With just a few days to the HSC class XII results, some education experts have raised the demand for an increase in the number of seats in the city's law colleges, perhaps even opening new colleges to accommodate the number of students wanting to study law.
Today, there are just 13 colleges in the city affiliated to the University of Mumbai that offer law courses like LLB (five-year bachelor of law programme), LLB General (two years), LLM (master of law) and some other specialised certificate and diploma courses.
In the last academic year, 2013-14, a total 1,258 students enrolled for these courses. The experts say that the number of students looking to study law has been increasing and therefore the need to increase the existing capacity.
"Most of the law colleges in the city have only two divisions for each year in each course. Also, there are not enough colleges offering the five-year course," said Narayan Rajadhyaksha, principal, New Law College.
Rajadhyaksha pointed out that there has been a demand from the law colleges to allow them to increase the number of divisions. "But this is in the hands of the Bar Council of India and not the University of Mumbai," he said.
Dr Samir Dalwai, guest faculty at Jitendra Chauhan College of Law, said, "I agree that the capacity of the colleges needs to be increased. If possible, the number of colleges offering part-time courses should also be increased."
Dalwai explained that more and more students were looking to study law even if they did not plan to practice as lawyers. "They simply want to enhance their knowledge," he said. In addition, he mentioned the need to introduce amalgamated courses in streams like management, forensics and cyberspace, in keeping with the demands of the time.
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