Bharat Shiksha Summit 2025: Justice Rajesh Bindal calls for serious relook at syllabus in law colleges 

Supreme Court judge Justice Rajesh Bindal on Thursday called for revising the syllabus for legal education in the country with greater emphasis on the practical aspects of law.

Addressing the inaugural session of the Bharat Shiksha Summit 2025 organised by the Balaji Foundation in New Delhi, Justice Bindal drew attention to the uneven quality of legal education in the country. He said the country has some 5 lakh law students but doesn’t have enough good faculty to teach them.

There is a level of compromise, Justice Bindal noted. He said barely 48-49 per cent of law graduates who sit for the open-book Bar Council of India (BCI) exam pass it, pointing to serious quality issues in legal education.

Reiterating that the quality of legal education has to be improved, Justice Bindal said though the New Education Policy 202 set parameters for most fields, education in law and medicine were independently managed. Law education is managed by the BCI. Justice Bindal said remedial measures need to be urgently taken to fix the shortcomings.

The SC judge said there has been a sea change in legal education in the country with law colleges mushrooming everywhere. In the 1980s, he recalled that there were no competitive exams for law and law was one of the last career options, now there are competitive exams to get into law colleges. Law has now become a top career choice, he noted.

There are 5.2 crore law cases pending for a population of 146 crore people leaving ample room for more lawyers and judges and legal scholars, Justice Bindal said.

Remarking on his career as chief justice of the High Courts of Allahabad, Calcutta and Jammu and Kashmir, he said he is still in the learning process and legal practice is continuing legal education. “We are living in the age of information, the challenge is how to convert that information into knowledge,” he said.

Welcoming Justice Bindal, Senior Advocate Pradeep Rai said Justice Bindal has served in important High Courts in his illustrious career. Balaji Foundation Chairperson Rajshri Rai said the Summit was an attempt to better India’s education policy and said 25 vice-chancellors from various universities will be attending the event. She said the stakeholders should put forth their views to resume the dialogue that gets left out in formal settings.