Lahore University of Management Sciences

Department of Law and Policy

Vision Statement

The Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) is currently spearheading a very important initiative geared towards the provision of high quality, socially relevant and cutting-edge legal education through the introduction and setting up of an exciting Law and Policy Program at LUMS (hereinafter the “Law & Policy Program” or the “Program”). This highly significant step is motivated towards ‘provision of legal education for legal reform’ in the context of globalization and the emerging global scenario. In other words, LUMS is endeavouring to set up a centre of excellence for law and policy studies, which not only addresses and provides meaningful solutions for pressing ground realities but is capable of offering international standard legal education, research and policy analysis which is in tune with the latest developments in these fields in the global arena.

LUMS strongly adheres to the ideal that provision of quality education is meaningless unless it actually contributes towards social and economic development. The proposed Law and Policy Program would endeavour to offer not just excellent professional education and research output but is expected to play a highly positive and productive role in bringing about social change and reform in the legal system, in promoting social responsibility, in stimulating intellectual dialogue and debate, in providing informed input to regulation and policy making and in strengthening the legal profession and judicial institutions for the better promotion of justice and greater national and regional growth and progress.

The Structure of the Program and the Nature of the Degree Offered

The Law and Policy Program will be governed and run by a new and autonomous Department of Law & Policy. The Department of Law & Policy will be an addition to the four Departments that currently comprise the School of Arts & Sciences at LUMS. It will be led by a Head of Department and will comprise of up to 8 to 9 full-time core faculty members in its initial growth years. The Department of Law & Policy may in the future grow into an autonomous School of Law & Policy under the LUMS umbrella. The B.A/LL.B shall be the first as well as the core law degree offered by the Law & Policy Program and other advanced degrees may be offered as the Program grows and matures.

The proposed Program will offer a unique five-year joint-degree of B.A/LL.B. This will allow students to spend the first two years of the Program towards getting a thorough grounding in the essential academic prerequisites for a sound legal training i.e. subjects such as politics, economics, history, philosophy, sociology, finance & accounting etc., as well as vital communication and computer skills. Over the next three years, the students will undergo a rigorous exposure to fundamental and specialized subjects in law as well as exciting new inter-disciplinary areas such as law and economics, regulation, and policy making which are now being offered at the leading law schools of the world. The mode of teaching will involve internationally proven techniques such as case studies, the Socratic Method and multiple clinical courses with an overall emphasis on developing a critical and analytical approach to the law. One of the essential hallmarks of this initiative will be its commitment to research and the dedicated full-time as well as adjunct/visiting faculty associated with the Program will be expected to develop quality textbooks/teaching materials as well as to engage in regular research projects.

The Distinctive Advantage of the LUMS Degree

LUMS has decided to take this vital step because of the several distinctive benefits and synergies, which emerge due to the launch of such an initiative from the LUMS platform. A Law & Policy Program housed in the LUMS environment, culture and facilities is highly likely to deliver academic excellence and a degree with a market and societal relevance. Such a nexus also provides exciting possibilities of inter-disciplinary learning through specially structured courses and research and joint degree programs between the Law & Policy Program and the existing School of Business and Departments of Economics, Social Sciences, Finance & Accounting, Mathematics and Computer Sciences at LUMS. An additional important benefit is that the rigorous and inter-disciplinary joint degree will equip graduates to not just pursue traditional vocations in the legal profession but also explore opportunities in and thus contribute to the private sector, academia, NGOs, civil bureaucracy, regulatory, research, and policy making bodies and financial institutions.

The Backdrop to the Vision

The system of law and justice in any country is the edifice on which it builds its civil society and democratic institutions. Not only is an efficient and fair system of justice a vital prerequisite for a free and pluralistic society, but also an equally important prerequisite is a wide spread belief and conviction in that society that the system of justice is efficient and fair. A collective sense of despair and injustice is lethal for any society and curtails the positive forces of development and reform. While the sustainability of a fair and just legal system is necessary for a developed society, for a less developed country it is the fundamental starting point, the alpha and omega of any possible progress. A society plagued by inner fissures, lawlessness, legal uncertainty, corrupt legal institutions and ill-informed economic, social and legal policy-making, begets a state oblivious to its duties and a public ignorant of its rights. Such a society is headed only one way – annihilation!

