All India Education News

THE Indian legal education system may witness big changes in the coming years. On one hand, while realising the importance of globalisation, law schools have called for making Indian legal education globally relevant. On the other, they are planning to introduce changes to the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) to select students who have the skills to become international lawyers.

These plans were announced at seminars organised in Hyderabad and Delhi recently by US-based Institute of International Education (IIE), an international exchange organisation. The seminars brought together the US Law School Admission Council (LSAC) and the National Law Schools (NLS) of India. “Expansion in business across the world has generated a need for lawyers who are global in their approach. Legal education has to play a big role in creating such lawyers. We at our organisation believe in international exchange of ideas so we thought to facilitate exchange of ideas,” said Ajit Motwani, director, IIE India.

CHANGES IN CLAT

Entrance examinations are an important parameter to select the right candidate. And while CLAT is only a year old, LSAC has the experience of holding Law School Admission Test (LSAT) across US, Australia and Canada for nearly 60 years.

Veer Singh, vice-chancellor of NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, will be the convenor of CLAT 2009. Singh, while elaborating on the plans to introduce changes in the exam, said, “Approximately 1.5 lakh aspirants from three different countries take LSAT. They have proved their credibility in terms of fairness of content, testing candidate on logical and verbal reasoning and language comprehension. So, we want to learn from them the things that can make CLAT more reliable.”

When asked about the feasibility of applying a US testing method in India, Singh said, “We will not be replicating the LSAT, since CLAT 2008 had its own peculiar problems like local, gender and caste reservations. Besides, some take it online and some don’t. So, we will consider all these factors before reaching any conclusion.”

For students enrolled with Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), especially those staying abroad or in remote areas of India, IGNOU has some good news. Getting information about IGNOU for its students will now be as simple as SMSing one’s friends. As IGNOU kicks off the first level of its mobile services in the next 15 days, sending SMSes in a prescribed format will be enough to get all information about its courses such as exam dates, updating personal details etc.

“This service will make information gathering and other exhausting procedure very simple and instant. It is a first of its kind experiment to be used by a university or educational institution in India. Most of the students enrolled with IGNOU are either students who are pursuing their regular courses or students who are already working. This service will save their time,” said P V Suresh, senior lecturer in School of Computer and Information Sciences.

Explaining the project, Suresh said, “The project has three levels. The first level will be started within 15 days wherein bulk messages will be send to millions of students enrolled with IGNOU containing information about various courses, subjects and also about this SMS service.”

Elaborating on the other two levels, Suresh said, “The second level will involve enabling the students to send SMSes to the university to get information on various courses, subjects, related projects, examination and its results. In the third level, the students will be able to update their personal details in their profiles, like address, phone number etc, directly through the software designed by us.”

While this service intends to make things simple for all IGNOU students, the main beneficiaries will be students staying abroad or in far off areas of the country. Said the IGNOU electronic media production centre director V K Arora, “As IGNOU does not hold regular classes, student can be updated about exams, fees instalments, study material, subjects and their related projects and other things, which earlier were very difficult to be communicated about. A student staying in some remote area might not have access to Internet, but can get information through a mobile phone. Similarly, it will be very difficult for a student in some other country to come every time as it is very time consuming, but sending an SMS is instant.”

P V Suresh, talking about the credibility of the service said, “The SMSes have to be sent in a particular format as prescribed by the university, which will ensure privacy and credibility of the service.”