This article is written by Ramanuj Mukherjee, CEO, LawSikho.

There was a time when the practice of law was simple, and the formula to make it in life as a lawyer was simple too. It may have taken a lot of time and effort to be successful, but the method was strikingly simple and universally accepted. 

So what was this formula?

It only made sense to learn to do legal work at district courts to start with, and then when you made a name at that level and people began to respect you as a lawyer, you moved up to High Court to try and make it as a lawyer at the High Court level. It was expected that you would have to spend at least 5-10 years at the district court level in order to be ready to take the plunge at the High Court. 

What enabled this jump from the lower court to the higher court, which would often be located in a different city altogether?

Basically, over the years of slogging at the district court, you had to gather enough regular clients who would perhaps need support at the appellate level as their cases moved up to appeal. Also, other lawyers who appreciated and trusted your work at the district court would send you matters when you moved to the High Court.  

When you had spent enough time at the high court and you might be doing well, and you had enough clients giving you work and enough lawyers holding you in high regards, which was likely to take up a couple of decades to achieve, you then moved to the Supreme Court to try your luck there if you still had the appetite for the same.

And it all worked out because your friends and peers from the High Court where you worked and made a name used to send work to you for Supreme Court appeals. 

Else you would hope to either become a judge at the High Court or just practice till you get too old to continue. 

This was the time-tested blueprint for building a stellar legal career that made great lawyers for 100 years at least. 

Unfortunately, this formula does not work anymore. Even if it works, most young lawyers do not have the patience to do things this way. Truth be told, this system favors the older lawyers and makes success difficult for the younger ones. Younger lawyers found that there are many, many other ways to succeed in life as a lawyer much earlier.

Also, the grammar of law practice itself has changed. More than knowledge of law, which used to be knowledge of statutes and case law in the past, there are a variety of skills that are needed to be a successful lawyer. Designing a great customer experience, for example. Ability to negotiate certain complex agreements. Knowledge of a particular industry and relationship with a regulator. Or it could be more technical legal skills, such as structuring a deal, or a holding structure for a business. Or knowledge of international arbitration procedure. Or the ability to explain to a judge why a certain patent should be invalidated in a lucid, non-technical way.

The law firms were not built by following the model I described above. They were built by finding gaps in the market and providing services at a scale to meet the demand-supply gap. 

Similarly, a young lawyer today can attain financial independence and satisfaction of running a profitable practice much faster by doing other things – such as starting his practice in a relatively uncrowded but technical tribunal such as APTEL, COMPAT or TDSAT. They could even work in any tribunal at the local level such as Consumer Forums, or NCLT or REAT and make a great living. 

A young lawyer could also discover any other possible way to find clients or build a reputation directly at a higher court, and do very very well within a couple of years. 

Many lawyers today start their practice directly at the Supreme Court, and it makes immense sense. What is there to learn about district court work that a Supreme Court lawyer needs to know that he cannot learn on his own, one way or the other?

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It makes sense to build a practice right away at a higher court for many young lawyers today, and I have seen many of my seniors and batchmates from college doing exactly that, from very close quarters. 

Here is an alternative formula people regularly use to build an amazing practice at the Supreme Court directly. 

Start by working as a junior of a successful senior advocate at the Supreme Court. They are almost always in desperate need of high-quality juniors due to massive work pressure, and most of them do not hesitate to pay a handsome amount to a deserving junior. The work is very tough, very rigorous,  but very rewarding too. 

If you do a good job and manage to push yourself through the 12-14 hour grind a day for 4-5 hours, these seniors help you by recommending you to various state governments or PSUs or government agencies who are looking to appoint a standing counsel at the Supreme Court. Once you get one or two such appointments, you are ready to hang out your own shingle and start your own chamber practice at the Supreme Court, having the economic security and credibility that comes with representing a government body at the apex court. 

Then you have to find ways to network, market your practice and attract the kind of clients that you need to get in order to get to the next level. This formula has worked wonders for thousands of lawyers doing really well at the Supreme Court as of today.

Most importantly, most of the work has gone away from district courts and found their way into various specialized tribunals. It makes no sense in today’s day and time for lawyers to work their way through the district court and then high court, often at the cost of penury and irrelevance.

Also, whatever goodwill you earn at one place may be lost when you move to the next court!

It is hard to even argue that skills learned at the district court level are transferable if one wants to do other things like appearing before the High Court in specialized areas like prosecuting a patent infringement or getting an arbitrator appointed. 

What is the logic to ask every lawyer to start their practice at the district court, unless we are still paying blind homage to the formula that worked for our previous generation but has stopped mattering any more?

Young lawyers graduating today are already fighting a very difficult battle, primarily because BCI has done a terrible job of regulating ever mushrooming law colleges all over the place that dole out useless education which does not prepare law graduates for the realities of today’s law practice. BCI has done nothing to stop those law colleges from charging exorbitant amounts and does not even update its curriculum quickly enough.

Law schools are teaching the Banking Regulation Act in the name of Banking Law for example, and nobody teaches the IBC, or RBI regulations, or the various statutes used by banks and NBFCs to recover their dues although that is exactly what clients in that sector need from the lawyers they hire!

Law students are still reading English case laws that are a century old, and memorizing sections from the Indian Contract Act for two semesters and not learning how to draft a real contract by the time they graduate. What has BCI done to change that?

The BCI is forced to ask terribly inane questions in the Bar Exam, despite it being an open book exam. And still, it has to allow mass cheating in the exam halls and still, they have to hide the number of people failing, one would presume out of utter shame.

And now they are talking about forcing young lawyers to practice in the district courts mandatorily before allowing them to “access” the Supreme Court and even High Courts? Here is the link.

Such a ridiculous measure will make it even harder for young lawyers with limited means to even attempt doing litigation. Will you be ready to work under a senior in District Court who perhaps is finding it hard to make ends meet and pays nothing to juniors? Things would be even worse than how it stands today if every law graduate wanting to litigate is forced to turn up at the district court first. Would they BCI ensure that they get a living wage while working at such district courts?

The BCI has done enough to hurt the legal profession beyond measure already, one would hope that they will never manage to push this archaic idea down the throats of young law graduates going forward. Apparently, this proposal will be discussed at a BCI meeting in January 2020. Please share this with your young law graduate friends and create some awareness about this travesty before it gains further momentum.

If the BCI truly wants to improve the quality of legal education, a revamp of the legal studies curriculum with a focus on teaching practical skills, having a real bar exam that actually filters incapable lawyers and making sure the law colleges are actually held accountable for the graduates they produce will go a long way in fixing the quality issue in the legal profession. 

And because we do not expect the BCI to fix anything anytime soon, I strongly recommend you check out one of the practical courses at LawSikho that will help you to learn the practical skills you will direly need to succeed in any kind of practice, even at district courts:

DIPLOMA 

Diploma in Business Laws for In House Counsels

Diploma in Companies Act, Corporate Governance and SEBI Regulations

EXECUTIVE CERTIFICATE COURSES

Certificate Course in Advanced Corporate Taxation

Certificate Course in Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code

Certificate Course in Advanced Civil Litigation: Practice, Procedure and Drafting

Certificate Course in National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) Litigation

Certificate Course in Arbitration: Strategy, Procedure and Drafting

Students of Lawsikho courses regularly produce writing assignments and work on practical exercises as a part of their coursework and develop themselves in real-life practical skill.