Beyond 75% Attendance: Indian Law Schools at a Constitutional Crossroads

India’s legal education system is undergoing a quiet but consequential transformation. This intelligence product by Global Eye Intelligence examines how judicial intervention has challenged the long-standing 75% attendance mandate in law schools, raising deeper constitutional, institutional, and pedagogical questions.

The analysis traces how attendance rules—originally designed to enforce classroom discipline—have increasingly collided with modern realities of legal education. Internships, moots, legal aid work, research assignments, and professional exposure are now integral to producing competent lawyers, yet rigid attendance enforcement has often penalised students for engaging in exactly these activities. Judicial reasoning has reframed the issue through the lens of fairness, proportionality, and mental well-being, signalling that education policy cannot operate in isolation from constitutional values.

This product evaluates the implications for regulators, universities, and students alike. It explores emerging pressure on academic bodies to adopt credit-based and hybrid attendance models, the likely rise of institutional review mechanisms, and the risks of inconsistent implementation across states and universities. Scenario analysis outlines whether reform leads to systemic modernisation or prolonged legal uncertainty through fragmented compliance.

Why this matters now: decisions taken at this inflection point will shape how future lawyers are trained, assessed, and governed. Those who understand this shift early will be better positioned to navigate regulatory change before it hardens into precedent.

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