The system of law and justice in Pakistan, unfortunately, suffers from several widely recognized shortcomings, which hamstring most of the less developed countries. The important nexus between the quality of legal education provided in a country and the quality of justice delivered in its courts is universally recognized. Thus the existing quality of legal education, training and academia in the country has a key bearing on the quality of justice, which is meted out to its citizens by its courts and their resultant faith in the state. High quality and socially motivated education produces elements of change, quality research output, an atmosphere of incisive analysis and intellectual debate and a culture of tolerance and democracy – all of which ingredients boost the quality of the legal profession and the judicial institutions in a country.

Therefore, the creation of a socially relevant, professionally sound and innovative Law & Policy Program in a country like Pakistan does not have the limited impact of certain law students becoming better equipped lawyers. It is expected to create innumerable ripples across the face of the entire social, political and economic milieu. Not just through training better lawyers, but through, among other things, high quality research, rights awareness programs, informed input into the enactment of laws and formulation of policies and special training programs for lawyers, judges, businessmen and policy makers, the Law & Policy Program can become an important enabler of social change. It can thus be a significant contributory to the intellectual evolution and ideological growth of a society. Through a period of our history, where the strengthening and preservation of institutions is vital, such a Law & Policy Program can prove to be an important player in the struggle for a renaissance in this direction.

The Evolving Face of Legal Education across the Globe

The increasingly vital linkages between the academic and practical dimensions of law and other disciplines/areas such as management studies, economics, finance, government regulation, political science and policy-making. The emergence and global acceptance of the multidisciplinary approach.

There is rapidly growing awareness all over the world that many academic disciplines can no longer be visualized and taught in a self-contained, one-dimensional manner. This is a direct boon of the fast growing complexity and interrelationship of international finance, economics, trade and social as well as political policy imperatives, which necessitate the development of a multi-dimensional approach to the complex challenges of today. Airtight compartmentalization of academic disciplines is, therefore, very much an outdated concept. Traditional legal training merely equipped lawyers with the requisite skill set for conventional litigation and chamber practice. The profession of law has, however, undergone a metamorphosis in recent years so that lawyers are being increasingly expected to play a vital role in the areas of economic regulation, corporate governance, economic and political policy-making and the restructuring of the state. This requires a completely new and different set of skills, which the traditional legal training does not provide.

For instance, in today’s world, an economic regulator will be rendered ineffective if his thorough understanding of economics is coupled with a limited understanding of the applicable regulatory laws and the regime of interests, which they protect. Such a regulator, therefore, requires the input of a lawyer who can, in turn, understand his economic reasoning and imperatives. Similarly, a lawyer handling complex mergers or acquisitions transactions is required to have a fairly clear understanding of the economic, accounting and tax ramifications of his legal drafting. To carry the argument further, any contemporary theoretical work in the area of constitutional law in any country would be inadequate without a profound understanding of political theory and the economic and political history of that country. And you cannot make reformatory recommendations about say the excise duty or sales tax law of a country without looking at the legal, economic and social dimensions of such a reform. This rapidly growing interdisciplinary approach to academics has led to essentially three very significant developments. These are fundamental changes in the syllabi and teaching methodologies of the leading international law schools which reflect the changing and increasingly complex demands of the political, economic and legal environments all over the world.

