senior counsel
DSK Legal Delhi corporate, competition and litigation partner Balbir Singh has resigned from the partnership to begin counsel practise in Delhi.
How can a first generation litigator survive? Advocate Dushyant Arora gives some handy tips.
The Bombay high court has designated 11 new senior counsel, including three outside Mumbai, Economic Laws Practice (ELP) partner Vikram Nankani, and one woman.
NLSIU Bangalore produced a total five senior advocates this year with three now in the Karnataka high court, who were designated next to one non-NLSIU alum.
The Bombay high court, hot on the heels of the Delhi high court that designated three new senior advocates, has named 11 advocates to become seniors, though none of them were women.
One of the three new Delhi high court senior counsel neither had a legal alma mater such as NLSIU Bangalore, Oxford, Cambridge or Harvard, nor even a relative in the profession. He did, however, have a degree in nuclear physics.
Dayan Krishnan, the second NLSIU Bangalore alumnus to have been designated senior counsel in a week, said that while luck, coincidence and the patronage of three seniors was instrumental in his career to date, the Delhi high court has very clearly voted for hard work in its designations.
Amit Sibal, Cambridge University graduate, Dayan Krishnan, public prosecutor and 1993 NLSIU Bangalore graduate, and Anup Bhambhani, have been designated senior counsel in the Delhi high court.
First NLS senior counsel interview: Akshay Bhan on the importance of seniors and who’s next from NLS
Akshay Bhan, who is the first NLSIU Bangalore alumnus advocate designated as a senior counsel, recounts how being a former Supreme Court judge’s son helps, the importance of seniors and how he thinks other NLS alumni are likely to be elevated soon too.
NLSIU Bangalore alumnus Akshay Bhan, who is practising in the High Court of Punjab & Haryana in Chandigarh, has been designated as a senior counsel.
A law graduate who recently blogged about how a retired Supreme Court judge sexually assaulted her while she was his intern, says that the problem is real and not uncommon at the bar and the bench.
Madras HC revenue norms on designating senior advocates: An advocate should have at least 15 years of experience arguing cases, some of them should be landmark judgements and should have earned at least Rs 7 lakh annually from lawyering for three years immediately before being considered to be elevated [The Hindu]
Madras bar opposes JAC: The Madras Bar Association (MBA) in a memorandum to the president of India has opposed the constitutional amendment that establishes the Judicial Appointments Committee. The MBA has likened the amendment to the British Rowlatt Act 1919 – which delimited all civil liberties [TOI]
Research better, says judge: Lawyers should do better research before arguing a case in court, in order to help the judges do their job better said a Madras HC judge [The Hindu]
JR for admin tribunals? Administrative tribunals should also have the power of judicial review, like the judiciary does [Zee News]
Pizza Hut under DTAA lens: The Delhi High Court is set to rule whether a US company can simultaneously avail of the benefit of a lower tax rate under the Indo-US Double Tax Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) and exemptions on payments of royalty under the Income Tax (I-T) Act [Financial Express]
SC slams IR flip-flop litigation: Revenue shouldn't "be allowed to flip-flop on the issue and it ought to let the matter rest, rather than spend the tax payers' money in pursuing litigation of its own sake... There was no need for it to continue this litigation when it was quite clear that not only was it fruitless but also that it may not have added anything to the public coffers", says SC [Business Standard]
Jayalalithaa asks SC to extend judge tenure to hear graft case: TN CM Jayalalithaa and others faces disproportionate assets probe in Karnataka HC, write SC asking for new judge's appointments to be quashed in order for old judge's tenure to be extended to hear the case [NDTV]
Photographic defaults: Banks' practice of publicising defaulters' pictures could be on thin ice, legally, lawyers tell TOI [TOI]
CC’s presentation tips for women: UK legal giant Clifford Chance issued a memo to its women retainers with advice such as: “Don’t giggle; Don’t squirm; Don’t tilt your head; No one heard Hillary the day she showed cleavage” [Above The Law/Think Progress]
SC designates women majority - Vibha Makhija, Meenakshi Arora, Kiran Suri & Sushil Jain - as seniors
The Supreme Court yesterday decided to designate women advocates Vibha Dutta Makhija, Meenakshi Arora and Kiran Suri as senior advocates by a unanimous decision of a full court, reported the Times of India. Advocate Sushil Jain was also designated a senior in the same meeting.
This is the first time in SC history that a list of designated seniors has male lawyers in the minority. The full court rejected the Supreme Court Bar Association's (SCBA) request to defer consideration of names for the senior designation.
Makhija and Arora are part of the seven-member Gender Sensitisation and Internal Complaints Committee that was recently set up by the SC.
At least five Supreme Court judges have to now agree to the candidature of an advocate to be designated as a senior by the court, reportedly under new rules.
The Delhi high court had in March designated five new seniors including two women, as reported by Legally India.
Correction: An earlier version of this story had wrongly mentioned that not Kiran Suri but Sushma Suri had been designated as a senior, relying on an erroneous Times of India report we linked to. This has been corrected after the Supreme Court released the full list of senior designated in September, online.
The higher judiciary is revamping the system of appointment of senior advocates, to weed out incompetent advocates and appointment through ‘uncle judges’. In the Delhi high court, the full court will now have to consider the name of each applicant, while in the Supreme Court five sitting judges of the SC will have to agree to the candidature of an advocate.
The Times of India reported:
Some of the advocates who have not been considered by a particular high court for such prestigious position have allegedly used clouts to get the coveted post from high courts of smaller states where the bench is relatively smaller.
What really happens in chambers: Anatomy of Litigation 101 (reader blog)
They say if you want to die of poverty, struggling to make ends meet, with no money and even less of a reputation, then choose your profession wisely because there are very few professions which can make you into an irritating, socially ridiculed, annoying destitute as law.{jcomments off}
Exclusive: The High Court of Delhi has today designated four new senior advocates. Two of the new seniors are women, and all four have less than 25 years of practicing experience.