Legal education is the education gained by individuals to become legal professionals or practitioners. The degree obtained by an individual in this stream can also be useful in some other fields like in business, academic or in politics also.

Unlike other forms of professional education such as medicine and engineering, legal education is both professional as well as liberal. It aims at the acquisition of professional skills, if taken as a professional education. But it can aim at value-oriented, socio-cultural education if it is considered as a liberal education. 

The main difference between law and other social science subjects is that legal studies are multi-disciplinary in character. In many law subjects, a scientific background is not only necessary, but is essential. Similarly, in many legal subjects, knowledge of finance and accounts has become essential. Law is concerned with governance and therefore, legal education must be developed upon a sound basis of multi-disciplinary education.

India, owing to its rapid development in professional education, has also provided Law as a hot career option to its aspirants. The various Law schools and universities in India offer several academic programs in Law. The course may be of 5 years, 3 years or of 2 years of duration. One can also pursue 1 year or even 6 months Diploma courses to gain specialized knowledge in the field.   

The specializations offered by Indian universities are depicted below.

• Civillaw,
• Criminallaw
• Company or Corporate law,
• Taxation laws like income tax law and Excise law etc.
• Labour law
• International law,
• Family law,
• Constitutional law,
• Administration law,
• Trade mark, copyright and IP rights or patent laws etc.