Experience counts

Law schools should incorporate experiential learning in order to prepare well-equipped lawyers who can give well-rounded and reasonable solutions to real world problems, says DR Avinash Dadhich

Experiential learning or learning through experience requires a series of experiences in the real-world setup. The experiences involved in this type of hands on learning stays with the students for a longer time, unlike rote learning or curriculum learning.

In today’s day and age law schools need to shed the conventional method of imparting legal education to match up to our changing and dynamic society. Law is a multi-disciplinary subject and it is the duty of a lawyer to be well acquainted with the multifarious problems of our society and have real world solutions to these complicacies. Therefore a law graduate who has only been exposed to the vast syllabus that we have our law schools and have gained their knowledge through the humongous law books will not be well equipped to give a well-rounded and reasonable solution to any real world problem. Many lawyers and some law professors have long believed that legal education placed too much emphasis on theoretical learning and not enough on practical learning. The charge was made that we were graduating students who could think like a lawyer, but were unprepared to act like a lawyer.

Being aware of the legal theories is no doubt the primary task of a lawyer but an appreciation of the other variety of factors in the society is the need of the hour. Lawyers are generally termed as the problem solvers of the society and recent law graduates can only carry out this task if they are sufficiently exposed to different kinds of experiences outside the four walls of their classroom.

Now mentioned below are six reasons why experiential learning is so vital in a law school:

• In the growing Indian economy, there’s a need of lawyers who can offer industry focused or business friendly solutions. A lawyer working in a corporate house should not only be familiar with the corporate laws of the country but should understand how the business works in real life. The ability to understand the different aspirations of different businesses and the way business is being conducted is necessary for a corporate legal counsel. In their law schools a student of law can only learn about this through internships. Through internships in a corporate house, the complexities of running a business and its day to day activities can be appreciated. Generally in Indian law schools only a month is dedicated towards internships. But the authors believe that in order to truly appreciate the way a business activity is conducted, at least three months is required in a year.
• Legal aid societies in law schools focus on a range of public interest legal issues, from the struggles adolescents face as they age out of foster care to the promotion of human rights, the pursuit of economic justice and environmental protection. The problem with legal education is that students have little or no experience of practice before they graduate. Actually, representing a real client while in law school is an invaluable learning experience. The work includes impact litigation, direct-services representation, collaborative investigations, policy initiatives, and grassroots advocacy. Students learn the practical art of lawyering by assuming increasing levels of responsibility for cases and matters involving real individuals, communities, and organisations that otherwise might be unable to secure assistance.
• The students are provided an option to choose an activity that they are passionate about, thus increasing their engagement and commitment. As the student, who for example is enthusiastic about protecting our environment, is directly involved in the problem-solving activity, the level of commitment is high. The need for lawyers to genuinely empathise with the modern-day problems becoming essential if we are looking for a viable solution to mitigate the problems. This also develops leadership skills in an individual.
• Law schools should encourage the students towards entrepreneurship ventures in legal and non-legal sectors. Entrepreneurship is not confined to any particular stream of knowledge, but an attitude should be developed by students during their law school days. Law schools must create training and live projects for students in this direction.
• As experiential learning is based on trial by error, from law schools itself a student should be encouraged to come up with innovative solutions. In this stage of their lives they can make mistakes without impunity. But the ability to think out of the box and give creative and reasonable solutions, a law student can hone this skill in law school itself through real life simulations or mock trials/moot courts. 
• A lot of technologies are being introduced in the legal sector, such as softwares backed by artificial intelligence and blockchain which still remains a mystery to law students. The future of legal sector will be highly dominated by technologies and during the law school days a student must be exposed to existing and emerging technologies to make them a better lawyer in our society.

In our law schools we definitely have a fair share of experiential learning activities like moot courts or internships, but proper multi-disciplinary, social, technological, industry and entrepreneurship focused emphasis on such activities is lacking. Passing an examination and mugging up theories before the said exam is a prevalent vice that needs to be addressed if we want to churn out law graduates who are trained to serve the dynamic needs of the society.

The writer is Dean, School of Law, Vijaybhoomi University