The Existential Threat to The Profession of Law

THE EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO THE EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO THE PROFESSION OF LAW By Mohammad A. Qayyum ASC, MPBC, Chairman Legal Education Committee, Punjab Bar Council The Honorable Chief Justice of Pakistan recently decried the poor level of drafting being seen in pleadings before the Court; His Lordship queried whether drafting is at all being taught in law schools. The dirty truth of legal education in Pakistan is that most law colleges do not hold classes; many do not even have premises, what to speak of teaching anything. Sale and purchase of law degrees, procured without attending a law college, is a major threat to the legal profession. It is widespread. What raises it to the level of an existential threat is its mindboggling scale. The purpose of this piece is to bring home to all concerned the precise scale of the problem, its roots and dynamics and the urgent need to address the same. In a recent 3 year LLB (banned in 2018) 1st year supplementary exam held by a university notorious for facilitating such sale and purchase, around 11,000 students were registered by its registrar to take the exam. After scrutiny was brought to bear through Court proceedings, the University Controller allowed around 6,200 students to sit in the exams. FIA was tasked by the Supreme Court to examine the documents of the candidates and according to their last report only 2,200 may be genuine students. In effect, around 9,000 were purchasing degrees; one is staggered by this number when one realizes that in the whole of Punjab last year around 6,500 licenses were issued. The fake purchasers were more than a year's entire enrollment for the entire province in only one supplementary exam of one university. The size of the entire class is much larger in the university. And then realize that this is only one university. Then add at least 9,000 from Punjab University and affiliated colleges and then add students from many other universities too. We are looking at a flood of students coming in, out of which a significant portion would have not attended a day of law college and would have purchased their degrees. While analyzing this menace, one is almost immediately shocked at the general acceptance of there being nothing wrong with not attending classes and just sitting in an exam. Parents and students find nothing wrong with students never having attended a day of school and sitting in exams on the basis of fake attendance. They claim to be victims when denied the chance to continue in this manner. Typically, the student is in one city, the law college is another and the university is at the other end of the province. Many may be in other employment, even government employment, when they are enrolled in ghost colleges, not attending classes. Delving deeper, examining the economics of selling fake degrees, its lucrativeness is alarming: the sale of law degrees is perhaps more profitable and less dangerous than selling cocaine. You can do the math. A law college is given 100 seats by the University. Instead it takes on three times that number of students. It gets around Rs. 1.5 to 4 lacs from each student annually. It comes to around Rs. 4.5 crores for one year. Each college has students in 3-5 years for LLB. So in total, multiply one class by 3-5, the number for years for a degree, to get the total earning from students of all years for a law college in one year. Tens of crores a year are taken from the public at large by ghost law colleges, with little overheads while not teaching at all. So lucrative is this business that even several genuine functioning colleges participate in this practice. University staff is given a cut to allow all the students to sit in exams on the basis of fake attendances. Some even own law colleges or academies which route such students to them. One university recently even allowed more than 300 students to sit in its exams from a purported law which was not even affiliated with it. Even among genuine law colleges, barring a few exceptions, it seems to be the norm not to ensure attendance in classes. Since attendance is not really considered necessary (it is faked later at the time of exams), such colleges do not really feel the need to offer classes. Since most college do not offer classes, they find there is no need for classrooms. Or for teachers. Such colleges do not even exist on ground; most just maintain front offices. Recently FIA and a University's own affiliation Committee held around 28 previously affiliated colleges to be ghost/non-existent. Each such college had 100 or often illegally more students. One wonders how the affiliation committee affiliated the said colleges in the first place. Now when brought under scrutiny, University officers seem to suddenly discover that most of their affiliated colleges do not exist at all. This indicates the level, rather lack, of scrutiny by universities of their affiliated colleges. We at the Punjab Bar Council deal with the complaints at the grassroots. We recorded first division being offered upon extra payment to students by an institution. In tackling these colleges, we have found such colleges to be hydra-like, cut one head