(My experiences as an internee with Dr. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud)
On a breezy winter morning, listening to a pure British accent of a student from Cambridge in a mid-nineteenth century gothic stone building, with men dressed in long black robes around me, I felt as if I was in the magical world of Harry Potter. What I was witnessing every day was no less than magic either, just that words were being used instead of Wands and Acts, Rules and Sections were being cast instead of spells.
While you must have guessed I was at the High Court of Bombay, you must also be wondering how the British student from Cambridge fits the picture. Well, let me put it this way, internees under Dr. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud* come from all over the world, including our very own DES Law College (Yes, the world really is that small!). In fact, I was introduced to a very pretty young Australian girl just a day before she was to leave and told I was her replacement. I am a single young man. I don’t think I need to write about my disappointment. Probably an article about my broken heart would have helped me much more in recuperating but there’d be nothing interesting or new about it. Colleges and law colleges in particular, are built on the foundations of broken hearts because women don’t really like young lawyers. At least in India, they’re too poor. I must write about something else if I ever want to get an article published. Honestly, if you go there you’ll just fall for some cute foreigner and get your heart broken but since I find my name on a published sheet of paper almost as attractive as that Australian girl, I’m writing about how I got there, what I did there and how it felt.
It all started in an online chat on gtalk when my friend Niharika studying in NLSIU Bangalore said she was doing an internship with Sir. Sir’s name rings so many bells in people’s ears that usually it is needless to mention that he topped through out his academic career including his law course from the University of Delhi, did his LLM and SJD both from Harvard, was the youngest person ever to be designated as a Senior Advocate, was the youngest person ever to be appointed as the Judge of the High Court of Bombay or is the son of the longest serving Chief Justice of India and is also known as a thorough gentleman and a gem of a person. I didn’t know he accepted internees until then. Naturally, I was excited about the idea of seeing this man at work. I mean how can the same man have so many feathers in his cap? Wouldn’t the cap just tear with all the holes the feathers would make?!
Anyway, so when I asked about the procedure for application she said because she was from NLSIU her application was processed within 2 days but she knew of a girl from GLC who had had to personally keep visiting the concerned people for over 3 months to finally get through. I have never understood if we could have stalwarts like Sir himself without National Law Schools there’s no reason why he would vouch for them over any other college. In my opinion students are of two types: interested and disinterested. And there’s no reason why someone who’s interested should be denied a fair chance to prove his caliber merely because he does not come from a particular college.
As luck would have it, Sir’s visit to our college was announced the very next week. He was to visit at the end of the month. At the student interaction I put my point across to Sir and guess what, not only did he accept he did not have any personal preference towards the National Law Schools, both of his sons in fact went to GLC, he personally went on to tell the gathering of the procedure to apply for an internship with him.
Don’t get over excited here! It wasn’t as simple as he made us believe. While trying to follow it I found myself standing outside the office of the Registrar (Personnel) for over 3 hours before he finally saw me. I had to visit two more times to finally know which exactly was the “clerk” I was to submit my documents to and then regret the fact that I addressed him as “clerk” in front of him because he actually was the Assistant Registrar! About 23 days later I got a letter allowing my application to work as an internee for the period I had asked. Now before you jump to the conclusion that I had to do this because I was from DES and Niharika’s application was processed within 2 days because she was from NLS, let me make it clear that Niharika had applied on Sir’s personal email id which, by the way, I now have too. It goes only to cute girls who don’t break my heart though. (:P) I still maintain there is no bias.
So now we come to the core question. What did I learn with Sir? Well, I believe what I learned can mainly be divided into four categories, legal or jurisprudential, personal, human and professional. Let me enunciate each of them one by one.
