Law School For All: IGNOU is drawing lawyers, cops, CAs, even sitting judges with revamped legal courses

With the changes in Indian penal provisions, the labour codes, the law school at Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) is all set to launch their updated programmes in January. The School of Law opened two decades ago and is unique among central university institutions because it is not able to produce lawyers.

Instead, its mission is promoting legal literacy across the country through certificate and diploma programmes. Its leaders say the school is now “accelerating” that mission.

Apart from legal literacy, the school is also determined to create a cadre of paralegal professionals in a few years, following their agreement with the law ministry’s department of justice. This was already one of the school’s most popular courses, along with a PG courses in cyber law, human rights and criminal justice.

Anuradha Dutta, an Assam-based accountant, completed the cyber law course in 2019.

“I think it was a very interesting course and at this age, when there are cases of cyber crime, knowing the law has been helpful,” said Dutta.

IGNOU’s programmes have drawn many like her. Working professionals from the corporate sector, lawyers, chartered accountants, students pursuing other programmes, even sitting judges are among the learners opting for these courses, said the school’s head, Gurmeet Kaur.

IGNOU new law courses

The university offers 10 courses, some diploma programmes and the rest certificate courses. Some of the courses are for the students who have just finished school while the others are for those looking to upskill themselves.

The university plans to launch more courses in the near future.

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“Alternative dispute resolution is an important area we are working on,” said Kaur. “Now, even the High Court provides certificates to mediators. There are also some professional programmes at masters level. MBA in Law and Management. It will be in collaboration with management faculty.”

IGNOU Law Courses

• PG Diploma in Intellectual Property Rights
• PG Diploma in Criminal Justice
• PG Certificate in Patent Practice
• PG Certificate in Cyber Law
• Diploma in Paralegal Practice
• Certificate in Consumer Protection
• Certificate in Co-operation, Co-operative Laws and Business Laws
• Certificate in Humanitarian Law
• Certificate in Human Rights
• Certificate in Anti-Human Trafficking

“The School of Law was started in 2005. There was a committee headed by well known jurist, Madhav Menon. The objective behind it was that there have to be courses to create some kind of knowledge of law and there was no need to study law full-time. Our mandate was to create legal awareness. What we found was that people who are well-paced, could not study law at that time but wanted to have an understanding of law enrolled in our programme” said professor Anand Gupta. He joined the university in 2006 and specialises in international law.

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IGNOU: Updated law courses

The cyber law programmes have been updated. The university has added a component on cyber forensics and the programme will be available in both Hindi and English.

“In criminal justice as well, the new criminal legislations are being incorporated. The revised programme will be launched in July. This course will be helpful for everyone as many new things have been added and it is important for people to know,” said Kaur.

According to the official, there are minor fluctuations in enrollment in certain courses.

“With the courses being updated, we are quite certain that the enrollment will increase further,” said an official.

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The fees for these courses range from Rs 3000 to Rs 10,800. They are six-month programmes that the learners can take up to two years to complete.

IGNOU cadre of paralegals

Paralegals are law professionals who are not full-fledged lawyers but assist them in the discharge of certain functions.

“The one unique course that was created was the Diploma in Paralegal Practice,” said Gupta. The goal is to create an entire cadre of such practitioners.

In order to do this, the university has signed a memorandum of understanding with the department of justice.

“It is for those who have not done law or LLM but they can be useful in mediation and in rural places, they could help people in filing a suit. It will also be for those who are working in the social sector and want to contribute towards society,” said Kaur.

The revised version of the course is being launched in January.

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IGNOU Law Courses: Diverse learners

Given IGNOU law school’s unique mandate of promoting legal understanding among non-lawyers, its learner groups are naturally diverse. But its cyber law courses are especially so. It has seen a large number of police personnel enrolling as well.

“Those with a law background and chartered accountants are enrolled in the cyber law course. Those who are working with MNC are also studying it. It is a mixed group. We also had a few sitting judges who were enrolled in some of the courses. There are also retired personnel who just want to stay updated,” said Kaur.

Alex Babu Joseph, now pursuing a masters degree in Germany, completed the certificate course in international humanitarian law.

“I completed my masters from University of Kerala in 2022 and enrolled in the course. Right now, I am doing my second masters and the certificate course has been helpful as I had studied immigration law and others. As part of the course, I also wrote a research paper so that aspect has also been very helpful,” said Joseph over the phone. From Kerala, Joseph did his BA and MA in English.

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IGNOU LLB course

According to officials at the university, they have approached the Bar Council of India and University Grants Commission seeking permission to start a full-fledged LLB degree programme. As BCI regulation does not allow legal degrees to be offered in distance or online mode, IGNOU has been unable to launch on so far. However, the university offers PhD in Law.

“This is the age of blended education, online face-to-face, and even conventional education has become blended. UGC also allows 40% of online programmes,” said Gupta. “We have different mechanisms to run the course. For instance, in science courses we have tie ups with local colleges which have labs. If we start LLB, we can develop mechanisms to ensure the quality of legal education. IGNOU does not compromise with quality. We will devise a mechanism to offer LLB courses as well.”