The national law school conundrum

The National Law School of India University ((NLSIU), Bangalore turns 25 this year. With a challenging testing process and a well laid out curriculum, Prof Madhava Menon and his handpicked team of instructors had an unflattering task – that of pushing what was hitherto considered a lower rung career option to the forefront. Combining the social sciences with hands-on practical courses, the institution took its first baby steps towards producing what it hoped would be the paragons of the legal profession.

Over the years, NLSIU graduates have peopled the UN, the ICJ, the IMF, Yale, Cambridge, Harvard and NYU, and many top tier law firms, corporations and banks. One would imagine then that an NLSIU education is one that would reward and flatter.

Yet, when the twentieth batch of students graduates this autumn, they will be a confused and unsure lot. Why, you may well ask. The reason lies in the administration’s woeful lack of understanding the pool of talent it is dealing with. At its inception, the narrow worldview of its founders was reflected in the phrase –’social engineers’ – an ambiguous expression, which placed an unwanted burden on young shoulders with the expectation that they would utilise their formative years in ennobled sacrifice, catering to the indigent and raising the lot of society as a whole. Fragile minds were tutored that only teaching and advocacy were expected of them and that any surrender to the lure of money was perverse. To expect this from an impatient generation was somewhat quixotic.  

Formal and structured

It took years for the annual recruitment process to law firms and companies to become formal and structured, with the status quoist Bar Council and rival faculties criticising transactional lawyers who were no ‘social engineers’, completely overlooking the fact that the more careful the transactions, the less likely the disputes reach the courts. Even the NLSIU website continues to hope that its graduates “will eventually become legal practitioners, law teachers or engage in legal research or enter the judiciary.”

Ergo, the School seeks to create a certain ‘type’ of lawyer, and it is expected that they will follow suit. And what if they do not? What if they, these blessed blighted youth decide to become news anchors, off-Broadway actors, professional cartoonists, music teachers, fashion models, radio jockeys, novelists, sports agents, journalists, bureaucrats, card-sharps, businessmen and even café-owners in SoHo? Strangely, in the dormant eyes that created NLSIU and the apathy that continues to nurture it, all of these wonderfully blessed and talented souls have not met their expectations.

It would not be surprising to know that the above alumni learnt less about their trades from what was taught at NLSIU and more from what they learnt on their own. With a system that relies majorly on lectures and frowns on extra-curricular activities, the propensity to become uni-dimensional is high. Is not the value of a University enhanced by the different directions taken by its own initiative? Would it not be unfair and unimaginative to limit the potential of these children by catering to only some and not others?              

Sir Ken Robinson in The Element argues that it is precisely this that is "stifling some of the most important capacities that young people now need to make their way in the increasingly demanding world of the 21st century - the powers of creative thinking”.

When well-meaning alumni return to teach, they are first diverted to subjects not of their expertise, then mired in reams of factionalism and faculty politics, and finally edged out when they protest. The most recent liability was Sidharth Chauhan, an erudite young alumnus, bright and popular, who made the mistake of questioning a knee-jerk administrative decision. The history of NLSIU is strewn with such errors of management.
NLSIU was meant to create and nurture talent, preferably in the law. The fact that it has succeeded in this is in no small measure due to the efforts of its students, a factor that remains to be accepted and acknowledged by it.

Rahul Cherian (NLSIU 1998) was the founder of InclusivePlanet.Com, which is the world’s largest online tool and social network for the visually impaired, with users from over 80 countries utilising it on an everyday basis. He was only 39 when he passed away a few weeks ago. He never considered himself a “social engineer”. He was only doing what he loved, and he did that with eagerness and passion and spirit. When our institutions allow each of us to be as fortunate as Rahul was, we would have awakened into a heaven of freedom. 

(The writer, who graduated from NLSIU in 2001, is an advocate at the Supreme Court)