Ashwini Obulesh
I would not be the first person to state candidly that a lawyer faces “culture shocks” quite frequently through their life, by virtue of being/having been a student of the law. While other professionals may also come forward to declare a similar claim, I would like to believe that lawyers have it the hardest. Let me recount my journey as a law student and later as a practitioner and teacher of the law as testimony to affirm my belief.
From Law School to the Court
As I walked into the National Law School of India University as a sincere yet reticent 18-year-old, I could not but be overwhelmed by the Law School pedagogy, academic rigour, its culture, the smartness of my peers, the need to balance excelling in academics as well as co-curriculars, the skills (reiterated time and again) to be developed to be a good lawyer, the pressure to be placed in, or even better, to receive a PPO from a Magic Circle Firm—the list was endless. My first “culture shock”.
At the same time, I was truly enchanted by the law, with its myriad ways of impacting lives and bringing about an overall positive social transformation. Law School broadened my perspectives in incredible ways, and also empowered me, a first-generation lawyer with an apparatus to wield in the profession, the most important one being a sound, strong conceptual and jurisprudential foundation of the law. I remember listening with rapt attention and awe to the lectures on jurisprudence and legal theory which were delivered by some of the most stunning legal luminaries of the time. I learned my legal concepts and wrote my examinations sincerely—I can perhaps be called a “decent student” in Law School. I had also readily enrolled myself with the Legal Services Clinic of Law School in my first year. As an LSC member and later Convenor, I passionately facilitated pro-bono legal assistance to hundreds of clients mostly comprising of the poor, women, and persons from marginalised communities. As I drew closer to graduation, I strongly (and overconfidently) believed that I was a notch, nay, several notches above my prospective colleagues in the Bar—something that Law Schoolites are always accused of—and that with the brilliant legal acumen I had gained from the best law school in South Asia, I was all set to rock the Bar. I was from the best law school, taught by the best professors, having experienced the best mooting, client counselling and negotiation competitions. Absolutely nothing could go wrong…
Except that this is when I faced my second “culture shock.” When I started my litigation stint at the High Court of Karnataka, I was but a speck in the cosmos of swiftly darting black coats and gowns, mostly male, in the vast space that is the High Court. When I occasionally appeared in the Civil Court or the Magistrate Court, I seemed to be lost in a denser cosmos of swifter males in a vaster court space. It did not take much time for me to realise that navigating through the sea of these unfamiliar lawyers, and deceptively familiar laws and court procedures needed some super power which I did not seem to possess, despite my Law School training, acquired skills, and jurisprudential wisdom.
The further “culture shock” was my experiencing the excessively long waiting time in the High Court and the complete unpredictability of matters being heard, the haphazard process of moving of memos which can be called a physical strength and decibel level competition, and most importantly, dealing with the overworked case workers in the various filing, scrutiny, and pending branches! No amount of pre-litigation studying and training seemed to be sufficient to cushion these everyday systemic and systematically operating shocks. Moreover, any amount of pride of being a brilliant law student accumulated over five years was bound to melt and flow through the corridors and basements of the courts.
Having said all this, litigation advocacy has been the most intellectually challenging and fulfilling element of my life. My work seems to have become an inevitable extension of my love for the law and passion for litigation, which was acutely nurtured in Law School. What has added fuel to the fire is running my legal aid organisation Dhwani Legal Trust, where I have had the opportunity to provide legal aid and assistance to victims of the cruellest forms of violence and persons from the most marginalised communities.
While I ogled at the beauty of legal jurisprudence in my Law School lectures, as a practising lawyer, I am discovering, on a daily basis, the practical implications and ramifications of the concepts I studied, truly appreciating their value in advocacy. I remember that in Law School, our class was introduced to the concept of “empathy, sympathy and genuineness”—one of the virtues of a good lawyer. Now, as a practising advocate, this concept comes to life with every client meeting, when the client describes an incident of human rights violation and seeks my assistance in securing justice. I remember learning about the right to constitutional remedies and how common persons can directly approach the Supreme Court under Article 32 and the High Courts under Article 226 in case of violation of their fundamental rights. As a human rights lawyer drafting writ petitions on a daily basis, I see Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s vision of the articles as the “heart and soul of the Constitution” play out in the lives of my clients.
