Introduction

“Inclusive, good-quality education is a foundation for dynamic and equitable societies.” —Desmond
Tutu

This statement by anti-apartheid and human rights activist, Tutu mentions that the creation of
equitable and dynamic societies can be achieved through an introduction of quality education, which
is inclusive, accessible, and uniform. However, an aspect of accounting for socio-economic barriers
has been missing in multiple spheres of the educational sector, including the legal education sector.
Understanding socio-economic barriers is particularly essential for law students as they are regarded
as ‘social engineers’ of tomorrow. It is imperative to say that education and opportunities ought to
be shared equally, irrespective of social or economic considerations.

The importance of National Law Universities (‘NLUs’) in the law school fraternity is increasing with
the increase in the number of students opting for the law as a career.1 This increased interest is
backed with an increase in opportunities for honing advocacy skills such as moots, journals, debating
along with established alumni networks in the legal profession, and lucrative placements from law
firms.2 NLUs have professionalised career in law, and law is no more seen as a last resort in career-
making.3 These NLUs were given autonomy towards their curriculum and pedagogical teaching
while introducing radical learning techniques for the students.4 By substantially overhauling the
existing manner of a traditional university, these universities aimed to differ from other Indian law
universities. The high employment rates of students of top NLUs in law firms have been a prominent
factor in leading to their popularity.5 The access to the prestigious NLUs is by ranks achieved
through the all India Common Law Admission Test (CLAT). However, a more in-depth study of these
law school structures reveals some disturbing trends. The NLUs have led to the belittling of other
traditional law colleges or non-NLUs, leading to an epistemicide in the context of legal education.
This is also supported by the fact that admission to NLUs is hindered by language, financial, and
social barriers for many students. In the first part of this paper, the authors have traced the
development of the five-year law school model. Subsequently, the authors have analysed and
presented data from Diversity Reports of NLSIU Bangalore (Hereafter NLSIU), NUJS Kolkata
(Hereafter NUJS, and Jamia Law School, Delhi (Hereafter Jamia). NLSIU and NUJS are top tier NLUs in
the country, while Jamia is considered as one of the better traditional law collegesin India.

These Diversity Reports have been relied upon to demonstrate the presence of language and socio-
economic barriers for students accessing law schools in these three colleges. The presence of these
barriers is further leading to an illusion of superiority of NLUs over non-NLUs, thereby resulting in
colonisation and epistemicide within legal education. The impact of this epistemicide has a
significant effect on the placements offered to students as well as the social value attached to legal
education institutions. The authors have presented some recommendations to bridge the gap
between NLUs and non NLUs. The authors have limited the discussion on CLAT to the Under
Graduate level (Hereinafter ‘UG) entrance test.

Background of Legal Education in India

The legal education system in India is regulated by the Bar Council of India as well as the University
Grants Commission (UGC).6 While the Bar Council is responsible for providing quality standards of
the legal profession7 , the UGC is responsible for maintaining quality education across all institutions
of higher education in India.8 The Advocates Act of 1961 mandates the BCI to lay down standards for
legal education imparted by institutions.9 It also allows the BCI to make rules to ensure continuity of
such legal standards as well as for inspection. The introduction of the five-year integrated law course
was one of the most significant legal education reforms of the 20th century, which led to a shift in
the model of legal education. The five-year law course in India owes its origins to the
Gajendragadkar Committee of 1964. The Committee recommended a change in the structure of the
academic course from a two-year course to a three-year course.10 The Committee had
recommended the establishment of model ‘National Law Schools’ in India.11 One of the
recommendations in this regard was trying to get eminent legal scholars to be faculties in such law
schools while also granting them autonomy to develop better pedagogy techniques.12 However, no
significant attention was paid to the model law school proposal until 1975. At the First National
Convention on Legal Education in 1979, certain reforms were proposed which included increasing
the duration of the academic course to five years.13 They also recommended inclusion of social
sciences in the study of law such as sociology, political science, and economics to give context to the
legal education and introduce inter-disciplinary analysis within the legal stream being imparted to
the students.14 Professor Upendra Baxi emphasised on the adoption of the five-year integrated law
course model as adopted by law schools across the country. He stressed the inclusion of subjects
such as economics, international relations, political science, history, and sociology to be taught to
students as part of their legal curriculum.15 He felt that it would help in the development of the
“social reality of law”.16 Ideas of autonomous national law schools continued to gain traction in the
1980s. Professor N.R. Madhava Menon, a supporter of the Baxi school was entrusted with the task
of establishing the first National Law School in India.17 The autonomy of these institutions was
ensured by making them “financially, structurally and administratively independent”.18 Professor
Menon wished for National Law Schools or NLUs to have distinct identities in the legal fraternity and
act as centers for development of analytical skills and clinical education.19 The traditional
universities that imparted legal education were based lecture model20, followed in Universities
around the world before Lang don had derived the case method in the Harvard Law School21. The
lecture involved teachers lecturing students for hours with the students making notes and reading
commentaries on different laws to supplement their knowledge of the law. These universities were
criticized for imparting education through rote memory and not inculcating critical understanding in
students.22 However, in the case of India, even though we had an extensive system of laws, we
lacked a legal profession which understood the social and economic architecture behind the system.
NLSIU was established by the state of Karnataka through the National Law School of India University
Act (Karnataka Act 22 of 1986)23. The Act embodied the principles of a model law school as
envisioned by Professor Baxi and Professor Madhav Menon. NLSIU was given complete academic
and administrative autonomy while leaving room for experimentation and innovation in
pedagogy.24

