By Aftab Mohammad
Legal education and professional regulation are often treated as internal concerns of the Bar. They should instead be understood as part of the architecture of justice. Courts do not deliver justice through judges, statutes and procedure alone. They also depend on the quality of advocacy placed before them. Lawyers shape facts, frame legal questions, advise litigants, draft pleadings and assist courts in interpreting and applying the law. The Bar is therefore not external to the justice system; it is one of its constitutive institutions.
The standards by which lawyers are educated, licensed, trained and disciplined have consequences far beyond the profession itself. Where law schools are uneven, entry filters are weak, apprenticeship is informal and disciplinary mechanisms lack credibility, the injury is ultimately public. It is felt by underprepared litigants, overburdened courts and a justice system already struggling with delay and distrust.
The central premise of reform must therefore be clear: the competence and ethics of lawyers are not private attributes of professionals. They are public conditions for the rule of law.
India has one of the largest legal professions in the world. The Ministry of Law and Justice informed Parliament that 20,13,081 advocates were enrolled with different State Bar Councils as of 2023. A large Bar is not, by itself, a weakness. A country of India’s size needs lawyers in district courts, legal aid institutions, tribunals, regulatory bodies, universities, civil society organisations, public institutions and commercial practice. The difficulty is that expansion has not been matched by a credible system of quality assurance, professional training and accountability.
The crisis, therefore, is not simply that some lawyers may lack genuine degrees, or that some law colleges may be weak, or that disciplinary bodies may move slowly. The deeper crisis is institutional. India has expanded access to the legal profession without building a matching architecture of verification, training, ethical supervision and public accountability.
The Fake-Degree Controversy and the Crisis of Verification
The recent controversy over fake law degrees has brought this anxiety into sharp public focus. In May 2026, a Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant reportedly expressed serious concern over persons wearing black robes despite doubts about their degrees and orally observed that the CBI should look into the matter.
The concern was reinforced by Bar Council of India Chairperson Manan Kumar Mishra, who reportedly stated that 35-40% of advocates may be practising with fake law degrees, linking this concern partly to the non-submission of verification forms by a large number of advocates during the degree-verification process.
This claim requires caution. Non-submission of a verification form cannot automatically be equated with fraud. Suspicion is not proof. Administrative delay, poor communication, negligence or bureaucratic inertia may also explain non-compliance in many cases. It would be unfair and dangerous to treat every non-verified advocate as an impostor.
The real problem is different, and more serious. The system appears unable to distinguish quickly and credibly between genuine advocates, negligent non-compliers and possible frauds. That failure damages everyone: litigants who need trustworthy representation, courts that depend on qualified officers, and honest lawyers whose profession is diminished by uncertainty.
Where forged degrees, organised rackets or collusion in enrolment are suspected, an independent and time-bound investigation, including by the CBI in appropriate cases, would not be excessive. It would be necessary institutional repair. The question is not only whether some individuals forged degrees. The deeper question is whether law colleges, universities, State Bar Councils and the Bar Council of India have the capacity to verify credentials, detect fraud, discipline misconduct and protect courts from impostors.
Uneven Legal Education and Regulatory Overload
The roots of the problem lie in the uneven quality of legal education. India has produced outstanding lawyers from National Law Universities, older university departments, government law colleges and many non-elite institutions. Excellence in Indian law has never belonged to elite campuses alone. But the broader ecosystem remains deeply uneven.
Some law colleges appear to exist only formally, issuing degrees without meaningful learning or quality assurance. Others function with inadequate faculty, weak libraries, poor clinical training, irregular teaching, little exposure to drafting or advocacy, and a limited research culture. The result is a professional pipeline in which the possession of a degree does not always guarantee professional readiness.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice, in its 2024 report on strengthening legal education, noted that inefficiency and inadequacy in the inspection process had contributed to the recognition of substandard law colleges. It recommended that quality should prevail over quantity and that effective steps should be taken to curb the mushrooming of weak law colleges.
The Committee also made an important institutional recommendation. It suggested that the Bar Council of India’s role should be limited mainly to regulating basic eligibility for practice at the Bar, while broader legal education should be entrusted to an independent authority. It proposed the creation of a National Council for Legal Education and Research under the proposed Higher Education Commission of India.
That recommendation deserves serious consideration. The same body cannot effectively represent advocates, regulate advocates, inspect law colleges, prescribe curricula, conduct licensing examinations, verify degrees and discipline misconduct at a national scale without institutional overload and possible conflicts of interest.
