KARACHI: Lauding the Supreme Court law clerkship programme, legal experts have suggested that such practice may also be adopted at high courts and subordinate judiciary of the country to expedite disposal of cases and professional grooming of young lawyers.

They are of the view that the country’s judiciary has been overburdened and it is humanly not possible for judges to go through the files of all cases fixed before them on daily basis and the assistance of law clerks will be very useful to speed up the trial and proceedings.

The concept of law clerkship has already been recognised and practised across the globe and has not only been constructive for capacity building of young lawyers and fresh law graduates, but also supportive for judges in timely disposal of the cases, the experts maintained.

A law clerk, also called judicial law clerk or judicial associate, is a lawyer usually a fresh law graduate who provides direct assistance to a judge.

Interns provide direct assistance to apex court judges and play helpful role in speedy disposal of cases

The law clerkship programme can be traced back to 1882, when the first law clerk was appointed at the US Supreme Court and the practice was later adopted by other countries, including the UK, Australia, Singapore, Mexico, and South Korea.

In Pakistan, this practice was introduced at the apex court in 2010 by the then judge of Supreme Court Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja, who later became the chief justice of Pakistan, and now this programme is in its 12th year providing opportunity for over a hundred young lawyers to work on complex and historic cases before the apex court and learn from the guidance of their respective judges and go on to excel.

Recently, the law clerkship program has also been introduced at the Islamabad High Court (IHC).

In May, the IHC had invited applications from eligible candidates for the position of law clerk on one year contract basis to primarily conduct legal and academic research.

Haider Imam Rizvi, a member of judicial commission of Pakistan and former vice chairman of the Sindh Bar Council, said, “We are in a midst of an era when the law is rapidly evolving and required to be developed in a right path while the courts are overburdened with cases and pending decisions.”

While appreciating the initiative of the IHC to start the law clerkship programme in line with the apex court, he maintained that currently, the burden of cases on courts was far beyond the strength of judges as a judge could not be humanly expected to go through all the cases fixed in a day, thus research on the same with the assistance of law clerks would be very useful to pass judgments in a nick of time as every litigant seeking quick decision.

Therefore, he suggested that the law clerkship might also be introduced to other high courts and sessions judges of the country so the process of justice can be expedited.

He was of the view that this concept had already been in place in many countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Brazil, the Philippines, Ireland, Singapore and India.

Mr Rizvi further said that in 2018, when he was the president of the Karachi Bar Association, he gave a proposal to the chief justice of the Sindh High Court to introduce such a programme at the SHC. However, it could not be materialised, he added.

He recommended that funds to pay stipend to such law interns could be generated by a pool in a separate account from the amount of costs being imposed by the judges in case of adjournments and frivolous litigation while donations could also be additional source of funds from lawyers and bar associations.

The incumbent vice chairman of SBC Zulfiqar Ali Jalbani said that the programme might also be extended to the high courts, Federal Shariat Court, tribunals, special courts and subordinate judiciary of the country.

“This will not only support the professionalism and performance as well as capacity building of young lawyers, but also be very helpful for the overburdened judiciary for speedy disposal of cases and to clear the huge backlog,” he added.

He stated that this concept had been in place in several other countries since long and highly useful for their judicial system.

A spokesman for the apex court told Dawn that law clerkship programme had been in place at the apex court since 2010 and the Supreme Court had been inviting applications for law clerkship programme almost every year across the country and the period of this internship was one year, which was extendable.

According a statement of apex court, today most supreme courts across the world employ some version of a law clerkship programme, whereby exceptionally talented recent law graduates are employed to work directly with the judges of the supreme courts. The practice has grown over the centuries since its inception and today, former law clerks make up the majority of sitting Supreme Court Justices in the US.

This year apex court has received the highest number of applications for its law clerkship programme since its inception as over 850 young lawyers applied across the country for 11 positions, it added.

Forty six of them were shortlisted on the basis of merit and they were interviewed by two judges of apex court and eventually, 11 candidates were finalised while five were kept on reserve list since additional law clerks may be required by the apex court from time to time.

Published in Dawn, December 28th, 2022