Minimum 3 years, but not at Bar: How SC changed rules to become a judge

On August 21, the Supreme Court maintained its 2025 decision mandating prior professional experience for entry into India's subordinate judiciary, but modified the rule's implementation. While the court did not revisit its decision that future judges should possess some understanding of court operations, it clarified that this experience does not need to stem from explicit practice at the Bar.

Instead, the court accepted a one-year judicial academic training and one year of supervised clerkship in its place. Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice A G Masih formed the majority, asserting that a judicial service demanding maturity and practical exposure must also remain attractive to the most capable young lawyers. They warned that excessively stringent entry requirements could deter the very candidates the rule aims to attract.

However, Justice K Vinod Chandran dissented, arguing that the original three-year practice at the Bar requirement should remain unchanged. Justice Chandran contended that law graduates steeped in academics should first gain firsthand experience of the workings of the court system before deciding their futures. Before 2002, most Indian states required a minimum three years of legal practice before aspiring lawyers could sit for the examination to become Civil Judge (Junior Division) in the district judiciary.

In 1993, the Supreme Court standardized this requirement across the country, stating that recruiting law graduates without any legal experience had not proven successful. The Shetty Commission, formed to review judicial recruitment, concluded that law school graduates were already exposed to courts through internships and clinical training.

Consequently, the commission recommended abandoning the three-year practice requirement in 2002, allowing law graduates to enter the judicial service examination immediately after graduation. However, in May 2025, the Court reversed this stance, reaffirming the three-year practice requirement, stating that candidates must have three years of relevant experience before taking the judicial service exam.

This period would start from the date they enroll with the State Bar Council, with time spent as a law clerk with judges also counting towards the requirement. The court directed successful candidates to undergo at least one year of training before assuming a regular judicial post. This decision sparked immediate review petitions, with critics arguing that the court relied on affidavits supporting the rule while giving less weight to states that opposed it.

They also noted that the ruling did not provide empirical evidence that fresh graduates perform worse as judges. Moreover, there were broader concerns about fairness, as two decades of law students had planned their careers assuming the exam would be open immediately after graduation, and the sudden reintroduction of a waiting period disrupted those plans.

Despite these criticisms, the 2026 order retained the court's core belief that law graduates should have some exposure to the functioning of courts before entering judicial services. It emphasized that civil judges deal with matters of life, liberty, property, and personal rights from day one, and that exposure to court proceedings helps develop judicial temperament, patience, empathy, courtroom discipline, and an understanding of the roles of the Bench and the Bar.

The court acknowledged that practical experience can be acquired through various means, including judicial training and supervised clerkships, but stopped short of creating separate eligibility standards for different categories of candidates.