Legal education today is not only about producing courtroom lawyers. It must prepare students for litigation, research, regulation, arbitration, legal aid, technology, governance, public policy and rights-based work. That requires an education regulator with academic depth, professional credibility and operational independence.
A Weak Entry Filter into a Powerful Profession
The present entry filter into the profession also needs reform. The All India Bar Examination was introduced to ensure a minimum level of competence before an advocate is allowed to practise. In Bar Council of India v Bonnie Foi Law College, the Supreme Court upheld the Bar Council’s power to conduct the AIBE and recognised the need for a qualifying examination linked to the right to practise.
The problem is not that the AIBE has a high pass percentage. A licensing examination need not be designed to fail candidates. A high success rate is not inherently suspicious if the examination properly tests professional readiness. The more important question is what the examination measures.
The official AIBE-XX press release states that 2,51,968 candidates appeared and 1,74,386 qualified, resulting in an overall pass percentage of 69.21%. That figure, by itself, does not prove weakness. But it does invite scrutiny of the examination’s design.
A meaningful licensing examination should test more than familiarity with statutes and bare provisions. It should assess legal reasoning, application of principles to facts, interpretation of precedent, procedural understanding, ethical judgment and professional responsibility. It should also examine practical skills such as drafting, client counselling, identification of conflicts of interest, pleading standards, advocacy aptitude and the lawyer’s duty to assist the court with candour and competence.
The contrast with other professional and academic filters is instructive, though not identical. For example, the Chartered Accountancy Final examination held in January 2026 recorded a pass percentage of 10.97% for candidates appearing in both groups. In the UGC-NET June 2025 cycle, 7,52,007 candidates appeared; 60,154 qualified across the JRF/Assistant Professor and Assistant Professor/PhD admission categories, giving an overall success rate of approximately 8%. The Foreign Medical Graduate Examination recorded 79,000 candidates appearing in 2024, of whom 20,382 passed, giving a pass percentage of 25.80%.
These examinations serve different purposes and should not be mechanically compared with the AIBE. Their value lies in the broader principle they reflect; professions carrying serious public consequences generally insist on credible entry standards. A doctor trained abroad cannot practise in India without clearing a licensing test. A chartered accountant must pass demanding professional examinations. A candidate seeking eligibility for university teaching must clear a competitive national test. Law deals with liberty, property, dignity and state power. It cannot afford a casual approach to competence.
The AIBE should therefore move towards a practical and ethics-centred model. Unless it does so, it will remain a formal checkpoint rather than a meaningful professional threshold.
What the Supreme Court and Law Commission Have Warned
The Supreme Court has repeatedly expressed concern about declining professional standards. In Mahipal Singh Rana, Advocate v State of Uttar Pradesh, the Court dealt with an advocate found guilty of criminal contempt and expressed anguish over the unsatisfactory regulatory mechanism governing advocates. The judgment brought into focus the need for stronger professional discipline and better regulatory oversight.
The Law Commission of India’s 266th Report, The Advocates Act, 1961: Regulation of Legal Profession, was prepared in this institutional context. It recommended comprehensive amendments to strengthen regulation, discipline and professional accountability. The report also examined the need for pre-enrolment training, apprenticeship, disciplinary reform and measures against illegal practice.
The Law Commission was particularly clear on the problem of fresh graduates entering courts without sufficient practical exposure. It referred to Sanjay Kumar v State of Bihar, where the Supreme Court criticised the phenomenon of ‘proxy counsel’ and warned against half-prepared appearances that waste public time and misuse the court process.
That concern remains deeply relevant. A lawyer is not merely someone who knows statutes. A lawyer must know how to handle a file, advise a client, draft a pleading, understand evidence, respect court procedure and assist the judge with sincerity. These skills cannot be learnt through a degree alone.
Why Courtroom Training Matters
Law is learnt not only from books, commentaries and bare acts. It is learnt in the discipline of courtrooms. Filing, drafting, objections, evidence, adjournments, bail, injunctions, limitation, cross-examination, client handling and the ethics of candour are learnt through supervised practice.
Traditionally, the district court was the first school of advocacy. It taught humility, protocol, procedure and the texture of litigation. That experience remains valuable. Too many young lawyers today enter higher forums without adequate exposure to trial-court work, procedural discipline or the realities of ordinary litigants.
India should therefore seriously consider a graded and certification-based right-of-audience model. A fresh lawyer should first undergo supervised practice in trial courts, district courts, legal aid centres, prosecution offices, tribunals or recognised chambers for a defined period. Independent filing and conduct of matters in higher courts could then require verified experience, specialised training and stricter certification. Practice before the Supreme Court would continue to be subject to the existing Advocate-on-Record framework and other applicable requirements.
