UJAS DHARAMSHI (Corporate Lawyer) 16 June 2008

Has the prestige of a lawyer completely reversed?

This Question "Has the prestige of a lawyer completely reversed?" just comes after inflation issues, issues of lawyer's payment being meagre, just few lawyers earning like a pandora's box and other's very few.

The prestige and the role of a lawyer since the inception, enactment and adoption of Our Indian Constitution, where the lawyers played a vital role in the making of the Constitution and the prestige they enjoyed with the major role they played, certainly this question raises! Now are the lawyers playing that proactive role or being initiative to earn that prestige of a lawyer that people sometimes ago dreamt invaluably.

This has all happened as the compensation, perks, incentives to the witness, salary to judicial officials has not gone according to the inflation or the growing economy. India has progressed tremondously since Independence but has the compensation to the poor victims gone up according to the growing economy. Has the salary of the lawyers been that increased? Has the compensation to the victims involved in the cases since years been provided? Has the judiciary system been systematised? Has the system been that quick or the lawyers been upto that reputation?

So who's responsible? Just take an example of our neighbouring country Pakistan. While recently the country was in temporary emergency, the association of the lawyers did change the whole system and brought back their desired system, even though they did take the blows of the lathis on their own bodies.

So let's take initiative try doing small good things to society, beef up the rates of cases being solved, help the society, bring changes to judicairy, legislative decision taking improvement, being involving more in the government and the system and WILL TRY TO BRING BACK THAT PRESTIGE OF A LAWYER by setting examples.

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2 Replies

Kiran Kumar (Lawyer) 17 June 2008

well certainly u ve raised an important issue here.

the most unfortunate part is that in India Legal Profession has remained highly unorganised......i must say that even the legal education system is highly unorganised, its not tough to get a LL.B degree but really tough to be a lawyer.

we must notice that even the quality of legislation has gone down and its a dangeros sign of poor legal set up.

as far as fee structure is concerned there is no parity and unless and until some professional discipline is introduced nothing is going to change. there is dicord among the experts regarding the fee structure. Few would term this profession to be a social service and few would consider it to be a vocation only.

but i must say in the present free economies it must be considered as vocation primarily because u can not run your house by doing charities only though the social service part can not be ignored in toto.

let there be some minimum fee criteria aptly linked with the taxation system and in my opinion it will introduce a lot of parity in the fee structure and good money in the pockets of lawyers too.....its merely a suggestion and waiting for further response.