Accepting ones own limitations and failures is never easy. But only when you do, can you ever exceed. There are an innumerable number of first generation advocates without familial connections in the profession (such as myself) who have done rather well for themselves. Bandying about stereotypes as a panacea to your frustrations, is an illusory salve. Cold hard reality militates against every single point you have mentioned.

Also, you seem remarkably ignorant and frankly, quite condescending of our clients. Why would a client ever engage an incompetent or someone who has never had to prove their competence? Why would said Senior Counsels ever engage with said incompetent AORs? How could said incompetents ever survive in the profession?

You live in your own echo chamber where failures are blamed on existing social archetypes and institutions. Look inward young man. Progress will never occur without introspection and acceptance of reality.

And age will teach you another fundamental truth - clients trust you only when you win for them and protect them at all costs. Stop living in worlds of childish fantasy and spouting nebulous pointless concepts like "ethics". The only ethics in our profession is when you protect your client, win for them in Court, get the deal done for them, all while abiding by our legal and social systems.

Ah yes, competence. Always a comforting word—especially when repeated loudly by people who never have to prove it in open competition.

Calling any criticism of a closed briefing circle “socialism” is a neat trick. It saves you the trouble of explaining why the same surnames keep winning musical chairs. Observation, sadly, isn’t ideology.

And if your only creed is money and stimulation, fair enough—but sneering at ethics while demanding trust is like mocking brakes while insisting you’re a great driver. Bold. Brief. Usually ends badly.

But do carry on evangelising. Faith, after all, is most useful when evidence is in short supply.

1. “Cartelised briefing system”? Sounds like you are a salty socialist who is upset that places at the dinner table are not given out to incompetents. Maybe skill up instead of buying into tired tropes about gate keeping and cartelisation? Competence is the only credo in this profession.

2. “Advocacy, ethics”? I do not know about you, but I am a hardcore commercial lawyer whose only credo is competence, intellectual stimulation, making money and trust from my clients. You are laughable naive young man.

Condescension is usually what people reach for when they have nothing substantive to say. It’s easier to psychoanalyse the author than to engage with the argument.

If calling out a cartelised briefing ecosystem is dismissed as a “child denied a toy,” that says more about how normalised gatekeeping has become than about the critique itself.

Also, treating “duffers and dalcops with contempt” is an odd credo for a profession that still pretends to value advocacy, ethics, and open competition. But perhaps contempt is the only language that sustains closed clubs.

You’re welcome to disagree. But sneering is not a rebuttal — it’s an admission that the discomfort struck home.

A very nuanced topic i must say.

But honestly if senior designation or even AOR designation was to go away, the whole story that coaching centres, schools, parents etc sell that law is one of the most financially lucrative position would be gone.

Learning, Grind, Hustle is there to exist from the day you enter into the profession and the day you exit but money is the one keeping it worth. If seniors like Ram Jethmalani, Kapil Sibal, Harish Salve etc were not crorepati's, majority of the law aspiring folks would just walk away towards othe fields in the blink of an eye imho.

Completely agree. Both the Senior Advocate and AOR designations need to be dismantled. Not only does it create a small group of beneficiaries, it also promotes corrupt practices. These designations are also a form of control over the Bar by the Bench and by the oligarchy at the Supreme Court. The favouritism shown to senior advocates must end especially to certain senior advocates who dominate the Supreme Court.

They are saying that the system has become inverted, with, mostly, toothless AoR’s that operate on the mercy of seniors who, contrary to established norms and conventions, are entertaining drafting, filing and other allied services that are conventional to law firms (and are routing these services, ie. services which fall outside the domain of a senior advocates practice, through their in-house juniors or AoR/ AoR firms in their network and now, laughably- through offices of more junior senior advocates). There’s essentially now an oversupply of senior advocates in the Supreme Court because fees, and market forces are pushing them into retaining/ furthering their drafting, filing and briefing practices (despite being senior advocates) - because many of them have far from established themselves such that they get briefed externally. The whole convention of designation has become a farce and needs to be done away with. For good.

Congratulations young man. You have revealed yourself as a rather naiive and blinkered fellow. Why do Senior Advocates prefer to work only with certain AORs/Firms? The answers are:

1. Certainty of payment. You'd be surprised how many counsels (even the most eminent ones) have to chase AORs/clients for payment. With their trusted AORs, payment is guaranteed.

