LL.M. in India: A Critical Review
Proceedings of the National Conference on Contemporary Legal Education in the Globalized World, The Central Law College, Salem (17 & 18 September 2017)(ISBN 978-93-5265-308-9)
8 Pages Posted: 20 Sep 2016 Last revised: 20 Jan 2017
Date Written: September 14, 2016
Abstract
The Masters Programme in Law in India has recently gained popularity for several reasons. Notwithstanding its rise in demand, the manner in which the said programme is conducted in law colleges in India has remained unchanged over several decades. Unlike undergraduate legal education, post-graduate legal education, especially the Masters programme has not undergone marked improvement. The National Law School reform has not percolated to the Masters programme in law to the extent desired. There are various reasons for this state of affairs. Some of them are lack of focus or goal, non-availability of quality faculty members, parochial goal setting of the LL.M. programme, and so on. The recent reforms in reducing the duration of the Masters programme has been welcomed by many, but several persons have expressed their reservations on the duration, especially as regards equipping the post-graduate students with enough skills which ought to be imparted in the post-graduate course. This paper argues that unless overreaching reforms are introduced in post graduate legal education, India will always lag behind developed nations in terms of quality of legal research and pedagogy. The paper was presented in the Conference on Legal Education in a Globalised World, Central Law College, Salem (17-18 September 2016).
Keywords: LL.M. in India, Postgraduate law degrees, Legal Education, Legal Research
JEL Classification: K10, K19
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation