The other day a friend suggested why I don’t write about my experiences at the law school now that I am almost a lawyer. I don’t know how much I know because I have seen people who know much, much more. The way I see it, I’m absolutely incompetent for the task. But on second thoughts, when I compare myself to what I knew as a person interested in law and as person who possesses a law degree, I do know of certain insights in the profession which I may share with everyone interested.
First myth is that ‘lawyers know the law’. Let us just do some Math. There are over 33, 00, 000 statutes in India, add to these the innumerable customs and traditions of different places applicable as law to those places, the multitude General Resolutions of the Government, the various Notifications, the rules under all these enactments plus the judgments passed every day by courts all over the world from all common law countries and treaties and conventions the nations have entered into etc. In short, it is impossible for anyone to know the law. No lawyer ‘knows’ the law.
What do lawyers do then? They are simply required to know how to ‘find’ the law applicable and then when all applicable laws are found and understood, making out what do ‘they mean’. The task is not as simple as it sounds because most of the times more than one law are applicable to a particular fact situation. They are often vague, ambiguous, contradictory, written in a language difficult to understand etc. While advising a client you have to take into consideration the ‘combined effect’ of all these laws put together along with the ‘client specific’ or the ‘case specific’ concerns. Point being becoming lawyer is not rote learning, it is learning a thought a process- learning ‘how to think.’
How does one learn this thought process? I did not go to a premiere law school. I do not know what are the methods used by the professors or teachers there to imbibe these skills in their students. Personally however, I would strongly recommend reading real texts of as many judgments as possible. I would strongly recommend reading textbooks written using the Case-Book Method and books of Lord Denning. Over a period of time, you will realize that ‘law’ is not an abstract concept which can stand independently on its own. It is a philosophy developed over ages which, just like poems, means different things to different people at different times. Just that laws, unlike poems, do not always rhyme.
To give an example of what I mean let us take the case of two baby siblings who want to share equally one bar of chocolate someone has given them. It is most likely that they will take the bar to their mother and trust her to break it into two equal pieces for them. The mother will then break the bar into two pieces and hand them a piece each.
Here, in spite of the fact that neither the siblings, nor the mother know a zilch about law the facts to be noted from a lawyer’s perspective are the sense the siblings have that ‘justice needs to be done’, that ‘it has to be done by someone impartial’ and finally the fact that ‘mother does justice.’ Point simply being, that no matter what we all do, we all have an inherent notion of what is ‘just’ and ‘fair’ irrespective of whether we know the law.
The fact situation I have created above is fairly simple. In real life, the situations are much more complicated and stakes much higher than a chocolate bar.
The study of ‘law’ therefore is both, the study of this ‘notion’ and an ‘activity’ which will enable us to develop over time our own ‘notion’ suitable to the needs of the present society. The more you study, the more you develop your ‘notion’ and that is precisely why older lawyers charge much, much more than younger lawyers.
No comments:
Post a Comment