Jurisprudentially, Sir gives you an access to all the papers of his Court and I mean all which one may possibly require to decide a case. It’s as if we’re his babies, his chamber or Court is our play school and his papers, our toys. You can touch anything, read anything as long as you don’t touch administrative files and his personal papers. After reading the Court briefs of both the sides (which under normal circumstances no one except the judge has an access to) Sir expects you to prepare a Researched Note on the case which shouldn’t just be properly formatted but must also have a your own decision of the case in the form of “Conclusion”. Many times when Sir doesn’t have the time to read the entire brief, he depends on the Researched Notes of his internees. And let me tell you something cool, if he’s impressed with your note, parts of it are copy pasted in his judgment! I can’t describe how it feels to know that the words you wrote are a part of the law of the State of MaharashtraJ. Then Sir expects you to be present at the time the matter you have prepared a Researched Note on is argued and read his draft judgments in the matter later. Reading his orders in the matter is usually a “paradigm shift” experience even when you’ve read almost everything you can on a certain matter. Not because his conclusion differs from yours, it almost never does but because while reaching the same conclusion or roughly the same conclusion Sir’s judgments consider several aspects more than the ones one can think of or has thought of while making that note. To put the things in perspective, in a certain case I had worked on, I had considered about 7 aspects, Sir had considered almost 15 to 17. There are also those rare occasions when you might just get a moment to discuss one of his judgments with him. At such moments your “paradigm shift” changes into an “Aha!” experience because that discloses how many more aspects Sir had considered before deciding to put only few in his judgment. These activities, naturally, develop in you a faculty of understanding arguments, conciliating them and a brain that understands logical structures along with the possible conclusions those structures may lead you to. More importantly however, it teaches you that being a lawyer is not about knowing what the law is or where it is written but about making and interpreting law to fit the peculiar facts and circumstances of each case even when it isn’t expressly written so. To convey the point in short, Sir teaches you that cases are full of possibilities. Don’t ever think you know everything about a case. As I shall enunciate in the “personal” aspects of my experiences with Sir, even Sir himself doesn’t think he knows everything about a case.
Personally, Sir thoroughly enjoys his work. I’ve seen a smile of great satisfaction on his face whenever he hears two or more equally persuasive but contesting arguments. It is needless to mention he works hard. He’s usually read every paper of every brief in and out before he sits for its final hearing. Even then when he allots work to his internees, he’ll never say he knows everything, instead he’ll put his point across this way, “See what you find, if you find anything other than what I’ve written in my order let me know.” Or he’ll call you in his chamber if there’s a question of law he finds particularly interesting and say excitedly but very sweetly, “See what you find on this. Counsels Mr. X and Mr. Y argued this rather well.” At times his Court hours even begin as early as 9 am and end at 7 or 7:30 pm even though the official Court hours are only 11:00 am to 5:00 pm. Don’t think he’s free after 7:00 either, he takes home the drafts of all the judgments he’s dictated during the day. Even then, you’ll never see him angry or irritated no matter how long his day gets. He’ll still smile, crack jokes in the open Court room and totally kill your image of a judge if you expect a judge to be a boring oldie with grey hair and a serene face. Once a lady was arguing on her Housing Society not letting her put up a TV antenna on the top of her building. The argument went on for a while but the lady wouldn’t come to the point, neither was she ready to take help of an Advocate. Finally, Sir jokingly said “Antennas will pop out of my head if you don’t come to the point now!” I was also a witness to an incident when he stopped Senior Counsel Mr. Seervai in the middle of the argument to ask him the latest score in the on going test match between India and Sri Lanka and then expressed his disappointment on Sehwag not reaching his triple century and Sreesanth not being in great form.
From the human aspect, Sir will teach you to be an awesome human being. His private secretary’s wife wasn’t well once. She had to be taken to Hyderabad for treatment. When Sir learned of this, he called the secretary inside his chamber and said “Don’t hesitate to call me even at 2 am in the morning for anything that you may need. I can make any arrangement in any hospital for you within half an hour. You need not even worry about the expenses. They won’t charge much if I ask them not to.”
When a matter was called out once, the poor lady arguing about the antenna above appeared in person. Naturally, she didn’t know the procedural or legal aspects of her case. All she knew was that her Society wasn’t letting her put a TV antenna on top of her building. Any other judge would’ve given up, but Sir patiently listened to her for over 2 hours because he did not want injustice done to her merely because she was appearing in person. 2 hours later, after understanding the lady’s case he passed an order in her favour. THAT is Sir’s commitment to Justice.
