Chief Justice Gavai just spoke the truth. Legal education was never equal.

WHEN CHIEF JUSTICE B.R. GAVAI stood before graduating students at NALSAR and told them not to  pursue a foreign LLM by taking on a ₹60-lakh loan, it may have sounded to some only as a cautious financial advice. But for those of us who have lived the realities he was alluding to, his words were  far more powerful. In a brief remark, he punctured a carefully preserved illusion: that legal  education in India is a neutral, merit-based ladder open equally to all. It is not. It never was.  

Coming from any judge, the remark might have passed without much attention. But Justice Gavai is not just any judge. He is only the second Dalit Chief Justice of India in the republic’s history, someone who has not theorised caste from a distance, but lived its everyday truths.  

His presence in that hallroom, and in that office, carries weight beyond formality. And what he said in that moment was not just about foreign degrees or debt, it was a quiet but forceful indictment of the  systemic inequalities that define who gets to thrive in India’s legal profession and who gets left behind.  

This country loves to speak of equality, particularly in legal spaces. We build speeches and  judgments around it. We quote the Preamble, cite Article 14, and invoke the Constitution as a grand  leveller. But we rarely stop to ask who actually gets to access the promise that equality holds. We  are less comfortable with that question because the answer often points straight back at us.  

The reality is this: merit is not evenly distributed because access never was. The legal education  system in India is built on a hidden scaffolding of caste, class, language, and inherited privilege.  National Law Universities (‘NLUs’), often seen as the pinnacle of legal training, admit only a narrow sliver of India’s population; those who can afford elite coaching, English fluency, and years of  academic grooming. Their fees, grossing around Rs 15 lakhs in total nowadays, are unaffordable for many. Their culture is alienating to most. And their graduates- almost by design, end up with disproportionate access to law firms, judicial clerkships, and postgraduate scholarships.  

Now contrast that with the journey of a student who enters a traditional law college, perhaps at a Central or state university. This student may have studied in a government school with broken  infrastructure, worked part-time to support their family, and walked into law with little guidance, few connections, and no margin for error. They read the same Constitution. They pass the same bar.  They often outperform their peers in real-life resilience. But the legal world does not reward  resilience. It rewards reputation, and reputation is monopolised by pedigree.  

When both these students step into the legal market, it is not knowledge that differentiates them, but taglines: the name of the university, the internships completed, the comfort with polished English, the ease with urban codes of behaviour. One is called “promising.” The other is “raw.” One is  absorbed into the circuit of clerkships and foreign LLMs. The other is asked to prove their worth  again and again, and still might not be seen.  

This is the reality that Chief Justice Gavai was pointing to. His warning about students taking massive loans to  pursue foreign LLMs was not about ambition, but rather about access. It was about how some students can fund dreams while others are asked to mortgage their futures just to keep up. When a privileged  student spends lakhs on an elite law school and more on a foreign degree, it is seen as investment.  When a Dalit or EWS student does the same, it becomes a risk. This is not just a matter of economics. It is a matter of caste, of history, and of how we have built the legal profession to look like it is open to all, while silently closing doors for most.  

Justice Gavai also hinted at something else that few in his position ever do: why young law graduates from  marginalised backgrounds are turning away from litigation. It is not because they lack commitment or capacity, but because the path is stacked against them. Unlike corporate jobs, litigation does not  offer income security in the early years. It often requires unpaid work, social networking, and survival in elite spaces that were never built with them in mind. For someone whose family depends on their earnings, this is not an option; it is a trap.