Ahmedabad: Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant on Saturday, February 28, said if a high proportion of law graduates are opting for jobs in corporate firms instead of practising in courts, then the situation is worrisome.
Addressing law graduates at the 16th convocation of the Gujarat National Law University (GNLU) in Ahmedabad, he also advised the students that the classroom cannot teach what practical experience can.
“As (GNLU) Vice-Chancellor Professor Dr S Shanthakumar pointed out, if 93 per cent of you have been hijacked outside the gates of this university by corporate entities, then it increases my worry. Because I presume, as a very selfish head of the Indian judiciary, that the national law schools will produce more and more members of the bar and the bench,” the CJI said.
Explained the difference between studying and practising law
He advised newly-graduated law students about their career as a lawyer, and explained the difference between studying law and actually practising it in a real courtroom.
“From experience, I remember the early months of practice with clarity that decades have not dulled. There is a particular disorientation in discovering that the law you studied so carefully bears only a partial resemblance to the actual profession,” CJI Surya Kant said.
“The textbooks gave you doctrines. Your seniors now give you deadlines. In moot courts, you are cocooned by your mentor, but in real courtrooms, you argue within constraints you do not choose and may not even agree with. This is not a failure of education. It is simply the friction between learning the map and navigating the territory,” he added.
The classroom cannot teach what years of practical experience can. Initial years of practice also teach you things no classroom ever could. You learn to read the mood of a bench before you have spoken even a word. You figure out how to sit with an anxious client and say something useful before you have the answers, he said.
You discover how to disagree with a senior without damaging a relationship you will need the very next week, and how to lose a case and still leave your client with the impression that the system, not indifference, hurts them. No curriculum details any of this, and only you can discover where within all of it you truly belong, he added.
CJI noted discipline of knowing the ‘game’ is important
Drawing an analogy from the recent T20 World Cup, he emphasized, “Some of you might be cricket followers, and if you have been catching the T20 World Cup between hearings, you may have noticed something relevant here. The teams that succeed are not built on the assumption that every player must excel at everything.”
“No one expects (batsman) Suryakumar Yadav to bowl the death overs, or (bowler Jasprit) Bumrah to anchor a chase. They are trusted to do precisely what they do best, and the team is built around that clarity,” he said, adding that the same principle applies to the legal profession.
He, however, added that the profession rarely teaches this lesson at the beginning.
“In the initial years, you are simply expected to keep up. If you observe closely, those you admire did not become distinguished by attempting everything equally,” the CJI noted.
Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court Sunita Agrawal was also present at the event.
