This article is written by  Suman Chatterjee Team LawSikho.

Why the beginning of the legal profession is the hardest and why most lawyers fail to get anywhere in the practice

I was talking to a final year LLB student the other day. He was from NLU, Assam and his primary problem was that he was not being able to learn anything from his internships. 

We had an hour-long decision and I came to an epiphany. 

The problem he was facing was not exclusive to law students. Even most junior lawyers face the issue and struggle with it unless they break out of the circle. 

What circle am I talking about by the way?

Okay, to answer it, let’s start with the age-old question that provokes controversy to this day.

Egg vs chicken dilemma

This question is a classic for a reason. People have been asking it for centuries and what’s interesting is that this little conundrum has a bit of history. 

It started when Aristotle probably first thought of this question and smartly eluded answering it saying: “There could not have been a first egg to give a beginning to birds, or there would have been a first bird which gave a beginning to eggs; for a bird comes from an egg.” (Nice diplomatic answer, Aristotle. You would have made a great lawyer, I am sure.)

Even Plutarch said, “Whether the Hen or the Egg came first, shook the great and weighty problem (whether the world had a beginning).”

Not to get into the substance of the dilemma here, I want to focus on what the dilemma signifies. 

I don’t care about either the chicken or the egg because I love to eat both of them (no offence to vegans!).

I say you go and get whatever is available in your fridge. Then you can get started.

In the legal profession, what matters is the question, “Which comes first?”

If I don’t know how to do the work, will I still be given work at my internship?

And if I am not given work, then how will I learn how to do the work?

And even when I get an internship, the lawyer is not giving me much work because I do not know the work. And I do not learn the work because it is not given to me.

Chicken and egg problem.

That is for law students.

For lawyers it goes like this:

How can I get a good job when all of them are asking for experienced candidates?

How can I get experience if none of them will take me when I do not have experience?

Some or the other version of this question plays a big role in the career of a lawyer. 

Surprised? Don’t be. 

In fact, this is so prevalent and common in the legal profession that we close our eyes to this one question and seldom take notice of it. 

It is a blind spot until there is no option to look away.

We live in blissful ignorance.

Until one day we are forced to confront this problem.

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The invisible vicious cycle most fall into

The experience that our NLU friend shared with me goes like this (in short): he starts interning under a lawyer or in a firm. 

He does not get allotted enough work. He does not learn anything. 

He starts his next internship. 

He still has not gained sufficient knowledge from his previous internships. His senior still does not give him work because he does not seem prepared to do the work. 

He again learns very little or almost nothing by the time the internship is over. 

Rinse and repeat.

I am sure many of you would relate to this experience. 

A vicious cycle that almost every unassuming, naive law student falls into.

Does it get better when you graduate and get a job?

Not really.

I know many junior lawyers, who might have passed out of law school lately and have already started their legal practice, going through the same experience. 

Like a tired, clueless hamster on a running wheel, going on and on, without any apparent progress.

I will tell you why this happens though.

It comes from blindly repeating what has been followed for the last several decades, and not even questioning the status quo. 

Which one comes first – knowledge or experience?

You are probably wondering, “What kind of a question is this? Of course, knowledge!”

Good, right answer. 

But why do law students go for internships? As anyone, and they will say in unison: to get experience.

Two problems with that.

First, talking about learning under a senior, only if lawyers and law firms were waiting with open arms every summer for incoming batches of law students, rolling out the red carpet, dedicating their billable hour to training law students, then perhaps law students get sufficient practical experience from internships.

Unfortunately, that is not the case.

Lawyers are not sitting around to teach practical skills to their interns, contrary to your unrealistic expectations.

Two, tell me honestly, does a fresh law graduate possess the requisite knowledge to enter the legal field?

At this point, you might be nodding your head. “They have already got their LLB degree. Yes, they got the knowledge.” 

But the fact is that they don’t.

They might have got their license to practice law but that does not mean that they are “ready to practise”. 

Most fumble when it comes to drafting simple notices, contracts and petitions. Many of them cannot even do case law research properly.

Doing client work is a far cry for a vast majority.

Some are clueless as to how the court works (how to get adjournments, how to file plaints or how to procure the right stamp paper for registration purposes, etc.). 

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Heck, a few don’t even know the value of court fees to use on the Hazira. (I have been one of them. *same pinch*)

They all have passed their LLB course and have already been enrolled as advocates under the Advocates Act, 1961. Yet they do not have the necessary “practical” knowledge and legal skills to work as a lawyer yet. 

Think about it. If you, as a law student or a graduate, start working under a senior lawyer, would he have the time and energy, and most importantly, patience, to teach you everything from scratch? 

On second thought, why should he do it anyway?

If he invests that time and effort into you, what is in it for him? You will probably leave for a better paying job anyway, and he can’t stop you. Why should he take that risk?

His experience says it is probably not worth it. 

