Legal Education

LEGAL EDUCATION <!--[if gte mso 10]> LEGAL EDUCATION By Mr. Justice Muhammad Nawaz Abbasi, Chief Justice, Supreme Appellate Court, Gilgit-Baltistan Legal Education is the education of individuals who intend to become legal professionals or those who simply intend to use their law degree to some end, either related to the policies or for academic purpose. 2. The importance of the topic arises due to the deteriorating situation and standards of legal education in Pakistan as compared to the developed world to which we follow blindly in some other aspect. The education policy of our country does not give much importance to the role of legal education in the development of the Country. Legal education is not thought an important part of the development of country by our managers of education policy but this is not the case in other countries so much so our institutions of legal education are not at par even with India in research facilities and consequently, this field is producing lawyers who are mere technical persons having no architectural capability to foresee the future with a critical eye to develop the law to meet the challenges of tomorrow. Most of our law graduates do not fully concentrate to the required studies and more than 95% of law students do not go to libraries for any type of reading or even for research purposes and knowledge. 3. Pakistan is a Muslim State and laws in Pakistan are based on the philosophy of human values in Islam, as ordained in Holy Qur'an and Sunnah. The last Holy Prophet, Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) while advancing the concept of rights of people (Haqooq-ul-Ibad) strongly forbade the violations of these rights and fought for the dignity of man and woman, by prohibiting slavery and by recognition of women's rights in property and marriage with consent. The Holy Prophet in his farewell Sermon (Khutba-e-Hajjatulawida), which is the first charter of human rights in the world, emphasized the very equality of mankind and professed human values as legal and moral education. 4. The Constitution of Pakistan in its preamble defines its objective to secure to all citizens social, economic, political justice, liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship, equality of status, freedom, equality, tolerance, social justice and opportunity and to promote amongst the people fraternity assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of nation. The Constitution offers freedom from exploitation and equal opportunity to all in preference to the vested interest of few and to enable Muslims to order their lives in the individual and collective spheres in accordance with the teachings and requirements of 'Islam as set our in the Holy Qur'an and Sunnah. The adequate provision has also been made for minorities to freely profess and practice their religions and develop their cultures. 5. Legal education needs to impart professional skills and also should be social justice-oriented education. In other words, legal education's ultimate mission is to transform law students into socially sensitive, justice oriented legal professionals. Therefore, the need is to institutionalize social justice based on legal education and no doubt the law colleges are the starting point for establishing a legal profession that provides social justice but other institutions also have an obligation to shoulder this responsibility. The Courts can participate by allowing internships and research work; the bar by involving practising lawyers to teach and monitor clinical programs; and government by providing adequate facilities to students and faculty to make the people aware about their rights. These institutions have immediate concern for the successful implementation of clinical legal education's mission of social justice and in addition, there must be a consensus, consistent with the reforms to identify the fundamental values of the legs profession together with skills necessary to achieve those values. 6. It is important to remember that legal literacy cannot simply be understood as creating awareness regarding the rights of the people, for any efforts towards legal literacy necessarily involves a broader approach which means an awareness of rights, but such awareness must go hand- in-hand with awareness regarding the remedies so that the people should know their rights and scope of the remedies to bring action for their rights. We must recognize that only such a comprehensive legal education can be said to have been meaningful. 7. Legal literacy is the core basis of the rule of law and Constitutionalism and the whole concept of Administration of Justice is based on the presumption that the people are legal literate and they know what are their rights, recognized and protected by the law and Constitution. Legal literacy certainly facilitates access to justice system and it helps in eliminating inequality and discrimination. Lack of legal literacy, on the other hand, makes the ignorant masses vulnerable to deception, deprivation and exploitation of all sorts. 8. The Constitutional goals of equality and justice will be accomplished only by enacting a number of socially oriented legislations and this challenge cannot be met by focusing only legal education on lawyering skills confined to traditional problem solving. Pakistan needs not only technically skilled lawyers, but also lawyers who are socially sensitive and thus legal education must therefore, focus not only on what lawyers actually do but on what lawyers ought to do. In this regard, the first task is to identify the values that legal education must contain as the Society needs socially sensitive and community-oriented lawyers'. The legal education system with a social justice agenda. Justice, fairness, and morality can be taught in the law colleges which requires a curriculum that exposes students not only to law and legal process, but also to many other factors and thus the aims and objectives of legal education in a modern civilized society must necessarily include learning in various branches of law and specialization in such branches. The legal institutions in public and private sector must concentrate to bring changes in legal education to improve the judicial system. 9. The Constitution of Pakistan and the legal system is based on the principle of social justice in Islam but very few people understand that social welfare is a legal entitlement. The legal education thus must focus on making the legal process an instrument of social development and on developing the legal profession as, a vehicle for social justice, socially relevant legal education can meet the constitutional goal of providing socio-economic and political justice by promoting a legal profession that can "meet the needs of the common person through the rule of law and a progressive social order". 10. The clinical legal education system must be introduced in the Institutions with the help of Bar Councils, Judiciary and the persons having practical knowledge of the legal issues and problems in the Society. The education system must introduce the concept of Social Justice and Free Legal Aid Societies for fair and effective methods of resolutions of disputes and ADR as well as Practical Steps and Public Interest Litigation. Conclusion: Legal education must shoulder the burden of preparing law students to meet these expectations and they must be provided clinical teaching. Students are required to have sufficient knowledge about the local culture, living conditions, local problems, and language and the social issues in the urban and rural life. In spite of the practical problems and drawbacks, law colleges can implement a social justice curriculum through clinical education without imposition significant changes to the present curriculum and key to success in this endeavor lies in the implementation of the Practical Papers. Clinical courses or projects covering the papers can be used to instill in law students. In addition, students can be encouraged to conduct legal research pertaining to a particular case assigned by the advocate under the supervision of a faculty member and on issues of public importance. The students have also option to conduct legal research on welfare benefits provided under various social welfare schemes in order to identify the beneficiaries and to help them to get the benefit of such research. The legal institutions can adopt a backward and en-courage students to conduct a survey to identify the problems that the people in that particular area. The students can be encouraged and trained to promote legal literacy and to advertise their legal aid clinics and various issues such as gender discrimination, domestic violence, children rights, and environmental issues. The law students in this way, can acquire and practice skills such as interviewing, drafting, and fact finding techniques. It also provides an excellent opportunity for the students to learn how criminal administration works and what their responsibilities would be as public defenders, prosecutors, or even presiding officers and by entering into the field in a real-world context, they will gain an understanding of the human side of the criminal and civil process of law and perhaps even an understanding of the patterns and causes of crime and social problem. The attention must be paid to both substantive law as well as clinical legal education because simply adding more general teaching and stirring is insufficient. The object of meaningful legal education can succeed if all the three organs of State i.e. Executive, Judiciary and Legislature, play their proper role with sincere and efficient efforts.