BCI gets advocates to go back to school, college

Mumbai: In a bid to crack down on lawyers who are practising without proper qualifications, the Bar Council of India (BCI) has started verifying educational qualifications of lawyers across the country. As part of the procedure, lawyers will have to submit year-wise and semester-wise results of their law graduation and any other graduation.

However, this is proving to be an uphill task for lawyers who are making the rounds of their alma mater to get the required results.

A lawyer who approached R.D. National College, Bandra, on Tuesday, to get copies of his B.A. results, having appeared for the exam in 2002-2005, said, “After graduating from this college, I studied law at L.K. Advani Law Coll-ege and started practising in 2010. However, as per BCI guidelines, practising advocates have to submit all
certificates including SSC, HSC and graduation. As it has been more than a decade and I have misplaced some of the certificates, I have come to reapply for the same.”

In fact, the BCI has set a deadline for submitting all certificates till June 30 as a result of which, lawyers are making a beeline for their alma mater. “The BCI had issued the order in February but due to exams and later, vacations, schools and colleges requested us to approach them after they reopened,” said another lawyer.

Advocate Satish Deshmukh, vice chairman, BCI, said, “It has come to light that thousands of lawyers across the country do not have proper educational qualifications and some have been practising using the credentials of dead lawyers. Hence, BCI decided to have the verification process. The process is almost complete and as BCI has to file a compliance report in the Supreme Court on July 10, lawyers who are yet to submit the certificates have been asked to hurry up.”