Like no other time in legal history, corporate lawyers are now attending magistrate courts because of numerous raids being conducted by Enforcement Directorate (ED) and slapping of cases under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), said Orissa High Court former Chief Justice S. Muralidhar in Chennai on Saturday.
Delivering the second K. Sarvabhauman memorial lecture on the topic ‘The Modern Day Advocate: Ethical Challenges and Professional Duties,’ he said: “This is the reality. Top notch corporate law firms now have a specialized criminal proceedings cell where they deal with bail, anticipatory bail and things like that on a daily basis.”
Urging young lawyers not to be content with arguing bail and anticipatory bail petitions and instead conduct criminal trials by developing the skills required to cross examine witnesses, he recalled an award instituted by him for such lawyers, between the age group of 20 and 40, during his tenure in Orissa High Court.
The former Chief Justice began his lecture with a brief history of the legal profession in the country from the pre-Independence days when the profession was divided between the Vakkils, Barristers and Solicitors who were unhappy with each other because of different privileges enjoyed by them.
He pointed out that it was the Advocates Act, 1961 which provided for establishment of the Bar Council of India (BCI) and the State-level bar councils. Stating that the profession remains to be male dominated, he said, the BCI, at present, had 18 members and five officers but not even one of them was a woman.
“It [BCI] has had 31 chairpersons, including the present, again not one a woman,” he said and lamented that the Bar Council websites do not have any information regarding the number of lawyers on roll, the number of them in active practice or the break up in terms of gender, age and other indicators.
“It is only through an answer given to a question in Parliament by the Union Law Minister on August 10, 2023 it could be known that there are 20.13 lakh advocates enrolled in the country of which Tamil Nadu’s share was around 1.14 lakh. Even this data is not updated,” he said and contrasted the situation with other countries.
He said the websites of the Law Society of UK and American Bar Association contain granular information on gender, ethnicity, age and so on. “So, there is a serious absence of information about lawyers in our country,” he said and highlighted lack of information even about disciplinary proceedings initiated against advocates.
Further, stating that there was a wide disparity in the standards of law schools, he said, it was the reason why some law graduates found the All India Bar Examination to be a cakewalk while others found it difficult to clear. He said several social factors too contributed to the disparity in proficiency, skill, confidence, exposure and aptitude of the law graduates.
Madras High Court judges R. Subramanian, G.R. Swaminathan, P.T. Asha, N. Anand Venkatesh and former judge K. Chandru attended the lecture. Senior Counsel S. Parthasarathy and M.S. Krishnan, both juniors of Sarvabhauman, had organised the event.
