Let me emphasis – my aim is to educate those young Advocates who are literally spoiling their lives on wayward activities and who are in the first 10 years of their most crucial productive years of Advocacy indulging themselves by calling off their days into petty politics or trucking with political goons or gaining no knowledge or practical experience yet working as juniors with the so called self-centered Senior Advocates.

The life of the junior Advocates is more pathetic in the hands of some Senior Advocates – they finally became slave in the making of an Advocate themselves. Unless a person has the desirability to attain the feat in Advocacy, I don’t think even he would be Junior to a most popular or calibre Senior Advocate, he would not even attain the feat of a better Advocate in his profession till he retires or dies.

Now the scenario is another set of Advocates are emerging in the Country on the backdrop of large number of Law Universities / Colleges started functioning under Corporate Umbrella. In a State like Tamil Nadu, the incumbent Advocate has to face challenges in terms of language competency in English with those new gen. The new gen Advocates are incubated from the lab of the global standard Universities operating in our Country and they are well placed to present their case from the day one of theirs joining the Bar or the Firm, howsoever, the point is whether they know application of provisions to those facts they were argumenting in the Court?

And those Advocates who have come from the background of a Government run Colleges now needs to counter these new gen Advocates by not only articulating the presentation in the Court in their language style but also speak substances more eloquently by handling the provisions of Law never before.

I am against of Advocates chasing citations to produce to the Court in support of their arguments when there is no ambiguity or the provisions itself speaks out loudly its correct interpretation. Very sorry state of affairs is that few Advocates who have put several years of practice in the Trial Court chose to file a citation together with 317 Petition for its admission. Very awkward is that even the Court is accepting such authorities. 

To those Advocates who sees success of their case relies only on citations – my argument is – as long as you rely on citations either you won’t develop your knowledge nor your skills in legal practicing and will never become a good legal practitioner. Otherwise, what is required is, legal acumen, not citations to present your case and success will automatically reach you.

Otherwise, always remember, citations could only be read and digested for updating you – how a case was handled by the Trial Court and what were the defects brought by the Petitioner to the notices of the Appellate Court in the Lower Court’s Order by way of Appeal or Revision and finally how the Appellate Court unraveled the mystery [raised as grounds by the Petitioner] in the case.

Whereas, I am of the opinion that the citations could only be referred by you – it is only to make you to understand or update of how the provisions were analyzed by the Appellate Court, and going beyond that would only make an Advocate a handicap in the long run and he would not be able to roam actively in the Court practice without the crutches of the citation and that is fatal.      

As there is a saying, learn from the wise man for not committing mistakes – the reason is that the wise man had not only put in his practice for several years before he is called a wise man, the fact is that he learnt from his mistakes by destroying his resources. Perhaps for such reason alone the one who knows the trade of Advocacy because of his long innings in the profession and had all the past wrath on him of his senior is not coming forward to pass on the baton of skill-set to his fellow juniors and unfortunately, the Advocate Profession is stuck there.

Eventually, a Junior Advocate, if not smart enough or not woken up to the reality, he would always be a junior to his senior. Having said this, it does not mean that I have no regards to senior, and that is not correct, the point, I would like to stress here is that unless a Senior Advocate would get in himself a certain amount of responsibility to impart and educate his junior as his principle duty, the profession would not reach its competitiveness.

In other words, I would say that seniors should not think by imparting skillset they would lose their briefs to their juniors and such thought in itself is absurd. Even some seniors make hoarse cry, once their juniors acquired required skills they never returned to them and they started their own offices – I don’t see any wrong in such attitude of the juniors.

Having their own offices and an independent practice never a day dream for junior advocates, it is quite an ambition to all the one who starts their career as Advocate. It is different issue whether they make use of the offices they developed and retained it till they decided to exit from the profession.

Otherwise, my argument is, in our profession, I don’t see any real competition or threat exist for those Advocates who has true intention to progress and keep himself updating with the developments in his profession – updating – it does not mean ascertaining judges qualities and / or resembling bar members personalities in the Courts you practice, but to get on with the core practices of reading and referring statues, citations, identifying emergence [transformation] of new thoughts in the justice, sharpening communications skills – be it writing or presentation of oral arguments in the Courts and such similar things.

I remind you, a day is no far, you will have to compel to share your space in legal practice with foreigners – whether the foreigners directly take away your space in legal practice or not but they will certainly intrude your clientele through backdoor by engaging those graduates who were incubated in the so called best Law Universities in this Country promoted by the Corporates.

It is on such given background, I am of considered opinion that tomorrow’s Advocate – be him a zero year of practice, let him awake from the very first day of his practice and let him have clear plans and thoughts and focus on how he foresees his legal practice he could be.