The proliferation and brand dilution of National Law Universities

The National Law University (NLU) experiment started in 1987 with an aim to add new vigour to legal education, which in 70s and 80s seemed to have resigned itself to institutional mediocrity. Except for few institutions in presidency towns, the legal education was in a downward spiral. The stage was set for something new and Prof. Menon (though some say he was inspired by Prof. Bakshi) decided to experiment with the novel idea of a 5 year law education right after secondary school. This model was completely different from the then contemporary legal education models followed in the common law countries. In US students could enter law school only after completion of an undergraduate degree, while in UK students could enter legal studies directly after school and the period of study was 3 years followed by a one or two year period of 'apprenticeship' to apply for Bar (through BPTC formerly known as BVC and pupilage) or law firms (via LPC).

The 5 year integrated law school model strived hard on its own for a number of years before the stakeholders deemed it to be successful but once this verdict was reached there was no holding back. First off the blocks were NALSAR, NLIU and NUJS. After that the flood gates were open. Within a decade the number of NLUs jumped from one to fifteen.

If we look at the comparative growth of other institutions of national importance like IITs or IIMs, we find that these institutions had a long gestation period with slow growth before they moved into the expansion phase. However for law schools the growth has been exponential (as borne out by the graph above).

Many reasons can be attributed to this explosive growth of National Law Universities across India, one of the main cause is the little or no initial investment to be made by the state yet the enviable tag of a state with National Law University. Most of the new NLUs run from makeshift buildings which have little or no infrastructure to run a corporation school much less a NLU. Secondly all the NLUs are based on self financed model, which secures a steady flow of capital in form of fees, thus all it needs from state is a legislative Act and voila there is a new National Law University. If one looks at the newest law schools like NUSRL and NLS&JAA they hardly have any of their own infrastructure. The trend seems to have reached such alarming proportion that new law schools start off without faculty yet invite applications from students for admission. CLAT though path breaking in reducing cost and anxiety among law school aspirants, unwittingly end up providing students for these new institutions. If these institutions fail in long term then it would do immense harm to the law school brand and reputation. Thus it is in the interest of the collective NLU brand that older more established NLUs provide active mentorship to the fledgling institutions.

It would also be opportune at this moment to look at the recruitment statistics of NLUs. Arguably AMSS, AZB, Khaitan & Co., Luthra & Luthra and Trilegal are the biggest five domestic recruiters. If we look at the collective recruitment pattern in 2011 of these Big Five we would find that they tend to favour old NLUs over the rest of the law schools.

The recruitment graph shows a classic case of inverse triangle, where few law schools have disproportionately large share of the top end of the job market. If we believe that private sector is the best judge of quality then the trend is extremely worrisome as it tends to point out that there are serious faultlines somewhere in the system and a diminishing brand value of NLUs outside the few top institutions. The situation is quite similar for the new IITs where the graduating batches are offered a 'pittance' compared to 'more established' IITs.

Though recruitment stats alone should not constitute the measuring rod for quality of any institution or its students, however it seems that the time has come to reinvent the NLU brand. The only way forward for NLUs to revive itself is to have strong inter NLU exchanges of both faculty as well as students, strong and active mentor groups for new NLUs and an unambiguous moratorium on opening of new NLUs unless there is an existing infrastructure in terms of library, academic buildings and faculty. To end on a happy note NLUD seems to be have discovered the proper path on how best to open a new NLU - with a world class infrastructure, a 'charismatic' VC and an able faculty.

Ranking Law Schools on CLAT preference

I debated a lot as to whether I should write on CLAT preference based law school ranking for this year. For past two years (2010 & 2009) I have tried to analyse the CLAT results and flesh out the ranking preference of the law school aspirant (who are/ought to be the intended beneficiary of all law school rankings), however this year the reasons for my doubt (about compiling a report on 2011 CLAT results) are the abundance of well written and well analysed articles in online legal news media like ‘Law becoming a primarychoice now’ and ‘CLAT 2011 Results’ by Rajneesh Singh, ‘Old-school CLAT prefswobble’ by Kian Ganz etc. These articles analyse every inch of the field and have provided a clear preference ranking among law schools: NLS, NALSAR, NUJS, (NLIU/NLUJ), GNLU, RMNLU, NUALS, RGNUL and CNLU.

So instead of providing my usual statistical analysis with average rank, rank width/dispersal, standard deviation etc. (but if you are interested in statistics check the articles by Kian or Rajneesh) I have decided to provide a visual representation of the CLAT preference in form of a heatmap. The 20x25 table represents the preference of the top 500 students who cleared CLAT in 2011 under the general category. Each university which have students in the top 500 have been provided with a particular shade to show how preferences vary in the set.

