Solicitor general and newly elected Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Gopal Subramaniam talks to Legally India about his top priorities, the need for a bar exam and continuing legal education, in this first part of a two-part interview.
Legally India (LI): What are your priorities at the BCI? Gopal Subramaniam (GS): I think at the moment there are some overwhelming priorities which need to be addressed.
The first thing to do is to evolve various ways and techniques by which the self esteem of those who belong to the profession is raised and to understand their professional roles and changing society.
The second important priority is that we as the legal fraternity have to be connected with each other. We are not adequately connected with each other, we do not communicate with each other as a result of which there is fragmentation of the legal community based on region, based on locality and based on other factors.
We need to work together and for which purpose I think the Bar Council of India must act as a great connector by which we able to reach out to a lawyer who is practicing even in the most far-flung areas of the country.
The third priority is that we need to upgrade our own skills on account of competitive environment. Today, you have large number of people who enter the legal profession and it becomes necessary that we are efficient, competent and transparent so that we would be able to actually have both a prosperous community of the lawyers on the one hand, and at the same time we would be a community which would protect the under-privileged.
LI: Do you think that an entrance test or bar exam is necessary? GS: I think as of today, the entrance test for becoming a lawyer is necessary. I think it is important that for the benefit of the person who is going to enter the legal profession, he must actually have some basic skills, fundamental knowledge and the ability to cope with other challenges of the modern Indian lawyer, whether he is in the rural area or whether he is in any other area.
We also planned to actually have a resource web in the Bar Council of India which will be a knowledge web where lawyers and law students will have continued access to resources including courses and continuing legal education.
I think continuing legal education along the entrance to the bar is very important. One is those who are going to enter the bar now will have at least an examination, but those who are practicing as a lawyer […] must be persuaded to opt for continuing legal education courses so that they are updated.
One of the problems in the legal profession is that we are not updated with reference to the advances is in law, advances is in technology and advances is in science.
In today’s time, a lawyer has to be as inquisitives as a scientist, he has to discover the facts and for this purpose we want to develop the resource web through the medium of the Bar Council. I think it is a very ambitious project and I have received overwhelming offers of support from professors, academicians in India and overseas who think it is the most important for the Indian legal profession to have a resource web.
LI: Do you think the legal education system in India has failed? Is that why you are looking for an entrance test for lawyers? GS: The legal education in India is not uniform. There are problems which are confronting our legal education today. There is a shortage of academicians, there are a shortage of people who actually want to teach law as a subject. Now we need to correct the distortion and we need to correct this imbalance.
Now one of the important considerations is that when you want to enter the professional course it is necessarily that you should have the adequate training. So we would like to develop our curriculum by which you have not only basic knowledge of law but you also have practical knowledge of law.
If your ability as commercial lawyer has to be tested, you have to have the skills for it. If you have to protect the fundamental rights of a person who is in the street, you must be able to protect it.
I regret to say that the role models who used to exist in the legal profession who have been able to also carry the momentum in the legal profession - their numbers have decreased. Now to reenergise it is always not possible to only get role models but you will have to do it by means of support through information and through rational development for lawyers.
This is our agenda. This is our priority list, which is that we become a resource pool where people can actually come to us. As the Bar Council, we are also going to interact with sections of civil society because it is important that the legal profession is never perceived as a manipulator of the law and one of the reasons why there has been fall in the esteem of the legal profession is because law is viewed as an instrument of manipulation, an instrument of exploitation as an instrument of being able to harass citizens.
LI: What would be the necessary requirements a student needs to fulfill to become a lawyer? What do you propose to do? GS: This is going to involve the same consultative process. We are beginning a transparent consultative process with lawyers, with law students and also with academicians, those who are in India and those who are abroad. And I am very happy to say that the community is offering completely free support for this particular movement and I think we should be able to seize these initiative and design the curriculum, make it contemporary, relevant and make it socially useful.
And I think that requires a two way traffic. This will involve a lawyer and it will also involve the support of the judiciary and I am very confident that the judiciary will support this initiative because this is the most dynamic moment of the legal profession. LI: Can you elaborate on proposals that there may be a mandatory internship before becoming a lawyer? GS: I personally believe that the apprenticeship and internship with the lawyer is necessary to know court procedure, to understand how to acquire confidence and to be able to know how to conduct oneself as a lawyer.
