Legal education in SAARC region faces today momentous challenge. The nature and adequacy of response in this context will have wide and enduring impact on the development of the society. The importance of legal education itself depends on the role played by the legal profession. If the legal profession plays a significant role in the affairs of the state the legal education would be perceived as some thing worthwhile - adding value to societal endeavors. In case the legal professional is treated as of peripheral importance, legal education would be regarded as devoid of any relevance. On the other hand, whether the legal profession is making an adequate response to challenges confronting society is in turn, determined, among other things, by the quality and orientation of legal education. "The character of law schools" it has been rightly pointed out, " determines the character of the Bar" ¹.

II

There is a great paucity of data regarding legal education in the SAARC member countries². One is not fully certain about the number of law schools, contents of course they teach, and quality of individual institutions. However, some facts are well established and are set out in the succeeding paragraphs.

Institutions for legal education in our countries have been modeled after those in foreign countries. They suffer from this congenital defect of being a product of foreign thinking. However, this would be true of all our institutions of higher learning in developing countries. This feature would not have been an insurmountable handicap had we kept on updating our institutions both on the pattern of subsequent developments in the developed countries themselves as well by showing greater sensitivity to our own environment. As this has not been done, by and large, our law colleges have come to be frozen in time as far as the course content, methods of training and academic orientations are concerned.

These institutions are primarily controlled by elites in the society i.e. legal profession and have consequently become a bastion of status quo. They have predominantly a private practice orientation. Even this feature has not been taken to its logical end because at times the approach of law schools is too academic. The current legal problems are not given the importance which they deserve³.

These institutions tend to treat law as an independent self-contained discipline. Very little attention is paid to the studies of socio-economic contexts, policy assumptions and actual impacts of legal rules. The teaching method also needs a great deal to be desired as it is pedagogical lecture method with little students' participation. Teachers are mostly part time with so many other commitments. There is hardly any research. Consequently there is lack of indigenous literature dealing with legal problems in socio-economic contexts.

These institutions have remained virtually unaware of their role and ignorant of desirable objectives in relation to problem of social change and development. There is no clear conception of skills required to cope with emerging trends. In fact no attempt has been made to assess the human resource needs of the legal system in a changing world.

Enrolment in law schools continues to be very large as compared to needs of lawyers and other law trained personnel. As a matter of fact legal education institutions in our countries are serving as sponge to absorb much of the general demand for non-science higher education. Thus the majority of students who enter law schools have not either academically performed well or are less motivated to join legal profession. Law schools are not regarded as centers of excellence. They are institutions with, limited academic facilities and extremely high student-faculty ratio. As a result they turn out a large number of graduates who are not productively employable in the legal system.

The increasing diversity and sophistication of law in the contemporary world is not reflected in curriculum. Even important areas such as economic analysis of law⁴ does not form part of the syllabus. Similarly problems of international trade, such as regulatory norms of WTO telecommunications and economic regional blocks are not given any importance during the course of teaching in law schools.

Another important area which has not been accorded due importance is, administrative law. A training in this branch of law has acquired added importance due to wave of privatisation sweeping our countries. Privatization while signalling end of public ownership means, putting in place a strong and transparent regulatory framework. A great deal of litigation would be generated in this area in the future - for protecting interests of public, preserving a competitive milieu and also for safe-guarding interest of the private owners of erstwhile publicly owned units. But law graduates are ignorant of this branch of law. Another critical area is that of legal protection of investments both foreign and domestic. Here again we find no attention paid to it in the course of studies.

Duration of legal education at least in Pakistan, has been till recently of two years' duration. It would be unrealistic to expect that in mere two years a sound legal education can be imparted. We have taken a few years ago the right step of increasing duration to three years for a LL.B degree which qualifies a person to practice law. (It is expected that the expanded syllabus for a three year LL.B course has improved the professional content of training and would help in weeding out, to a reasonable extent, degree seekers who were not serious to pursue career as lawyers.)

