Problems and perspectives in Indian legal education have remained unchanged since the mid-nineteenth century when the earliest academies were established under imperial rule. Both legal studies and the profession were not created with a visible need to integrate with India’s social, political, and economic challenges. This wide gap has continued to thwart efforts to reform legal education thereafter. Thus, it is important to look between the past and the present to take stock of events from pre-independence till the advent of the national law schools. The article charts the consequences of India’s legal education policy, and developments, to further suggest that reforms must include more unorthodox introspection.