The Lack of Clinical Legal Education in India and its Implications

By VMLS

June 23, 2025

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The concept of business and human rights has gained global popularity in recent years spurred by several landmark cases involving the tragedy of the commons (public harm due to corporate greed). Instances such as environmental degradation and human rights abuse as a result of a corporation's obsession with profit maximization has been the focal point of several judgments, research papers, books and films. Contemporary cases in Tamil Nadu such as the infamous Sterilite Copper case perfectly capture the conflict between business and human rights and also demonstrate how law empowers local communities to safeguard their human rights against corporate appropriation. However, there remain several instances where local communities suffer in silence due to a corporation's unjust actions due to a lack of awareness about their legal rights and remedies or due to lack of access to affordable legal assistance.

It is a fairly common practice for law professors in India to show films and documentaries such as Erin Brokovitch (2000), A Civil Action (1998) or the Corporation (2003) to their students as illustrations of class action lawsuits and the intersection of business and human rights. Yet, it is extremely rare to see law schools in India train students in clinical legal education (CLE) in such critical areas. In contrast, law schools in countries like the United States are well known for their strong emphasis on CLE which forms a core component of legal education, especially in various public law oriented subjects. Such robust CLE models remain absent in most 5 year law colleges and 3 year law colleges schools across India.

This is one of the factors that contributes towards the lack of skilled law graduates in a country which churns out an excessive number of law graduates every year; a problem which has been further exacerbated by the boom in new law schools mushrooming in every state in the country. The problem of not imparting effective clinical legal education (CLE) in Indian law schools has a rippling effect. It results in producing sub-standard law graduates who set out to join legal practice with negligible clinical legal skills. Due to a mismatch between demand and supply of clinical skills in the legal services industry, a vast number of these law graduates are unable to find gainful employment forcing many to seek alternate career paths. A percentage of such graduates wind up in legal academia after completing a post-graduate academic degree as they are unsuitable for the highly competitive legal services industry.

This leads to the vicious cycle where law students are trained by legal academics lacking practical and clinical legal skills who are often unable to impart effective CLE to the students they teach. This has been one of the major issues plaguing legal education in India for many years now. The regulatory gatekeepers of legal academia in India also turn a blind eye to this pressing issue as evidenced from the National Entrance Examination (NET) which does not test aspiring legal academics on their clinical legal skills and instead focuses almost exclusively on a candidate's ability to mug up and regurgitate legal theory. The regulatory bodies also do not mandate any minimum qualitative or quantitative experience in legal practice for those aspiring to join legal academia.

Historically, CLE models and legal aid clinics have been typically confined to public law oriented issues. Modern law schools should also extend CLE programmes to cover private law oriented issues. For example, legal aid clinics could extend assistance to needy local entrepreneurs and help them with various legal aspects of setting up and running their business. This assistance could range from advisory services (such as advising on intellectual property rights, business structuring, tax filing) to transactional services (contract drafting and negotiation) to dispute resolution (connecting entrepreneurs with local advocates and helping them resolve various types of disputes).

This mode of imparting CLE embodies the concept of experiential learning, where students are given the opportunity to apply the theoretical foundations of law to real world cases and be closely involved throughout the lifecycle of the case. Unlike an internship with an external law firm or other organization over a short period of time, working as part of a legal aid clinic at one's own law school instills a sense of ownership and long term responsibility among students which are critical personality traits for any successful professional.

Therefore, implementing robust CLE models help in two major ways. First, by providing students with hands on training in practical aspects of legal practice and working with clients on a real time basis. Second, it helps providing low cost and high quality legal services to underprivileged/ needy local communities and helps drive impactful societal change.

The newly established legal aid clinic and CLE programmes at Vinayaka Mission's Law School (VMLS) aim to try and solve the aforementioned problems by implementing robust CLE programmes to train the students as well as providing legal aid across a range of issues to people from surrounding local communities in Chennai.

The Lack of Clinical Legal Education in India and its Implications

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