The establishment of the NLSIU in 1986 represented the creation of a new law school which
incorporated the vision suggested by Professor Baxi and Menon. The idea of a five-year law school
was appreciated and deliberated upon for further creation of National Law schools. NLSIU, NALSAR,
NLIU and NUJS are considered as successful implementations of this reform. They kick started the
race for establishment of national law schools in different parts of the country. As of 2019, there
were 23 NLUs established in India by different state governments25. The 24th law school to be
created is the Jammu and Kashmir National Law University established in the year 2019.26 The NLU
model aims to create a legal education framework recognised as adequate to mold students into
professionals capable of fulfilling the changing requirements of the legal profession in India and
abroad. NLUs have begun to create a new set of legal luminaries over the ones emerging from
traditional universities with legal departments, such as Delhi University or Aligarh University. Thus,
within the Indian context, the NLU model of legal education has been considered to occupy the
highest rung of the legal education ladder.27 This is reinforced by the fact that numerous state
governments have endeavoured to establish NLUs in their respective states, sometimes three in a
single state28, believing in the superiority of the NLU model over traditional universities imparting
legal education.

Opportunities to Student National Law Universities Vis-à-vis Traditional University: A case Study of
Three Law Schools

This part of the note will analyze the demographical patterns in three colleges which have conducted
their Diversity Report in the past. These reports include NLSIU Bangalore (2016 Report)29, Jamia
Institute of Law (2018 Report)30 and NUJS, Kolkata (2019 Report)31. The respondents’ backgrounds
have been checked to understand the diversity in the Universities and determine accessibility of
National law schools to students belonging to social and economic backward sections of society. The
hypothesis for this part is that there exists a similar pattern of diversity in students of two of three
top tier NLUs i.e. NUJS and NLS in this case.32 The authors shall also present basic demographics,
financial background, and educational background of students from these three colleges. In this
section, the term ‘students’ refers to respondents of the diversity reports.

Basic Demographics

In this portion, a socio-economic analysis of the background of students studying in NLSIU, NUJS and
Jamia has been done. This determination will involve identification of caste of the respondents and
their regional background to understand the percentage of students belonging to urban and rural
areas of the country. In Jamia, around 11% and 22% percent respondents associated themselves as
‘Brahmin and Other Upper Castes’ respectively.33 4% respondents identified themselves as
belonging to Other Backward Castes (‘OBCs’).34 Surprisingly, there were no respondent (0%) who
identified themselves as belonging to Scheduled Castes (SC) or Scheduled Tribes (ST).35 This requires
one to question the reasons for this as to whether these students refrained from answering due to
social circumstances or their representation is lacking in Jamia.36 NLSIU and NUJS both had around
27% of Brahmins and, 32% of other upper caste.37 On account of other backward castes, there were
2.7% and 2.3% of the students who identified themselves as OBC in NLSIU and NUJS respectively.38
While around 15% and 7% of the students of NLSIU students and 10% and 5% of the students of
NUJS marked themselves as coming from SCs and STs respectively.39

Urban v Rural background

We will first compare the Urban-Rural distribution in background of students of Jamia and NLSIU
since NUJS Diversity report didn’t rely on tier model but rather divided the responses into ‘City’,
‘Town’ and ‘Village’.

