Project Complete Lawyer – A road map

AUTHOR: Adv.Johnson Gomez is a leading lawyer in Kerala and the Chairman of Project Complete Lawyer.

INTRODUCTION

The life of a novice lawyer is often difficult for more than one reason. They may find many of the things studied in the law school not of immediate use during the initial days in the legal profession.

They start training afresh once they join the domain. Most of them are forced to use the technique of trial and error. The errors mostly are at the cost of the clients. Alternatively, they may follow their seniors and learn the practice techniques by observing them.

LONG INCUBATION

These techniques often prove to result in long years of incubation of fresh graduates. Seven to fifteen years is roughly estimated. Those who cross it by seven years are the ones who happen to fall in a reasonably good senior’s chamber, while the less fortunate end up with the maximum period. Such a long incubation frustrate the young graduates, and most of them drop out and end up in dignified clerical positions.

CONSTITUTIONAL EXPECTATION FROM THE PROFESSION:

The Constitution of India, guarantees to all the citizens’ justice, social, economic and political^[1]. The current population of India is 1.38 billion approximately. The justice needs of this vast population are expected to be catered to by lawyers and judges. The ratio of the number of lawyers to the ordinary citizen, is alarmingly low.

Therefore the expectation is, to increase the number of good legal professionals who are suitable judges of the future. There is no doubt that the country cannot afford to tolerate extended incubation periods or dropping out of law graduates from the legal profession.

PLIGHT OF LEGAL EDUCATION:

Some critics of legal education would opine that the present teaching method in law schools is the primary villain for the current state of affairs. Attempting to teach law invites disastrous consequences as the number of statutes enacted and precedents produced by the court is innumerable.

The method of memorizing statutory provisions and reported precedents may be an outdated method. A better approach would be to encourage the students to find the law and, once they find the law relevant to a particular clinical problem, encourage them to interpret it. It is identified that a lawyer requires a bundle of skills, and training the law students to acquire such skills should be the primary focus of training in the colleges. Unfortunately, the current syllabus offered to the students does not cater to either of these needs.

PROJECT COMPLETE LAWYER – AN OVERVIEW:

The complete lawyer is a project that intends to reduce the period of incubation to less than 2 years from graduation.

The expectation is to enable the fresh graduate to venture into the profession with confidence and to become independent practitioners within this period. This project is developed by Cochin Institute of International Arbitration and Law and Justice Research Foundation^[2], drawing inspiration from the teaching of Prof. Dr N R Madhava Menon^[3].

FUNDAMENTALS OF THE PROJECT:

The project works on the fundamental understanding that all the institutions created under law, operate on the principle of ‘Rule of Law’.. The higher judiciary, including the Supreme Court and the various High Courts, are governed by provisions of the Constitution, statutes and various rules formulated under them. Similar is the case of courts under the District Judiciary and the Tribunals established under various laws. The project believes that a study of the jurisdiction of the institutions, including the practice and procedure followed by them, would help the students venture into the law practice with confidence.

Let us consider the empirical data relating to filing of cases before a high court.  More than 70% of the cases filed in a particular year are writ petitions. The majority comes under the category of Mandamus or Certiorari Writs. The remaining 30% may be first, second or miscellaneous appeals. A minimal number of miscellaneous proceedings are also filed. Project Complete Lawyer would therefore attempt to train the students in the significant areas of jurisdiction exercised by each institution.

The Project focuses on procedure for filing, case management study, basic research, settling pleadings, formulation of submissions during different stages of a case. Every case has a journey from the conference room of a lawyer’s chamber, where the grievance of a client is identified, pleading settled and filed before the appropriate court having jurisdiction and finally rests in its record room. A study of this journey is an integral part of the project.

The MacCrate report^[4] has identified the skillsets of a lawyer. The project proposes to impart training to the skillsets when the student is continuing his studies in law school. The project’s total duration is 7 years, which starts from the first year of joining the law school and shall be completed within two years from the date of completion of the course.

