LAHORE: Punjab JudicialAcademy Director General (DG) retired Justice Chaudhry Shahid Saeed on Friday vowed to convert the academy into a university ofinternationalstandards.

In an interview with APP, he said LLM and PhD degrees would be introduced in the university for in-service judges.

He also said appointments and postingsofjudgestojuniorcourtshadbeen conditioned with training course of the academy so that trained judges could be produced.

Providing details, he said courses being introduced at the academy had been designed in such a way that appli-cants could get justice in time. He said a large number of law students studied from guide books close to their annual examination and after passing joined the profession with poor knowledge.

The DG suggested a six-year law course be introduced in which students could opt for law after matriculation for improvement of standards of law education.

Answering a question, he said the number of judges in subordinate courts was being increased due to pressure of number of cases.

Commenting on the performance of the judicial academy, he said a trainingworkshop had been conducted for 512 district and sessions judges, senior civil judges, civil judges-cum-judicial magistrates since May.

He further said training programmes for judges of other provinces were also conducted in the academy, while several judges were sent abroad for certain courses.

The DG said work on the new building of Punjab Judicial Academy over 400 1(anals near Kala Shah Kaku was in progress and one block had been completed so far. Construction of a hostel for judges would be completed this year. APP