5 Essential Things Every Budding Lawyer Should Know.
Your expertise is a powerful gift that deserves to be shared. It’s yours: Yes, you earned it. And the best part? sharing your expertise not only helps others in their endeavours, but it also helps you.
I am a quick learner and along with it a focused, ambitious law student. This being my first article on medium I would love to share what I have learned and in my experience would help me further pursue a legal career.
The profession of law is a great profession, the most brilliant and attractive, with responsibilities both inside and outside it, which no person carrying on any other.
The rules governing the legal profession recognize that a lawyer must be a zealous advocate for the client, putting that person’s interests ahead of all others
1. The right to practice law comes with obligations and duties
Being one of the largest and the oldest professions in the world, the Indian legal profession has been enrolled with more than 1.4 million advocates across the country. In order to practice law as an advocate, the legal professional should be enrolled with the Bar Council of India.
One of the primary obligations you undertake when you are admitted to practice is to put your duty to the court and your duty to your client before your own interests.
“Once the vital point is realized that the advocate in court is engaged not in expressing his own views of the case but is presenting all that can be said of his client’s view of it, all room for the charge of insincerity disappears.”
2. Being a lawyer is not only a privilege but it’s a great job
The skills you learn in law school and in the early years of your practice easily translate into alternative legal careers. Most lawyers possess exceptional analytical skills including reading and writing skills. Practising law allows you to use your mental skills each day in effective ways to solve problems for your clients. Because each case is unique, you must use your full mental capabilities to research, speculate, hypothesize, and formulate legal strategies to effectively solve problems for your clients.
3. Respect and honesty towards your client and to the court is an absolute requirement
Lawyers must deal with a conundrum because they are required to act as officers of the court-presumably working to advance the truth-while providing loyal representation to clients who may have little to gain from its ascertainment, particularly in criminal cases.’
Also, a lawyer shall use tactics that are legal, honest and respectful of courts and tribunals.
The cardinal principle which determines the privileges and responsibilities of an advocate in relation to the court is that he is an officer to justice and a friend of the court. This is the primary position.
Amicus curiae is the word translated from the Latin as ‘friend of the Court’. An advocate appears in this capacity when asked to help with the case by the Court or on volunteering services to the Court.
4. Your reputation is critically important
You need to always act in a manner that enhances your reputation. You will find that it doesn’t take long to develop a reputation in the legal profession.
If you become known as competent and trustworthy, opposing lawyers will listen to what you have to say and you will enjoy credibility. This is very much in your client’s interests.
5. There are always people to turn to for advice and assistance.
To get good at it, you have to learn the ropes. You can teach yourself, of course, but in my experience, it is much better (and more rewarding) to learn from those who are good at it already. So learning from senior advocates who have plenty of knowledge and have become experts in this field would be beneficial.
They will be glad to have some help and you will get a real-life insight into the process.
It takes practice to get it right. Thanks to legal work experience and law courses many students and graduates develop these skills eventually with the potential to succeed.
