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Informist, Friday, Aug. 21, 2026

 

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--SC upholds previous order on mandatory law practice to enter judiciary 
--CONTEXT: Review plea in SC against 3-yrs practice to enter judiciary
--SC modifies practise rule to include advocacy, academy training, clerkship 
--SC: Till Mar 2027, law graduates can apply for judgeship without practise 
--SC: After Mar 2027, one-year law practise mandatory to enter judiciary

 

NEW DELHI – In a relief to law graduates, the Supreme Court Friday reduced the period of law practice to enter judicial services from three years to one year to apply for the civil judges junior division examination. The candidates who succeeds at the judicial service exam will have to undergo one year of intensive training at the state judicial academy followed by six months' clerkship under a district judge or higher judicial service and six months under a sitting High Court judge, said the bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant.

 

Though the apex court upheld its previous law practice rule to enter judiciary, it said sudden restoration of the three-year advocacy rule without any transitional arrangement has visited hardship on young lawyers and law graduates, hence a limited intervention was warranted. The objective behind the rule can be achieved not just through conventional practice but through a combination of pre-institutional training at the state judicial academy and supervised probation which will be treated as equivalent to practice at the bar for the purpose of eligibility, said the top court. 

 

The candidates in judicial exam notifications between May 25, 2025 till Mar. 31, 2027, are eligible regardless of prior experience but will be appointed only as trainee judicial officers for one year, said the top court. After completion of one year at the state judicial academy, the training judge will go further one year of law clerkship, said the apex court.

 

Initially, most states had a condition that lawyers with a minimum three years of practice could apply for judicial service. However, in 2002, the top court had done away with that requirement, allowing fresh law graduates to apply for posts such as Munsiff-Magistrate. Thereafter, pleas were filed in the Supreme Court seeking the reinstatement of the previous condition of experience for entering into the judiciary.

 

Last year, the top court had ruled that the appointment of fresh law graduates into the judiciary had led to several problems. From the very first day in office, judges deal with matters concerning life, liberty, and property, areas that demand not just academic knowledge, but practical courtroom experience gained by assisting seniors and understanding the court, the apex court had said.  

 

Challenging the apex court's ruling, review petitions were filed by various law graduates. The petitioners sought that the rule of mandatory three-year practice should be implemented only from 2027 to avoid unjust exclusion of graduates who passed out from 2023 to 2025, who prepared under the previous eligibility criteria. Immediate enforcement causes retrospective hardship, violating principles of fairness, legitimate expectation, and equal opportunity under Article 14 of the Indian Constitution, said the petitioners.

 

The apex court's order for mandatory legal practice excludes a large number of meritorious fresh law graduates without any empirical evidence that three years of practice result in better judges, said the petitioners. The direction to amend service rules uniformly across all states and high courts amounts to encroachment upon the powers of state legislatures and public service commissions, which are constitutionally empowered to frame service rules and recruitment criteria, said the petitioners.  End

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Deepshikha Bhardwaj

 

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