2. Trust and accuracy. Recently, a plaintiff rep'd by one of the top SCs in Bombay was saddled with 50 lakh costs for suppression of facts. It was a major embarrassment for said senior. He told me that unless he had a briefing attorney like me, or he himself personally had verified all facts, he would henceforth not settle any pleadings or argue matters. Doubt he will stick by this though - his practice is far too lucrative, but, you get my drift. With trusted AORs, the SCs can blindly take their word for the truth because they know the immense amount of hard work and effort the AOR has put in to unearth facts and research the law. Since the relationship b/w the SC-AOR transcends the mere brief.

3. Joie de vivre. Many people don't get this. But ultimately, people, especially highly intelligent ones, want to be around others whom they like, whom they consider intellectual equals, and, who are dynamic, fun and stimulating. One cannot thrive in this profession if you do not have fun while you work. Highly intelligent folk find many people plain drab and plain boring.

I admire your idealism — it has a certain vintage charm — but the reality is rather more prosaic. India has produced a surplus of lawyers vastly disproportionate to the number of litigants who can afford litigation. When the profession outnumbers its market, the consequences are inevitable and rarely edifying.

Those without pedigree or patronage discover quickly that Supreme Court litigation is not a career path but a stress test. Brilliance is helpful but scarce; luck even more so. The genuinely intelligent do the sensible thing and leave for corporate practice.

As for the younger Senior Advocates: yes, their filing practices are unbecoming of the designation. But clients reserve premium fees for seniors alone. If one is not designated by the late thirties — and is not already a Shardul, Pravin, or Karanjawala — the market marks one as permanently “non-premium.” Early designations and discreet filing practices are the predictable result.

This is not decline; it is adaptation. The solicitor–counsel divide is collapsing everywhere, including Bombay, and the incoming generation of AoRs is considerably more competent than your nostalgia allows.

Which brings us to your proposal: abolishing the Senior Advocate designation. Admirable in sentiment, catastrophic in consequence. Remove the only substantial financial incentive in litigation, and the Bar will empty faster than a Delhi courtroom at 4:58 PM on a Friday!

There’s a development unfolding within the practice of advocacy that is not merely concerning — it is profoundly unsettling. We are witnessing the rise of an entire category of lawyers whose principal role is not advocacy, not legal strategy, not even substantive engagement with the case, but simply to act as glorified couriers for filings and briefings headed to Supreme Court Senior Counsel. To imagine this as a harmless administrative evolution would be a grave mistake. It is, in fact, a system that has been carefully constructed — and carefully maintained.

What should trouble any serious observer of the profession is this: these firms function because senior counsel — yes, the seniors themselves — are feeding them the work. For anyone outside this comfortable little ecosystem, let’s be absolutely clear. This is a complete inversion of how the system was designed. The client never belonged to the senior. The senior was meant to be briefed, not to orchestrate the flow of briefs.

Then there is the matter of fees — astronomical in many cases — and the perpetual “unavailability.” These obstacles exist primarily for those who stand outside the charmed circle. But route your matter through one of the favoured firms and suddenly the senior is available, the conversation changes, and the fee structure becomes remarkably flexible. It is, frankly, astonishing how openly and effortlessly this cartel operates.

Which leads to a question we have been far too hesitant to confront: has the time come to reconsider — perhaps even dismantle — the entire edifice of Senior Advocates and AoRs? The oft-cited claim that AoRs provide some form of meaningful filtration is, to put it politely, implausible. Everyone within the profession knows it. What remains today is a structure that is conceptually outdated and practically repurposed to restrict access to Supreme Court work.

And here we must also address the hypocrisy. A number of younger designated seniors — including the NLS and NLU pedigrees who present themselves as the torchbearers of professional ethics — are, in reality, running what are effectively law firms. They draft. They file. They brief other seniors. They do precisely what the rules say they should not — all while maintaining a veneer of sanctimony about the honour of the designation. Even some of the “stars” so frequently lauded on this very platform are immersed in this charade.

Perhaps the time has come to speak about this openly — and honestly.

Let’s discuss this.