Classrooms, compendiums, coffee and coma: Addendums of an advocate

There are few things in the legal universe more ambitious and more tragic than the compendium. In theory, it is supposed to be the neat little booklet that gathers every precedent your case may need. In practice, it is a jungle safari through judgments running into hundreds of pages, with annexures, photocopies and more highlights than a Delhi wedding album.

By the time it lands on the judge’s desk, it looks less like a legal aid and more like a family heirloom - something to be preserved, not read. Somewhere between the 47th and 93rd page, you realise this is not advocacy, this is archaeology with a stapler!

It only gets funnier when you step outside court. Conventional magazines, once fat with stories, are now thinner than a summer novel, having quietly traded substance for full page ads of universities nobody has ever seen in a ranking list. Most of them are No. 1 in categories no one asked for, certified by committees no one has heard of.

If magazines can sell you universities you’ve never heard of, placement brochures can sell you salaries you’ll never see. Four lakh a year is confidently dressed up as “₹7.5 LPA”, a number most students suspect they will not see even after ten years of practice.

Then comes the staged metaphor-CV, every law student’s tragicomedy. Mandatory NGO internship, always there. Whether the NGO is alive, dead, or just filing RTI applications from a Gmail account, nobody can say.

The classroom adds its own humour. For years, students are made to mug up section after section as if law were a list of ingredients, not the recipe. Then in the last semester, just as you are packing your bags, the subject called Interpretation of Statutes is dropped casually on the table.

Suddenly, there is the literal rule, the golden rule, the purposive rule - to teach how you were actually supposed to read the law that you had once memorised but have now forgotten. Like realising after years of swinging a bat that cricket is not just about holding it, but knowing which end to hold.

Professor GP Singh’s textbook may be the gospel for interpretation, but the real trinity of law school survival has always been Paranjape, JN Pandey and a half-legible photocopy. Between Singh’s authority, Pandey’s reliability and Paranjape’s simplicity, entire batches have been pushed through the gauntlet of end-terms with their sanity only mildly dented, and with case laws often made up on the spot but delivered with absolute conviction!

The court has its own script, though none of it is written. Interns are the invisible bloodstream of the court ecosystem. You see them scurrying around with bulging files, sprinting to the copy shop and practicing the art of balancing dignity with desperation. Their place in court is always the back row, a kind of unpaid balcony seat to the theatre of law. And should they dare to sit beside advocates, they’re reminded that premium seating isn’t part of the internship. Their greatest heartbreak is when the killer precedent they highlighted at 2 AM is dismissed by the judge in a single “not relevant”. Their greatest pride, knowing which registry clerk to smile at, and when.

Juniors live in another universe altogether. Fresh black coats, fresher faces and eyes that gleam every time a senior walk past. Their daily currency is awe: “Did you see how Sir got that adjournment?”. They survive on borrowed authority, second hand confidence and the eternal hope that one day their short matter will last longer than five minutes.

The display boards! They seem impossible to crack at first, especially when you expect the sequence to go 1, 2, 3… and your little brain cannot fathom how item 3011 pops up ahead of 4. You climb the dais armed with notes, case law, practiced voice and misplaced courage, only to realise that your senior’s only instruction is to whisper a meek request for the next date. The Harish Salve inside you fizzles out as your timid debut is swallowed by the courtroom buzz.

Between hearings, the canteen rescues you. However drained you are, the chatter fills you up again. Even when you sit alone, you are never truly alone - the noise, the gossip, the clatter of plates and kulhads will not let you be.

Coffee in court circles always has an agenda - a meeting, a negotiation, a catch up with purpose. Chai on the other hand is pure. Nobody has ever plotted an empire over a cutting chai. Bonds form faster over those little glasses than over any other one by two coffee!

Still, court corridors can be lonely. You walk past dozens of people and find no friends, only familiar faces who nod in recognition and move on. And yet, in your lowest moments, the same place offers unexpected kindness.

Your first mentioning is usually a comedy of errors. Where do you even get the slip? You begin to slip into a coma just thinking about it. And just at that moment, strangers appear - unknown until now - and guide you through. That is the court at its best, cruel on the surface but with a current of generosity running underneath.

Chambers are another story altogether. To outsiders, they are dingy rooms piled with dusty files. Arguments break out over nonchalant coffee, laughter follows over forgotten citations and everyone bonds over the same universal truth: the AC will always stop working when the file pile is at its highest. But for those who have once held flimsy jobs with glossy titles and small money, where they were called lawyers but did little justice to the word “Adv”, chamber life feels like punishment. No cushy chair, no HR, no nine to five illusions. Just the grind of drafting, running, waiting and often earning nothing but scars and skills. Yet, chambers remind you daily that LL.B is not a degree, it is a discipline.

And through it all, lethargy never strikes in court. It only hits you when you hit the bed. Before that, you are lethal, running on adrenaline, banter, deadlines and the faint belief that tomorrow might finally be your day.

Maybe that is what makes the legal world so oddly lovable. It is not just logic, it is performance. The compendium is the prop, the syllabus is the script, the chamber is the rehearsal hall and the courtroom is the stage. Some days, you are the lead actor. Most days, you are the background extra. Either way, you cannot help but laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Because if justice is blind, perhaps it is only so she does not roll her eyes at us. Though if there is chai in the canteen, she might just join.

Agatha Shukla is a practising advocate in the Allahabad High Court at Lucknow.