BA LLB Hons at NLU Hyderabad (NALSAR) Offline Course

Till May 2012, our BA LLB (Honours) program was driven by mandatory courses, what with 47 of the 50 courses being mandatory. Upon re-evaluating the undergraduate course it was found that the one size fits all approach did not bring out the best in all students as many of the mandatory course did not interest them. Consequently, from June 2012 NALSAR moved to a credit based elective system, which requires students to earn 200 credits over a period of five years to earn the degree.

All the courses listed as compulsory by the Bar Council of India; along with law and poverty and intellectual property law have been listed as mandatory courses. Training in the practice dimension of law is ensured through the clinic program. Students are required to collect 16 credits from the clinic program. Students can earn the remaining credits for the degree from a wide range of elective courses, which are offered by the home and visiting faculty.

The mandatory courses are transacted through large class lectures and small group tutorials. The tutors are appointed from the LLM and LLB final year students after a rigorous selection process.

The degree aims to equip students with research and writing skills through different kinds of projects assignments such as : newspaper discovery; film reviews; conducting of live interviews; creating moot problems; drafting petitions; book reviews; case comments; literature surveys and research papers. Whilst students are required to undertake one assignment for each mandatory course; they can choose the kind of assignment, they wish to do in a course by bidding for the same in a class auction and thus create their own project portfolio. Since the assignments have been calibrated for difficulty level and have to be handed at periodic intervals through the semester the projects portfolio supports efficient use of time; along with training students in varied kinds of research and writing skills.

Even as the university has organized the research and writing skills through projects, it allows students to explore other co-curricular routes such as moot courts and essay competitions. The co-curricular initiative which is seen to fulfil the project requirement is then evaluated by the faculty. The large repository of elective courses; the varied project assignments and different learning techniques is an effort at recognizing multiple intelligences and providing space for the strengths of all kinds of students.