down and three others sprout up in its place. The proliferation is exponential. Supreme Court orders one college to shut down. Not only does the owner not shut down the college, but opens up multiple more, claims to be a group of colleges, often not affiliated with anyone. A law college disaffiliated turns into an academy to avoid regulation, such an academy sells degrees through other colleges which are selling such seats. Or the Academies deal directly with corrupt officers at universities. Shockingly, there is no scrutiny of who owns or runs a law college. When one university disaffiliated several colleges found guilty in a report before the Supreme Court of massive corruption and were facing recommendations of criminal action, another university affiliated said colleges. Another owner recently threatened a regulator on the Supreme Court premises that he had only recently been acquitted in a murder case and he will deal with all who challenge his illegal actions. Many such law colleges have after taking the money from absent students disappeared on them. Most other which have been disaffiliated from their respective universities, yet continue to manage to extort monies from such students. The brutal murder of the secretary Punjab Bar Council traced back to be linked to missing files and fake enrollments and degrees. It also points to the levels of threats and dangers in this field. Law College owners have also effectively weaponized students against any regulation and all regulators. Bar Councils and its members have often been targeted on a regular basis through protests, harassments and threats as they are held responsible for stopping purchase of degrees after they were paid for. Even otherwise the mindset of the degree purchasing students is prone to violence: The person who has not attended a day of law school does not know how to argue or talk law before a judge. He is of course going to resort to violence or unfair means in court when that is what has gotten him where he was throughout his education. Getting a license to practice is tragically easy for such candidates as things stand. In 2018 the Supreme Court took a great first step in the judgment reported as Pakistan Bar Council v. Federation of Pakistan and others (PLD 2018 SC 815) inter alia directing many substandard, non-functioning affiliated colleges to be disaffiliated. Unfortunately, the effect of the judgment has been nullified legally or illegally since then. For example, affiliated colleges for one university have tripled from the level that was found to be excessive by the Supreme Court in 2018. Many law colleges continued to work despite the Court's clear specific directions or have now been re-affiliated. Recently a newly approved university advertised a B. Sc Law degree without reportedly having a department for law at all. The recent parliament on its way out passed bills for establishment of many more universities without any real oversight. From the above, one should not think that this matter is limited only to Punjab. Many of the ostensibly fake degrees are now coming from other provinces and even Azad Jammu and Kashmir. It is common knowledge that purchased degrees from other provinces will even be gotten verified by the well-connected sellers when Bar Councils come asking. It should also not be thought that this cancer is limited only to the field of law; there is reason to believe that the situation is worse for other subjects. Many of the owners of disaffiliated law colleges for fraud continue to run colleges for other subjects. Startlingly, most of this is being done in plain sight. Several notorious sellers are found across the road from universities. They even advertise on social media, through flyers and billboards. The universities have absolutely no checks and balances in place despite much vaunted committees and claims. In fact, many employees are complicit. In a recent enquiry being undertaken at the Punjab Bar Council on a complaint, it was shocking to notice that not only the complainant was a university employee who was ostensibly booking seats, but even the Respondent Law College was owned by a former employee, and all were pointing towards other employees of the university for corruption. The sad truth is that only a handful of colleges hold classes. False attendance certificates are submitted to the universities, which rarely make an effort to verify. Attendance Registers are not maintained or are manufactured if ever required, as before the FIA in a pending case. It is possible to parachute into examinations without even studying, even on the eve of exams. University staff facilitate. One owner/principal when approached by FIA blithely admitted that he does not hold classes; he stated that he uploads a handful of video on Youtube and that is enough. He heads the organization of disaffiliated, mostly fraudulent law colleges seeking their re-affiliation. Law College owners threaten University officials for accommodating 'fresh' candidates; one owner heard threatening University officials in a voice note stating 'hum tau doobay hain sanam, tum ko bhi lay doobaingay.' Another key to the problem is that students do not feel the need to attend classes because they do not need to and can easily pass exams