As a result, you would be at the mercy of other junior lawyers, who are probably a bit more experienced than you, trying to learn whatever you could. You would not be given any serious work because your senior knows you probably will not be able to do it. 

You would have to follow the same, old and very expensive advice, “Observe and learn.” 

Sure, practical skills can be learnt that way. Only problem is that you will be learning through trial and error, at the cost of many mistakes, with little guidance, and spend years learning what could be learnt in a few months if you followed a systematic approach. 

Learning lawyering needs consistent practice and personal guidance by a competent mentor. You can’t learn it by watching videos or reading books.

As a result, it is highly likely that any internship you secure or a stint in the office of a senior lawyer would become unproductive and unfruitful beyond getting some basic familiarity with the profession. 

The worst thing is that you will be told that you are on the right track. This is how all lawyers learn. Just keep doing it. Your time will come. Bla bla.

The only way you can break a hamster wheel is when it breaks off on its own. 

Little by little, bit by bit, you are running it down. 

When it finally breaks, you may realise that some of the most precious and productive years of your life is behind you, and it was unnecessary.

Ultimately, the interns who were full of hope and optimism once turn into frustrated and pessimistic lawyers who spout acid every time someone asks them, “Is law a good profession?”.

The only solution out of this is, you have to break the vicious cycle by taking responsibility for your own skill development. You have to learn, and it is not upto some employer to teach you.

If you have the skills, thanks to your own effort, you immediately stand out from the crowd.

Walk the smarter path to success

To fill that gap, you can either choose option one (followed by most LLB students or grads out there) or option two (followed by a smart, chosen few). 

What are they?

One, you keep doing what you are doing. Whether as an intern or as a junior lawyer, you keep slogging away for years to come. I am sure you will learn the tricks of the trade, although at a snail’s pace.

Two, you can join a 3-month Certificate course, 6-month Executive Certificate course or 1-year Diploma course conducted by LawSikho and gain as much practical knowledge and experience as someone who has been working for 2-3 years in the legal profession within a few months.

Want to know how LawSikho courses could pack years of practical experience into a few months? 

Talk to our career counsellors on 011 4084 5203 or comment below to this article with your phone number and stating, “I want to know more about practical training at LawSikho.” Our experts will get back to you ASAP.

Ultimately, the choice is yours. 

Most of my batch mates ended up choosing option one. I will bet my hat, most of your batch mates will do the same. 

Unfortunately, it is not the right choice. 

You need to sweat it out in the court. But why sweat it out at the court every day without the basic training to start with? 

Why embark on an expedition of your lifetime with a ship without a sail and they try to build it on the way? 

Why waste your precious time when you can reach your dream destination 10x faster? 

Why zig and zag when there is a straighter and more efficient road ahead of you?

Let your answer to the above questions guide you in the right direction.

To your success.

P. S. For the curious-minded, the answer to the “hen or egg” question is rather controversial. Science says that the egg, containing the genetic makeup of the modern chicken, probably came from an almost-chicken like creature. 

Then some religious proponents would say that God made the animals first. Thus, the chicken was created first and then came the egg.

I, for one, love this answer by David Consiglio on Quora:

“Neither. And both. This is a false dichotomy.

You see, there is no such thing as a chicken, nor is there such a thing as a chicken egg.

Let me explain.

Chickens aren’t a static thing. They evolve over time. They are constantly changing.

So are their eggs and the contents of those eggs, too.

Many millions of years ago, there was a dinosaur. It looked vaguely chicken-like, but it had teeth and claws on its “wings.” If you saw one at night, you might briefly mistake it for a chicken.

Over generations, though, this creature changed. Its teeth disappeared, as did the claws on its wings. It gained the ability to fly and then lost it again.

At what point did it become a chicken? It still isn’t a chicken, remember? There is no such thing as a chicken.

The eggs you buy at the store come from a small dinosaur that is still in the process of becoming what it will eventually become. It is the first of its kind. It is the last of its kind. Its children will not be chickens, any more than it is.

They are beasts on the spectrum, categorized by we humans as “chicken” but no more chicken than dinosaur or incredibly advanced amphibian or hyper-evolved protozoa.

There was no first chicken. There was no first egg. We could arbitrarily draw the line anywhere we wanted to, summarily deeming that this is the first chicken or the first egg.

But, in the end, that decision would be arbitrary. The creature we are about to eat is what it is, regardless of where we draw that line. And, this is important, the being just on the other side of that line, regardless of where we draw it, is more “chicken” than any other creature. If you were to see one, you’d say, “that’s a chicken”. Either that, or we’ve drawn the line so far from what we think of as “chicken” that the creatures on both sides would fail this simple test.

False dichotomies of this kind are common. Which is better, conservative or liberal? Answer: yes. Which is worse, rape or murder? Answer: no.

Life is far more complex than ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and ‘better’ and ‘worse’. Expand your mind and see the world as it is: a spectrum of existence.”

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