From the Classroom to the Courtroom: Rethinking the Practice Requirement for India’s Civil Judges

There are judgments that settle a question of law, and there are judgments that compel us to reconsider how we prepare people to administer justice. The Supreme Court of India’s decision in Bhumika Trust v Union of India, 2026 INSC 904, delivered on 21 August 2026, belongs firmly to the latter category.

The immediate issue appears deceptively simple. How much experience at the Bar should a law graduate possess before being permitted to enter the judicial service as a Civil Judge, Junior Division?

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In May 2025, the Supreme Court had restored a requirement of three years of legal practice before a candidate could enter the civil judiciary. The rationale was understandable and, in many respects, compelling. A judge should not encounter the realities of litigation for the first time after occupying the judicial chair. Yet, on review, the Court has now modified that requirement. By a majority of two to one, the Court has reduced the period of actual practice from three years to one year, while creating a considerably more structured pathway involving judicial academy training and supervised law clerkship.

I welcome this reconsideration, although not without some caution.

As a Professor of Law and Legal Practice, and equally through my work in dispute resolution at ADRODR International, I have consistently believed that legal education cannot end with knowledge of legal rules. Law is ultimately practised through people, institutions, procedure, judgment and responsibility. A student may understand every provision of the Code of Civil Procedure and still not understand the dynamics of a courtroom. Equally, a young advocate may spend three years formally enrolled at the Bar without necessarily acquiring the breadth of experience that prepares a person for judicial office.

That, to my mind, is the real significance of the Supreme Court’s latest judgment.

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The Journey from Three Years to One

The debate must be understood against the background of the Supreme Court’s continuing supervision of judicial service conditions in the All India Judges Association proceedings.

In its judgment of 20 May 2025, the Supreme Court restored a minimum three year practice requirement for entry into the Civil Judge, Junior Division cadre. The Court was concerned that candidates entering the judiciary immediately after graduation often lacked sufficient familiarity with actual court functioning. It also directed that selected candidates undergo at least one year of training before presiding over a court.

There was considerable merit in that concern.

Judging is not merely the application of a statutory provision to a factual matrix. A Civil Judge deals with witnesses who may be frightened, evasive or confused. The judge encounters lawyers of dramatically different levels of experience and competence. Procedural applications must be decided while maintaining fairness and momentum in litigation. Interim relief may determine the practical fortunes of parties long before final judgment. Court administration, evidence, pleadings, limitation, execution and case management all operate simultaneously.

These things are difficult to learn from textbooks alone.

However, the three year requirement produced another set of difficulties. It affected recent law graduates who had structured their education and careers around judicial service examinations. It also raised a deeper question. Does the passage of three calendar years at the Bar necessarily produce judicial readiness?

The answer, in my view, has always been more complicated than a simple yes.

The Court’s 2026 reconsideration recognises precisely this complexity. The majority, comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Augustine George Masih, retained the fundamental proposition that practical exposure before entering regular judicial service is indispensable. What changed was the method by which that experience could be acquired. Justice K. Vinod Chandran dissented, maintaining that three years of practice at the Bar remained essential.

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The distinction is important. The Supreme Court has not abandoned practical experience. It has redesigned it.

The New Framework

For recruitment notifications issued on or after 1 April 2027, candidates seeking appointment as Civil Judges, Junior Division, must possess at least one year of actual practice. That practice must be verifiable through a Certificate of Practice under a mechanism prescribed by the High Courts, with the candidate’s presence and participation in effective judicial proceedings being recorded.

Selection, however, does not immediately place the successful candidate independently on the Bench.

The selected candidate must undergo one year of intensive training at the concerned State Judicial Academy. This is followed by a further year of structured law clerkship. Six months are to be spent under a Principal District Judge, District and Sessions Judge or member of the Higher Judicial Service, followed by six months under a sitting Judge of the concerned High Court. The process concludes with a reasoned evaluation of the trainee’s performance and suitability for judicial office.

There is also an important transitional arrangement. For recruitment advertisements falling within the period following the 2025 judgment and up to 31 March 2027, all law graduates are permitted to apply notwithstanding the earlier three year requirement. Candidates within this transitional framework are deemed, for the purpose of their applications, to have completed one year of active practice. Successful candidates must nevertheless undergo the prescribed judicial academy training and structured clerkship.

