Indian law schools are still training students for a profession that is rapidly evolving. The traditional assumption that a lawyer’s primary skill is remembering sections and precedents no longer holds in an age where artificial intelligence (AI) retrieves the law in seconds and disputes increasingly resolve through mediation and negotiation. If legal education is to remain relevant, it must move beyond lecture halls and embrace practice-oriented models of learning.

The legal profession itself is undergoing structural change. Mediation and arbitration are expanding rapidly. Negotiated settlements are often preferred over prolonged litigation. AI can retrieve statutes, precedents and commentary in seconds. In such an environment, testing students primarily on how well they remember provisions or case law makes little sense.

Professional disciplines such as architecture and design recognised this challenge long ago. Architecture and design schools across the world rely on studio-based learning models where students spend most of their time solving practical problems rather than memorising theory.

Institutions such as CEPT University and the Schools of Planning and Architecture in India, along with leading international institutions such as MIT, the Harvard Graduate School of Design and ETH Zurich, emphasise design thinking, collaborative work and critique-based learning.

Theory is taught, but as supporting knowledge that informs practice rather than the centre of evaluation.

Legal education would benefit enormously from adopting a similar philosophy. Law, like architecture and design, is fundamentally a problem-solving profession. Yet, law schools continue to train students primarily in doctrinal recall rather than strategic thinking.

Design thinking - widely used in architecture and design disciplines - involves identifying the true nature of a problem, generating alternative solutions, testing strategies and refining them through feedback.

In practice, this is precisely what lawyers do. Advising a client involves designing a strategy: choosing between litigation, arbitration or mediation; structuring settlements; anticipating risks and crafting solutions that achieve the client’s objectives within the framework of law.

Yet, law schools rarely teach students how to design legal solutions.

Architecture and design schools organise learning around studios where students work on practical problems under the supervision of faculty and practitioners. Learning occurs through iteration, critique and refinement.

Legal education could replicate this model through law chamber studios where students work on simulated or supervised matters involving litigation, arbitration, mediation and negotiation.

Students could draft pleadings, conduct client interviews, participate in mediation exercises and design dispute resolution strategies. Faculty members and practising lawyers could review their work much like studio critics in architecture and design schools.

Assessment could focus on litigation strategy, drafting ability, negotiation outcomes and ethical reasoning. Such an approach would produce graduates far better prepared for professional practice.

The growing emphasis on alternative dispute resolution (ADR) makes this shift even more necessary. Mediation and arbitration demand negotiation strategy, conflict management, persuasion and settlement design - skills that cannot be learned through lectures alone.

Law schools must, therefore, move away from a system that rewards mugging of substantive law and toward one that emphasises real-life dispute resolution scenarios.

If AI can already retrieve the law faster than any student or lawyer, the continued obsession with memory-based examinations raises a basic question: are we preparing students for the profession of the past rather than the profession of the future?

Another structural obstacle in legal education is the traditional expectation that advocates who take up full-time teaching positions must surrender their sanads. This discourages practising lawyers from entering academia and widens the gap between law schools and real-world practice.

Architecture and design schools routinely integrate practicing professionals into teaching roles. Law schools must similarly encourage practitioners, Senior Advocates, mediators and arbitrators to participate in teaching as professors of practice.

In the past, some of the finest criminal law teachers were themselves distinguished practitioners. Older lawyers in Bengaluru still recall the classes of Prof MD Nanjundaswamy and CB Motaiah, where criminal law was taught through lived courtroom experience. Such traditions have unfortunately become rare.

Another reason is the economics of legal academia. Salaries paid to law teachers in many affiliated colleges are abysmally low.

As a member of the Academic Council of Karnataka State Law University, I once asked a young Assistant Professor teaching labour law in an affiliated college whether she was at least being paid the minimum wage prescribed for daily wage workers. She chose not to answer. The silence was revealing.

Universities and regulators rarely monitor salaries effectively, making it difficult to attract talented professionals into teaching.

In this context, bringing eminent practitioners into classrooms as professors of practice may be the most realistic way of strengthening teaching quality.

The scale of legal education in some states makes reform even more urgent. Karnataka alone has well over a hundred affiliated law colleges under Karnataka State Law University. Similar structures exist in universities such as Mumbai University, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Osmania University and the University of Madras.

While some premier National Law Universities are slowly adapting to these changing professional realities, the vast network of affiliated colleges remains largely untouched. The result is a deep structural unevenness in legal education.

The institutional thrust continues to rest disproportionately on moot courts rather than negotiation or mediation. Yet, the greater need today is to train law teachers in mediation rather than confining capacity-building efforts to MCPC-style programmes for judges and practising lawyers. If mediation is to take root in legal education, it must first enter the classroom through teachers who understand it not merely as doctrine but as method and professional skill.

Clinical legal education also requires urgent attention. Almost every law college maintains a legal services clinic, but in many institutions these function only nominally.

Properly structured, they could become the equivalent of architecture and design studios. Students could assist in real legal aid matters, observe mediation proceedings, draft notices and pleadings and engage directly with community legal problems.

Universities should, therefore, treat the effective functioning of legal services clinics as a sine qua non for granting or continuing affiliation.

The legal profession is changing rapidly. AI is transforming legal research. ADR is reshaping how disputes are resolved. Clients increasingly expect lawyers to design solutions rather than merely cite precedents.

Legal education must respond to this transformation.

Shridhar Prabhu is an Advocate practising before the Karnataka High Court and former Academic Council Member of Karnataka State Law University.

The views expressed are personal.