Now this needs training and commitment from the senior lawyers those who have years of experience to able to teach juniors. So we in the Bar Council are going to appeal to lawyers who have ten years experience to ask them to take juniors as a part of their service in return to the profession
We are also going to appeal the senior advocates to have not less than three to five juniors that are trained. This will have two benefits: one that you train the juniors when they become lawyers, the other is you have mandatory training programs in the law course itself as part of the curriculum.
There I feel that training under the lawyer, preferably practicing with the trial court, should be made mandatory because there is where justice truly commences. And I think the success of any justice system will be always gazed at in terms of the ability of the primary tier to be able to fulfill the aspiration of people.
My dream as a lawyer is that one day in India, we will have a legal system where the competence of the lawyers as well as the judiciary in all the three limbs, whether it be primary, secondary or the appellate level would be equally compatible.
The second part of this interview is now published on Legally India and includes Subramaniam’s views on the entry of foreign law firms, reciprocity.
Photo from KIIT
Comments
plus considering your statement - "The first thing to do is to evolve various ways and techniques by which the self esteem of those who belong to the profession is raised and to understand their professional roles and changing society." .... almost everybody in five-yr law schools are interested to join corporate law firms right from the beginning which are very much a part of the changing society ... very few are interested in going to trial court ...
Bar exams - well you should atleast inform students about such exam at the beginning of joining their course , i.e., five or three years before .
If you enjoy litigation then follow his new methodology and if you dont then how come he compels you to work under an advocate ?
Clearly your claim that this is "unconstitutional" shows the gap in your legal understanding of constitutional law.
I think practical training is a key element that should be heavily endorsed and encouraged (if not made mandatory) in 3 and 5 year law courses. Even if you intend to exclusively practice commercial law (or rather commercial law consultancy) the court experience will only help you. After all when you advise a client even in commercial matters, at the end of the day one of the biggest reasons your client has come to you is to avoid / manage any litigation that may arise. If you haven't the faintest idea of how courts work, and how even commercial law cases are argued in court, how credible would your advice be?
However, if you are only talking about paralegal / secretarial work, sure, perhaps they can have shorter 'vocational' courses for such requirements, to distinguish people interested in this type of work from full-fledged lawyers.
I don't mean to put commerical lawyers down, but having a law degree (and therefore being a "lawyer") without stepping a foot in a court is a bit like becoming a doctor without ever having attended a patient.
Perhaps the need of the hour is to have a separate "commerical law" degree that does not bring one under the ambit of the BCI etc. and is more like a M.B.A. course.
1) While a bar exam may actually be a good idea, would the Bar Council ensure that the process is transparent and involves no running-around for the applicants? My recent enrollment experience was a nightmare, and more so for my friends in some other states.
2) While compulsory internships are a good idea, why not let the student choose a lawyer / court? And what if a student is not accepted by any lawyer (hypothetical situation, but can't be ruled out). Will the Bar Council help with that?
3) Though unrelated, the Bar Council should think on this. Shouldn't "pay for juniors" be on the top of the agenda for the Bar Council since the concern is "self esteem of those who belong to the profession is raised". Seniors pay juniors a pittance and they talk of the honourable profession. How can one maintain dignity with Rs. 10,000/- in Delhi? Broken down, its .... R-I-D-I-C-U-L-O-U-S. Why doesn't the Bar Council ensure that the pay is rational and linked to no of matters handled and amount billed to the client etc. And why not fix a minimum pay that makes sense. Senior counsels employ national law school students at ludicrous pay and then they call corporate lawyers "clerks" and lawschools a "failure at the bar". If Bar Council can address this meaningfully, the standards will go up faster.
For corporate legal compliance , litigation is helpful but not mandatory.
I strongly urge you to read about structure of legal profession in countries like UK, Canada, US, Australia, US, Eurozone, Singapore, HK, Mauritius... list goes on. Tell me one country that has even come close to implementing your brilliant ideas regarding corporate lawyers being MBA type of consultants and being separately regulated. Please, I implore you, be informed before you post your comments, this is not your typical forum of practice where no one ever focusses on whats being said...
