Abolishing mandatory attendance in law schools: A great leap forward or setting the clock back?

Mandatory attendance norms have long been observed in higher education institutions (HEIs) across India. Notwithstanding this, the Delhi High Court, in its widely publicised judgment delivered on November 3, 2025, invalidated Rule 12 of the Bar Council of India’s Legal Education Rules, 2008 (LER 2008), which prescribes the lowest attendance requirement compared to other disciplines.

It further directed the BCI to reframe its attendance policy and in the interim, prohibited all the law schools in the country from barring a student from appearing in an examination solely on the ground of shortage of attendance.

By abolishing such a long-standing and well entrenched norm, the judgment is set to bring a paradigm shift in India’s legal education. This article seeks to critically evaluate the grounds on which the judgment is based. It also looks to determine whether the decision will prove to be a great leap forward, or instead set the clock back to an era when both legal education and legal profession were viewed with scant regard.

The decision resulted from a suicide committed by a law student after being detained for attendance shortage. Although the trial court did not hold the administration and faculty responsible for the suicide, the High Court regarded it incumbent upon itself to examine the validity of the mandatory attendance norms, as they can have a debilitating effect on students’ mental health and lead them to take extreme steps.

It emerged from the affidavits filed by various regulatory bodies and HEIs that they all prescribe a minimum attendance which is more than the one prescribed under Rule 12 of the LER 2008. BITS University emerged as an outlier, as it does not prescribe any minimum attendance requirement.

The Court acknowledged, albeit in a cursory manner, the importance of mandatory attendance in maintaining academic discipline and proceeded to invalidate Rule 12 of the LER, 2008, mainly on the following grounds:

1. It is inflexible and makes holistic learning impossible.

2. It is not pragmatic as it does not account for certain real-life crisis.

3. It impinges upon the right to life.

4. It is in digression with the NEP 2020.

The Rule is inflexible and makes holistic development impossible

According to the Court, the purpose of education is to develop a multi- dimensional personality which requires students to participate in a range of activities like dance, drama, music and sports etc. It further observed that law students must be exposed to its practical side, therefore, they must do internships, visit courts, prisons and juvenile homes, participate in legal aid clinics and moot courts which are indispensable for producing an 'effective lawyer'. The lack of attendance relaxation for such activities defeats the purpose of legal education, rendering the BCI’s mandatory attendance policy liable to be set aside.

While the Court is right in asserting the importance of holistic learning and practical training for law students, it is not correct in judging that the present attendance policy is framed in ignorance of that. The LER 2008 mandates 15 weeks of teaching per semester, leaving nearly 20 weeks annually for students to gain practical legal exposure through internships and court visits etc. Furthermore, they can miss up to 30% of their overall classes. Therefore, the Court’s view that the BCI’s attendance policy does not leave room for holistic development and practical learning is unfounded. Moreover, out of 24 hours in a day, classes take place for only 4-5 hours.

We need to realise that while participation in various co-curricular and extra-curricular activities is important, it cannot substitute for learning the academic aspects of the discipline. Unfortunately, the Court seems to think otherwise. How else does one justify the observation that "if a student is selected for national and international level moot court, such student may not be able to attend the classes for a whole semester"? Can participation in one moot court competition equal the teaching conducted over an entire semester? Such a dim view of class teaching is going to cause only harm to legal education.

The non-pragmatic nature of the policy

The Court also observed that the BCI’s attendance requirement is not pragmatic as it fails to account for students’ inability to attend classes due critical situations like their own ill health or bereavement in the family. According to the Court "such paradigms of human experiences cannot be ignored" while framing attendance norms.

It must be noted that in situations as mentioned above, the minimum attendance requirement is reduced to 65% as per Rule 12 of the LER 2008, allowing a student to miss a little more than 1/3^rd of the total number of classes scheduled in a semester. This means in a semester of 15 weeks, a student can miss classes for 5 weeks in a row. It is difficult to accept that allowing a student to remain absent for such a prolonged period to address aforementioned crisis is not reasonable or is not pragmatic.

Infringement of the Right to Life

The Court opined that loss of an academic year due to non-compliance of mandatory attendance requirement is excessively harsh. This can lead students to take drastic steps such as committing suicide as happened in this specific case and thus impinges on the Right to life itself. This reasoning appears to be overstretched. Once it is established that the provision is neither inflexible nor excessive as discussed above, it cannot be blamed for a student taking the unfortunate step of committing suicide. Furthermore, students have committed suicide for failing in exams also. Will the Court then set aside the norm of getting minimum marks in exams and allow everyone to pass?

BCI’s policy in digression with the NEP

The Court held that since the NEP has discarded the concept of minimum attendance, the BCI cannot continue to enforce it. This reasoning is problematic because if the legislature had intended to abrogate such a deep-rooted and widely followed norm, it would likely have done so explicitly. Therefore, the absence of any mention of the mandatory attendance norm in the NEP is more likely to favour its continuation rather than abrogation.

Similarly, the flexibility of attending classes online envisaged under the NEP does not imply abandonment of the mandatory attendance policy. On the contrary, the facility should be used to support a student to fulfil the mandatory attendance requirements and should be allowed only on justified grounds and after due scrutiny.

In the rush to hail the judgment as a promoter of autonomy, its detrimental consequences have been simply ignored. It has long been common in this country to enrol in law courses as a provisional measure to explore other career options. This was possible because, unlike other professional programs, attendance requirements in legal education were not strictly enforced. Lamenting on this, Prof PK Tripathi, former Dean of Delhi University’s Law Faculty, stated in 1968 that “the insignificant number of great lawyers that freaked out of these indigenous law schools had in mature years nothing but indiscipline and proxies for attendance to recall as reminiscences of the law school days”.

Legal education was transformed from this grim position into a highly sought after career choice by emphasising the “theoretical, scientific and philosophical aspects of law” to enable a legal professional to function meaningfully, for which regular class attendance is essential. Therefore, the NLUs described as 'islands of excellence' were structured as fully residential institutions. Now, with the help of this judgment, students may intern throughout the year hopping from one firm or lawyer to another, thereby reviving those very practices, which were responsible for the sorry state of legal education in this country.

Nevertheless, the existing policy can be revised to provide for a graded system, requiring a student to attend at least 70% of classes per semester. Attendance between 50–69% shall result in deduction of marks (0.33 per cent of the CGPA or 5 percent of the total marks of the semester for every ten percent shortfall in attendance - this is followed at IIFT and was seen favourably by the Court). Relaxation up to 10% can be provided for valid reasons like illness, bereavement or representing the institution in co-curricular or extra-curricular activities without any penalty. Academic detention shall be enforced only where a student’s attendance falls below 50 per cent.

Thus, while the existing threshold may be relaxed, completely abolishing the minimum attendance requirement risks taking legal education back to the unpromising state from which it was salvaged after decades of planning and efforts. The BCI must now act promptly to frame a new attendance policy.

Dr Rajesh Kapoor is an Associate Professor & Head Examinations at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad.