Project Legal Information Exchange Network (LIEN) By Raghul Sudheesh Efficient Legal Education depends a lot on research and

application skills. While the top NLUs are efficient enough to provide opportunities for developing such skills among the students, the students at the other law institutions often lag behind. This has been an important factor in the creation of the mass opinion about law as a career option, and most of it seems to be mythical. As such, to improve the status of legal education and bring forward its real potential, a uniform standard of quality education needs to be set so as to bring the law students across the country at par, albeit their educational background and the nature of their institution. This will not only add new career prospects for the students in the numerous law institutions in the country but would also improve the outlook of the masses towards legal education. The legal fraternity must take responsibility of meeting these objectives to elevate the status of law on the educational as well as vocational strata. As an effort in this direction, Stripped Law < www.strippedlaw.blogspot.com> in collaboration with Career and Counselling Cell of Government Law College, Calicut is pleased to introduce Project LIEN: a project aimed at tapping the potential of the students in the lesser known law colleges and giving them opportunities to develop unique application skills. Project LIEN (Legal Information Exchange Network) proposes a unique four tier process to augment the assimilation of valuable knowledge from authoritative sources to the students and also among the students themselves. It brings forward a platform which facilitates the top layers and the legal fraternity to contribute to this collective responsibility, thereby also facilitating students with expert guidance. The Project proposes a four staged process. Initially, the students are sensitized by various legal experts as to the various areas of law, for instance, mergers, acquisitions, intellectual property regulations, etc. This forms the

First Stage and would facilitate insight into various legal dimensions, delivered by the experts themselves. The second stage would include the formation of student groups. These groups will be formed by the students among themselves after the sensitization process is over. The groups will be formed according to the interests of the students in the various areas of law. For instance, there may be an IPR group constituted by students interested in the Intellectual Property Regulations. Each group shall also appoint a team leader. These student groups will then sensitize each other on the area chosen and will get updated to the maximum. Each student can pick up a specific sub-topic and update the other group members regarding the same. In this way, each student will be able to get a comprehensive insight of the particular area. After the intra-group sensitization concludes, the groups begin an inter-group approach and assimilate the knowledge of their areas to students of other groups. This can be done by organising seminars, workshops and other such activities. This forms the Third Stage. After the extensive exercise of information exchange, the process of institutionalisation will start, when the students will initiate the process of forming academic power houses among themselves. The students create a platform and then participate in the subsequent developments in their respective areas of interest by analysing and commenting on the advancements happening in the legal arena. This forms the fourth stage