypocrisy of Indian legal education which on one hand expects students to study social sciences and on the other hand allows anybody from any technical background to study law directly. Reducing the scope of social sciences in a five year law course will not only shorten the entire duration of the course but also will make enough space for practical training to be incorporated in the legal curriculum. This practical training can be in the form of one year of mandatory apprenticeship before enrolling as advocates, as recommended by Prof. Faizan Mustafa. He also suggests reducing the total duration of course to four years by forging more interdisciplinary courses such as Law and Economics or Sociology. As is the case with Medicine, integrating the practical aspect of law into the curriculum and making the apprenticeship compulsory can yield more benefits in terms of efficient judges than making three years court practice mandatory. As urged in the PIL filed by Adv. Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, an expert committee including lawyers, academicians, retired judges can be constituted to review the legal curriculum in order to make it more effective and consistent across universities. 

Second view holds that rather than imposing three years practice as a prerequisite, enhancing the training of the candidates chosen as judges will be a feasible and pragmatic way to ensure their quality and efficiency. In All India Judges Association (2025), in addition to three years practice, at least one year of training is made compulsory to the candidates before presiding in a Court (para 89, vii). Many jurists are of the view that rather than mandating three years law practice, increasing this tenure of training will expose candidates to the necessary practical realities of the legal system and will enable them to understand them from the lens of a judge rather than an advocate, since a judge has to be well-versed with all the matters coming before him/her but an advocate specializes in only a particular aspect of the law. 

Understanding International Training Models

There are various models which can be incorporated in our judicial training programme. Thus, a deep understanding of the training frameworks of judges from various other countries becomes essential if India truly wants to adopt them and do away with years of mandatory practice at bar. 

• In France, a competitive exam is conducted and based on which judges are selected and are further trained for 31 months by École nationale de la magistrature (ENM). 30% of the practical teaching at the ENM involves teaching given by experts, exchanges with serving judges and prosecutors, their partners and professionals in other areas, simulations of hearings, role play, etc. and 70% of the training involves introductory and professionalisation internships (mainly with courts, but also in law firms, with police criminal investigation departments, in prisons, in companies and public institutions, abroad, etc.) 

• The judicial system of Denmark provides for the recruitment of deputy judges either directly from law school or after few years of experience. Danish Court Administration looks after their recruitment wherein they assist judges and are further promoted to being “permanent judges”. Deputy judges undergo a training period of three years and have to appear for a final exam at the end of the training. This concept of deputy judges can function well in India since it will not only increase the judge-population ratio, reduce the case pendency but will also provide young graduates with financial security. 

• The National Institute of Magistracy (NIM) is an autonomous government institution in Romania which holds judicial level competition and conducts the training of judges. One can be a judge either by qualifying the NIM examination or by completing five years law practice after law graduation. The two years training period (recently extended to 3 years) for pre service judicial trainees have been bifurcated into: attending seminars, conferences and extra curricular activities in the first half of training to expose them to diverse skills and the second half is designed as practical introduction to the field, with traineeship within the lower courts and their prosecution offices. “When the training period is over, a graduation examination is conducted to appoint junior judges and a capacity examination for in-services judges and prosecutors.” NIM keeps the in-service judges updated and helps them specialise in their field by the ongoing training sessions once in every 3 years. Moreover, above 70% of the trainee panel at the NIM consists of judges. This reflects in their national statistics — the score for civil justice and criminal justice in Romania is greater than the global average. There is higher female participation in judiciary throughout the country and almost 75% of judges in the Supreme court are female.

• The legal education system in Japan consists of a three year law graduation course or two years of elementary knowledge of legal studies. Apart from this, students who cannot afford legal education can directly appear in the bar examination by first qualifying yobi-shiken (preliminary test). The duration of the training period (or apprenticeship) is one year and mainly comprises imparting practical know-how at the district courts. It is interesting to note that the training curriculum is the same for judges, prosecutors and attorneys. At the end of the training programme, a qualifying national bar examination is conducted at the  Legal Training and Research Institute of the Supreme Court. It is considered to be one of the most difficult bar examinations.

It is fundamental to note that these countries have under 50 global rankings for their civil and criminal justice systems. With a liberal law course of maximum three years, most of the aforementioned training models are lengthy as compared to India and focus on practical exposure to candidates. Hence, India needs to work from grassroot level to improve the legal education and training model rather than mandating 3 years law practice as qualifying criteria.

Other Suggestions and Way Forward

The 117th report of the Law Commission published in 1986 focused on the training of judicial officers and also elaborated on the inadequacy of the three years law practice at the bar before entering the judiciary. Former Chief justices, Shri Satish Chandra and P.D. Desai, in their proposal, recommended a one and half years training programme for pre service judges.  Other than this, Kerala High Court Staff Association was also in favour of a more intensive practical training that was essential for the judges to have a sound knowledge of law and its application as a judicial officer. The Law Commission itself is of the opinion that the two years intensive training would outweigh the advantage, if any, of three years practice at the Bar which often enough hardly helps in the matter of equipping oneself. But the training institutions suffer from a number of deficiencies: there is no synchrony among various states with regards to the exam syllabus, schedule of the exam, content of the training imparted, which results in inconsistency of knowledge about societal issues, lack of equal technical expertise and differing skill set among the judges. In a study, it was found that many academies lacked permanent training faculty. Further, improvements can also be made by ensuring a well equipped and trained faculty is available for induction training. 

Along with providing adequate training, the feedback mechanism and assessment can duly be incorporated in the post training sessions in the state academies. In a study concerning judicial academies in India (pg 18 except Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh), 63.3% do not conduct assessment after the training period is over. It is an essential component to evaluate the impact of the overall training on the judges, exposing which areas need improvement. Additionally, Justice U.C. Dhyani had suggested the scientific methodology based feedback method to be applied on individual participants and incorporated in training academies. After appointment, if the judge has not significantly performed adjudication or failed to equip properly with the justice delivery system and art of writing judgements, then he may be called back to the academy to advance knowledge on the area he lacks.

In the words of Justice J.K Mathur, emphasis on adequate research facilities in the training institutions can add significant value to the training regime. This would not only improve the individual participant experience but also help in development of the whole training programme. Moreover, to enhance the quality of judges, which is nonetheless an objective of the recent judgement, it becomes crucial to include a more collaborative and cooperative effort between the state and national judicial academies towards a standardized and uniform curriculum and training throughout the country. 

**Mansi Pathak and Tanu Priya are third year B.A.LL.B. students at ILS Law College, Pune. Both of them are particularly drawn towards studying societal issues and display keen interest in constitutional law, criminal law and family law.

**Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog do not necessarily align with the views of the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.