Many Indian lawyers may not find favour with the LPO-career-trajectory for lack of “professional satisfaction”, but fast easy money it sure does make, believe most. Here’s the money-myth dispelling tale of an Indian family lawyer who ended up billing only 10 per cent less working on standardised family dispute forms for American law firm clients [GlobalPost]
NLU Delhi assistant professor Anup Surendranath argues that because the death penalty is administered in India in an unfairly discriminatory manner, capital punishment here is constitutionally unviable. He asserts that the Naroda-Patiya case was as much a fit case for death penalty as Kasab’s if there was one. "It is as though we are acknowledging that there will be moments in our life as a nation where we will need to satisfy our need for collective revenge. A need satisfied with the gloss of the rule of law,” he says [Hindu][Profile of the judge who delivered Naroda Patiya]
Court-fee in the Supreme Court will not exceed Rs 20,000 for people earning gross annual income of less than Rs 7.5 lakh or less than Rs 60,000 per month. The scheme is available under the Supreme Court Middle Income Group Legal Aid Society which comprises 30 prominent senior advocates and 100 advocates-on-record. To avail the services of an advocate-on-record in the society a litigant can submit an application form with a nominal fee at the office of the society in the Supreme Court complex. Seniors part of the society can be engaged for as low as Rs 3,000 and not more than Rs 9,000 for three days of hearing. Though the scheme existed since 1995, hardly anyone used it till now which is why it is being publicised. [PTI]
India’s first child court-witness room is inaugurated in Delhi’s Karkardooma district court, with one-way mirrors for the accused, the option of video-conferencing for recording the testimony of child witnesses, a T.V for the accused to view and hear the child’s testimony live outside the child’s presence, and a special judges-only pathway to the courtroom for the child-witnesses, besides a distinct “comforting environment” inside the courtroom [HT]
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Been plugging away - over two dozen years - on my own, earlier had stints with the "Biggest" Indian firm/s etc..
I fail to understand how any self-respecting lawyer will forego the satisfaction of seeing (At Least) One of his/her matters hand-held with actual results for a troubled client... It feels like it must to a doctor who saves a life.
If money be the sole motivator, then these LPO etc professionals do not merit to be called lawyers, but businessmen or by any such other name.
Not too many qualified lawyers in the first 10/15 years of their careers are likely to agree to this.. They earnestly believe that all seniors/Firms are vampires even though their evident brilliance (if at all, seen in very brief flashes in between a hundred distractions that actually consumes most of their minds) merits that they be offered the golden keys to the entire domain on a silver platter.
The argument: Hello, after all it is we who have our first house to buy, our first car, first spouse, child, foreign holiday blah blah to finish.. so keep the lectures to yourselves and allow us to make the money first, ask uncomfortable questions later.
But the irony (as I have seen repeatedly play out) is that it is the few who genuinely accept the "profession-first" (and the world is a nasty place, agreed) dogma and eschew immediate monetary gains for (a) better and broader grip over the entire legal services domain and (b) the massive grind of building trust with various stake-holders, are the ones most likely to achieve all those external trappings (and much more) sooner! Hurt egos, inter alia, of the rest converts them into cynics throwing stones every where they couldn't be...
So, insofar as the LPO domain is concerned, I do not see lawyers like the Zias of the world actually spend more than 2-4 hours a month in that effort. Seniors like that know what Real lawyer-ing is all about (I doubt if their own children will spend 10 years at the start of their career at a LPO)...
The scheme would be to put together a "valuable team" (aka morons) which will slog away 16 hours a day, create an annuity model for founders to prime their "actual" legal practice with, even as the workers are talked into feeling good for their pittance and 'international exposure'...
Lawyers as a group are universally the earliest to see through a "Raja-Praja" situation - so I hope we see more and more true 'lawyers' stand out there straight facing the sun. And discharging their role in Society at large.
I recall a grand old man of the Indian judiciary (related to a large law-firm partner) once tell me: "Dikraa, saroo keedhoo ke you are filing your own vakalat....!". Wink.
The rest, my young friends, is business as usual.
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