While my Law School experience opened my mind and taught me to remove any biases or preconceived notions about persons and communities, through my practice, I have come to become more empathetic to the persons and communities I work with, especially those who approach Dhwani for legal aid. Law School lectures surely helped me understand the rights of the accused and of convicts—for instance, securing bail—now my legal aid work has shown me more closely the pain and suffering behind bars, and the urgency and significance of bail in an accused’s or convict’s life.
So, in other words, I can say that the legal theory I was taught in Law School was important to lay the foundation for my legal practice, although not sufficient to prepare me for the everyday court procedures as also the realities in the profession. For instance, in Law School, I learnt that an application under Order 1 Rule 10 of the Code of Civil Procedure must be filed to add a party to a suit, but in practice, I would learn that one set in green for the Court and one set in white for the opposite party is required to be submitted. Legal practice is a whole gamut of skills, advocacy, attention to basic but crucial court procedures, presence of mind, and jugaad (of the good kind). The value of each of these can be fully comprehended and appreciated only by a practising advocate. Even after ten years of practice, I am still cultivating these qualities. I still grapple with issues as mundane as figuring out the jurisdiction of a Magistrate Court, being unable to get a matter listed as urgently as necessary, being stuck at the stage of evidence in a matter for a prolonged period of time where the opposite party is just refusing to appear in Court. That is when jugaad comes in, and using it during appearances in the court halls, in the filing/scrutiny/pending branches, in mediations and client dealings, becomes crucial in justice delivery. It is after these long years of practice that I seem to have (now) come closer to the possibility of rocking the Bar, after inculcating much of these dexterities of legal practice.
The Court and The Classroom
Yet, I was to encounter my next “culture shock” when I was approached to teach Drafting Pleadings and Conveyancing and later Litigation Advocacy in the National Law School as visiting faculty. I almost jumped at the opportunity, because entering into the field of legal pedagogy seemed to me to be a perfect culmination of the constant, everyday interaction between legal theory and legal practice in my work. The “culture shock” though, was threefold: (a) the challenge of catering to the current generation of NLS students; (b) the challenge of making the students (who, statistically, primarily opt for corporate careers) understand the real significance and impact of litigation advocacy, especially human rights litigation; and (c) the challenge of bringing the mundane court procedure and tasks—including moving memos, following up with scrutiny/pending branches, doing an RPAD when notice is ordered by court, stitching the file, creating a paper-book, etc.—into the classroom and convincing NLS students (who probably will work in fancy firms in the future, and would not necessarily need to know these intricate details) that doing these tasks well is crucial to the justice delivery system.
Coupled with these challenges was also the herculean task of “teaching” the whole gamut of skills, advocacy, attention to basic but crucial court procedures, presence of mind, and jugaad that constitute legal practice. Interestingly, a majority of the students in the classes I was assigned to teach were very eager to know the everyday court practices and procedures. The courses itself were designed in a comprehensive manner, and covered civil trial, criminal trial, and High Court procedures.
In the Drafting Pleadings and Conveyancing course, I would go about the syllabus in a standard manner—first, I would read the provision from the relevant statute and explain the prerequisites for filing a case under it, then take the students through a draft petition/application filed under the provision, and then provide a problem/fact situation and get the students to draft pleadings according to what they had learnt in class that day. In order to break monotony, I would regularly present dramatic fact situations to the class. Thereafter, we would brainstorm about the legal options for the client, nitty-gritties in the drafts presented by some students before the entire class, and best advocacy practices, etc.
