As you’re beginning your career, here are a few things you might want to know:

1. It’s all about appearances

If you’re a counsel in Bombay, you have to make yourself seen in court. On the Original Side of the Bombay High Court, that means that you have to sit in the library on the 2^nd floor, and visit the Bar Association room on the 3^rd floor, ever so often. You have to become a familiar face, so that solicitors recognise you and eventually give you work.

In fact, it’s said that you should sit in the Original Side library all day during court hours.

Now, here’s the catch – you won’t actually get any work done in the Original Side library.

There are no plug points where you can plug in your laptop.

There’s a nominal WiFi system, but it doesn’t work.

It’s too noisy with too many distractions.

There is very little place on the tables for you to keep your papers.

In fact, to a very large extent, the Original Side library on the 2^nd floor is meant to be nothing more than a waiting room, where lawyers sit, wait and often socialize until their cases “reach”, i.e., until their cases get called out before the judge.

As a junior counsel, though, you have to act like you’re working in the library – you have to be seen ordering books there and reading. That will give solicitors the impression that you’re busy, and so you will get work, or at least that’s the idea.

There is one more thing you need to know about the library though – it has a many books that you might not find in your senior’s chamber, and so it’s important to be able to know how to get books there.

2. The library is a strange place

As alluded to above, the Original Side library on the 2^nd floor of the Bombay High Court is quite a strange place.

First of all, there’s an informal system of assigned seating.

Everyone recognizes that there’s one table (at the far end of the main room as you walk in) which is the “Tulzapurkar” table, where the Tulzapurkar brothers sit. Another table, in the center of the room, is the extended Chagla table – where Iqbal Chagla and others from the Khursetjee Bhabha chamber (including the likes of Janak Dwarkadas and JP Sen) sit.

If you’re a junior to one senior counsel, it would be considered very odd if you sit at another table in the library without good reason.

So, for example, a Chagla junior wouldn’t be caught dead sitting at the Tulzapurkar table, if he can help it. Of course, it goes without saying that you have to give your seat to a senior counsel if you’re sitting at his place in the library.

Second, the manner in which you have to order books in the Original Side library is a bit odd. While seated at your table, you have to raise your hand, snap your fingers loudly to catch the attention of a librarian, and then yell out the name of the book you want.

It all looks a little colonial to me. I can imagine some white British lawyer sahib yelling out in 1875 in the High Court library, “Eh, coolie, Contract Act laao”.

Can you imagine sitting in the library at Oxford or Yale, and ordering librarians to get you books like this?

Third, it’s very hard to identify who the librarians are in the library when you’re starting out.

That’s because many lawyers’ peons also sit and wait in the library where the librarians sit. So when you raise your hand, snap your fingers, and call for a book, don’t be surprised if the librarian you’re hailing does nothing, because he might not be a librarian at all – he might be some lawyer’s peon.

3. No attorney-client privilege

There’s another thing you’re likely to notice when you start your career as a counsel.

There’s almost no attorney-client privilege at the Bombay High Court.

Lawyers often conduct conferences in the library on the 2^nd floor, or in the Bar Association room on the 3^rd floor. These can be heard by anyone who’s sitting nearby. I find it extremely strange that lawyers discuss strategies with clients in open areas like this. It’s also sometimes embarrassing to conduct a conference when your friends are nearby. 

4. You will start slow

No matter who you are or what your family background is, you will get very little work in the beginning.

On the Original Side, you will get few or no chances to appear and argue (even less so if you don’t belong to a “legal family”).

Your senior at the Bar will pay you no money.

This is not necessarily a bad thing – it ensures that you’re not an employee for your senior, and that you can take outside work as well.

5. There are many entry barriers to litigation

You will often see that there are two kinds of lawyers who become counsel: (i) children of lawyers or judges; or (ii) children of business families.

There are a few reasons why this is so:

First, counsel practice is a big risk.

You make little or no money in the beginning. If you have to pay rent or earn money to provide for your family, counsel practice is not for you, because you won’t make enough money for at least a few years.

As a consequence, it’s only if you come from a reasonably well-off family and if you have a flat to stay in without paying rent that you can afford to become a counsel. It’s only the sons/daughters of lawyers/judges (or those from business families who are reasonably secure financially) who can brave the risk of becoming a counsel.

Second, getting a position in the chamber of a senior counsel is very hard in Bombay.

There are reasons for this. When you join a senior in Bombay, you join that senior for life.

The senior doesn’t pay you anything, and that means that he can’t fire you. He’s stuck with you for the rest of his life. 

That means that a senior will be very cautious before taking someone on as a junior. If law firms like Amarchand, AZB or J Sagar hire newbie nobody lawyers from a National Law School, and then don’t like their work, they can always get rid of them.

Not so for a counsel, which is why it’s so hard to get into a senior’s chamber in Bombay.

As a result, it’s usually only the sons/daughters of the well-connected – again, children of lawyers/judges or businessmen (businessmen who have hired senior counsel in the past and so know them well) – who can get into these chambers.

6. Moot courts were a joke

If you enjoyed mooting as a law student, and thought that you would get into litigation because of it, you’re in for a rude shock.

First of all, moot courts were all about the law, but litigation is about facts.

In moots, students often skip the facts by saying something like “if your Lordships are conversant with the facts of the case, I will come to my arguments in law…”

This is unheard of in counsel practice on the Original Side of the Bombay High Court. In fact, it’s often said that law schools teach you to apply complex law to simple facts, whereas in litigation, you apply simple law to complex facts.

Second, preparing memorials for moot courts does not train you for preparing pleadings on the Original Side.

Memorials are like written submissions, which come only at the end of a heavy case. Preparing pleadings, on the other hand, is nothing like writing a memorial.

It’s a remarkably mundane process, where you have to respond to each and every paragraph of the pleadings made by your opponent (the process is called making “para-wise denials”) and you have to “deny and dispute” everything which goes against you.

On a lighter note, you will learn to use redundant repetitions while drafting in counsel practice. For example, you will write phrases like “deny and dispute” or “repeat and reiterate” often.

Third, you will never get the luxury of only preparing for one case for several months, like a moot court. Often, the papers will come to you only a week before the case comes on board. Often, you will have many matters to work on such that you can't give all your time and thought to just one case.

Oh, and one last thing.

When someone asks you for your “number” in court, don’t give them your cell number. They’re only asking what your number is on the board.

Good luck!

Photo by Michael Siegel