The Bar Council of India has directed all the Universities across the country to scrap the one-year LLM degree in law from the next academic year. No law university will be allowed to offer a one-year master's degree in law which was introduced in 2013. However, the BCI has told the SC that this decision will be brought into effect only from 2022-23. It will not have any impact on this academic year's students.
According to the BCI, the LLM degree will only be awarded to students after they have completed a two-year which has four semesters. The Bar Council has also proposed a new admission test- Post Graduate Common Entrance Test in Law (PGCETL) for admission to master's courses in law.
The decision to scrap the LLM degree programme was a part of the BCI's Bar Council of India Legal Education ( Post-Graduate, Doctoral, Executive, Vocational, Clinical, and other Continuing Education) Rules, 2020, which were notified on 2nd January 2021.
Apart from this, BCI has also clarified that only the LLB students can appear for LLM entrance exams and the graduate students of any other stream (irrespective of having studied individual law subjects as part of their course) including Company Law, under MBA cannot appear for LLM entrance tests.
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The details regarding the PGCETL will be notified soon and until then all the law universities in the country have been advised to follow the regular admission process. The new master's law programme course based on PGCETL is expected to start in September through the PGCETL entrance exams. The examination dates will be released soon.
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