1. The changing face of the role law plays all over the contemporary world. The vital importance of the newly emerging areas of regulation, trade and governance. The emerging multinational environmental treaties, the fast growing WTO regime, the complex international trade regulations and the ever-growing role of regulatory agencies in the domestic and international arenas are some of the glaring manifestations of a sea-change. All these are the reasons for and product of an international legal environment, which has changed beyond recognition in a very short space of time. Gone are the days of the conventional role of the law restricted to the civil and criminal procedure codes and straightforward litigators and counsels. Law now plays a fundamentally important role in the tremendously important growth areas of, inter alia, (1) regulation, (2) trade, and (3) governance, internationally as well as in domestic spheres.
2. Teaching the law not just as lawyers see it but from the eyeglasses of many others. The multidisciplinary approach. The leading law schools of the world, like all dynamic institutions, have tailored and amended what they teach according to the pressing demands of the fast changing international legal and economic environment. For instance, the Dean of the Stanford Law School introduces Stanford’s concept of legal education in the Law School’s 2002 Application Guide, by stating ‘ When you come to Stanford you also integrate legal analysis with the newest developments in other disciplines, from economics, statistics and finance to history, psychology, and cultural theory’. Thus, the primary consequential change has been the inculcation of a multidisciplinary approach at the level of teaching individual subjects of law. Supplementing this are advanced courses in international trade, regulation and governance, taught by lawyers and social scientists, who are increasingly finding ever-expanding spheres of common interest.

   As a result, even the teaching of and research in traditionally independent and airtight disciplines has undergone a tremendous transformation. The law of Contracts, for example, is no longer taught the way it was taught twenty years ago. At the leading law schools in the world, a professor teaching contracts can not limit herself anymore to enunciating the basic legal principles behind the theory of the law of Contracts, without familiarizing her students with the important, newly emerging and conflicting economic theories of Contract law. Similarly, the contemporary research in the important area of Corporate Governance is being conducted jointly by economists and lawyers. This is due to a collective recognition of the importance of both disciplines to understanding and prescribing how firms can be governed better, to protect the interests of a diverse body of stakeholders.

3. The Outcome: The emergence and growing popularity of joint degree programs. The natural resultant mini-revolution in the world of academics has been the emergence of joint degree programs/schools such as law and economics, law and public policy and law and business management etc., These programs are fast becoming the rule rather than the exception at most leading USA universities, such as Harvard, Stanford, Chicago as well as leading universities in the region. This is a direct manifestation of an international identification of the growing modern need for such an approach in order to successfully tackle the challenges of the changing world.

Having identified the acute need for the setting up of not just a high quality Law & Policy Program in Pakistan, but one which operates under the contemporary international approach to the teaching of law, as discussed above, LUMS has stepped in to fill the existing vacuum for such an institution of higher learning in Pakistan.

The Strategic Educational Mission of LUMS and the Law & Policy Program

LUMS’s strong historical interest in the setting up of a Law & Policy Program to boost and complement its overall educational initiative. The unique position and strengths of LUMS, which in turn make it an ideal place to launch and house such a Program.

In just over a decade, LUMS has grown to be a name to be reckoned with, not just in Pakistani academics but also in the academic world of the region. LUMS employs the latest and most sophisticated tools, materials and methodologies of teaching in its academic programs, enjoys an impeccable reputation for its meritocracy and culture of open debate and intellectual dialogue and can boast of a faculty of international standards. Its alumni are blazing new trails all over the globe and enjoy the respect and admiration of the market. For these and several other reasons, LUMS is best suited to initiate and house a Program of academic excellence in law and policy studies, which employs the latest in the teaching of these disciplines, offered by the leading law schools of the world. In other words, any such new school of law would uniquely benefit from being housed at LUMS.

LUMS has a professed and historically well-demonstrated commitment to offering academic excellence in areas such as social sciences, business studies, economics, finance and computer sciences, amongst others. The idea of housing a Law & Policy Program at LUMS is not new and it was very much within the original vision plan for the university. LUMS has thus always recognized the importance of taking the lead in the provision of high quality legal education not only for its own sake and the reasons discussed above, but also because, and very importantly, such a Program would enhance and significantly contribute to what LUMS is already offering through its other schools and programs. The strategic plan for the setting up of a Law & Policy Program at LUMS is the result of over three years of intensive internal debate and discussion amongst the LUMS faculty and its vision providers, an exhaustive evaluation of the existing standards of legal education in the country and the reforms introduced for its improvement as well as engaged consultation, inter alia, with the concerned Pakistani legal education regulatory institutions, legal and policy studies academics, judges of the superior courts, leading legal practitioners, social reformers and activists, representatives of industry, commerce and regulatory bodies as well as international law schools and legal academia.

