Teaching of Legal Language in Indian Law Schools Needs Urgent Attention: by Harshil Munjal & Ananya Trivedi

Introduction

The foot-prints of Law can be traced back to centuries. Where there are people, law is needed to govern them and to maintain their harmonious existence in society. Law is itself a language the genesis of which can be dated back to old Irish period (600-900 AD), flowing through the history of Anglo Saxons, to Latin, from the advent of Christianity to the law of the Scandinavians. When William invaded England he appointed French speaking Normans at the official positions. Hence, French derived its power since then. Even during this period Latin was still the written language and also used for creating status. Though Royal Courts had French, Latin was the language with number of terminologies from French. Legal maxim, even today are studied in Latin, however lawyers continue to use French. With the passage of time, lawyers continued to use French. Later, lawyers had to have Knowledge of English as it was used in specified domain. 

Why legal language differs from local language?

Legal language differs from local legal language and English. In India, Hindi is the widely spoken language which is used in Lower Courts as legal language. However, some tribunals may mandatorily not have legal language. In Court room or in front of the counsel the discussion can be on direct basis, as both the Judges and the parties know the Law, but the difficulty arises when a layman tries to understand the law through the legal language of his advocate[1].

Though knowledge of the statutes and laws is the basic requirement, but most importantly, a successful advocate is the one who masters the language of law. A lawyer learns this language in his alma mater, where he studies. Now-a-days it’s seen that the teaching institution i.e. law schools which provide the student’s knowledge of law aren’t paying much attention on teaching of legal language. 

Thus, the burden of understanding and using legal language falls on the student. This create the foundational difficulties for a law student and ignorance of meaning of law terminology affects the non- specialist more because in everyday usage a person uses up substantial number of legalities knowingly or unknowingly.

For Example, the employment contracts are used in every field; however, they are all governed by law. Law is dynamic and so it’s a perception that a law graduate (who might have specialization in one subject or the other) is deemed to know the general principles of law such as drafting, counseling, researching, legal ethics etc.

A Lawyer is different from a layman from his or her knowledge of legal terms and the clarity of those words. 

For Example: A law student treats the words ‘Act’ and ‘act’ as different. ‘Act’ with a capital ‘A’ is for the statutes and act with small ‘a’ in the starting is a task or work done by some individual or a group of individuals. For a layman, both the words may appear the same. 

Understanding of words comes by example rather than theoretical studies.  A same text or a same term is used in different context. A statue may use a word in different form and this is the clarity which the law students are lacking at present times[2].Often words are differently interpreted by judicial bodies in different instances as also rightly said by Hughes, ‘We are Under Constitution but the constitution is what judges say it[3].

This is another problem associated when the law schools do not put much effort to train their undergraduates on phraseology. It is duty of the teachers and the faculty associated, to initiate the seed of parlance in the students. A term which may look like a simple one, occur in no times be an umbrella term in front of masses of lawyers. 

History of Legal Education in Modern Ancient India

• In the era where the legal English terms are still disputable the linguistic applicability of law is a non obvious question.  For an instance, one can understand the substance of Latin maxims or French words as to law, but the greater question arises that is based on educational institution, the responsibility of teaching legit expression and its various essences is on the law schools. 
• One of the reasons behind all these drawbacks could be the lack of training of law teachers about teaching the subject of law. There is lot of theories, models and research which are giving the very nature of teaching law. The objective of a law teacher to the first year students should be to make the learners adaptable and comfortable with the language which they are reading[4].
• One more obvious question which arises is this: which is necessary for every single individual. The institutions are funded well and are charging high fees but where is this money used? Legal language teaching and its practice can be accelerated if done by the learner friendly environment such as an expert giving good lectures on various languages to the students, a comfortable environment with various exercise. Still there is no clarity that is it just the syllabus which must be competitive for the law teaching institution or is there a lack of intention on the role of these institutions. 

Need for Training Law Teachers on Teaching Skills

Some law schools don’t even have subject on legal language in the first year. The lacuna is caused by the structure of the syllabus for the 1st year of a law school. It is true that the teacher who teaches law, if they are the same who developed the syllabus with various modules, they will always prefer to take up the content of their choice in which they are comfortable in teaching. To understand the learning capacity of a law aspirant and the versatile nature of the combination of language and law should be done by a person who is an expert in psychology and law. This is needed because every next thing is law and the law candidate is the future of legal domain. 