This transitional relief is particularly important because changes to eligibility requirements cannot be examined only from the perspective of institutional convenience. Young graduates make significant decisions around judicial examinations. They decline employment, undertake coaching, relocate, postpone postgraduate education and organise years of their lives around recruitment cycles. Legal reform should not casually disregard such legitimate expectations.

Why One Year Can Be More Meaningful Than Three

The most important idea emerging from the majority judgment is that three years of conventional practice is not the only method of obtaining meaningful practical experience.

This deserves serious consideration by both the judiciary and legal academia.

The debate should never have been reduced to a contest between fresh graduates and practising lawyers. Nor should we romanticise either category. A fresh graduate is not necessarily professionally immature, just as three years of enrolment at the Bar does not automatically produce courtroom competence.

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What matters is the quality, intensity and diversity of professional exposure.

One year of genuine practice, involving drafting, filing, client interaction, observation of evidence, procedural hearings, arguments and regular engagement with courts, followed by intensive judicial training and supervised clerkship, may produce considerably greater institutional understanding than three years of nominal or sporadic practice.

The key word, however, is genuine.

If the one year requirement becomes merely a certificate gathering exercise, the reform will fail. A certificate signed by a senior advocate cannot become a ceremonial passport into judicial service. The Supreme Court appears alive to this danger, which explains its emphasis on recorded presence and participation in effective judicial proceedings.

Implementation will therefore matter as much as doctrine.

What We Must Teach Future Judges

For legal educators, this judgment should provoke some institutional introspection.

For decades, Indian legal education has become increasingly sophisticated in teaching constitutional doctrine, commercial law, arbitration, international law and theoretical jurisprudence. Yet the everyday administration of justice in the District Courts sometimes remains distant from the experience of students studying in our leading universities.

That distance must be reduced.

If students aspire to judicial service, they should understand not only what the law says but how justice actually moves through institutions. They should observe trial courts. They should learn how issues are framed. They should see examination and cross examination. They should understand why an apparently minor adjournment may have enormous consequences for a litigant. They should study execution proceedings, interim applications and procedural orders with the same seriousness with which they study celebrated constitutional judgments.

Above all, they should learn that judging involves human beings before it involves files.

This is where my experience in Alternative Dispute Resolution also shapes my understanding of judicial preparation. A good judge requires many of the qualities we expect from a good mediator: patience, disciplined listening, neutrality, the ability to identify the actual controversy and sensitivity to the interests underlying stated legal positions.

Of course, a judge is not a mediator when exercising adjudicatory power. The institutional roles are different. But the human skills involved in administering justice frequently overlap.

A judge who listens carefully will usually understand the dispute better. A judge who understands the dispute will identify the relevant issues more accurately. A judge who identifies the issues accurately is more likely to deliver a judgment that is legally sound, intelligible and capable of resolving rather than merely concluding litigation.

That is legal practice in its deepest sense.

The Importance of the Dissent

Justice K. Vinod Chandran’s dissent should not be treated as a footnote to the majority judgment. It represents an important jurisprudential warning.

His view was that three years of practice at the Bar should remain an essential prerequisite and that practical courtroom experience cannot adequately be replaced by institutional training. His memorable characterisation of the courtroom as the most profound of classrooms captures something that every practising lawyer understands instinctively.

There are lessons learned in court that cannot be simulated.

The nervousness of making one’s first submission before an impatient judge, the discipline required to concede a weak point, the consequences of an incomplete brief, the responsibility of advising a client that the law does not support the outcome they desperately want, and the experience of watching a seemingly strong case collapse under cross examination all contribute to professional maturity.

The dissent therefore serves an important purpose. It reminds us that efficiency and accessibility must not dilute professional formation.

Yet I believe the majority has found a thoughtful middle course. It does not say that practice is unnecessary. It says, rather, that practical formation can be deliberately structured through a combination of Bar experience, judicial education and supervised institutional exposure.

That is a significant distinction.

A Question of Access and Diversity

There is another dimension that deserves greater attention.

