Dr Madhava Menon, the father of modern legal education in India, passes away

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]HE father of modern legal education in India, Dr N R Madhava Menon, passed away yesterday after a prolonged illness. He was 84.

Credited for setting up the five year National Law School system in India, Dr Menon was an institution builder, a pioneer in the Indian legal education system and a professor of repute who gave an impetus to legal scholarship in the country.

At the behest of the Bar Council of India, Professor Menon conceptualized and worked out the National Law School system in the country and with the establishment of the National Law School of India University in Bangalore in 1989, completely overhauled the legal education system by introducing the five-year honours degree in law.

He was the Founder Director of the National Law School of India University, Bangalore and the Founder Vice Chancellor of the National University of Juridical Sciences in West Bengal. He was the first director of the National Judicial Academy, an honour conferred on him by the Supreme Court of India.

A Padma Shri awardee in 2003, Dr Menon was an evangelist for continuing legal education in India and strongly believed in the need for lawyers to stay abreast of global changes in legal practice. He took the lead in providing practical skills training to lawyers in district courts and before his passing, was the honorary director of the Bar Council of Kerala’s Academy of Continuing Legal Education.

“Continued self-education is indispensable to honing the skills of lawyers in emerging areas of practice and to their social relevance in a changing world,” he said in an article in The Hindu way back in 2012.

Born in 1935, Dr N R Madhava Menon acquired his B. Sc. and B. L. degrees from Kerala University, LL. M. and Ph. D.  from Aligarh Muslim University and M. A. Degree from Punjab University.

Dr Menon joined the Faculty of Law, Aligarh Muslim University in 1960 and then moved to Delhi University in 1965 to become Professor and Head of the Campus Law Centre. During this period, he served on deputation as Principal of Government Law College, Pondicherry and Secretary of the Bar Council of India Trust.

Dr Menon’s passing is a great loss to the entire legal fraternity.