The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Tuesday ordered notice to the State on a public interest litigation petition that sought a direction to the State government to set up an Advocates Training Academy in Madurai or any other part of Tamil Nadu to train advocates in drafting, interacting with clients, carrying out court procedures, etc.
A Division Bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice M.M. Sundresh observed that it was necessary to impart general training to young lawyers and introduce courses on ethics to remind lawyers that this was a profession and not a trade. An overall strategy was necessary to ensure that knowledge inputs were made available at the entry stage of the career to hone skills.
The judges said, “This is an area we must invest in”, and added the High Court Registry as a party in the case. The court was hearing the PIL petition filed by advocate R. Manibharathi of Madurai who also sought a direction to the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry to conduct seminars and organise talks on legal topics by eminent jurists.
The petitioner said many students were preferring law courses, but not all ended up successful in the profession. The government law colleges in the State were not providing additional courses on ‘Training in the courts’ as it was considered to be outside the scope of the legal education, he said.
He pointed out that Kerala had set up an Advocates Training Academy in 2015. Karnataka had also decided to establish a similar academy. Tamil Nadu should set up one such institute for the welfare of the advocates who came from a non-legal background and had to struggle to establish themselves in the profession, he said.
