Let’s call this what it is: privilege doing cosplay as grit. Charming chap, no doubt. But when he says he “chose” not to be a junior, what he really means is he could afford not to be. The rest of us don’t choose the ladder—we cling to it and hope it isn’t pulled away. Instead, he “accepts” junior briefs from top firms and drifts in as second chair to legal royalty. How terribly subversive. It’s not breaking the system; it’s being softly escorted through it. And that Supreme Court debut—followed by the judge ringing up his father with feedback on both argument and hair. That detail lingered. It brought to mind my own last appearance before a certain judge—widely recognised, for all the wrong reasons—who wouldn’t indulge me for even a second because I wasn’t a “known face,” or more to the point, someone’s son or daughter. He proceeded to dictate an unsubstantiated dismissal. I interrupted his dictation—something I fundamentally disagree with and frankly dislike myself for resorting to—and only then did he partially correct course, awkwardly carving out the very relief I had sought in the first place. And the order reflects that confusion perfectly: it begins with a dismissal, only to then grant, in substance, the very relief I had asked for. A contradiction, neatly preserved on record. One suspects that had a more recognisable surname been on its feet, the Court might have taken the trouble to call it what it actually was: not a dismissal, but a disposal. Clarity, it seems, is also a function of who’s asking. That performance was… instructive. The only honest line in the interview was the accidental one: you’re only competing with yourself because someone will always be ahead thanks to connections. Quite. Though it’s a far more comforting philosophy when the queue has a habit of parting for you. And watching this little masterclass in inherited momentum masquerading as merit, a thought lands with unusual clarity: I’m done. Not in a dramatic, flounce-out way—just the cold, administrative kind of done that comes after a decade of watching the same script play out. Not just with this version of the profession. With India. Because if this is the ecosystem—where access is dressed up as excellence and proximity is mistaken for talent—then staying starts to look less like perseverance and more like complicity. And I’ve no interest in spending another decade pretending this is normal.

Wow, did this interview just wipe out one more 10+ PQE litigator from my competition? Brutal.

Thanks, Gaurab Da. Please, do more interviews. Be candid, be carefree… keep accidentally torching the field while you’re at it.

As a first-gen litigator, I’m being squeezed from both ends: nepos on one side, and people pricing themselves like clearance sale items on the other just to get a foot in the door. So yes, more of this, please. I need all the help I can get!

Ultimately, we're a lot of people competing for too little. Another problem is the sheer neglect en masse, despite being a large population.

You'll have to compete with these multi-gen faces, who already have aplenty and are positioned to take away more. But you seem like a wise old-ish(?) Chap with a creative legal brain. You'll fight bigger battles. Hope you win.

Alongside, one makes peace with what they want and have, in the materialistic sense. This is the greatest struggle. And it seems like the coming waves might not sustain all lives.

OP here. Yes, I used AI to proofread my post. Why? It has been—and will likely remain—the least consequential thing I’ve done in March 2026.

That said, I stand by every word I wrote. The lived experience I shared is entirely real and my own. Using AI to proofread a draft is no crime, as long as the underlying intellectual input is honest.

Which is why I take exception to what feels like a coordinated attack by the mods of LI, marking the post as “Contested.” Come on—get real. I shared an opinion, a lived experience, and my loss of faith in this system—all of which are, no doubt, subjective.

Thanks for clarifying, no offense was intended.

Unfortunately AI rarely just proofreads and has a tendency to embellish and bullshit and sensationalise, which makes readers attuned to it doubt the perhaps authentic experience behind the post. Most would surely be happier to see an unproofread post than the sloppy AI writing that seems to have flooded the entire internet (and we generally aim to moderate responses criticising posts' spelling or English level as trollish).

So AI might embellish.

I’ve said it didn’t, in this case. You’ve acknowledged that, and then returned to what it might do, marking my post “contested” and your ad hominem attacks “featured.”

At this point, the moderation, purely as a matter of impression, looks less like a check on accuracy, and more like a way to preserve the status quo.

No worries. That tells its own story...

Btw - I used AI to proofread this response as well :)

I want to place on record my serious doubts and reservations that you used it merely for "proofreading". That implies that it helped you sort out subject-verb agreement, spelling issues, wrong usage of homophones and other syntax issues. The way that some language has been used here indicates otherwise - the word patterns of a few sentences, the way sentences have been begun, etc, indicates a writing-style quirk common to many AI programmes that throw out a lot of product per day.

I am not doubting your ideas or experience, however. Just stating the fact that the labour you put into writing this is not proportionate with the expectations you have from people - to give up their time to read and respond to it, and additionally that your doubling down is even more unhelpful to your advocacy of what is actually a very worthy and important cause.