A common man, who seeks justice in a matter, is represented by the advocate who once was a law student. If he doesn’t have a good knowledge and command over the language, legal and otherwise, he might not be able to impress upon the judge his points and position. This may give rise to confusion which may eventually lead to injustice for the aggrieved party who has paid heavy fee for justice. Law does have a need to use these Latin and French and Greek terms because they are irreplaceable and no other words from general English can now support the meaning of the word so well as the terms in these languages are doing. 

The only possible idea to flourish the nation is by educating the future in the right way and to understand that the urgent need to teach legal language to the students is for creating a better justice system for everyone. Also the Right to quality education comes under the Article 21(A) of Indian constitution which talks about “Right to Education”[5]As stated by divisional bench of Honorable judge Adarsh Kumar and Uday Umesh Lalit in the case of State of UP. v Anand Kumar Yadav [6]. 

There are more than 900 colleges or universities providing law courses in India and time and then the Bar Council of India, Law commission of India and universities Grant commission (UGC) are very active for creating export panels to have suggestion about legal educational reforms The alarm to teach the undergraduate seriously burning high now and it should be stopped with great concern and alertness[7].  

Another good set of reason for not imparting the exact legal profession, qualification skills in the students is the unawareness or unwillingness of the students about this matter[8]. It’s very difficult to see students discussing laws and its litigation and practice in the areas outside their curriculum makers who are more concerned about attendance of students rather than the quality of education provided to them while talking about what can change this. The job is not about to change the pattern of linguistic an curriculum teaching over night. Though the fluency of English speaking should be incorporated it in the students, studying law because firstly teachers can teach well to the students and the secondly the number of teachers in law schools is much lesser than the students studying in it[9].

Conclusion  

It’s the pressing priority to stand by the urgency to create a better learning schedule for carrying out the procedural requirements to create better and stronger and legal experts not only in the category of litigation but also in transforming the nation to a healthy one. The steps to excel to the desired goal starts with teaching and training the ones who teach the students of the law schools all over the country. Next to surplus is to make a better curriculum for the scholars, so that they realize the call to enroll themselves outside the classroom because not all things and languages could be taught in a class with perfection. A minute requirement is to motivate the tutee too on timely basis and to aid them in showing a direction of what needs to be done. When all the challenges could be overcome, nevertheless the time it takes, it will help in approaching a better education system as well as a better motherland. 

 

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[1] Peter Teresina, Legal Language, 1st Edition, University of Chicago Press, 2000 .

[2] Emanuel Beckert, Problem of legal analysis, 1945, 54, the Yale law journal, accessed 4 May 2020 https://digitalcommons.law.yal.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi. 

[3] Friedman Richard D. “Charles vans hughes”. In Yale biographical dictionary of American law, 2^nd edition ,2009 

[4] Prof. S. shanthakumar , Need for Training Law Teachers (2^nd edition), IIM University India, 1956

[5]MP JAIN, Indian constitutional law 1284(8^th edition.1962). 

[6] State of UP. v Anand Kumar Yadav, (2017) 2 SC 501(India)

[7] Schukoske jane,’’ Legal Education Reform in India, 2009, 1, jindal global law review

[8] 14^th Indian law commission report, page 522

[9] Getman,juliusG.,” The development of Indian legal education : The impact of  the language problem’’(1969)  

About Author(s)

Author1: Harshil Munjal pursuing 2^nd Year, BBA. LL.B(Hons) from Faculty of Law, JECRC University 

Author 2: Ananya Trivedi pursuing 2^nd Year, BBA. LL.B(Hons) from Faculty of law, JECRC University

We  show that the necessity of legal language of subject as law curriculum in the very first year of study in the law school. This is significant because this subject is of great important in a profession of law and its studies and the urgency to have this subject of legal language for the adult learners should be in practice in all the Indian law schools.We believe that this manuscript is appropriate for publication because this article covers all the concern of the competition and framed with the objective to cover both the challenges and suggestion of the concerned subject.The reading of the article also discusses the issues faced by legal education in the linguistic aspect and also studies the subsequent problems associated is the usage of legal jargon which is used from decades if not studied well in foundation years. We have no conflicts of interest to disclose.