Such a model must not become a rigid hierarchy that blocks young lawyers or entrenches seniority. It must be designed with care so that it does not harm first-generation lawyers, women lawyers, lawyers from rural backgrounds, lawyers with disabilities, or those entering specialised areas such as tax, intellectual property, arbitration, regulation, technology law or public policy. The purpose should not be exclusion. The purpose should be professional formation.
A useful analogy may be drawn from the civil services. An IAS officer normally advances through field postings at the tehsil, subdivision and district levels before assuming senior policy roles in the state or Union government. Such experience is not incidental. It gives the officer a grounded understanding of citizens, institutions, implementation and governance realities. The legal profession is different, but the principle of graduated responsibility remains relevant.
A lawyer who first learns practice in trial courts is often better placed to understand pleadings, evidence, procedure, witness examination, bail, injunctions, limitation and the lived realities of litigants before moving to higher courts. A graded pathway should therefore be seen not as a barrier to young lawyers, but as a system that links responsibility with experience, maturity and competence.
This principle is not alien to Indian law. The Supreme Court’s Advocate-on-Record system already recognises that practice before the highest court requires special training and testing. If the Supreme Court recognises that its procedures require special preparation, there is no reason why the profession cannot think more carefully about progression from trial courts to High Courts and then to the Supreme Court.
Learning from Comparative Practice
India does not need to transplant the models of England and Wales, the United States or any other jurisdiction. The Indian Bar is larger, more multilingual, socially diverse and deeply anchored in district-court practice. Yet comparative experience is useful as a source of principles: structured training, ethical scrutiny, supervised practice and continuing professional development.
In England and Wales, entry to the Bar involves academic and vocational stages, professional ethics assessments and pupillage. Pupillage is a supervised training period during which aspiring barristers must demonstrate practical advocacy, drafting, legal analysis, ethical judgment and courtroom readiness before independent practice.
The United States follows a different route, but its emphasis is similar. Bar admission usually requires educational credentials, success in a Bar examination and a character-and-fitness assessment. The American system recognises that legal competence is not only about knowledge. It is also about integrity, discipline and fitness to serve clients and courts.
The common principle is clear: the right to practise law is not treated as the natural consequence of holding a degree. It is earned through education, testing, ethical scrutiny, supervised training and continuing professional development.
Emerging Good Practice in India
India also has examples worth building upon. The Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa has established the Bharat Ratna Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Advocate Training and Research Centre at Taloja, Navi Mumbai. Inaugurated in January 2026, it has been described as India’s first such advocate training and research centre, intended to bridge the gap between classroom education and courtroom practice.
This initiative should not remain an isolated experiment. Every State Bar Council should develop training academies, whether residential, hybrid or district-level. These centres should cover advocacy skills, drafting, ethics, technology, legal aid, trial practice, client counselling and emerging areas of law.
They should also support first-generation lawyers, women lawyers and lawyers from rural and marginalised backgrounds, who often lack access to established chambers and informal mentoring networks. Professional training must not become another privilege available only to those already placed near centres of power.
Apprenticeship Without Exploitation
A useful institutional lesson may be drawn from medical education. Under the National Medical Commission’s Compulsory Rotating Medical Internship Regulations, 2021, an MBBS graduate must undergo at least 12 months of compulsory rotating internship before being treated as ready for full professional registration. The internship is an integral part of undergraduate medical education. The emphasis is not merely on possession of a medical degree, but on supervised exposure to real clinical settings, completion of essential practical skills, mentorship by qualified supervisors and certification of professional readiness.
The legal profession requires a comparable system of professional formation. A fresh law graduate should not be left to acquire competence through accidental exposure, informal chamber culture or unsupervised court appearances. Before assuming independent responsibility for clients’ liberty, property and rights, young lawyers should undergo structured and assessed practical training in drafting, client counselling, court procedure, evidence, legal aid, negotiation, ethics and advocacy.
Apprenticeship is essential, but it must not become exploitation. Many young lawyers already spend years in chambers without meaningful mentorship or income security. A proper apprenticeship system must define the responsibilities of advocates, chambers, law firms, legal aid bodies and public institutions. Juniors should receive exposure to real legal work, feedback on drafting, court observation, ethical guidance and humane working conditions.
The qualification and accountability of advocates providing apprenticeship or mentorship must also be clearly defined. There should be an effective monitoring mechanism to ensure that young lawyers are not treated as free labour but receive meaningful professional training, fair learning opportunities, proper supervision and, where appropriate, reasonable remuneration or stipend support.