Mandatory practice requirements have economic consequences.

The early years of litigation in India can be financially difficult. Young advocates frequently receive modest remuneration, particularly outside established chambers and commercial practices. A compulsory three year period may therefore operate differently upon candidates depending upon their social and economic circumstances.

A candidate with substantial family support may comfortably spend three years building a practice before attempting the judicial examination. Another equally capable graduate may not have that luxury.

The reduction to one year therefore has implications beyond administrative convenience. It may broaden access to judicial careers while still preserving meaningful professional exposure.

This matters because the legitimacy of the judiciary depends not merely upon doctrinal excellence but upon its capacity to attract talented people from different social, regional and economic backgrounds.

The judiciary should demand competence. It should demand integrity. It should demand maturity. But the route towards demonstrating those qualities should not unnecessarily exclude talented candidates merely because they cannot afford prolonged uncertainty at the beginning of professional life.

Judicial Education Must Now Deliver

The success of the new framework will ultimately depend upon the quality of the judicial academies and clerkship arrangements.

One year of training must not become twelve months of lectures.

Judicial training should be experiential and rigorous. Trainees should work through actual pleadings, identify issues, analyse evidence, draft interim orders and judgments, observe trial management and confront ethical problems drawn from real judicial life.

Training should also include mediation and settlement processes, communication with vulnerable litigants, gender sensitivity, disability inclusion, digital evidence, courtroom technology and judicial ethics.

The clerkship component is equally promising. Exposure first to the District Judiciary and then to a High Court Judge can give a future Civil Judge something extraordinarily valuable: an opportunity to see the judicial process from both ends of the institutional structure.

The District Court teaches the immediacy of justice. The High Court teaches the consequences of judicial reasoning under appellate scrutiny.

Together, they can create a more reflective judicial officer.

The Five Year Experiment

Perhaps one of the wisest aspects of the judgment is that the Supreme Court has not treated its new formula as immutable. The scheme is to operate for five years, after which empirical material concerning recruitment quality, training, clerkship and the performance of judicial officers may inform reconsideration.

This approach should be welcomed.

Judicial administration should increasingly be informed by evidence. After five years, the relevant question should not be whether one prefers one year or three years as a matter of instinct. We should ask what the evidence demonstrates.

How have officers recruited under the new system performed? Has the quality of judgments improved? Are procedural errors reduced? Are newly appointed judges more confident in trial management? Has diversity in recruitment increased? Has the clerkship genuinely contributed to judicial maturity?

These are measurable questions.

Legal policy becomes stronger when experience is allowed to test assumption.

From Legal Knowledge to Judicial Wisdom

Ultimately, the debate about one year versus three years is part of a much larger conversation about what kind of judges India needs.

The Civil Judge is often the citizen’s first encounter with the judicial system. For many litigants, this is not the lowest court. It is the most important court. Property, family relationships, livelihood, contractual obligations and personal dignity may all depend upon what happens there.

We therefore cannot afford to treat recruitment to the subordinate judiciary simply as another competitive examination.

A person may be academically brilliant and still need to learn how to judge. Equally, years spent in practice do not automatically confer judicial temperament.

Judicial excellence emerges from the combination of legal knowledge, practical experience, institutional discipline, empathy, integrity and the capacity to decide.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Bhumika Trust recognises this reality. It preserves the principle that future judges must experience the law in practice, but it refuses to equate professional maturity mechanically with the passage of three years.

For me, that is the enduring importance of this judgment.

As teachers, we must prepare students not merely to pass judicial examinations but to understand justice. As practitioners, we must give young lawyers meaningful exposure rather than certificates of convenience. As judicial institutions, we must transform training from formality into professional formation.

And for those young lawyers who aspire to sit on the Bench, one principle should remain clear: one year may now satisfy the formal practice requirement, but becoming a judge is the work of a lifetime.

The law can prescribe the minimum period before entering judicial service. It cannot prescribe the moment at which wisdom is acquired.

That must still be earned, case by case, litigant by litigant, and judgment by judgment.

Author: Pavani Sibal is the CEO of ADRODR India and Professor of Law at O.P. Jindal Global University. The views expressed are personal.