Problems relating to existing legal education in Bangladesh: An agenda for the advancement of legal education in Bangladesh
Though legal education is ancient, it is a prestigious one. At present, the demand for LL.B. (Honors), LL.M. yet increased especially since the separation of judiciary from the executive organ. There is a declaration that only those who have legal knowledge are entitled to become a judge. Moreover, now many local and foreign companies need legal advisers. Banks and NGOs also need legal consultants. The function of a legal adviser in general is to deal with the legal matters of the companies, banks & NGOs.
As we know that England is famous for its legal education system. There are many courses available namely LL.B. (Honors) with Economics, LL.B. (Honors) with Accounting, LL.B. (Honors) with Management, LL.B. (Honors) with Finance, LL.M. on International Trade, LL.M. on International Investment, LL.M. on International Commercial Law, LL.M. on Intellectual Property and so on. Introducing these courses in Bangladesh would require much time. If the teachers and course coordinators of law in different universities in our country propose for a modern course curriculum of LL.B. (Honors) which includes accounting, finance, statistics, and computer studies as like as B.Sc. (Engineering) offered by different engineering universities. I think then the law graduates will get more opportunities in case of working with different multinational companies as well as local companies. There is a court named Artha Rin Adalat. In order to become a Judge of this court, the basic knowledge of economics, accounting, finance and statistics etc. is an additional advantage. The law graduates who run businesses and are not involved in practice may also be benefited from having knowledge of those subjects. Ultimately, the demand for law graduates have increased and students will become more interested to study law. A further advancement in the L.L.B. (Honors), LL.M. course curriculum will be fruitful for student to jump start their career as successful legal professionals.
In Bangladesh, there are two separate kinds of legal education, first private law college-based two year post graduate course, and second one is the four-year undergraduate LL.B. (Honors) Programme, which is generally followed by a one year LL.M. course offered by Law Faculties of both Public and Private Universities. But it’s a matter of sorrow that the curriculum followed in public and private universities and law colleges is too obsolete and traditional. Though the subjects included in the course-curriculum of public and private universities are relatively more developed and relevant, but a number of subjects have to be included in these present curriculum (say for example, many universities and law colleges don’t offer cyber law, criminology, environmental law, consumer law, admiralty law and so on), otherwise the national and international need will not be met up. So we can see that course curriculum as well as examination system are also be considered as a major problems in the existing legal education. Considering the course curriculum in the law colleges and public and private universities, we can see that there is a huge gap in case of quality of legal education. It is because of lack of funds, absence of government control as well as financial assistance, infrastructural inadequacies, shortage of academic faculties (e.g. lack of well equipped and good collection of law books and journals in the library), poor management, absence of full time teaching staff, and irregularity in admission and so on.
The most important problem is that most of the private universities and private law colleges admit the student without any writtenadmission test and oral test. Selecting students via written and oral test in the law colleges and private universities is not satisfactorily met up. Because of it, there is no option to examine the applicants’ analytical skill, writing ability and vision to study law. In this case, public universities are far better than private universities and law colleges. So we can see that there exists a haphazard legal education inBangladesh.
Moreover, the evaluation process in almost all the institution encourages only memorizing, and hardly accommodates any space for innovation, logical thinking and an interdisciplinary approach to learning law. Ultimately, law degrees are conferred upon those students who are not qualified to receive it. As a result, they are not committed to use the law as a tool for social justice and reforms.
Considering the importance of legal education, the following points are to be seriously taken into considerations by the policy makers as well as academicians:
(1) Introducing basic law in all levels of education.
(2)Modification of LL.B. (Honors) & LL.M. course curriculum by introducing new courses.
(3)Teaching methodology is to be made more practice-oriented, accommodating (e.g. mock-trials and moot courts).
(4)Establish a national committee consisting of eminent academicians, judges and lawyers to motion the standard of legal education.
(5)To arrange training to the law teachers by the national committee as they able to ensure quality education in their universities.
(6)Offer lucrative remuneration along with admissible benefits to the law teachers as they don’t give up their teaching profession,
Finally, I would like to say, in order to ensure quality legal education in Bangladesh, there is a compelling need to change legal education in Bangladesh by significantly ways. Keeping the needs of modern time, policy makers need to take long term reform plan if law is to work as an effective tool to ensure social development. Only a satisfactory legal education system can make possible this role for the law to play.
Mohammad Rayhan Uddin,
Department of Law,
LL.B. (Honors), LL.M. (9th Batch),
Premier University, Chittagong, Bangladesh.LL.B. (Honors), LL.M. (9th Batch),
Cell No: +8801914676110
