Supreme Court Wants All Lawyers to Undergo Compulsory Training

New Delhi: All advocates should undergo compulsory training and they should not be allowed to practice unless they have a certificate from a recognised law university, the Supreme Court said on Friday.

If judges can go to the National Judicial Academy for training, why not lawyers, remarked a bench of Justices Bela M Trivedi and Pankaj Mithal, while hearing the bail plea of Souvik Bhattacharya, son of Trinamool Congress (TMC) MLA Manik Bhattacharya, arrested in connection with the West Bengal teachers’ recruitment “scam”.

Appearing in the court on behalf of Bhattacharya, senior advocate Sidharth Luthra submitted that a bail application was filed by one of the lawyers in the trial court despite the absence of a summoning order.

“If judges can go to the National Judicial Academy, why not lawyers? Unless they have a certificate from a recognised law university, they should not be allowed to practise. It is there in foreign countries. It is not that nobody knows it, the problem is that nobody wants to implement it,” the bench observed orally.