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There was a big seminar on legal education and the future of national law schools the other day with constitutional heavyweights in attendance. Five-year law, it was said, has captured the national imagination.<\/p>\n
In 1991, when I was leaving the safe ecosystem of Kolkata (then Calcutta) for law school in Karnataka, I had to grapple with the silent, judging looks of my relatives who emitted sympathetic groans and patted me, all the while thinking \u201cwhat a loser, couldn\u2019t even get into a law course in Calcutta and has to go all the way to Bangalore\u201d. Crossing the Vindhyas for engineering, medical, hell even hotel management, was understandable. But law? Who would do that when anyone and every one could just walk into South City Hazra Law College (evening course)?<\/p>\n
I did quite well in law school. Sadly, not so well in the real politics of law. My classmates, who I silently wrote off as they stayed back after terms to give \u201crepeat\u201d exams \u2013 \u00a0incidentally many prided themselves in the title \u201crepeat king\u201d \u2013 are today rockstars heading global law firms and law departments of multinational firms.<\/p>\n
This got me thinking. Why has the \u201cnational law school\u201d education failed me?<\/p>\n
Here are my two bits on what they fail to teach us in law school and what we are forced to learn on the job.<\/p>\n
101 innovative adjournment ideas<\/strong><\/p>\n Once a lawyer was caught out for asking for an adjournment as his grandmother had died. The judge, gleeful at having finally cornered the \u201cadjournment specialist\u201d, said, \u201cVakil sahab<\/em>, that\u2019s what you had said six months ago.\u201d This lawyer, who is famous in Delhi\u2019s labour courts for taking adjournments, without batting an eyelid, said, \u201cSir, can I help if if my grandfather had married twice!\u201d<\/p>\n This talent can come of use collaterally as well. One lawyer reportedly staved off tax officials by pleading that rats or termites had eaten his records. My lack of talent in this department was exposed early in my legal career when I learnt a basic legal lesson the hard way. My senior had gone off to a tribunal and I was told to take an adjournment before the Supreme Court. I was nervous as Justice S.P. Bharucha, who headed the bench was not one who suffered fools easily. When he asked me where my senior was, I truthfully blurted out that she was before a tribunal. Opposite me was the then attorney general for India, Soli Sorabjee. When the judge started fuming at me, for the life of me, I could not figure out what I had done wrong. Sweet Soli came to my rescue: \u201cForgive my young friend.\u00a0 He will soon learn the ways of the bar\u201d.<\/p>\n I later learnt the golden rule. You want a date in the lower court, you must always give the higher court as the excuse. The high court will not countenance someone seeking accommodation for being busy in the trial court. I had asked innocently, what about the Supreme Court? Surely I cannot say my senior has gone to Hague to the International Court of Justice!<\/p>\n The answer: Simply say your senior is busy in another court room.<\/p>\n 101 ways to self promote and network<\/strong><\/p>\n This requires a special skill set. We have private fan clubs for some of the lead achievers in this category. I went through the portals of law school when we still had a Soviet Union with Mikhail Gorbachev. Nelson Mandela had been freed from Robben Island in my third year. So forget smart phones and social media, we had no computers. Today, technology assists the promotion driven lawyer. Even before the order is signed, the victorious lawyer whose Facebook page would already have forewarned us that he had \u201cchecked into the premium lounge of the airport\u201d and then \u201cchecked into the Bombay high court \u201c would have posted a triumphant selfie in black robes with a winner of a tagline, \u201cWe did it\u201d or \u201cVictory\u201d.<\/p>\n We have \u201ccelebrity\u201d lawyers whose Twitter following may give serious competition to the dockets pending in courts and who, if\u00a0Vogue<\/em>\u00a0or \u00a0Cosmopolitan<\/em>\u00a0are to be believed, have been integral to all major cases that have shaped the architecture of the Indian Republic. The reality could not be more different. We have lawyers receiving best litigator awards when a fact check from the court website would show an annual filing statistics in single digits. Sadly, from \u201cperform or perish\u201d, we have moved to \u201cpromote or perish\u201d.<\/p>\n 101 creative awards to self engineer<\/strong><\/p>\n We can add purchasing educational qualifications and honorifics to this list too \u2013 essentially people who can, without batting an eyelid, accept awards and sit at a high table and pass off as \u201cachievers\u201d. Which they indeed are as they have \u201csucceeded\u201d as per parameters we have now come to covet: \u2018Best Boutique Law Firm of the Decade\u2019. \u2018Best General Counsel of the Millennium\u2019, etc etc. These awards are a big business now.<\/p>\n \u201cI think therefore I am\u201d, has now been replaced with \u201cYou come up on search results and therefore you must be something\u201d. Social media presence means a lot and it\u2019s a big business. And when you have none, and worse, your\u00a0namesake is a famous Left-leaning activist\u00a0who was abducted and killed in Majuli in Assam, you can imagine one\u2019s plight.<\/p>\n In our time in the law school, pre the\u00a0Kuch Kuch Hota Hai<\/em>\u00a0days of multiplex consumerism, we used to pride in boastfully calling ourselves \u201csocial engineers\u201d. This breed of \u201csocial engineer\u201d pass outs is facing virtual extinction. Alumni social platforms have now sadly started resembling pulpits of self-promotion and celebration of \u201cawards\u201d and \u201cachievements\u201d rather than of social upliftment. In these prisons of WhatsApp groups and Facebook Pages, many graduates of the law schools who are silently working away to make a difference in people\u2019s lives in\u00a0mohallas<\/em>\u00a0and distant villages, in small chambers, must be finding themselves totally lost as congratulations and compliments fly thick and fast for awards and appointments. I am sure for people like them, all this makes no difference at all. That, however, cannot be a justification.<\/p>\n Managing courts and clients<\/strong><\/p>\n Now, I am being serious. No doubt if you are endowed with skills in the other kind of \u201cmanaging\u201d you would be a rockstar of a lawyer in these sad times. However, our law schools even fail to teach the \u201clegit\u201d kind of management of courts and clients. Of course, this comes through practice and actual interaction. While most national law schools have placements programmes wherein law students are actually embedded in courts and lawyers\u2019 chambers and corporate offices, the importance of this assignment in shaping the future lawyer is never truly appreciated.<\/p>\n In today\u2019s India, the important role that is played by the legal profession cannot be overemphasised. \u00a0 When I graduated, I was told that if I wanted to take a successful plunge into the sea of black coats, I would have to \u201cunlearn\u201d all that I have learnt at law school. Why should it be so?<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t \n\t\t\t <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t