CLINICAL LEGAL EDUCATION :

Clinical Legal Education is defined as a learning environment where students identify, research and apply knowledge, in a setting which replicates, at least in part, the world  where it is practiced. It almost inevitably mean that the student takes some aspect of a case and conduct this as it would be conducted in the real world^[5].  Clinical legal education as a pedagogy technique has its focus on learners and the process of learning^[6].

Although a number of law colleges involved in clinical education grew over a period of time, most of their programmes remained fairly small, isolated and voluntary. By and large the colleges continued with the traditional method of lecture sessions and clinical programs were sidelined. Project Complete Lawyer proposes to make a paradigm shift by placing clinical studies in the frontlines, in order to equip the participants to meet the challenges put forth by legal practice.

COMMUNITY LAWYERING:

The project expects that on completion of his course, the law student would become ‘ready to practice’. Its objective is not to assure that he could excel in practice. However the training that he acquired from the project would enable him to practice law, without risking the interest of clients or other stakeholders. This training can also enable him to pay his bills.

Opportunities are the immediate requirement after effective training. The large question would be, who would offer a brief to a trained young graduate. In answer to this question, the project proposes to enroll them as community lawyers. The community lawyers would cater to the needs of marginalized sections of the society. One of the methods suggested to take forward the activities of community lawyering may be as follows:  The central and state government offers several welfare measures to cater to different sections of society. However, due to the lack of sufficient legal service provisions, many eligible citizens could not avail such benefits. Most of the time, such schemes require the formation of legal entities, obtaining registrations from various authorities, submission of proper project reports to the competent authority and financial institutions to claim the benefits. The community lawyers trained under the project could easily create such legal entities, obtain necessary regulatory compliances and protect the small investments right from the beginning throughout its operations. At the end of the day, these small entrepreneurs would become the future clients of the project members.

DEVELOPING SMALL LAW FIRMS:

The development of small law firms is one of the methods that could be used to overcome the incubation crisis. Legal practice requires multiple skills. We cannot expect a fresh graduate to acquire all the skills within a short period of time. However joining hands with others would be helpful to overcome any deficiencies in the practice faculties. A combination of fresh and medium level lawyers would be ideal partners in such law firms.

One of the significant areas that the project wishes to focus on is in the study of law firm management. Small teams from the members can join together, share their skills and place themselves as partners of such small law firms. Obviously, such small entrepreneurship can always avail the expertise of seniors in the Bar or larger law firms, through suitable arrangements, whenever a need arises. The entire business happens in the virtual world; the requirement for legal service is not an exception. The legal service industry expects prompt service and timely delivery. The number of years put in by the partners in the firm may not always matter.

CONCLUSION:

Project Complete Lawyer is a small, big step towards achieving the constitutional goal of ensuring justice, social, economic, and political, to all the citizens of this country.

The implementation of the project could, by and large, overcome the current bottlenecks in attracting young talents into the legal profession. A standardized framework operating as a guardian angel for the law students during the course and afterwards, and throughout their career, is the future envisioned by the project.

Acknowledgement:  The contributions of Mr. Viswanath Jayan, Advocate and an alumni of NUALS, Kochi, in editing the Article is acknowledged.

^[1] Preamble of the constitution of India.

^[2] https://ljrf.in/

^[3] Prof. Dr. N.R. Madhava Menon – Neelakanta Ramakrishna Madhava Menon (4 May 1935 – 8 May 2019) was an Indian civil servant, lawyer and legal educator, considered by many as the father of modern legal education in India. He is the founder of the National Law Universities system. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 2003 and Padma Bhushan (posthumously) in 2020 by the Government of India.

^[4] Skills as per Maccrate Report are: Problem solving, Legal analysis and Reasoning, Legal research and Morality, Factual Investigation, Communication, Counseling, Negotiation, Litigation and Alternatives, Organization and Management Resolution of Legal Work, Recognizing and Resolving ethical dilemmas.

^[5] J. WEBB & C. MAUGHAM (eds.), R. GRIMES, THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF  CLINICAL LEGAL EDUCATION 138 (Teaching Lawyers skills 1996). 

^[6] N.R. MADHAVA MENON, FOREWORD, IN A HANDBOOK ON CLINICAL LEGAL  EDUCATION (N.R. Madhava Menon ed., 1998).