PBC extends LLB degree duration to five years

Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) has reviewed its rules to lay down that the time period of an LLB degree programme shall not below 5 years. No university or the college will admit the aspirants for a three-year LLB programme when the new rules were made compulsory. The current 3-year programme shall discontinue after the 3 years of implementation of the modified rules that the Pakistan Bar Council announced last week. Pakistan Bar Council has said that it has reviewed the rules in view of the weakening standard of the law education as well as the mushroom growth of law colleges and the private universities as well.

The bar has revised the Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) Legal Education Rules of 1978 and also the rules about the Affiliation of Law Colleges and PBC (Recognition of Universities) Rules, 2015, associating the same in one set of rules broadcasting the Pakistan Bar Council Legal Education Rules, 2015.

According to the new rules the number of aspirants admitted to the first year LLB by a recognized university or a college shall not be over 100 and that there shall be just morning classes. A university or the college aiming to impart the law education for LLM or PhD programmes shall have to look out for the prior approval of the Pakistan Bar Council as well as the Higher Education Commission (HEC), Pakistan.

The institutes that are already offering LLM or PhD programmes shall have to search out for a approval and approval of these courses from the PBC as well as Higher Education Commission within six months of announcement of the new rules.

No university or the degree-awarding institute shall associate any law college following the prosecution of the rules. The bar proclaimed that the universities as well as the degree-awarding institutions offering law education, shall certify and inform the PBC in writing, at the beginning of every academic year that each and every private law college affiliated along with them, is implementing and following the rules in letter and spirit.

No institution shall work under international or external or distance learning programmes of any foreign university without getting a no-objection certificate (NoC) from PBC. The institutions already doing so shall tactic the bar for an NoC within six months of the implementation of the rules.