The Supreme Court writ petitions in the bar exam has been postponed again, this time to 25 October, following no notices having been served on respondents.

A day before the Supreme Court hearing in the All India Bar Exam (AIBE), over 80,000 lawyers from 240 bar associations of the Madhya Pradesh State Bar Council have gone on a one-day token strike today to protest the exam, which they say is “unconstitutional” and causes unnecessary hardship on students.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has reaffirmed and upheld the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction in the adjudication of the impending writ petitions against the All India Bar Examination (AIBE) citing the apex court’s earlier decision to combine and hear the matter as transfer petition titled Bar Council of India vs Babubhai Vaghela & Ors.

Exclusive: The Bar Council of India (BCI) has abandoned its high-rent offices at short notice after less than four months in the premises, which has caused logistical difficulties and shut down the Airtel-operated bar exam telephone helplines for nearly a week now.

2010-09-28-no-sweat [ Legally Drawn is back after a long US bar exam-related exile. I believe he is not referring to the Indian bar exam, by the way, but the US bar exam. Legally Drawn is created by Vasanth Sarathy and is published on his blog www.legallydrawn.com We will be featuring his future car...

Responding to a Right to Information (RTI) Act request by a Nalsar graduate, the Bar Council of India (BCI) did not disclose the fees that would be paid to legal industry service provider Rainmaker in connection with conducting the all India bar exam while admitting that it did not actively look for any other suitable providers.

This controversy-packed week all of India lived in fear of Friday, awaiting the verdict in the 60-year-old Ayodhya land title dispute.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has today extended the deadline to apply for the all-India bar exam from end of September to 31 October 2010 to accommodate students facing delays in enrolment.

Procedural delays were set to derail the discussions on the merits in the All India bar examination court challenges, as the Supreme Court has adjourned the hearing in the transfer petition to 20 October after ordering the issue of fresh notices to the respondents and the shifting of the case to the Delhi High Court was not mentioned.

Indian lawyers planning to qualify as English solicitors were thrown into temporary tizzy this week, as the new Qualified Lawyers Transfer Scheme (QLTS) came into effect. Under the new rules Indian lawyers will not be allowed to apply to practise in the UK, as India is not included in the list of jurisdictions to benefit from the QLTS.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has published the preparation materials and model questions and answers for the new all India bar exam that is proposed to take place on 5 December 2010.

Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Gopal Subramanium said that the BCI would crack down on any recently enrolled lawyers who were practising law without having passed the proposed bar exam and that law colleges whose graduating law students did not take the bar exam could be derecognised.

Supreme Court advocate K V Dhananjay along with a group of practising 2010 law graduates from Nalsar and NUJS have secured a three-pronged victory for godman Swami Nityananda, including restoring his passport that was impounded following his arrest after an alleged sex scandal involvement in April, and securing an injunction against the publication of a book and a police order.

The bar council of Maharashtra and Goa said today that it would oppose the proposed all India bar exam after a decision reached by 11 chairmen of different state bar councils on 31 July, although the body admitted that unless the Bar Council of India (BCI) or a court intervened the exam would go ahead.

The tentacles of the “pseudo-lawyers” have driven the bar to the wall, claims advocate and partner Elizabeth Seshadri. Is a bar exam enough to cure the setting rot or do we need a test that reaches far more deeply?

The Supreme Court today outright dismissed one public interest litigation (PIL) against the bar exam filed by a Delhi University law graduate and issued directions to combine the pending national high court writ petitions against the bar exam for hearing before the Delhi High Court, as Friday’s Bonnie FOI case hearing was adjourned.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has responded to common queries and concerns about the bar exam, explaining that the BCI is discussing options to ameliorate lot of 2010 batch graduates, that legal challenges will cause no shift in timetable, and that the Rs 1,300 test fee is reasonable, answering questions relating to Rainmaker’s appointment to assist in the exam.

A writ petition filed in the Madya Pradesh High Court by a final year student of University Institute of Law in Jabalpur has increased the tally of reported cases challenging the all India bar exam to at least 10.

A group of law graduates from Delhi University have invoked the Supreme Court’s writ jurisdiction under Article 32 of the Indian Constitution as two students of the NUALS Kochi have filed yet another petition before the Kerala High Court against the all India Bar Examinations.

Is India a success story because or in spite of democracy? Compared to China, for example, hundreds if not thousands of different vested interests have made Indian reform painfully slow, if not impossible.

But in the legal sector someone is clearly trying to force a leapfrog.