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An estimated 3-minute read

Learning Law 'THE JOKER' way

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Remember THE JOKER of movie THE DARK KNIGHT? How can anyone forget the immortal character played by Late-Great Heath Ledger. After few months of the movie release, the critics acclaimed the scene where THE JOKER had manipulated Harvey Dent when he was in the Hospital. Well the scene goes like this, THE JOKER talked about the attitude and the psychology of the mob. THE JOKER said "if I tell the Press that truck full of soldiers will be blown up NO ONE PANICS, because its all a part of the plan, but when i say that one little old man will die THEN EVERYONE LOSES THEIR MINDS". Moreover he added during his conversation with Harvey that ANARCHY IS THE KEY TO FAIR SITUATIONS, which upsets the established order and due to this every single thing becomes CHAOS, in which CHAOS is FAIR.
The reader must be baffled that what is the relevance of these statements in the field of Law? But my friend if we far-fetch this concept of THE JOKER we will find that there is relevance. Lets look at the First statement of THE JOKER, he meant that if any person talks about a situation where he tells the mob that a catastrophe is about to happen in such day, at such time and at such place, then no one panics because they already know what is going to happen in future. But look at the next situation where we are given only one information that one person is going to die, this will definitely infiltrate panic among the people and they will be impelled to ponder as to how, when and where this person will die? Therefore, we can see that the UNPLANNED situation is worse than the PLANNED.

This is what we have to deal in law, to manage the UNPLANNED situations where we might be propelled to lose our psyche. Moreover THE JOKER also stated that CHAOS is FAIR, this is because where you don't know anything about the UNPLANNED situation then the chances of despair and triumph is 50-50, hence no single individual can be an opportunist and take advantage of the opportunity. Practical example is, that a lawyer fighting a case for his client and the chances are 50-50, as he doesn't know that whether he will win the case or not. It all depends on PREPARATION which we can term as PLANS.

If, because of a lawyers continuous PLANNING, enhances his chance to win the case then he WILL NOT PANIC, but what if an extraneous situations crops up or new fact is discovered that can destroy the PLANNING of both the parties as BOTH THE PARTIES WERE NOT PREPARED FOR SUCH CIRCUMSTANCE then the UNPLANNED circumstance comes into picture, and hence this leads to CHAOS, and therefore the parties are on equal footing as they have a 50-50 chance because they are again back to square one. Therefore the lawyer who keeps his nerves and is as cool as a cucumber will definitely take advantage of the chaos and win the case. This is what we have to learn in our academic years. To tackle such situations as stated by THE JOKER. All the great lawyers have such ability, one can read over the landmark cases where eminent lawyers have made such arguments that changed the course of history. One such great example is the story behind the concept of "TO BE HANGED TILL DEATH". LATE GREAT MOTILAL NEHRU had to deal a case where a boy was being hanged. When every effort had failed and all the PLANNING had failed to save the boy, the British Government finally ordered to hang the boy, but in that CHAOS, Motilal Nehru said that the boy should only BE HANGED. So, the life of the convict was saved and since then the Britishers amended and started giving death sentences read as TO BE HANGED TILL DEATH.

How exquisitely a Lawyer played with the words and took advantage of the UNPLANNED CHAOTIC situation. Indeed what THE JOKER said is true and we as lawyers have to LEARN THE JOKER way and apply our brains like MOTILAL way.
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