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As is clear from the visual evidence NLS is still on top, NALSAR is second choice but has a serious dent with about a quarter who could be at NALSAR opting for NUJS, NUJS is undisputed third, there is tough tussle between NLIU and NLUJ (look at the intertwining of green and red in the middle half of the diagram), the bottom 1/3^rd is dominated by GNLU which is followed by scattered presence of HNLU, RMNLU and NUALS (in that order).

Whose picture is it anyway: The contagion spreads to Assam

It seems that newborn NLS&JAA (NLU of Assam) website copies the toddler NUSRL, Ranchi in freely borrowing inspiration from the internet.

A quick glance at the website of NLU, Assam would show that directly below the masthead are three images: a cafeteria, stack of law books and an impressive dorian stairway.

All the images are followed by a stamp which reads ‘National Law School & Judicial Academy, Assam’ and to any lay observer would signify that these images are a representation of NLU, Assam. However they are definitely not, NLS&JAA doesn’t yet have a campus and its only existence is in the legislative Act and the website. 

The book stack picture has been borrowed from the University of Pennsylvania library website.

The image of the cafeteria is actually of Walsh College, Ohiom USA and has been taken from Aultman College website.

I could not find the staircase photo, I suspect it is the shot of UCL portico (or the generic photo of any of those US universities with tuscan columns and broad stairways)

But this trend of new law schools in India showing liberally borrowed pictures is quite disturbing as it not only tries to ride the bandwagon on others achievement but also shows that the university itself may not have a vision for future. Apart from such philosophical ramblings, on a more practical note, it shows that the universities do not have any noteworthy (or photograph worthy) infrastructure or achievement. It thus calls into question the mushrooming of National Law Schools across India and the eventual dilution of NLS/NLU brand.

Whose picture is it anyway?

Newest cub at the NLU stable the National University of Study and Research in Law (NUSRL), Ranchi has quite an interesting website. Just below the masthead it carries a series of changing images. The following are the images used in the flash sequence (though not in this layout).

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While the first two are stock photos used in several law related website the last three photos in the series caught my attention. A bit of trawling around the net and it seems that the photos were borrowed from different websites around the world. 

The snapshot of the library (which with its furniture and copiers seems quite impressive) is ‘borrowed’ from the website of Law Library of Wichita County, Texas. Further the next picture of students in post convocation celebration is most certainly of NUJS, as evidenced from the distinctive arch entranceway. Further as NUSRL is yet to have a graduating batch it is improbable to have a convocation ceremony. 

Click on the image for a larger size (opens in the same window)

The borrowing of ‘inspiration’ does not stop the last picture is taken from the flickr page of a student of Griffith University, Australia. 

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While many may argue that being a toddler law school NUSRL website carries these pictures as inspirational or aspirational however that cannot condone the use of popup which marks the images as ‘NUSRL Ranchi’.

As per news from media NUSRL is ‘facing the problem of inadequate infrastructures at its temporary campus near BIT-Mesra.’

PS: The title of the post is inspired from the title of the comedy TV show ‘Whose line is it anyway?’

The problems of plenty and scarcity: An analysis of the BCI list of law colleges in India

After a mammoth and laudable data collection on the law colleges by the BCI (to comply with the Legal Education Rules of 2008), recently BCI has published a comprehensive list of law colleges in India (however there are some glaring omission like NLUD etc., there is also a tendency to add newly approved applicants who do not have any infrastructure at present). As per this new list dated 10.04.2010 the total number of law colleges in India is 900. As per the list the distribution in number of law colleges per state in India is as below:

Unfortunately BCI website no longer has the earlier list (at least not in the same domain location) which in July 2009 formed the basis of a post on the explosion of law colleges in India. According to the earlier list there were 1136 law colleges in India in 2008, thus it is surprising that in a period of couple of years the number went down by 236 colleges. The number of law colleges per state also shows that states in North-East except for Assam have very few law colleges. In Karnataka for example there is one law college for every 5 lakhs 93 thousand people, in NE including Sikkim (except for Assam) there is one law college for every 11 lakhs 10 thousand people (source of population data is wiki article on List of states and union territories of India by population). A quick comparison of population, HDI and number of law school per state would further bolster this argument. 

Thus the need of the hour is for BCI to encourage setting up of law school in the NE of India (another interesting nugget of information, this is also the region of India which is farthest from any kind of National Law University).

