Advocate assessment: NTS exam made mandatory for bar licence

Committee also suggested an amendment in the rules to allow a litigant to engage counsel of her choice in review cases

LAHORE:

The Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) has decided that National Testing Service (NTS) examinations should be mandatory for the grant of practising licences to advocates, PBC Vice Chairman Akhtar Hussain said on Friday.

The decision was made keeping in view the deterioration in the quality of education at law colleges, Hussain told a press conference at the Karachi Shuhada Hall of the Lahore High Court Bar Association (LHCBA). He said a letter had been sent to the Law Ministry asking it to introduce an amendment to this effect in the Legal Practitioners and Bar Council Act.

The vice chairman said that the PBC’s Law Reforms Committee had passed a resolution calling for an amendment in the suo motu powers exercised by the Supreme Court. The resolution was moved by Mohammad Ahsan Bhoon, a member of the PBC. He said that in a suo motu case, the aggrieved party/person should be given the right of appeal.

He said the committee had also suggested an amendment in the rules to allow a litigant to engage the counsel of her choice in review cases. The requirement that the litigant engage the same counsel was a violation of the fundamental rights of a litigant and needed to be changed, he said.

LHCBA president Chaudhry Shehram Sarwar also attended the press conference.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 1^st, 2012.