Bench vs Bar: Why Learning Law from a Judge Differs Structurally from Learning Law from an Advocate, and How the Parul Institute of Law Is Restructuring Around This Insight

Most law students learn the institutional distinction between the Bench and the Bar in their first semester. They rarely think about it again.

The distinction shapes the entire professional architecture of Indian legal practice, but it rarely receives explicit treatment in classroom instruction. The appointment of Hon’ble Justice Rajesh Bindal, retired Judge of the Supreme Court of India, as Distinguished Honorary Professor of Law at the Parul Institute of Law, is the first concrete institutional action in Indian private legal education that addresses this distinction at scale.

Two institutions. Same legal system. Structurally different professional perspectives.

The Bar is managed by the Bar Council of India nationally and state bar councils regionally. The bench is guided by the Supreme Court of India, High Courts of India, and the related judiciary and specialised tribunals. The appointment of judicial candidates usually requires decades of practice at the Bar, but the institutional views differ of a Judge from that of an advocate, even if they have years of experience.

What members of the Bar do:

• Members of the bar list out the pleadings, drafts, and legal documents for clients.
• Advise clients on legal strategy across litigation, transactional, and advisory practice
• Argue matters before courts and tribunals as counsel
• Conduct due diligence and legal opinions for corporate clients
• Negotiate settlements and represent clients in mediation and arbitration

What members of the Bench do:

• Preside over court proceedings and hear oral arguments
• Weigh evidence and competing legal interpretation
• Deliberate on questions of law alongside fellow judges in benches
• Author judgments that resolve disputes and become binding precedent
• Operate within the institutional constraints of judicial conduct and impartiality

Look at the guest lecturer rosters of most Indian law schools. The pattern is the same.

Practising advocates, Senior Counsel, law firm partners, and litigation specialists are the most common external faculty contributors at most Indian law schools, both government and private. The model has produced significant value:

• Exposure to current practice: Students benefit from real-world case examples drawn from active litigation.
• Procedural grounding: Practising advocates can convey courtroom procedure with the authority of recent practice.
• Career pipeline visibility: Bar-anchored faculty are structurally connected to the placement and internship infrastructure that absorbs law graduates.
• Operational realism: The model reflects the practical accessibility of practising advocates relative to judicial figures during active service.

But the model leaves a structural gap. The perspective of the Judge is largely absent from the standard curriculum.

Read More : Article 39 (b), decision on Property Owners Association v. State of Maharashtra (2024).  

A law student reading a Supreme Court judgment encounters the decision as a finished doctrinal product.

The judgment reads as a coherent statement of law, with citations, reasoning, and conclusion. What the student cannot see, reading the published judgment alone, is the deliberative process behind the document. The hidden layer includes:

• The arguments that nearly succeeded: Counsel positions the Bench seriously considered but ultimately rejected.
• The unresolved tensions: Constitutional, statutory, and moral considerations that had to be balanced before judgment could take shape.
• The shifting deliberation: Moments when the Bench’s collective view changed during oral argument or post-hearing deliberation.
• The alternative frameworks: Legal theories that were considered as candidates for the holding but rejected on the way to the final reasoning.
• The administrative consequences: Considerations of institutional impact that weighed upon the Bench in framing the order.

A Judge who has presided over thousands of such proceedings carries this knowledge in a form that no textbook can convey.

When such a Judge teaches, students access a layer of legal understanding that the conventional Bar-anchored model does not deliver. The understanding is not about how to argue a case (which the Bar can teach excellently). It is about how the Bench evaluates arguments, what the Court actually weighs in its deliberations, and how doctrinal reasoning emerges from the interaction between counsel’s submissions and the Bench’s institutional perspective.

A law student who learns only from the Bar learns how to argue. Whereas a law student who learns and gets guided from the bench gets knowledge of how the court will receive that argument. The two views are complementary, not substitutable.

Institutional position on the Bench-Bar pedagogical distinction at the Parul Institute of Law

Indian legal practice operates within a substantial body of unwritten norms.

Courtroom etiquette, professional bearing before the Bench, expectations of restraint and decorum, implicit hierarchies of seniority and respect, and ethical sensibilities that shape professional reputation across a career, none of this is statutory. None of it is in any examination syllabus. None of it is taught in any standard textbook. The norms are transmitted through observation, practice, and the correction that operates inside the legal community when someone violates an expectation.

The cost of arriving at the Bar without internalising these norms is significant.

A lawyer who is brilliant in doctrinal knowledge but clumsy in courtroom bearing will struggle to earn the respect of judges and senior peers, regardless of technical capability. The norms are best transmitted by those who have observed them from the elevated perspective of the Bench across decades of proceedings.

Read More : MedLEaPR’s architecture Justice Rajesh Bindal

During an oral argument by a senior law officer of the Government of India, a junior member of the Bar standing behind him began nodding visibly in agreement with each submission made. The Bench observed the conduct and addressed it directly. The junior was instructed:

• That nonverbal communication of agreement or disagreement with senior counsel’s argument was inappropria
• That the Bench would correct any error in the law officer’s submissions if such correction was required
• That the courtroom is not a venue for performative endorsement by silent observers

The lesson is not a rule of procedure. It is a cultural expectation about the dignity of proceedings.

A Judge who has presided over countless such moments is uniquely positioned to transmit this cultural knowledge to students in a way that no textbook, no procedural manual, and no Bar-anchored guest lecture can match.

Also Read: Law At Parul University

The default image of a lawyer’s career in India centres on litigation or corporate law firm employment. The wider landscape is rarely visible.

Indian legal education’s standard career counselling tends to under-explain the alternative pathways that absorb meaningful shares of qualified legal talent each year:

• Judicial service: Subordinate judiciary entry through state-level judicial service examinations leading to district and sessions court positions.
• Government legal practice: Central and state ministry legal departments, Attorney General’s office, Solicitor General’s office, government law officer positions.
• Regulatory bodies: Legal advisory roles at SEBI, RBI, TRAI, CCI, IRDAI, and other statutory regulators.
• Public policy law: Legislative drafting, policy advisory at think tanks, parliamentary legal research positions.
• Legal academia: Research and teaching positions at law schools, judicial academies, and constitutional study centres.
• International legal organisations: UN bodies, international tribunals, cross-border arbitration practice.
• Statutory body advisory: Legal advisory roles at NHRC, NCW, NCSC, NCST, and similar institutions.

A retired Judge who has navigated the apex levels of public legal service can illuminate these pathways in ways conventional career counselling cannot.

The appointment of Justice Rajesh Bindal as Distinguished Honorary Professor of Law at the Parul Institute of Law operationalises the Bench-perspective insight as a structural feature of the institution rather than as a one-off guest engagement. The framework includes:

• Experience-anchored teaching: Justice Bindal teaches through judgments he authored and courtroom situations he presided over, not through syllabus recitation.
• Planned expansion: Up to four more honorary professorships approved, drawn from former Supreme Court Judges and former Chief Justices.
• Curriculum integration: Judicial perspective fed into the Board of Studies and curriculum review processes.
• Research mentorship: Justice Bindal guides student research and publications, opening pathways to scholarly journals and academic placement.
• International partnerships: Plans for formal MOUs and research collaborations with international law schools where Justice Bindal has academic standing.

For students taking or planning to pursue BA LLB, BBA LLB (Hons.), LLB and LLM programmes at Parul Institute of Law, the practical experience is gained through judicial perspective across their degree programmes.

Also Read: D.Y. Chandrachud at VLF Parul University.