The initiation and housing of such a Law & Policy Program at LUMS would also be a vital step towards the creation of a center of excellence where academics working in the increasingly interrelated areas of economics, finance, politics and law can collectively take on the challenges being posed by the transformation of the Pakistani economic and legal system. As to three of the above-mentioned disciplines, LUMS already can lay claim to possessing some of the leading academics and experts in the country who are increasingly becoming aware of the vacuum, which exists as to the fourth discipline, namely law. Quite apart from the benefits of a high quality Law & Policy Program, which have been enumerated below, housing such a Program at LUMS would provide this collective intellectual effort, the dynamic and forward thinking men of ideas belonging to the legal profession, whose vital input is crucial for any meaningful policy- making and reform. The areas of regulation, trade and governance have assumed enormous significance and LUMS has been involved in some of the most important, recent advisory and policy work in this area. With the establishment of a Law & Policy Program, this endeavour will receive a tremendous boost, not just for LUMS but also for wider society.

As already discussed, the contemporary approach to legal education is an interdisciplinary one. Because of what it already offers and the way it offers it, LUMS is ideally suited and equipped to set up a Law & Policy Program, which would be in a position to successfully adopt and employ such a contemporary approach. The distinctive features of such a Law & Policy Program are as follows:

• The 5-Year Law Degree. The Law & Policy Program will offer to students who hold at least an F.A/A-Levels degree, a five-year joint degree program (the “BA/LL.B”). The idea is to familiarize students during their first two years of the BA/LL.B with a variety of vital background subjects such as economics, political science, sociology, philosophy etc., already being offered at LUMS, which also form an essential foundation for the study of law. At the same time, the language and computer courses, which LUMS is offering at the undergraduate level, will help these students develop vital language and computer skills. The idea is simply this. A student who has taken basic courses in political theory and the economic and political history of Pakistan will obviously be able to gain a lot more from the more advanced courses in constitutional law being offered at a later stage. After a completion of two years of the above-described liberal arts education and skills development during which a student will be able to take some introductory courses to law, he will then embark on three years of sustained legal education while eventually having the option of choosing a specialized career stream, described below. LUMS is currently the only university in Pakistan, which is in a position to offer such a unique five year degree as it has a thriving undergraduate program with highly qualified social sciences, computer studies, mathematics, finance & accounting and economics faculty as well as a highly successful business school and fast growing graduate level economics and computer studies programs. All these schools and departments at LUMS offer enviable faculty resources and tremendous possibilities of interdisciplinary teaching and research for the Law & Policy Program. Thus the primary synergies required for the unique joint degree program already exist because of what LUMS is.
• Provision of Specialized Streams in Areas such as (a) Law, Policy and Development; (b) Law, Business and Economics; (c) Law and Society; and (d) Law and Technology. After its initial growth stage, the Law & Policy Program shall be in a position to offer to its students, specialized streams of learning at the advanced stages of the LL.B component of their joint degree. This will ensure that apart from a solid all round academic training at the B.A component level and a rigorous training in multidisciplinary subjects at the LL.B level, students will also be able to further specialize in a specialized stream of their choice, which shall equip them even better for a career in that area. Such specialization does not currently exist under the prevalent legal education system in Pakistan.
