TOWARDS EQUITABLE ACCESS: ADVANCING LEGAL EDUCATION AND PRO BONO INITIATIVES IN INDIA

AUTHORS – ADVIKA DEVANSHI & ADITYA JAIN, STUDENTS AT SYMBIOSIS LAW SCHOOL, NOIDA

BEST CITATION – ADVIKA DEVANSHI & ADITYA JAIN, TOWARDS EQUITABLE ACCESS: ADVANCING LEGAL EDUCATION AND PRO BONO INITIATIVES IN INDIA, INDIAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL REVIEW (IJLR), 4 (1) OF 2024, PG. 1559-1570, APIS – 3920 – 0001 & ISSN – 2583-2344.

ABSTRACT

The legal aid movement and reports of numerous legal aid committees between the 1960s and the 1970s highlighted the value of experiential learning. In India, this is considered as an important period that contributed to the emergence of legal aid education in India. The lack of resources and the inaccessibility of the constitutional provision of ‘Access of Justice’ to all was the primary goal of enrolling law students in the national legal movement along with increasing their sense of responsibility to the society. 

Roscoe Pound, one of the greatest philosophers of all times laid emphasis on the fact that the purpose of modern law is nothing but that of social engineering. There is a moral responsibility, therefore, on the lawyers to construct a society on this basis. However, there are two major challenges which the legal professionals face which include- the gaps in the learning mechanism of law and the gaps in the concept of law and justice. It is the need of the hour to overcome these difficulties and make legal education interactive and reachable not just among the legal fraternity but also amongst the society at large aiming for awareness and access to justice.

It is important to accept the fact that justice is not common for all and the law must strive to reach a middle ground to serve the maximum, which can only be achieved when social engineers step up to shape the society. Some of the methods other than involving themselves in pro bono activities are adoption of the workshop model, campaigns, group discussions through fish bowl method or sticky note methods. Legal assistance in India has a very vast background and is supported by decades of law, constitutional reasoning, and several state-funded initiatives. The pro bono tradition, however, continues to be under development. The necessity for such services outweighs the availability, despite legal professionals, deemed universities and even non-governmental organisations offering their services