Legal Profession

Are lawyers obsolete?

By Ranjeev C DubeyLegal Profession
The dynamics of the legal market continue to amaze me. India has lakhs of jobless lawyers sitting around exterminating houseflies in district courts around the country. In any random sample, less than 10% make a living wage. As has always been the case, without a daddy or uncle in the…

Fee Fixation

By Ranjeev C DubeyLegal Profession
“Can’t you see,” Pink Floyd’s singer songwriter Roger Waters berated us in 1984, “it all makes perfect sense, expressed in dollars and cents.” This must be why Supreme Court senior counsels aren’t celebrities till they make Rs 10 lakh a hearing! This is easy to understand: if you are that…

Foreign Lawyers: The Global Desi

By Ranjeev C DubeyLegal Profession
When Chief Justice JS Khehar stated on July 8 that he supported the entry of foreign lawyers in India, he drew attention to an issue that has been boosting the testosterone levels in lawyers’ canteens since Prime Minister Narasimha Rao liberalised the economy a mere 26 years back. Clearly, it’s…

Self-inflicted Wounds

By Ranjeev C DubeyLegal Profession
When the Supreme Court directed the Government of India to establish a National Disaster Mitigation Fund in May 2016, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley observed that India’s judiciary was destroying its institution structure “step by step, brick by brick”. Who is responsible for this judicial activism is a matter of debate,…

Transforming the Judicial Club

By Ranjeev C DubeyLegal Profession
It is with a great sense of privilege, not exasperation, that I find myself witness to the great ideological battles being waged in India today. In an attempt to radically re-engineer a society that changes slowly, progressive forces are fighting to transform our patriarchal carpet bagging ‘sometimes democracy’ into a…

Striking Disservice

By Ranjeev C DubeyLegal Profession
For 5000 years, we have believed that the individual is defined, not by his rights, but by his duties. How this has transformed into an environment of rights and entitlements is quite the untold story. On most days of the week, the Supreme Court of India undoubtedly does very brave…