Legal aid education in karnataka a critical analysis

Abstract

Legal Education has witnessed major transformations since the last few decades. The Constitutional ideals of justice, have been the foundational philosophy of legal newlineeducation in India. Consequently, legal aid has been a crucial link in the entire gamut newlineof advancing the values of justice. However, these purposes and ideals have undergone newlinemutations over the years. Aligned to these ideals, the Bar Council of India, had newlineintroduced legal aid as an important pedagogic tool that can fulfil twin mandate of providing justice to the common man and at the same time, train the students of law in newlinethe necessary skills and imbibe values in their journey of professional and social newlinecommitments. The history of legal aid is not new, in India and in the global context, yet legal aid as an educational tool is undermined and least prioritized in institutions that impart legal education. This could be attributed to various reasons, priorities of the institutions, ambiguity in understanding and working towards these goals. With the emergence of National Law Universities and various types of institutions on one hand and the newlineproportional rise in the number of students pursuing legal education on the other hand, newlinecreates a vast arena for the institutions to augment the existing resources in contributing to the societal needs. There have been various studies that have been conducted which focus on certain newlineaspects of law school clinics, specifically in creating Access to Justice. But there have newlinebeen limited studies in considering legal aid as an educational tool in terms of Teaching, newlineLearning and Research. There has been lack of evidence based approach that are employed to understand impending issues that hamper the effective working of legal aid within an institutional set-up. Hence the current study focuses on how the internal and external pressures act on legal aid within four different types of institutions across the state of Karnataka.