Apart from this regional imbalance another approximation garnered from the data is the chronic overproduction of lawyers in India. As of March 2007 the total number of lawyers enrolled with BCI through various state Bar Councils were around 9,55,000. The total number of law colleges according to the latest tally is 900, thus if every law college on an average enrols 100 students every year (please note that 100 is on the lower scale of the spectrum, all National law universities except for NLS Bangalore takes in more than 100 students, most Government law colleges, even the most famous one, like CLC Delhi, GLC Mumbai etc. take in around 300-500 students p.a.), the total number of law graduates produced every year in India is 90,000. Thus every year 9.42% of the total number of lawyers is added to the Bar. Obviously there is a mortality rate which on an average for the last 10 years stood at 7% in India. Thus the effective rate of growth in number of lawyers is 2.42%. Strangely the rate of population growth in India is 1.3%. Therefore the rate of growth in number of lawyers in almost double the rate of population growth in India, which is bound to create a decreasing rate of opportunity for lawyers in future. 

The obvious solution to this twin problem of geographical imbalance and overproduction of lawyers is to first curtail the number of existing law colleges (this can be done through periodic checks on the infrastructure and faculty quality of the law colleges against the agreed minimum standard), raise the entry barrier for aspiring/new law colleges (which should be more than the minimum standard for existing law colleges, BCI may argue that the scope of improvement for existing colleges is a slow process, but for new entrants the standard is that of ideal standard), give sops for private colleges which wants to open law colleges in NE (given Indian Govt. recent NE Development Policy, it wouldn’t be financially difficult to set up a NLU in NE) and finally to derecognise colleges which have a 3 year/part time/night shift law programme.

Before we part another chart to show the privatisation/commercialisation of legal education in India.

 

Telling a true story few Indians know

One of the major advantages of pursuing LLM in a foreign university is that you come to meet with students with varied cultures and traditions from around the world, unlike Indian NLUs with generally monochromatic student population (hailing from educated middle class or upper middle class, English speaking, fancy schooled, city dwelling families). While pursuing LLM at a somewhat reputed UK university I met a Bangladeshi student from the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), my knowledge about Chittagong was quite limited, though I knew that it was a port of some significance, there was blockade in 1971 Indo-Pak war and that it had a medium capacity good cricket stadium (atleast that is what I gathered from the televised matches). I also vaguely remembered that some time ago there was a talk among the diplomatic community in India that Bangladesh Government might let Chittagong be used as an alternate gateway/port for NE India. But what this Bangladeshi-Chakma student told me greatly altered my understanding of ethnohistoriography of Eastern India during the perilous times of Independence and the irrelevance of partition by a colonial master.

We all know something or other about the partition and its fallout every Indian would have heard of the Kashmir story (irrespective of what view he/she may hold on the issue), most know about the partition of Bengal and Punjab (and the enormous emotional-economic hardship borne by the displaced people), many would know about integration of Hyderabad, Junagad and Goa by force to Union of India, some may know that North-West Frontier Province of British India (presently the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and FATA in Pakistan) which decided to join Pakistan in a referendum would have joined India if Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan (also known as the Frontier Gandhi) and his volunteer/political faction/followers (the Red Shirts) had not abstained from voting (during consultations on the future map of India and Pakistan, Patel/Gandhi is thought to have conceded that NWFP should be part of Pakistan, hearing this Khan is said to have famously lamented that ‘You have thrown us to the wolves’), few Indians may know that in Sylhet (today a province of Bangladesh) only a majority of 43.8 per cent voted in favour of being part of Pakistan.

But almost none of the Indians today know that in the last days of British Raj, the Boundary Commission which divided British India (which worked on the principle that a region should be awarded on the basis of its religious demographics, simply put Muslim majority area would goto Pakistan and no-Muslim majority area would be awarded to India) by a mere pen stroke had given to Pakistan a land area of over fifteen thousand square kilometres (to put in perspective about half the size of Kerala or larger than any NE Indian state except for Assam) which were populated by 97% tribal non-Muslims in 1947. This area is today known as the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) and the demographics have completely altered with the native tribal non-Muslim population trimmed to 52% in 1991.     

The curious case of ‘missing’ 70,000 law students

As per the latest data available at the Bar Council of India website on the number of law colleges in India, there are at present around 900 educational institution offering LLB course. BCI notes in that this data is correct as of March 2010. Thus if every institution has around 100 students then the total number of graduating law students by August-September 2010 should have been around 90,000. Its a quantum leap to average out the number of law students around 900 institutions at 100 each, however if we consider that all NLUs have more than 100 students (except for NLS Bangalore) and that most Government law colleges have intake of 200-300 students and that most private colleges would not break without 100-150 students per batch. Thus arguably 100 students on an average per batch per institution seems to be at the lower end of the scale. So let us agree that at least 90,000 students passed LLB in 2010 in India.

However as per the data made available by BCI in the latest press release on AIBE, it has noted that around 22,000 students have applied/appeared for the first AIBE. If we do simple arithmetic it seems that close to 70,000 LLB passouts of 2010 have not sat for the AIBE, it seems pretty weird that  no one bothers to investigate why around 77.78% of 2010 law graduates did not opt for the exam or what happened to them.