Complete Lawyer - A Concept Note

 

Johnson Gomez

Advocate, High Court of Kerala

        Complete Lawyer is the concept, developed from the vision of Late Prof Dr N R Madahava Menon.  The institutions that he created during his life time, were to train good lawyer, who could achieve the constitutional goal of rendering justice social, economic and political to all the citizens.  The term 'complete lawyer' means a lawyer trained in all the skills required by legal practice. Eventually, this training would help him sustain in the profession, and earn him a reasonable income to pay all his bills and facilitate a reasonable living.

          In a country with the population of more than 1.3 billion, the current strength of lawyers is highly insufficient to cater the needs, of all.    The long incubation period, when compared to other professions, seems to be an important hurdle in attracting law students to the legal profession.  The best of talents coming out of law colleges, prefer to settle down with entry level employment in the lower judiciary as Munsiffs and Magistrates.    The first-generation lawyers still struggle to hold ground and to enter the higher judiciary or to practice law, with confidence.

The present curriculum offered to law students, in fact creates a huge gap for them in their transformation as a professional lawyer.  Moreover, the legal profession, in general, is not very supportive in accommodating young lawyers, but there are exceptions.  Given the requirement of good lawyers, there is no scope for waiting for individual support, for their development.  It may be necessary to have an institutional support, itself, for training them and finding them sufficient opportunity in trained areas, to exhibit their skills.

          The program wishes to create complete lawyers, within a period of two years, after their graduation.  This time frame is attempted to be achieved by regulating and structuring the internship, and by focusing on clinical study from their first day in the law school.   A series of discussion were held, with academics, professional lawyers and the most important stakeholders, the law students, regarding the concept. 

A prototype structured internship having a duration of one month was conducted which started from May 2, 2021 till June 31, 2021 from a few final year students of various law colleges.  The contribution of the participants of the program Ms Struthi Vinod, Government Law College Ernakulam, Mr Dinoop P.D., SN College, Poothotta, Ernakulam, Ms. Anu Viswanath, Ms Rheema Riyad, Ms Sarangi Anil Kumar, from Nehru Academy of Law, Lakadi, Palakkad and  Ms Anu Anna Baby, Markaz Law College, and Adv John Gomez, Associate L Expertians Associates is acknowledged here.  Their response to the prototype internship give us the necessary hope that the time frame proposed by the project is achievable. 

Two organizations were working together for the implementation of the concept, namely the Law and Justice Research Foundation (LJRF) and the Cochin Institute of International Arbitration (CIIArb)  The contributions of Mr. Safi Mohan, Assistant Professor of the Government Law College, Founder of (LJRF) and Mr Sandeep Chandrasekharan, Research Scholar, the Joint Secretary (LJRF) for the development of the concept needs special mention. 

The complete lawyer shall be a separate entity, in itself, supported by institutions and individuals, who wish to see that the vision of Prof Menon, fulfilled. A blog has been created in the name of complete lawyer.  Anyone having domain knowledge in the field, may contribute for the development of the project, in the form of articles, which can be published in the blog. Please send you articles to completelawyer2021@gmail.com..

The concept in simple terms would to train the students, various skills of legal practice, which would include litigation and non-litigations skills and also assist them in the study of legal institutions.  The first institution that we have attempted to study is the Kerala High Court.   

A detailed concept note prepared by Mr Sandeep Chandrasekharan, Research Scholar, the Joint Secretary (LJRF) in consultation with other team members, is published in the Complete Lawyer Blog.  A study of the Kerala High Court, is also published as an article, titled ‘Opening the Kerala High Court to the intern’..  There are a few other articles relating to other institutions, in the pipe line.

The program is still in the stage of a concept.  The implementation requires sincere support of academicians, lawyers, interdisciplinary professionals like chartered accountants, engineers etc., and of course law students.  They may have to take defined roles, to support it.  

It is proposed to start the training program, in this academic year itself.  The initial intake would be 60 final year students, from the state of Kerala.  The duration of the program would be for three years.  They will be trained for three years, from now and in  the next year the entry level will be fourth year students of the five year LLB stream.  In the meantime, necessary training protocol is being developed.  Finally, total duration of training would be 7 years, which would include 5 years during the period of their studies and 2 years after graduation.

Hopefully, we will be able to find good placements for them in some premier law firms, in the country and outside and they will also be encouraged to form independent law firms joining together with their friends and enjoy the journey of legal practice.   

Your critical reviews about the concept is also welcome, which may also be forwarded  completelawyer2021@gmail.com.  This paper will be improved, with your inputs.