I don’t know whether this is the new “in” thing with law graduates but I have heard quite a few lawyers complain about the state of legal education. Criticisms include poor teaching standards, threadbare infrastructure and declining (sometimes non-existent) levels of academic research. One of the most common allegations is that law school does not prepare you for “real” life i.e. life after college (which is somehow more “real” than life during college). The general complaint tends to be that law schools throws you out into the wild, wild world without actually preparing you for the same.

To some extent these criticism are depressingly well founded but sometimes, just sometimes, I feel that perhaps people are being a bit too harsh.

For there are some things which even the most brilliant law school can never teach you. I don’t know how true this is of corporate lawyers but it definitely rings true for litigating lawyers. For instance, procedural law is a subject which can be notoriously difficult to both teach and to learn without practical experience. And then there are the more trade-specific subjects which can only (and I do mean only) be learnt through actual practice.

Take the example of file inspection or “pagination”. A file inspection is done to prepare an accurate replica of the file that is read by a judge, right down to the page numbers in the judge’s file.

When a suit/petition etc is first filed in court, the pages are numbered. In a ten-page writ petition for example, let fact “X” be mentioned on page number six.  When the lawyer wants to direct the courts attention to a fact X, s/he merely has to refer to page number six and the judge will know where to look. So far so good.

Once subsequent documents are filed (counter-affidavit, rejoinder, additional affidavit etc) then things get a little more complex. Say a ten page counter-affidavit has been filed after the ten page writ petition. This will now be numbered by the court officials as eleven through twenty. If a ten page rejoinder is filed after the counter, then the same will be numbered twenty-one through thirty and so on and so forth.

The page numbers become especially important when the matter reaches the stage of final arguments. Here, a competent lawyer will have the entire file correctly numbered so when s/he has to draw the courts attention towards the third page of the second respondent’s counter-affidavit, s/he will know exactly what page number to state.

One may also inspect a file to copy interim orders or orders passed by the Registrars Court which are not available online. Often, the matter is so old that none of the orders are available online so you have to copy each and every order. This exercise can take a few hours at times and can be mind-numbing and hence often the sole domain of juniors. Step into an inspection room (the room where files are delivered to be inspected) and you will almost always see a bunch of juniors scribbling away with their pencils (no pens allowed) to ensure that all the relevant information has been noted.

For me file inspections were a wonderful way to reconstruct the entire case. Due to the fact that the judge’s file is always well maintained and arranged in a chronological manner, it is fairly easy to put together the chain of events. Right from the first day (“Notice issued”) to the subsequent dates before the Registrar for completion of pleadings, to adjournments taken for various reasons to that crucial interim order, I always found it fascinating visualize the course that the particular case had taken.

File inspections would also throw up an interesting anecdote here and there. For instance, in a matter stretching back two decades, one lawyer had appeared to ask for an adjournment as a proxy counsel (a lawyer on behalf of another lawyer). Normally a junior lawyer is cajoled into being a proxy counsel and this is nothing out of ordinary. What caught my eye was that the same lawyer was now a sitting judge of the High Court! I found it hard to imagine that the imposing judge was once a meek junior who had been bullied into seeking an adjournment for another lawyer.

Of course, even a mundane task such as file inspections can turn into an exciting rollercoaster. I remember one high profile matter where I had been directed to inspect the file. The judge had recently passed an extremely crucial interim order and we had to obtain a complete copy of it so as to plot the future course of action. To put things in perspective, the order had been passed yesterday, the inspection was today and the appeal was to be filed tomorrow!

And, to add to the excitement, the opposite party also wanted to lay their hands on the order so that the order could be served on the parties. In essence, we both needed the order as quickly as possible. It was a race then!

In the inspection room, I managed to get the file first only to realize that the order was some twenty pages long! It would take me at least an hour and a half to jot it all down, time which we simply did not have. And all the time Boss was getting frantic calls from the client. The pressure was intense to say the least.

To make matters more fun, the opposite party’s counsels was begging/cajoling/threatening me to hand over the file so that she could take steps to serve the parties. Imagine a junior struggling with a pencil whose name was Blunt even as a seasoned lawyer was trying to nearly snatch the file away. It was complete chaos and tempers were frayed to put it mildly. The only solution was to Xerox the order but that could only happen after one in the afternoon.

What followed would have made an absolutely manic comedy film. It was as if a piece of candy had been dropped right in the centre of a school ground during recess. A veritable free for all then! My clerk, the opposite counsel’s clerk, the opposite counsel’s friend, and my clerk’s friend everyone began shouting and pleading with the other while, right in the thick of things, the Inspection Room official was getting increasingly flustered with our antics. Finally, unable to bear us any longer, she allowed me to Xerox the order and get out of her hair, something which I did with incredible alacrity.

As soon as the Xerox was made, I practically ran out of the court complex with the order in my hand. The opposite counsel had already told me to hand over a copy of the order but I obviously did not want to do that. So I just ran out of the court building, clutching the order like my life depended while at the same time pretending that I could not hear the desperate pleas of the opposite counsel. Boss was happy, client was happy and I was ecstatic!

You think any law school could prepare you for this?

Kroswami, after five glorious years in Calcutta, chose to litigate in Delhi. Two years later, Kroswami decided to leave the Rajdhani and shift to Bombay where he occasionally meets people dressed in white shirts and black pants.

Paginate