AI Can Solve India's Justice Backlog—And Law Students Must Lead the Way: BITS Dean, Ashish Bharadwaj

In this exclusive conversation with Shiksha.com, Prof. (Dr.) Ashish Bharadwaj, Founding Dean of BITS Law School, Mumbai, discusses how artificial intelligence is transforming legal education and the justice delivery system in India. He also shares insights into the school’s unique admission process and its integrated law programs.

Q. Today we have BITS Law School Dean Ashish Bharadwaj. Sir, first I would like to understand from you the role of artificial intelligence in legal education.

Dr Bharadwaj: Thank you for that question. I mean, the role is unravelling and opening up on a day-to-day basis. But what we are essentially seeing is new ways of applying intelligence, which is already out there—either through human cognitive abilities or through advancements in machine learning or natural language processing-based tools—that can further improve the way we work and the way we access solutions to problems.

Specifically, in court administration and legal practice, we are seeing a very particular solution to a challenge we face as a country: an already overwhelmed court system burdened with long pendency. I shared a data point earlier in my remarks—we have less than 900 judges across the approximately 25 high courts in the country, and they are collectively responsible for deciding nearly 63 lakh cases.

So, we are looking at an enormous burden on the judiciary, which slows down the entire justice delivery system. If you think about it, that further impacts how citizens’ trust evolves in the justice delivery system and the legal architecture of the country. And trust is the bedrock of any democracy. It also has implications for business and investments.

The whole idea of ease of doing business, of attracting investments—these are compromised when industries and firms see that their matters are taking more time than they should. So, the technology we discussed today, the technology we wish to share with everyone through this Centre Palette, essentially addresses this problem—of an overwhelmed judiciary and a justice system that is not able to contribute to society and the economy the way we would like it to.

Q. So how are you training your students in using AI and AI tools?

Dr Bharadwaj: Law students are one of the many components of the entire Palette. First, we need to introduce the idea of doing legal research on their own, using some traditional, conventional, tested pedagogies. But we also want to introduce newer ways of learning and engaging with material, and we see Palette as a platform where these two different approaches can come together.

We don't have to see it as an either/or—either you take the conventional route of in-classroom learning facilitated by a faculty using traditional methods, or you take the AI-enabled, more productive route in your research and writing. We see a confluence of the two.

Q. Will you also be launching some courses around AI?

Dr Bharadwaj: Yes. What we plan to do is offer a palette of programs or approaches that will be very useful for five different components of the ecosystem. The first are the students, as you said—and they needn’t be only law students. Students across disciplines.

The second set of stakeholders are those in active legal practice—as counsels, legal professionals, litigators. The third set are in-house teams of corporate firms or public companies. They all have in-house legal expertise and, as you heard from other panelists, they all want to bring about more efficiency, cost optimization, and process improvement.

The fourth set of stakeholders are those who are part of court administration and the judiciary. Because the change has to start with those handling the bureaucratic and administrative aspects of the justice delivery system, they too need to be exposed to and comfortable with these tools.

And the fifth and final set are researchers, faculty members, and professors—those who are the bridge between young learners and practitioners or jurists.

Q. Sir, some questions about BITS Law School. What are the programs that you are offering as of now and what is the admission process for those courses?

Dr Bharadwaj: BITS Law School was established in 2023. We offer two programs: BA LLB (Hons.) and BBA LLB (Hons.). Both are five-year integrated law programs. We have a residential campus, and these two programs are offered in a fully residential format.

The admission process has four layers. The first is academic and co-curricular achievements or efforts by the applicant from the 10th grade onwards. We’re not just looking for toppers in grades 10, 11, and 12—we’re more interested in the consistency with which students have been learning.

The second layer, mandated by the Bar Council of India, is a law entrance exam. We accept all standardized law entrance scores, including CLAT and LNAT. We also have our own BITS Law Admission Test (BLAT), which we’ve developed by borrowing tested ideas from various entrance exams.

The third layer involves interviews for shortlisted applicants. These are conducted virtually in a live session with a faculty member. The interviews have two parts: the first is what has become really popular among law aspirants—a one-word essay. This tests spontaneity and critical thinking based on what the student has learned in school.

Q. Is there something like an SOP?

Dr Bharadwaj: No, there is no SOP. You have to understand the genesis of the Statement of Purpose. SOP in higher education is meant to help a student reflect on their goals. But the idea behind higher education is also to help students experience different avenues of finding purpose.

If a 17-year-old already knows the purpose of their life, then there’s no real need to go to university in the first place.

Every part of our admission process is tailored to capture something very specific that we’re interested in. We are not overly focused on toppers, grades, or marks. I’ll complete that last point.

One is the one-word essay to test spontaneity and critical thinking. The second is a reading comprehension exercise, done live with a faculty member. The emphasis is not on accent, and only to a small extent on vocabulary—but more on how coherently a student can mentally form sentences, create an argument, and reason that argument with the interviewer.

The last element is that we do give some weightage to what the applicant has done outside the classroom. We are very interested in co-curricular and extra-curricular activities. These don’t need to be academic in nature. It doesn’t have to be just MUNs or debate competitions—it can be anything.

Again, the question is “why?” What we are trying to measure is where the applicant’s interests lie. If they have identified an interest for themselves—be it playing with clay or chess—then we want to understand how passionate they are about it. We assess the efforts they have made to deepen that interest.

We’re not too concerned about whether they came first in a competition. We want to understand what makes them get out of bed every morning, beyond academic studies.

Q. How many seats are there in these courses?

Dr Bharadwaj: Our BBA LLB (Hons.) program has 60 seats—it’s slightly niche. The BA LLB (Hons.) program has 120 seats. So, currently, the total batch strength is 180.

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