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Note: 4.63% marked inapplicable in NLSIU which might be representative of Non-Residents of Indian
origin or foreign nationals.

In the Fig. 1 we can witness that the students from Tier-3 and Tier 4 cities are merely 18.24% of the
student strength in NLSIU while the same percentage is 43.64% in the case of Jamia. The student
strength of NUJS41 (84.3% of the students) and NLSIU42 (77.1% of the students) was primarily
dominated by those from cities43 unlike Jamia44. This trend can also be seen in NUJS wherein only
15% people came from ‘Town’ and only 1% belonged to ‘Village’.45

The above data is suggestive of the fact that CLAT aspirants who make into these two NLUs are
residents of urban areas. This is in sharp contrast to Jamia, where a more significant number, 43.64%
of students came from Tier 3 & 4 areas.

INSERT IMAGE

Figure 246 : Background of Students of NUJS

Supplementary issues of impediments faced by students belonging to semi-urban and rural

Financial Background

This section discusses the financial background of students joining these universities. In order to
assess financial background of students, we will resort to the data on total combined income of
parents of the respondents.

INSERT IMAGE

Figure 347: Combined Annual Income of Students of three law schools.

In NLSIU, the annual income of Brahmins and other upper castes lies between 20.8-21.5 lakh rupees,
while it was Rs. 12.5 lakhs and Rs.15.8 for SCs and STs respectively.48 Contrasting this with NUJS, it
was 17.5 lakhs rupees for other upper caste, 19.5 lakh rupees for Brahmins and 21.5 lakhs for
students refusing to identify their caste.49 The same was substantially lower for SC and ST students
with both groups having average combined income being around 11.5 lakh rupees.50

This is reflective of the fact that students from higher income groups find it easier to access National
Law Schools. A small 20% of the students in NLSIU51 and NUJS52 belong to homes with annual
salaries of less than 6 Lac rupees. In comparison to Jamia, almost half of the students belong to this
group.53 In NUJS and NLSIU, 15-16% of students had annual parents’ salary more than 36 Lacs
rupees while in case of Jamia, it was just at 2.5 % of student strength.54 This data shows the
difference in terms of the financial background of the students joining two of three top NLUs in
comparison to a traditional law school such as Jamia.

Role of CLAT in determining Accessibility to Law schools

The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) leads to inaccessibility in three ways: first, registration fees
for taking up the examination, second, mode of the examination, and third, medium of the
examination. The third part has been analysed in a subsequent section.

CLAT Fees

The fees for UG CLAT is Rs. 4000/- (General) and Rs. 3500/- for students belonging to SC,ST, and
Below Poverty Line (BPL).55 The average monthly household income of the wealthiest top 1% of
Indians ranges in between 8-14 Lacs, and that of the wealthiest 10% is 4.3-8 Lacs.56 A meagre 0.2
per cent of the country’s aggregate workforce makes over Rs 1 lakh per month.57 The earning of as
many as 45% of regular workers in India is below Rs 10,000 per month as per Periodic Labour Force
Survey (PLFS) survey for the year 2017-18 gs).58

Entrance fees of Rs 4000 and Rs. 3500 are substantial burdens for all middle to lower classes of the
population in India. The amount of fees has been decided arbitrarily without any financial audit of
the CLAT consortium as to the funds that get collected by the sorganising NLU for that particular
year.59 In 2018, a report of the MHRD found that the CLAT fees should be Rs 1500.60 The
Committee highlighted that out of Rs 25.7 crore collected, 23.1 crore (around 90%) was profit.61
Financial hurdles in the form of high application form fee impede students of weaker economic
backgrounds from reaching NLUs. The authors believe that the first step towards inclusivity in legal
education can be a reduction of these entrance fees to incentivisee people from all backgrounds to
apply for the exam.