A Saga of Exclusionary Practices: Systemic Hindrances in Obtaining a Certificate of Legal Practice in India

In India, to practice law, a law graduate needs to clear the All India Bar Examination conducted by the Bar Council of India. The popular narrative about the exam is that it is straightforward and easy to clear, however, it the system is deeply unequal and narratives around its difficulty are imbedded with intersectional privilege. There are multiple challenges that candidates face right from the enrollment stage to the exam stage. Systematic issues such as an exorbitant enrollment cost, cumbersome registration processes, quality of question papers in vernacular languages and an ineffective grievance redressal mechanism. The article series argues that the entry point of the legal profession in its present form is deeply exclusionary. In our three-part article series, based on our interactions with hundreds of law graduates about their lived experiences of the examination process, we attempt to capture and bring forth these structural inequities into public discourse. In the first part of our article series, we discuss the exorbitant registration fees, examination fees and other associated costs that contribute to making the examination process exclusionary. This article was first published in LiveLaw (https://www.livelaw.in/columns/all-india-bar-examination-aibe-bar-council-of-india- bci-197405) in April 2022