The hardest implementation question is funding. A mandatory apprenticeship cannot be credible if it simply transfers the burden to young lawyers who cannot afford unpaid work. State Bar Councils, legal services authorities, law firms, senior advocates, government law offices and law schools should together explore stipend-supported models, especially for first-generation and economically vulnerable entrants.
Transparency, Discipline and Public Trust
Transparency is equally important. India needs a national, searchable and regularly updated registry of advocates. It should show verified educational qualifications, enrolment status, certificate-of-practice status, disciplinary findings, suspension orders and declared areas of practice.
This is not to create a popularity ranking of lawyers. It is to provide litigants and courts with basic, verified information. A person hiring a lawyer should at least know whether the advocate is genuinely enrolled and in good standing.
Discipline must also become credible. A profession cannot claim nobility if misconduct is rarely punished, complaints remain pending and ordinary litigants have no effective remedy against lawyers who cheat, mislead, abandon or exploit them. Disciplinary proceedings must be fair, but they must also be time-bound. Final findings should be reasoned and publicly accessible, subject to safeguards relating to privacy, defamation, appeal and proportionality.
Honest lawyers have nothing to fear from transparent regulation. Indeed, they are its first beneficiaries. A credible disciplinary system protects not only litigants and courts, but also the reputation of the majority of lawyers who practise with integrity.
Why Reform Matters for Justice Delivery
Improving the quality of legal education and professional training is not only about lawyers. It is about the justice system itself. India’s courts are already carrying several crore pending cases. Judges, infrastructure, vacancies, investigation quality, government litigation and procedural complexity all contribute to delay. But lawyers also matter.
Bad drafting, unnecessary applications, casual adjournments, weak pleadings, unprepared arguments and unethical conduct consume judicial time and injure litigants. A good lawyer assists the court. A careless lawyer burdens it. A dishonest lawyer corrodes public faith in the system.
The quality of the Bar directly affects the quality of justice. A weak Bar weakens the Bench. A strong Bar strengthens the rule of law.
The Way Forward
The reform agenda should be ambitious but practical. It may be organised around three principles: verify entry, train before independence and discipline throughout practice.
First, law colleges must undergo rigorous, periodic and public accreditation. Weak institutions should be placed under time-bound improvement plans and, where necessary, closed with safeguards for enrolled students.
Second, the AIBE must be redesigned to test drafting, ethics, procedure, evidence, client handling and professional responsibility. It should become a test of professional readiness, not a mere formal checkpoint.
Third, a structured apprenticeship of at least one year should be made mandatory and may be integrated into the LLB degree, much like internship is integrated into medical education.
Fourth, a graded and certification-based right-of-audience model should be considered, so that lawyers acquire supervised experience before independently conducting matters in higher courts.
Fifth, a verified national advocate registry should be created to enable courts, clients and institutions to check credentials and professional standing.
Sixth, continuing legal education should become compulsory for renewal of practice, but it must be designed to avoid becoming a superficial certificate industry.
Seventh, disciplinary systems must be made more independent, time-bound and transparent, with clear safeguards for fairness and appeal.
These reforms must be designed carefully so that they do not become tools of elitism. India needs first-generation lawyers, rural lawyers, women lawyers, lawyers from marginalised communities and lawyers who speak the languages of ordinary people. Democratisation, however, cannot mean dilution of standards. The objective should be to democratise excellence.
Reclaiming the Noble Profession
Law should not be treated as a last-resort career for those who could not enter medicine, engineering, management or civil services. It is a demanding public vocation. It requires reading, reasoning, judicial logic, restraint, courage, empathy, discipline and ethical judgment. The black coat should not be a costume of convenience. It should signify preparation, responsibility and trust.
The phrase ‘noble profession’ cannot survive on nostalgia and ceremony alone. It has to be restored through institutions. India does not need fewer lawyers. It needs skilled, competent, better-supervised and more accountable lawyers.
Legal education and professional regulation must be understood as part of the infrastructure of justice. They shape not only the careers of lawyers, but also the everyday experience of litigants, the efficiency of courts and the moral authority of the legal system. If law schools remain uneven, licensing remains weak, apprenticeship remains informal and discipline remains uncertain, the burden is ultimately borne by citizens who approach courts in moments of vulnerability.
The Bar’s claim to professional autonomy can be sustained only when it is accompanied by credible systems of public accountability. The renewal of the legal profession is therefore inseparable from the renewal of the rule of law.
[Aftab Mohammad is a lawyer and a senior public policy and governance specialist. He writes on diplomacy, history, democracy, and contemporary questions of law and justice.]
