KARACHI: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) is set to hold the Law Graduate Assessment Test (Law-GAT) for enrolment of candidates as lawyers across the country next month amid concerns expressed by the legal fraternity over a delay in regularly holding such an important exercise in compliance with the apex court’s directives, it emerged on Sunday.

In 2021, the HEC had conducted Law-GAT only two times in contravention to the apex court’s directive that the test should be held on a quarterly basis.

The HEC has been holding Law-GAT since 2018 after the Supreme Court had tasked it to examine the eligibility of fresh law graduates seeking enrolment to become members of legal fraternity.

Earlier, the provincial bar councils had been conducting the examinations to grant legal practising licences, but the Supreme Court had taken away their role in order to ensure proper scrutiny and assessment of law graduates willing to join the profession.

The HEC said that under the authorisation of the Pakistan Bar Council, the apex body of the country’s lawyers, it was conducting Law-GAT on Feb 20 in several cities including Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Islamabad, Lahore, Multan, Bahawaplur, Faisalabad, Peshawar, Abbottabad, Quetta, Turbat, Muzaffarbad and Gilgit.

HEC to organise this year’s first Law-GAT on Feb 20; it conducted the test only twice in 2021

The HEC stated that it was conducting Law-GAT in the light of March 6, 2018 judgement of the Supreme Court to ensure proper scrutiny and evaluation of a law graduate desirous to join the legal profession so that only competent individual possessing necessary basic knowledge of law may enter the profession for practicing law.

The assessment test is being held by HEC in pursuant of the apex court’s order and under Section 26(cc) of the Legal Practitioners and Bar Council Act, 1973 and PBC Rules.

Senior lawyer Haider Imam Rizvi, who is a member of Judicial Commission from Sindh and a former vice chairman of the Sindh Bar Council (SBC), said that as per the apex court’s order, the eligibility criteria to appear in Law-GAT was at least 50 per cent marks in final degree exam.

He said that the Supreme Court had directed the HEC to conduct Law-GAT on a quarterly basis, but the test was conducted twice in 2021 on the pretext of the coronavirus pandemic causing a delay in enrolment of young lawyers.

The chairman of the executive committee of SBC, Arif Dawood, was of the view that the HEC was not implementing the apex court’s order in letter and spirit as Law-GAT was not being conducted after every three months.

He maintained that the apex court had set 50 marks for syllabus, but HEC has reduced it to 40 to 45 marks on a few occasions while many questions in the exam held in May and October 2021 were out of syllabus.

He said that the SBC had highlighted such issues in a recent meeting of all provincial bar councils held in Islamabad.

In 2018, a three-member bench of the Supreme Court headed by the then chief justice Main Saqib Nisar in its judgement, authored by Justice Umar Ata Bandial, had ruled that Law-GAT for law graduates seeking enrolment must be held on a quarterly basis by the HEC as the executing institution throughout the country based on a question bank prepared for the assessment test.

The court observed that the legal profession had attracted more and more people as a career of choice, which has led to a growing demand for institutions imparting legal education.

Since last 45 years the proficiency for entry to bar has been regulated under the 1973 Act, but careful monitoring, supervision and enforcement of standards have been lacking due to complacency and neglect, the order had said.

Law schools across the world are striving to attain higher standards of legal education for meeting the complexity of legal relations and problems that arise in the increasingly integrated global society and market, but the case in Pakistan is different as there has been a major decline in the standard of legal education owing to various reasons explained cogently in an earlier judgement of apex court handed down in 2007, it added.

In the judgement, the apex court had approved almost all the recommendations made by a special committee, constituted by Supreme Court, on structural reforms in legal education with slight changes.

The order further said that a law admission test (LAT) for all law colleges in Pakistan must also be held biannually by the HEC.

It also banned admission to three-year LLB programme and directed all the law colleges and institutions to offer five-year LLB programme with effect from September 2018.

The apex court had also placed a ban against holding of evening classes in all law colleges and universities across Pakistan and further barred on conducting LLM and PhD in law classes by the universities/ colleges / institutions which were not allowed to hold LLB classes.

Published in Dawn, January 31st, 2022