Finally, think of this. When Sir was appointed as Judge of the High Court of Bombay in 1998, it is said, he’d paid Rs.2.5 crores as Income Tax. (Note that it was not his income. It was merely the tax he’d paid on his income.) This man could’ve earned a fortune as a Senior Counsel, thousands of times more money than the Lakh rupees per month he gets as a Judge. Yet he chose to be a Judge. And not just any Judge, an honest Judge who works very hard because he believes in the cause of justice. Being a Judge is not easy. You’ve to literally isolate yourself, give up almost all the lawyer friends you ever made in 20 odd years of practice and become a center of attention of the lawyer fraternity. Everyone is sitting there paying attention to everything you do from the most un-noticeable of your habits such has how fast or how often you have tea to where you go for your walk, what you eat and what you like. While you may believe in anything you want, in my opinion good honest judges are saints. I don’t just respect them, I worship them. The word “My Lord” has very rightly been coined. The theme for our magazine this year is “Unsung Heroes” and I sincerely think Judges fit the category.
Before I go on with my experiences from the professional aspect, it is necessary to tell all the beautiful young ladies wanting to go out with me in return for Sir’s personal email id that though I am just 22, I look a little older. While having a cup of coffee at the coffee place in the High Court people often mistook me to be an Advocate. Apart from learning the grievances of general clients, it also taught me how to behave with my black coat on.
First myth is that one doesn’t get cases initially. Just standing outside the High Court will get you loads and loads of poor clients in need of an Advocate. The most common grievance made by most clients is that their Advocate is bought out by the opposite party. So when you go out there with your black coat, the best thing you could do is to remain loyal to your client. That itself is half of the battle won. While it may not pay much initially, it will certainly guarantee you quite some client base and help you create your face value.
Listen to your client patiently, let him say all he wants to and when he finishes say all you have to. (In my case all I had to say this time was that I wasn’t an Advocate!)
Always give away your seat to an Advocate senior to you if you see him standing. Never even think of paying for your food if you happen to have it with an Advocate senior to you. It’s a custom at the bar that the senior is to pay for the junior if they happen to sit at the same table. Even taking out your wallet before him is considered impolite. Always put across your point in the most polite and sincere manner that one possibly can etc.
There are many other skills which will go a long way in making you a good Advocate, having strong legs and an athletic body with good health for instance. Believe me, as a young lawyer, you’re going to have to do a lot of running around in the Court for your senior. And when I say “running around” I mean it literally, not metaphorically!
Lastly but most importantly, observe various styles in which senior counsels argue and then develop your own. In my case I learned the following from the following counsels:
From Navroz H. Seervai, Senior Advocate- dramatize facts. Be a good story teller. It helps judges remember facts more clearly and helps you put forth your argument forcefully.
From S.P. Chinoy, Senior Advocate- Concentrate on pronunciations. Develop a high volumed but low pitched voice. Be precise and to the point.
From Rafiq Dada, Senior Advocate- Be a fluffy sugar candy with clean finger nails. Make judges fall in love with you and melt in their mouth with the way you behave, appear and talk.
From Virag Tulzapurkar, Senior Advocate- Be short, simple and to the point. Don’t waste time.
And lastly, from Janak Dwarkadas, Senior Advocate- Sometimes being monotonous, putting judges to sleep with the tone of your voice or creating an unintelligible maze before judges is necessary when you don’t really have a case.
To conclude, loving what you do and enjoying it, hard work, honesty, belief in the cause of your work, being a great human being and hope that you will be able to change the world are the ingredients of the potion that creates legal wizards who make law.
So again, when I ask myself, what I learned at this internship, I get my answer in one of the dialogues from the movie “Philadelphia”. Co-incidentally, they’re also very good words to conclude:
“What do you like about law?”
“That every once in a while you get to be a part of the process of justice being made.”
I’m grateful I got to be that part.