In Pakistan there has been till a few years ago no provision for the advanced degrees in law such as LL.M and Ph.D. Complexities of law in the contemporary setting makes it imperative to make adequate arrangements for post graduate (graduate in American parlance) legal education.

There is no exposure to computers. This deficiency shuts out a rich avenue of readily accessable legal knowledge.

In Pakistan there is no center of excellence for legal education. One only hopes that the situation is better in some of the other SAARC countries.

There has been (in the context of Pakistan) a mushroom growth of law colleges in the private sector. These have neither the intention nor the motivation to impart a sound professional training and are mainly driven to make easy money in return for exorbitant fees. Universities, it seems have not been vigorously enforcing the prescribed criteria for affiliations of private law colleges⁵. The state of law libraries in most of the institutions leaves a great deal to be desired. In particular "IT" age seems to bypass them.

There does not exist any adequate arrangements for continuing legal education programme. At present though one keeps on learning law in the court rooms and chamber practice, there is no structured programme available for upgrading skills of members of legal profession on a continuing basis. Both the legal education and legal profession are often criticized for remaining insulated from the problems and requirements of the society. Lack of sensitivity in this regard has led to an impression that the law instead of being a shield against injustice has been serving as an instrument of exploitation. At best it is of no relevance. Before suggesting how can we change the orientation and enhance relevance of legal education/profession, how can we liberate ourselves from the legacies of the past and prepare to face the challenges of the future it would be necessary to view the subject in a contextual perspective.

A contextual approach, among others things, would address the following questions:

(1) What kind of world is represented by SAARC?

(2) What goals should the countries in the region strive for?

- 830 million have no access to basic sanitation facility.

In this stark setting the only legitimate goal for our countries should be removing this colossal human deprivation. The ambiguities and weakness of development theories in the context of South Asia need to be replaced by a redefined concept of development which aims at bringing about "an identifiable positive change in the lives of the poorest 50% of the population⁷. This change can be effectuated only if all the segments of the society - particularly those who are educated and influential - make unremitting efforts with utmost conviction and commitment.

The responsibility of legal profession in this context is self evident. An independent and competent legal profession is indeed pivotal to a free, democratic and liberal society committed to improve the lot of its citizen. Telescoping the process of development, alleviation of poverty, and enlarging choices available to individuals for optimum realisation of the human potential require, among other things, good governance. This entails setting in place institutional mechanism "for enforcing the accountability of leaders to their peoples, the establishment and proper enforcement of transparent legal frameworks, scrupulous respect for the rule of law and due process, independence of the judiciary, a pluralistic institutional structure, popular participation and vigorous protection of human rights and the press⁸."

All these elements call for active participation and meaningful contribution by the lawyers/law trained individuals. It would be pertinent to recognise that:

to ask: Are the products of our law schools fully aware of their responsibilities? Have they been infused with a sense of mission to transform society? Are they being equipped with knowledge of complexities of the contemporary world? Are they being imparted skills to deal with legal issues stemming form globalization of trade, phenomenal changes in technology, innovations in the fast integrating financial world, internationalization of human rights, concentration of power and privileges in few hands, diminishing role of the state and emergence of deregulation, liberalization and privatization as the new credo during the twilight years of this millennium.

Given the present state of legal education in our countries answers to the questions posed above cannot be given in affirmative. Our institutions of higher learning in law have failed to harness the vitality and idealism of the youth for betterment of the society. Our law schools should prepare our youth to adequately handle responsibilities of tomorrow.

Adequate response to various challenges set forth above will have to be multifaced. It should aim at changing orientation/attitudes, content of courses, methods of teaching and intensity and quality of legal education.

As stated above the orientation of legal education in the region is patently flawed. Sensitivity to suffering of people has to be inculcated among the students. Their mind set has to be consciously changed. They should be imparted insights into, the problems confronting the society. They have to be imbued with a mission to be real social reformers and regard profession of a lawyer not as a business but as a mission in their life for mitigating the sufferings of people.

The mission of law schools should be to turn out graduates who¹⁰:

1. The Public Influence of Bar, Harvard Law Review 1 (1948).