Autonomous law schools in India

In India, autonomous law schools are the law schools founded pursuant to the second-generation reforms for legal education sought to be implemented by the Bar Council of India. The first such autonomous law school was the National Law School, Bangalore which admitted its first batch in 1987. Since then a number of other national law schools have been established all over India and various other States are also considering options to establish such schools.

Traditionally legal education in India was conducted through the medium of non-specialized universities of India which granted law degrees like any other graduate degree. These Universities referred and taught the curriculum prescribed by the Bar Council of India but since they were under the overall control and supervision of the University Grants Commission and therefore it was not possible for the Bar Council to effectively pursue reforms in legal education.

This system continued for more than two decades with the overall legal education supervision by the Bar Council, since its establishment in terms of the Advocates Act, 1961. However, there were calls for reforms from all quarters of the country in general because of the falling standards of the bar and there were mounting pressures over the Bar Council of India to bring forth change in the way in which legal education was imparted in India.

The first concrete decision to this end was taken in 1984 when various proposals to modernize legal education were considered and approved by the "Legal Education Committee" of the Bar Council, in an attempt to improve legal education throughout India. One of the major proposals was the decision to establish specialized institutions to impart legal education in an integrated and diversified manner. The aim was to revitalize the legal profession by making law as an attractive profession and making it competitive to attract talent, which was hitherto diverted to other professional areas such as Medicine, Engineering, etc.

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