• The Boons of a Joint Degree Program. As described above, students will be awarded a joint degree at the end of the five-year program i.e. the BA/LL.B. This means that apart from their thorough grounding in law and policy studies, they will have a very good grounding in subjects like economics, finance, political science etc., This will not only enhance their skills and potential as a mainstream lawyer but also make them highly desirable for many employment sectors, which require such a diverse training and set of skills. Graduates of the Law & Policy Program, with their academic depth as well as broad variety of knowledge and skill sets, can thus not only opt for a conventional legal career but also have the option of joining and contributing towards a better functioning of state regulatory bodies, NGOs, private enterprises, civil bureaucracy, financial institutions, the academia etc.
• Building of a Legal Academia. Unlike existing law programs in Pakistan, the Law & Policy Program at LUMS is to be built on the essential idea of not just creating a legal training institute but a center of academic excellence. Apart from an essential core faculty of academics who will be expected to engage in research, the Program will attract the best available professionals with an academic bent who are willing to invest the time and effort towards visualizing and structuring a course/course materials and teaching it with tremendous commitment and originality, while adhering to the above state principles and approach. Constant faculty evaluation at the faculty and student levels will be introduced to maintain and further improve teaching standards. Outstanding students will be funded to go for Ph.D. studies and come back to further bolster the full-time faculty at LUMS as well as to deepen the law and policy faculty base in the country. Once again, all this is already the norm at the existing schools and departments at LUMS.
• Research Dimension and Knowledge Generation. Continuous and on-going research is a fundamental value and corner stone of the Law & Policy Program initiative. Apart from other impacts, such research will directly translate into better teaching. Law is an organic subject and unlike the study of Latin or Greek, there are very frequent changes of text, approach and issues. The introduction of the research dimension would, therefore, be a vital contribution by the Law & Policy Program to the broader society.
• The Dynamic Inter-disciplinary Syllabus. The provision of such a syllabus will be a hallmark of the Law & Policy Program and the contents of such a syllabus will be constantly evaluated and improved according to changes in society. While fulfilling the requirements of the Pakistan Bar Council, the fundamental focus and emphasis will be on the provision of a progressive and intellectually demanding syllabus in the following four basic ways:
  • By offering cutting-edge subjects such as international environmental law, e-commerce law, WTO, law of regulatory agencies, law of NGOs and social enterprises, etc.
  • By teaching the offered courses, not just within a legal paradigm and an emphasis on the statutory provisions but keeping in view the social, political, economic and commercial dimensions as well. The course materials and teaching techniques will be formulated accordingly.
  • By exploring the various dimensions/aspects within significant conventional subject areas. For example a study of Pakistani Constitutional law can be divided into, inter alia, four different specialized subjects, namely -- History of the Pakistani Constitution, Constitutional Law and Fundamental Rights, Constitutional Law and Political Theory and A Comparative Study of the Indian and Pakistani Constitutional Law.
  • Through offering several significant, interdisciplinary subjects such as the Economic and Legal aspects of Corporate Governance, Legal and Financial aspects of Banking, Law and Economics. LUMS has tremendous faculty resources to offer such cutting-edge courses, and is already offering some of these with great impact, and cross listing by students from the business and other schools will further make these classes even more informative and effective.
• State of the Art Teaching Methodology. LUMS is already a pioneer in the area of the Case Method of teaching and the Socratic Questioning approach, in Pakistan. The Case Method of teaching requires the creation of challenging cases, which present the students with problems and issues set in real life situations. This gives the entire intellectual exercise a context and direction, which is missing from the prevalent teaching methodologies. The use of the above techniques has been a resounding success in the LUMS Business School and the market has recognized the analytical edge, which it provides LUMS students with. The Law & Policy Program will benefit from this existing culture of teaching at LUMS.