In Litigation Advocacy, the entire course was constructed as a trial proceeding. Only the initial few classes had theoretical discussions on relevant provisions of law and court procedures. After that were a series of student-led client-counselling, cross-examinations, and arguments rounds based on fact situations assigned to the students as cases. Through the course, the students drafted pleadings for the entire trial, and also researched the subject matter in their respective cases and presented legal arguments before me, sitting as the judge. Teaching both these courses was a wholesome experience for both the students and myself, where the legal trinity, i.e., legal theory, legal practice, and legal pedagogy, all came together.
My teaching experience has certainly helped me go back to the roots of legal theory that I had learnt in the very same classrooms a decade ago, and revisit legal principles, their evolution, interpretation in landmark judgments, and contemporary developments in my current context of legal practice. In fact, reflecting on my legal practice experiences in an academic setting has also offered me a valuable insight into and urged me to introspect about my own ability to apply theoretical concepts to solve client problems in everyday practice
Legal Theory, Legal Practice, and Legal Pedagogy
Legal theory and legal practice are often viewed as separate elements; legal pedagogy is mostly always restricted to learnings from academic material. After having taught these two extremely important courses (which during my time as a student in NLS were largely theoretical), and having witnessed this wonderful dialogue inter se the legal trinity, i.e., legal theory, legal practice, and legal pedagogy, I strongly believe that a bridge ought to be drawn among them.
A starting step, and a short-term fix, can be to bring in practising advocates to teach courses at law schools so that they bring in their expertise and experience in legal practice and motivate young minds to solve real legal problems by applying the legal theory they have been exposed to in law school. Moreover, the Bar itself is not given to academic re-examination of its habits. Constant re-examination and improvement of skill-sets and knowledge base is crucial to the Bar. Persons from the Bar would be valuable contributors to legal pedagogy. Law schools must ensure that such professionals engage with young legal minds and successfully improve their skill-sets—an exercise largely beneficial to the legal fraternity as a whole.
I also believe that in the long-term, there is a crucial need to completely modify the current legal education pedagogy to wholly adapt a clinical legal education system with a view to harmoniously marry legal theory, legal practice, and legal pedagogy. Close to a decade after Law School and having worked in diverse careers as a corporate lawyer, policy worker, litigator, and running a legal aid organisation, I have constantly wondered how students in law school can engage with the profession as well as the society in a more meaningful manner. Currently, right out of law school, they are bound to be affected by “culture shocks”, absence of a system of support and career guidance, lack of sensibilities about the “real” problems before them, the actual impact of their advice/work and the urgent need to hone requisite skills “on the job” while grappling with long work hours, high client demands, and the constant striving to attain work-life balance.
So, a system of clinics if instituted and sincerely and wholly practised in law schools, would be crucial to equip students with the skills, support, exposure to first-hand experiences of a job, and the realities of clients and their problems. It would also aid in their diving into work areas of their choice quicker and establishing their practice. Clinical legal education is also bound to enable wider access and proliferation of better legal practices among law students while they are in law school itself. Such implementation of best practices early on is a win-win for the student community as well as the legal fraternity.
It must be stated, though, that this marriage of legal theory, legal practice, and legal pedagogy is not a forced one; it is an organic conversation that ought to be facilitated in law schools. This facilitation will also help reiterate and reassure students, faculty, and the society that the law is not operating in some extraneous setting based on some complex textual codes, but is an apparatus solving “real” problems of “real” persons and communities around us.
Ashwini is an advocate practising before the High Court of Karnataka. She has been working in diverse legal arenas such as the corporate, public policy, litigation, and legal activism over the past decade. Ashwini has also been associated with several women and child rights based organisations and has worked on their projects in various capacities - as legal advisor, advocate, volunteer, etc. She runs Dhwani Legal Trust, an organisation that provides legal aid, especially to persons from poor and marginalized communities, thereby empowering them to establish their rights. Ashwini has a B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) degree and an LL.M. degree from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore.
Feature Image: Central front portion of Karnataka High Court, in Bangalore. Wikimedia Commons.
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