NOWADAYS, new law schools are mushrooming left and right in Pakistan, all offering more or less the same external programme with similar shortcomings across the board. While a burgeoning legal community is something of which to be proud, the uninterrupted production of hastily educated and ill-prepared lawyers is increasingly problematic.

While jurisdictions such as the US and UK may not be without their own legal shortcomings, Pakistan’s legal community may still stand to advance by adopting aspects of their regimes.

Both the lawyers that practise that law and the law itself must be developed far beyond where they are today to de-incentivise common harmful practices. These harmful practices include, but are not limited to, acts or omissions such as medical malpractice, deceptive marketing of lower quality products, fraud, negligence etc.

By no means does this list cover every area of law that requires reform, but it is indicative of the fact that a well-developed, sophisticated legal regime both protects the people from harmful practices and provides a channel for restorative justice.

The reform that is ultimately required can come from nowhere other than the law schools that produce these lawyers. Until law students are made aware of the sophisticated and complicated nature of the law they practise, the remainder of the community will suffer the same lack of adherence and respect. The law is not a fixed marker indicating the rights and wrongs in society; it is a constantly evolving mechanism, advancing in coverage and complexity over time. However, if students approach their classes and exams in a non-serious manner and if the practice of law is pursued as a default rather than an aspiration, there will be little improvement within Pakistan’s society.

This means that the law taught in law schools and the manner in which it is taught must be extensively reformed. It should be compulsory for all law students in all programmes to have a solid, demonstrable understanding of how and why the law developed as it did and how to apply it to their forthcoming practice.

Essentially, they must learn to think like a lawyer. Practical skills may be learned later on, but if law schools are shirking their responsibility to recalibrate the mind of law students (or if students are unwilling to be recalibrated) then the rule of law will sustain an irreparable setback.

Moreover, it must be compulsory for law students in all programmes (including those in the immensely popular external programmes) to learn at least some aspects of the law of Pakistan. Law schools must focus on developing the comprehension, logical reasoning and analytical reasoning techniques of budding lawyers, supplementing this with skills training.

It is the refined co-mingling of knowing the law and being able to read between the lines of that law that creates a great lawyer. Pakistan needs these great lawyers now more than ever to develop its regime and to impact its government in order to establish a more orderly society. To appropriate the saying, behind every great country is a viciously intelligent set of lawyers.

While law schools in Pakistan are charged with future reform, the various bar councils must be tasked with reform now. How can the legal practice and the quality of its lawyers be reformed today? One very common and very necessary suggestion is examination. Two sets of examination must be put in place, standardised testing for entrance to law schools (such as those required for entrance to domestic medical schools) and standardised testing for entrance to the profession. Law schools may use the standardised exams administered by a professional council as a qualifying factor.

More importantly, a standardised exam must be developed across Pakistan for admission to the bar as is done in the US. There must be some exclusivity established to reflect the sophistication and superior knowledge required for admission to this advanced profession. Not everyone who enters law school is meant to become a great lawyer. Only those students who work hard and excel in their studies should be endowed with this privilege. That is exactly the mentality that is required, for being a lawyer and playing a part in developing the law is a privilege.

For established lawyers, it would be impractical to enforce entrance exams at this point. Therefore, the relevant professional councils should require mandatory continuing legal education. It is no secret that the law is constantly evolving and thus those privileged with its use and enforcement should be required to evolve with it through regular re-education. Few lawyers would or could do this on their own; thus a regime of continuing legal education would be beneficial in several ways for the individual lawyer, his or her practice and clientele.

This education may be conducted by accredited law schools or by the professional councils themselves or even by private companies specialising in this education. Lawyers are academics who test the bounds of their field outside the ivory tower. It would be a disservice to their profession and to a society thirsting for legal reform to not require these workday warriors to update their knowledge regularly.

There is a reason there are so many jokes about lawyers. Jokes like ‘What do you call 5,000 dead lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start’ are indicative of the degree to which a substantially developed legal regime and the lawyers that practise within it are a nuisance to all those looking for loopholes. The rule of law is meant to be complicated but fluid and it needs lawyers that are well-educated and knowledgeable to practise it.

The writer completed her juris doctor at the University of Notre Dame Law School, US.