• New Teaching Materials. Since the raison d’etre of the Law & Policy Program is the introduction and promotion of a high quality interdisciplinary approach to law and policy studies, the process is expected to make a seminal contribution to the creation of quality reading materials for these courses with a high amount of commitment and research expected from all faculty members towards preparing such case books, treatises and course materials for their courses. These will not only ensure the desirable teaching of these courses but will also be an invaluable contribution to legal teaching in general in Pakistan, given the dearth of such case books/treatise/course materials in the country. The fact that such a tradition for case writing and research is already well established at the existing schools and departments at LUMS, would enhance its inculcation in the Law & Policy Program.
• Latest Teaching Techniques. The Socratic Method of teaching and the use of Cases, where appropriate, will be supplemented by widely used teaching tools such as class presentations, seminars, visiting lecturers, law moots, simulated negotiations, active class participation and role playing, field studies to provide a direct experience of the subject matter of study, grading against the bell curve etc., which will ensure that classes have more of an impact and that the emphasis of teaching remains on promoting curiosity, analytical and communication skills and a deeper grasp of the subject. The examination system will also be geared towards gauging progress in these areas and not accumulation of meaningless information. The above-mentioned teaching techniques are already the norm at LUMS and hence will not be alien territory to the Law & Policy Program.
• Better Training and Marketability. The Law & Policy Program would ensure that the graduating lawyers have a diverse skill set and are extremely well trained in not just the law but many related disciplines as well as in the important overarching areas of communication and leadership skills. This translates into tremendous marketability for such graduates. Also, very important is the esteem and connections, which LUMS already enjoys in the market which would further contribute towards the successful placement of such graduates at highly challenging and diverse positions.
• Academic and Career Support to Students. LUMS is already well cognizant of the importance of providing effective academic and career-counseling support to its students in order for them to fully realize their potential and such an approach would be diligently followed at the Law & Policy Program.
• Financial Assistance and Student Diversity. Through its National Outreach Program, LUMS has already shown its unflinching commitment to providing access to its portals to talented but underprivileged students in society. Such an initiative is meant to make an important contribution towards removing existing social and economic inequities in terms of opportunities of pursuing higher learning as well as to attract the brightest and most hardworking students to LUMS from all vistas of society. The Law & Policy Program will share the same vision and the diligence and commitment required to realize it.
• Constant Interface with Developments in Society. The Law & Policy Program is by no means intended to be an air-tight haven of learning but one which develops strong links with the society around it, both to imbue its teaching content with practicality and also to be able to make effective practical contribution to society by being an important component of the broader societal dialogue. In this regard regular interface with the leading thinkers and activists in society as well as organizations doing meaningful and inspiring work shall be maintained through lectures, seminars, colloquia and conferences.
• International Partnerships/Student and Faculty Exchange Programs. In keeping with the existing tradition of LUMS to have highly valuable relationships with internationally reputed institutions of higher learning, the Law & Policy Program will endeavour to develop such relationships in order to give its program an international exposure and edge and to develop the requisite rigor to meet the demands of the new and increasingly technology and knowledge based economies.
• The Physical Infrastructure of LUMS. The physical surroundings and infrastructure also play a very important part in the success of an institution and the Law & Policy Program will tremendously benefit from being housed in the idyllic setting of LUMS, while enjoying its state of the art buildings, class rooms, library, computer facilities, support mechanisms etc