using a couple of guides and a couple of week's preparation. So flawed is the examination system for local law degrees that it is easy to pass with a little common sense, without much effort and without even having gone to law school. Mr. Anwar Kamal, ASC in his thorough report on the problems of legal education filed in the 2018 SC case identified the examination system to be the main problem and fixing it to be the main solution to many problems. He correctly concluded that students will attend classes and colleges will hold classes if it is made impossible to pass exams without having studied thoroughly. Successfully prosecuting such fraudulent activities as identified above is almost impossible. Perpetrators have deep pockets and are too elusive. Bar Councils even otherwise do not have the infrastructure to effectively prosecute. There are little or no information gathering mechanisms and Bar Councils only learn about most of the problems through complaints, when matter have already risen to unmanageable levels. There is the problem of agency capture in all institutions and levels as well. Bar office holders are reluctant to act or often have own direct or indirect interests in such colleges. Many consider their future election prospects linked with such circles. Such problems as have been pointed out thrive due to lack of regulation. Frankly, legal education is practically unregulated. The infrastructure and reach of regulators are very limited at Bar Councils. There is also a systemic problem: most of the power to deal with the Universities and Colleges lies with the Pakistan Bar Council at Islamabad, but the Council is removed by distance from the grassroots. HEC and other Government agencies which may have the best infrastructure do not regulate law schools. They are even otherwise overtasked. Even the recently established Directorate of Legal Education for all its diligence will find it difficult to regulate the entire country with its limited manpower. All of this is also not to say that this problem is only limited to local law degrees. There is evidence that external program LLBs are also headed in this direction. Unregulated law colleges offering external degrees are mushrooming. Anyone who can afford it, is now headed towards a 3 year external degree rather than a local 5 year degree. One of the problems with said degrees is that they do not teach a word of Pakistani law or for that matter Urdu, the language in which most trial work is done. Some so-called local law colleges offer 3 year LLB in 1 year, with two years faked for the degree to appear three years. New fangled unrecognized degrees are on offer. You can not qualify for a local LLB due to low FA marks and still qualify for external LLB through a backdoor. External colleges consider blatantly violate the LAT requirement stating it does not apply to them when the 2018 SC judgment makes it applicable to all law colleges. In fact it is now possible to obtain certain vaunted international qualifications while sitting in Pakistan. Reportedly, even the exams can be exempted. But all of this is perhaps more appropriately be discussed in another article. Spare also, in all of this, a thought for the plight of genuine students and even genuine law colleges. For them, universities have unjustifiably delayed exams for years, using fake students and colleges as an excuse. Often times Universities do not hold exams stating they need to scrutinize for fake students first and at the same time they undertake no scrutiny. This leads to an entire frustrated breed of victim-students. The prime reason for delay seems to be that after recent scrutiny many students and law colleges and university staff have been caught involved in fraudulent activities. So now they seek to avoid examinations as it would require unwelcome scrutiny: as a consequence the genuine students suffer and lose faith. The problems with the legal education system are many. This piece has focused on but one and the micro-problems surrounding the same. The solution lies in a multi-pronged strategy which we are attempting to implement through the Bar Councils, Pakistan Bar Directorate of Legal Education and Legal Education Committees, Higher Education Commission, a SC appointed monitoring committee, etc. Tracking students data from the time of their registration to remove chance of interpolation is essential. Zero tolerance and prosecution of fraudulent college owners is vital. Lifetime ban on degree purchasers, sellers and facilitators is a must for deterrence. It should bar them from teaching other subjects as well. The solution ultimately also lies in capping the number of colleges, licenses and making licensing entirely merit-based. One should not be able to get a license unless one has studied hard. Presently, LAW GAT and SEE LAW exams are, contrary to popular belief, easy to pass, with now chances having been increased to seven. All of the aforementioned and other strategies for improvement of legal education will also be the subject of more detailed and focused future articles. For now this piece ends with its warning of an incoming flood, that if not stemmed, has the potential to wipe away any and all semblances of professionalism and merit from the profession of law.