On Saturday, delivering the keynote address at the convocation ceremony of the NALSAR, Hyderabad, one of the 24 NLUs in the country, CJI DY Chandrachud flagged his concern about the 'sense of entitlement' prevailing among the NLU students.
He thus advised that NLUs should not look down upon students from other law colleges and shouldn't work in isolation.
"The outlook of legal education must be to improve law colleges across the country and not just few. The sense of entitlement that NLUs are better than other institutions leads to unnecessary wastage of energy," the CJI said.
He also highlighted the need for creating empathetic enviornments in campuses so that discrimination towards students from marginalised communities, particularly dalit and adivasi students could be eliminated.
"Promoting empathy is the first step which educational institutions should take and it can end the culture of elitism and exclusion... Empathy is not a personal attribute but require institutional change; people who come to courts are not just names on case dockets but also has individual struggles, which we seek to see," he opined.
The CJI suggested that it can begin with doing away with the practice of alloting hostel rooms based on marks secured in entrance exam. He emphasised on 'reshaping legal educational model' by creating empathy and weeding out structural inequalities.
CJI Chandrachud, to this regard disapproved practices like putting out a list of marks obtained by students along with social categories, asking for marks of dalit and adivasi students publicly to humiliate them, making mockery of their proficiency in English and labelling them as inefficient.
He went on to talk about growing use of technology and emergence of platforms like YouTube which is shaping legal discourse among masses.
"Now we see a lot of YouTube channels producing videos on legal concepts in simplified forms, YouTube is the new platform in law as is elsewhere. the number of views on these videos show the level of curiosity which our citizens have towards the legal discourse," he said.
The CJI pointed out that it is the duty of the legal fraternity to make citizens aware of our laws with the use of technology so that law can get rid from being an 'elite concept.'
Interestingly, he asked NALSAR to share its educational videos with students from other law schools as well and not make them a monopoly of their own.
"Therefore, I would beseech NALSAR like other law schools to ensure that videos of quality legal education which you provide to your own law students do not become a shared monopoly of your students alone and is disseminated across the nation," the CJI stated.
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