The Bigger Picture

The Multiple Potential Benefits to Society and the Legal Environment through the Law & Policy Program Initiative.

While the main unique features and strengths of the Law & Policy Program have already been touched upon, there are several other significant societal benefits as well as more specific advantages to the overarching legal and judicial environment, which are attached to such an initiative. They are briefly described as follows.

1. The Contribution toward an Enabling Environment for Change. Considering the paucity of quality legal education in Pakistan, there seems to be a ready demand for a center of excellence in the area of legal and policy studies. This is imperative for the development of an enabling environment in the country so that the system of law can be improved and the dispensation of justice reinforced, through a training of astute legal minds that can make a contribution as future lawyers, judges, policy makers, academics and activists. The future economic development of Pakistan, as well as the development of a civil society, is very much dependant on the establishment of such an enabling environment.
2. Joint Law and Economics/Law and Finance input to Policy Development. The Law & Policy Program is expected to play an important role in strengthening legal reform and policy making in the country through high quality and specialized input in these areas. The economics, finance and business management faculty at LUMS has noted the tremendous importance of the legal dimension of policy research work, which they have been conducting in the areas of regulation, governance, trade, institutional reform and the industrial and financial policy of the government. The Law & Policy Program will provide a tremendous platform for collective research and consultancy work in these areas.
3. A future LL.M Degree Program and other Specialized Graduate and Joint Degree Programs. Collaboration between the LUMS Economics M.Sc. and a Future LL.M Degree Program. An LL.M degree program would eventually be very much on the cards after a successful launch of the Law & Policy Program. It would fill the gap in the area of advance legal studies and research, which currently exists in Pakistan. There can be a tremendous nexus between the M.Sc. in Economics that LUMS is offering and an LL.M program. The M.Sc. is offering certain specializations in areas such as regulation, finance and development, which require a multi-disciplinary focus and a graduate program in law, could provide that dimension. Similarly students in a future LL.M program could conduct work in the area of law and economics by taking courses in the M.Sc. program.
4. Rights Awareness and Justice. The Law & Policy Program can perform a very important role in generating better rights awareness in society and providing a focus on justice issues, through the offering of relevant courses, the coordination of seminars, think tanks and research projects, and the setting up of a Center of Human Rights at LUMS. This would be a very valuable service in the current milieu where civil liberties enjoy their lowest protection yet.
5. Development of Future Law and Policy Academia as well as New Standards of Teaching. Through providing competitive remuneration packages, a culture of intellectual curiosity, opportunities for professional growth, scholarship programs for higher studies and collaborative arrangements with leading law and policy study institutes of the world, the Law & Policy Program hopes to attract talented Pakistani students to legal and policy studies academia, who shall not only bolster its own faculty but create a pool of well trained academics for other teaching and research organizations in Pakistan and thus set new standards of law teaching in the country.
6. Collaboration for Capacity Building at other Pakistani Law Schools. The Law & Policy Program is committed to not just creating a center of excellence at LUMS but to have on-going collaborative relationships with existing Pakistani law schools and centers of policy studies to contribute towards their capacity building and the raising of their standards. The Law & Policy Program also hopes to thus benefit from the good work already taking place at such institutions by learning from their experiences.
7. Specialized Centers and Interdisciplinary Think Tanks. These would be the logical result of the philosophy underlying the creation of the Law & Policy Program and would be of tremendous importance in providing specialized, high quality input into and direction for various areas of law and related disciplines.
8. Continuing legal education for Lawyers, Judges, Businessmen, NGO representatives etc., In most less developed countries, the idea of seeking formal education seems to come to a standstill after completing university education. Law, like many other disciplines, and in some ways more so, is in a constant state of flux. All those associated with it need to be constantly updated with changes in the law and legal approaches. This is a well-recognised function of law schools all over the world and the Law & Policy Program can take the lead in offering continuing education courses to a variety of players, which make up the system of law and justice in Pakistan.
9. Law-Based Executive Development Program. The current Executive Development Program at LUMS has been a great success and it is readily apparent that a similar program, focusing on the legal issues faced by the corporate, business and trading sectors, amongst others, will receive a similar response.
10. The establishment of an Alternative Dispute Resolution Center (“ADR”) Center. All over the world, alternative methods of dispute resolution are finding great favour with the business community. This is due to their lower costs and greater speed and efficiency in adjudicating matters, than the conventional court system. Quite amazingly, no center for alternative dispute resolution currently exists in Pakistan. The setting up of a reputable ADR Center can thus be a very useful and financially viable possibility with the establishment of the Law & Policy Program.
11. Law Journal and Other Publications. Currently, not a single law journal of quality exists in Pakistan, which is remarkable considering the size and importance of the legal profession in the country. A law journal serves not just as an avenue for the expression of current thinking on important legal issues but a platform for an analytical review of the leading legal developments and judgments. This in turn has a strong bearing on judicial as well as public policy approaches to such important matters, which require review, research and rigorous analysis. The Law & Policy Program could make a tremendous contribution through the initiation of a journal and other regular publications.
12. Library as Resource Center. More so than most other professions, the legal profession relies heavily on a well-equipped and constantly updated library, of which there are currently none in the academic and public spheres in Pakistan. The establishment of such a library is not just a sine qua non for the Law & Policy Program but it would be a tremendous resource center for the legal and academic community in general. Such a library would not only house international law journals and treatises of repute but also provide access to the most sophisticated on-line search engines and databases.
13. Contribution towards the Development of the Concept of Law Firms. The concept of having law firms, which offer a variety of specialized services and train high quality lawyers, is still very nascent in Pakistan. There are very few entities in Pakistan which can be called law firms in the internationally accepted sense of the word; in spite of the tremendous role such firms have played in the development and growth of legal systems in the developed world. The Law & Policy Program can play an important role in the development of law firms in Pakistan by not just training high quality lawyers but by helping out and providing guidance and direction in the process of such law firm creation.

In conclusion, the Law & Policy Program is committed to bringing about the establishment of not just a single institution but a wider culture of professional excellence, social relevance and constant innovation in the areas of legal and policy studies in Pakistan.