Having said that, it would also be pertinent to point that chamber practice or transactional work is not so lowly as considered by some litigators. Transactional/Advisory practice is also interesting and challenging. As regards ensuring development of the junior bar, it is high time that appropriate amendments are made in the Advocates Act and the Bar Council regulations to ensure that junior members of the bar are suitable paid so that they can continue to practice the profession of law with dignity and passion. If at the end of the day a junior lawyer, without a rich father or a god father, has to think only about paying his rent and bills, how would one expect him to think about the client's problems or the intricacies of law. If the Government, which includes the Hon'ble Supreme Court, is concerned about the state of the judiciary then they must review the whole gamut of issues from a practical perspective and bring about suitable reforms. By failing to do that, the Govt. would be liable for negligence as regards its constitutional obligation of protecting legal and fundamental rights of its citizens. If the judicial mechanism is rusty and dishonest how do you expect the rule of law to be upheld and how do you expect the citizens to avail legal remedy. Ultimately, the quality of a democracy depends upon the efficiency of the judiciary for if the judiciary all those attached with it are inefficient how would you expect the enforceability of the parliamentary will expressed through its legislations.
While you speak of Rs. 10,000/- p.m., in Delhi I know of people getting paid as less as Rs. 2,500/-!!! To be paid less than a servant is nothing short of demeaning and insulting, not just to the person but to the 17-18 years of education he/she has had to go through to get to this stage.
It's only common sense that if the status quo continues, litigation is going to attract the bottom of the barrel and not the cream of talent.
And raising the level of retainers to what one would expect in the corporate world would work a 100 times more than introducing a bar exam or continuing legal education.
1) GS can should know WHY law grads don't join the bar? This is a country where RK Anand gets away scot free and BMW-owning lawyers pay their juniors the salary of a peon. Things like family background and community (whether mallu, tamilian etc) matter in the bar.
2) Why the hell should 5 yr NLU grads be forced to work in dingy trial courts? Yuk! GS should re-introduce the barrister-solicitor distinction.
What Chappell's grand ideas did to the Indian team GS's grand ideas will do to the bar.
Make sure its in Delhi High Court.
@12 - such a society won't support entry of foreign firms e.g. we have SILF (Society of Indian Law Firms) whose main members are trying to block foreign firms tooth-n-nail. You see they earn more money than foreign firm partners due to inequities in our Indian system. As regards trial courts not being the only mandatory option (ya its oxymoronic) I think some student body will take the initiative and it can be a group of national law schools who take the initiative. It will prolly go direct to SC.
@ Gopal Subramanium - Sir, please put "juniors' fees" as top priority as that is the only thing which can lead to a quick makeover. Bar politics may be changed over a long period as you have rightly said and while that is a good agenda and a statesman-like approach, it may be good to tackle short term issues first if you want junuior lawyers to have some dignity.
#6
If that happens .... HE HE HAW HAW
AND LET THE SELECTION PROCEDURE BE REALLY COMPETITIVE AND IMPARTIAL. YOU WILL IMPROVE QUALITY OVERNIGHT.
THEY CURRENTLY PAY THEIR DRIVERS (ALBEIT, BMW AND BENTLEY DRIVERS) ABOUT TWICE AS MUCH AS THEIR JUNIORS. JUST LUDICROUS.
Besides most juniors weeping (as seen above) over working for a pittance do enjoy the flexibility to entertain personal matters.
Talking about working for seniors who are driven around in BMW's / Mercs / Bentleys
- what about the quality of work experience/exposure / clientèle that is gathered working in such offices?
Most briefing lawyers / solicitors have a good eye for smart promising counsels and start engaging them in matters wherein the stakes are not that high.
Litigation practice is not an easy ball game anywhere in the world.
It has way many stakeholders / competitors on one end with well known and established , family runned practices on the other.
Becoming a successful litigating practitioner requires a lifetimes work and more. Its for the passionate and not for those whose primary agenda is only to make a buck.
