In the three-year mandatory practice debate, clinical legal education offers a third way

THREE MONTHS INTO MY LITIGATION CAREER, I encountered a humbling experience that underscored the chasm between academic learning and practical application. After meticulously researching and drafting a petition, I submitted it with a fair bit of early-career confidence. However, during the hearing, the judge pointed out a glaring omission: the absence of an interim prayer, or a request for temporary relief before the final decision. Despite the well-researched grounds, the court couldn't grant interim relief without the specific clause. My law school education hadn't prepared me for such practical nuances, where meaningful relief could be thwarted in the absence of that prayer clause (ii). Fortunately, my senior was understanding and guided me to file an additional application. This incident has stayed with me, an echoing reminder of the critical need for experiential learning in legal education.The Supreme Court's mandate: A call for practical experienceIn May 2025, the Supreme Court of India reinstated the requirement for a minimum of three years of legal practice before eligibility for judicial service examinations. This decision aims to ensure that aspiring judges possess practical courtroom experience, enhancing their ability to deliver justice effectively. While the intent is commendable, it raises concerns about accessibility, especially for fresh graduates and those from marginalised backgrounds. This is precisely what a review petition, filed on June 16, to reconsider the judgement, argues..While the intent is commendable, it raises concerns about accessibility, especially for fresh graduates and those from marginalised backgrounds..The Supreme Court’s concern, that judges without litigation experience may struggle to deliver justice effectively, holds certain legitimacy. Litigators, it is argued, are better equipped with an understanding of real-world dynamics of courtroom proceedings, evidence presentation, and the challenges lawyers face in building cases. This experience helps judges not only better manage trials, but simultaneously be grounded in the consequences that arise from judicial delays. However, addressing this gap need not come at the cost of excluding fresh graduates, particularly women aspirants, who already face systemic barriers in accessing long-term litigation practice. For many women, familial responsibilities, lack of financial independence, and safety concerns restrict prolonged exposure to courtrooms or chambers. .To deliver justice well, we need judges who have lived it too: In defence of the SC’s 3 year practice mandate for judicial exams.Instead of closing doors, the response should be to reimagine legal education to offer deeper, structured clinical exposure within the law school itself. If law schools embed rigorous, supervised legal clinics and apprenticeships as integral to the curriculum, aspirants can gain the practical, empathetic, and procedural understanding the court rightly demands, without disproportionately disadvantaging those who cannot afford years of unstructured practice. This approach balances competence with inclusion, ensuring that judicial benches are both capable and diverse.Clinical Legal Education: Bridging theory and practiceIf the courtroom is the crucible where legal theory is tested, then law schools must do more than lecture - they must integrate robust clinical legal education into their curricula. Such programs can provide students with hands-on experience, preparing them for the realities of legal practice and judicial responsibilities.1. Legal apprenticeships that last long enough to matter:One-off litigation internships are a check-in-the-box for the vacation cycle. What students really need are long-term, embedded apprenticeships with courts, legal service institutions, legal aid organisations, or law chambers, where they do not just observe but meaningfully participate. This includes facilitating students to shadow lawyers as they prepare for arguments, sit through bail hearings, help draft petitions, and debrief with clients after an order has come through. The law does not come alive in lectures; it reveals itself in the silences after a judge says, “I’m not inclined.” That kind of proximity and insight cannot be achieved in a 3-week internship.2. Working with marginalised communities is not optional:Legal professionals cannot learn the spirit of the law without witnessing its failures. Clinics that focus on working with underrepresented populations, such as prisoners, survivors of sexual violence, religious and caste minorities, and daily wage workers, force students to ask difficult questions: Why do some people never get bail? Why does a survivor keep withdrawing her complaint? Why does a worker with a solid claim never want to go to court? These are not abstract problems. They are real, systemic, and urgent. If students see these injustices firsthand, they carry that insight into the courtroom when they sit as judges. It teaches them that granting ‘relief’ is not a line in a judgment, but a lifeline in someone’s reality. 3. Practical skills need practice, not just theory:Every law student studies the mandated subject on drafting, pleading and conveyancing. Very few know how to craft a writ petition that outlines the narrative, the statutory breach, and the constitutional hook with clarity and urgency. In a strong clinical program, students should not only draft but revisit those drafts after seeing how they fare in court. They should understand why a particular prayer was ineffective, or how poor structuring lost an argument. The mentorship element would allow them to sit in on strategy meetings, hear senior lawyers rework submissions, and pick up the unspoken art of timing and tone in argument. When they enter the judiciary, they will know what a good argument sounds like, and what a fair order looks like..The Supreme Court’s judgment raises valid concerns about the preparedness of young judicial officers. But we must be cautious not to let that concern harden into erasure..Rethinking how we build judgesIf law schools want to meet the moment, they will need to do more than tweak curricula. They must build strong partnerships with trial courts and chambers, embed clinical work in compulsory credits, and treat these programs as central to legal education, not side quests for the interested. Evaluation must shift from just grades and memos to actual field competence. Who did the student represent? What did they file? What impact did it have?.The SC’s three year practice ruling is a case study in ‘indirect discrimination’ .The Supreme Court’s judgment raises valid concerns about the preparedness of young judicial officers. But we must be cautious not to let that concern harden into erasure. Clinical legal education offers a third way: rigorous, practice-informed learning that opens up the path to the Bench without gatekeeping it. For women and marginalised aspirants in particular, who often don’t have the social capital or the time to “put in the years” at the Bar, this could be the difference between exclusion and entry. We need judges who understand that justice is not just learned in the law, but grounded in life. It is negotiated daily in overcrowded courtrooms, with litigants who have everything to lose. Clinical legal education could bring that reality into focus before the robe ever does.

In the three-year mandatory practice debate, clinical legal education offers a third way

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