Being Lawyer
Being a lawyer is fun in most
parts but on some occasions it can do to your mind what prisoners feel in
solitary confinement. I enjoy the work that I do because when I started I had
the option of choosing what cases I wanted to concentrate on. Once you get into
litigation it is good to gain exposure in all branches – criminal, civil,
personal laws, banking, corporate litigation you name it and just dip your
finger tips and toes in it.
When I started practice I made
just one request to my senior – To not assign any family court cases to me. I
can’t go near family court cases because I believed that I was jinxed when it
came to those cases. He phoo-phooed me and the very first solo case that I
drafted and filed in my life was a divorce case. Let me just say that the case
never saw the inside of a court hall. The incident only made my resolve
stronger to never ever handle
a family case again.
In college I had spent most of my
8th and 9th semester in family court helping in the
mediation process which involved counselling couples. I remember coming home
exhausted and angry. The reasons that the couples gave were so asinine that the
very idea that the two were actually permitted to enter matrimony baffles me.
On some occasions I was glad that the couple in question hadn’t procreated. The
idea of morons multiplying is what my nightmares are made of.
I stubbornly continued to refuse
family court cases. Until one fine day a friend called and asked to meet up
with me. I hadn’t met this friend for over 13 years and I was just glad to
catch up with her because she and I shared plenty of common interests which is
why inspite of not having met for over a decade we could still catch up and
discuss life as it is today instead of leaping back in time and reliving school
memories. As we sat speaking I knew intuitively that I would soon be her
lawyer. I waited for her to broach the topic.
She eventually told me that she
had decided to seek for a divorce and wanted to know the procedure and duration
to obtain a court order to the same effect. As a lawyer I had sworn that I
would try and stay in the bounds of what is right and not step out of my moral
boundaries that I have been drawing since childhood. Hers was a love marriage
and I am a believer in all things love. (Yes, way down in the bottom of my
heart and in some random corner in my mind I am a passive aggressive romantic
who believes that if you’ve loved someone at some point of time in your life no
matter what happens next the fact that you loved that person trumps all else
that you feel and just set the person free if that is the only way to move
forward. Try not to make a mess. If parting ways is the only way to go clink
glasses, cheer each other for a better future. Move on.) I like to think that I
can bifurcate between the friend and client barrier without difficulty.
Clinically I laid out her options. One of the options I recommended was divorce
by mutual consent which would take about 6 to 7 months from the date of filing
and that she and her husband would be required to be present in the court on
the date of filing the case and 6 months later when they are required to file
their affidavits stating that they haven’t retracted their decision to separate.
That is when my friend told me that before she approached me she had consulted
with another lawyer. This lawyer hadn’t even suggested a Mutual consent divorce
but had instead told her that the he could help her get half of her husband’s
property and told her the case would be long drawn and could take years. After
stating all this he quoted an exorbitant fee and put his hand forward to seal
the deal.
This particular lawyer specie is
the kind that drags cases only to fill their pocket, because god forbid if a
case closed too soon how would he fend for himself? Such lawyers always live in
the constant fear of losing their monthly fee that their gullible clients pay. People
fear courts. I wish people didn’t. I want people to look at courts as an
approachable forum to actually get the relief they seek for the violation of
their rights. That is not going to happen. People have this deep seated fear in
the judiciary and a little girl can only try to dispense the fear but it is the
clients job to actually let go of that fear.
When I started out as a newbie I would
patiently explain the process and tell the
client in explicit detail my plan of action and encourage a Q & A
session after I charted out my plan for them. This worked well with some, some
didn’t want any details and some just got more nervous because they thought I was
talking too much to cover up the lack of any fruitful conclusion to their case.
I had to pull out my human sieve and learnt to separate the clients who wanted
to be in the loop, the ones who didn’t and the ones I preferred never enter the
court hall. Having done that it was relatively easy to proceed with cases.
I was given complete freedom to
do as I pleased with the files assigned to me. Young lawyers rarely get to
argue/cross examine witnesses within a month of starting practice. I just got
very lucky. With that started my experiments and pretty soon I was called the little
girl who managed to close cases within a year without even troubling the client
to step in to the witness box. All was fine until the land mafia decided to
just make my life a wee bit more interesting. I guess self-defense and police
protection is covered under my job description.
Being a lawyer is interesting
because I have met people from all walks of life. Seen what desperation does to
people. Seen how wealth sees no kindness and have seen families prey on each other
like their life has no meaning beyond a piece of land. If it were possible I’d
say I became more cynical. The clients crib, cry and complain about everything.
The following are some specimens
of the clients I have had to represent:
The Paranoid Client:There are some clients who are so
paranoid that they suspect their own lawyer of sabotaging the case. In the 5
years that I have practiced I have been accused by one such client of this. I
am a competitor. I LOVE to win. I am not even ashamed to admit it. When I step
in the court hall I have no friends. It is just my clients interest that are my
priority and I prepare for every case like that is my only case. Thus when a
client accuses me of sabotaging his case, I do the only decent thing I can do,
I give him his file and ask him to leave. (I don’t wish such people good luck,
come on I am Human.)
I Need to see it to believe it: This specie usually looks at
my face and wonders why the youngest person in the office has been assigned the
file. I sympathize with them because I know what they are thinking – Dear good
god! Why her? Am I going to lose my case? Is that why it is assigned to her? Is
my case really that simple that this person is handling it?
I ask such clients to be present
in the Court Hall for their case. I don’t say much else. After this client sees
me in the court and sees how I present my case I know I have won them over and
trust has thereby been established. From thereon they are the nicest clients to
have.
I trust you completely: This specie is rare but they exist
and I have found that when a client puts so much faith in me I find myself being petrified because I don’t know what
about me appealed to them that they decided to trust me completely and not
question my methods. I take more care in their cases because when you are as
young as me and someone trusts you to know exactly what you are doing to
protect their entire life’s earning you have no other option but to deliver. As
overwhelming as their trust is, it is just as powerful in knowing that you can
actually safeguard their interest.
Being a lawyer also helps one get
to know oneself better. I started out as being cynical. I have become more hard
hearted over the past 5 years. I am a workaholic who discovered her love for
whiskey and Amon Amarth. I also found that I have a dual personality. Outside
the court hall I am being a human being. Inside the court hall I unleash my
lawyer – self. The Court hall is my turf and I am the King. The kind of comfort
I feel inside a court hall makes me smile. I don’t feel that kind of comfort
with people but here I am surrounded by people arguing on behalf of a person
and yet when I speak, in my mind the court hall is empty, it is just the judge
and I trying to convince the judge to rule in my favor. My behavior inside the
court hall is the complete antithesis of how I am otherwise.
It is a demanding profession. A
time sucker. I tend to fall off the grid while I work. I know what is happening
around the world and in the country but I can’t pay too much attention to all
the details because I am busy saving the human race and fighting crime for
real. What are you doing?
P.S: If you like your whisky - Try Amrut, Indian Single Malt Whisky. It is out of this world.
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