"Pure litigation practice" especially as what is seen in the High Courts and the Supreme Court can never be given a corporate law firm / soliciting firm like structure.
Example- a senior advocate cannot legally be a partner of a firm.
It is only of recent that two prominent lawyers in New Delhi who were later designated as Senior Advocates around the same time had to part ways as a 'firm'.
Lit practice is in most cases a one man show, especially successful litigation practices.
Juniors are understood and expected to learn from their senior and move on to establishing their own practice.
No "lawyer" worth his salt would want to work as a junior/ apprentice for his Senior for the rest of his life / take up junior-ship the rest of his life . (unless he is convinced that he/ she i.e. the junior ! is absolutely worthless)
Seniors who can afford paying well MUST PAY .
Respect, money and credibility can only be earned by a junior lawyer who intends to pursue litigation practice- if he is willing to ASPIRE, WORK HARD, WORK SMART,WAIT and not otherwise.
1: Bar Council of India has over encroaching power over the way law school function from designing syllabus to making attendance class compulsory unlike U.S.
2: I believe they conduct regular inspection to various law colleges to check whether they are meeting up with the requirements; how bogus all these inspections are is a different matter.
3: you have a thoroughly insufficient internal disciplinary system to regulate the conduct of lawyer;
4: Sir please clarify what do you mean by how a lawyer should conduct himself?? i believe you mean an air of self importance when all of us know how huge a forgery whole indian legal system is in ALL ITS ASPECT..
Besides most juniors weeping (as seen above) over working for a pittance do enjoy the flexibility to entertain personal matters. -
To get matters unfortunately merit is not enough. In India your father needs to be a lawyer, judge, politician or bureaucrat for a junior lawyer to get matters which pay. These are the smart "promising" counsels. Otherwise he may get a matter the usual arrangement being take money when you win the matter.
what about the quality of work experience/exposure / clientèle that is gathered working in such offices?
- Ever wondered who gets into such offices and their backgrounds. The juniors are themselves those who drive cars over 10L and flash all the swish brands. Rich enough that he/she can survive without any salary.
Becoming a successful litigating practitioner requires a lifetimes work and more-
How do you sustain yourself for a lifetime without any income? ever wondered? - So clearly its not your merit which makes you a successful lawyer. Well and good if you are from an affluent background.
I have joined a big law firm after doing my time in an old school law firm. I had signed my articles in the latter and thereafter became a Solicitor. I am sorry at the state of the big law firms, I have known many who come from 5 year law schools and opine on squeeze out of minority shareholders or why the Bombay High Court insists on reading Section 391 to 394 in reduction under Section 100. They don’t have the slightest clue about it. They are told that this is the position, by the Senior Partner (who always were partner of old school firms), and they put it on paper like good schoolboy and schoolgirls and feed it to an overseas client. Fortunately, I have gone through the entire rigmarole of mergers, demergers and reduction and also how to get the ‘work’ done while being paid a pittance. I have learnt that law is learnt at the cost of levels not to mention keeping an open mind.
Having said this, this is the age of super specialization. Young turks don’t know zilch about the above mentioned matters (including Securities Appeals and Arbitration) yet opine on it. Tch tch – really bad lawyers I have seen who in spite of their shortcomings get paid a lot. Remember when you want to break out it’s your practical approach that makes you shine out rather than anal (not the BDSM kinds) approach.
The young turks will only grow under a big name, remove them from there and they will fall flat on their face.
Humbleness and eagerness to learn without getting immediate rewards will reap rich dividends in the long run (I still haven’t tasted the latter)!
Not all juniors working with successful seniors sport swish brands and drive 10L+ cars. Besides, what are you trying to convey? What’s wrong with driving a 10l+ car and sporting swish brands at a young age if your pop can afford it!
For the ones who don't, clearly they just have to work much harder to make two ends meet! There are many opportunities/avenues (legal) in cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Cal etc. which may not be the most sought out for/ top of the line but pay way better, in most cases more than double. As things sand , It is a question of choice and luck at the end of the day.
And yes, becoming a successful lawyer does require a lifetime’s work or maybe more. Your point if there being no scope of earning money and recognition on the way is baseless needless to say shortsighted and clichéd!