CALL TO ACTION
Final year Students Unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!
We are under attack from the repressive tyrannical Bar Council.
All of us who have worked so hard over five years of law sweating it out at internships, writing papers, winning moots, doing summer courses and what not, to land ourselves our dream jobs will now have to be faced with the prospect of losing it all!
The Bar Council and the esteemed members of the bar have no care or interest for our plight. Sh. Subhramniam seems to be hell bent on not letting us practice till we give the bar exam even if it is a decade from now!
The fact of the matter is the incompetent Bar Council does not have its own house in order and it now wants to make us the scape goats. First they wanted to conduct the bar exam in July- almost like a surprise assignment and now they say they are not well prepared and so the exam will be in December. (To top it all they still haven’t given an assurance that it will happen in December, but they are sure they won’t let us practice till then!). The minimal implication of this is we lose eight months pay and this whole disruption may threaten some of our jobs.
Is there any logic in denying us the right to practice because they cannot conduct the exam?
The quintessence of a civilized community is freedom from terror. However, unfortunately in our country whimsical administrators have always had their sway over the life’s of people, destablising their plans and bring their hard work to naught.
Today, our future is threatened and time for sitting on the ropes is past. We must enter the battlefield with all weapons at our disposal. Our single point demand should be - conduct the bar exam in July or allow us to practice without it.
The fact is that today there is nobody who is interested in our future, those on the bar are happy to do give us meritocratic moral preachings while they gain eight months free labour at our expense. The Hon’ble Supreme Court, as yet not apprised of our plight, is more focused on uplifting the standard of legal education. Whilst behind the shadows those in favour of foreign law firms in India are strongly backing the bar exam. (Of course we do not oppose foreign firms). At this stage to sit back and think that someone else will do something about it will be fatal. The macro scenario is against - in the forward march of the legal community, we are going to be the road kill.
Each of us must fight against this oppression. The following steps are suggested:
- Signature Campaigns and Open Letters addressed to Bar Council, Hon’ble Chief Justice of India, and the Minister for Law and Justice.
- Meetings & Discussions in all Colleges
- All-India Level Co-ordination
- Approach teachers sympathetic to our cause
- Approach sympathetic bar members
- Approach prospective employers esp. law firms against the entry of foreign law firms to flex their muscles.
- File Writ Petitions, get our selves impleaded in the Bonni Case (perhaps some one can draft a writ and post it here)
- If need arise Delhi Chalo! to protest in front of the Bar Council Office.
More Suggestions are welcome.
Comments
The December exam makes things worst
Secondly, I am quite skeptical about this interpretation that the bar exam has to be given only by those who have to appear in court. The Advocates Act has only one category ‘advocate’ and you need to be one to ‘practice law’ there is no middle path and so everything that comes within practicing law will have to be done only by an advocate and I am certain that preparing briefs and attending conferences does come within this ambit.
Thirdly, if you will look closely at your contract your lit firm is probably engaging you as an advocate, that is your not being paid a salary but a retainer (because the rules framed under the advocates act provide that an advocate cannot be a full time employee). Now unless you’re an advocate you can’t be paid a ‘retainer’ and hence unless your firm is nice enough to accommodate you as an intern and pay you a part of your salary you have no where to go.
Fourthly, firms won’t be keen (or able) to pay you your salary or a substantial amount keeping you as an intern/trainee because they won’t be able to bill (or bill at an associates rate) in your name because you are not an advocate and so unless they want to pay you from their own pockets they won’t pay you at all.
Finally, considering all this if you have been hired by a mid-level firm that desperately needs an advocate you may get the boot and could be replaced by a lateral hire who is an advocate.
If we can get a size able group than we can realistically look at getting a sympathetic senior counsel to argue our case in court..
The problem is in our system you are victimized even for raising the right questions..so we have conceived of this way to interact anonymously till we can get the numbers together.
and lets get creative guys Kian has given us such a good platform-poems,posters,slogans lets get the ball rolling..
Forget law firm vs. lit firm. People may want to get into lit n need license to practice asap on graduation. I think a writ petition is in order and the apex court would - in all probability - hold that a law graduate has a right to practice as part of Arts. 19(1)(g) and 21, conditional upon passing the exam when it is held (i.e. license to be suspended if exam failed).
So all in all you will not lose anything. But your protests will mar a extremely beneficial move for the entire legal fraternity. This exam to an extent will work miles towards weeding out incompetent buffoons, the numbers of which are ever growing in litigation. And this will significantly improve all aspects - from the work environment of lawyers, to the efficiency of the judicial machine, to litigants getting competent lawyers.