RFGIs Report on Entry Barriers to Litigation

Kanan Dhru analyses the entry barriers to litigation in India, through a survey on law students, judges and Senior Advocates and law graduates between 1 to 5 years of employment. She compares the starting salaries for a litigation lawyer in India vis-à-vis a lawyer in the UK and the US and gives recommendations on improving the current system..The “Entry Barriers to Litigation” report is based on a survey and a series of interviews held in 2009 and 2010 by Research Foundation for Governance in India (RFGI). It analyses the bridge between legal education and “junior” level litigation in India and gives a comparative analysis of the systems prevalent in the UK and USA. The report showcases the several entry barriers which prevent law students from entering the profession of litigation and in which adversely affect the quality of the legal profession in India, ultimately hampering the process of administration of justice. It gives recommendations as to how the current system can be improved by removing the unregulated juniorship barrier and by lessening the effect of family background..Speaking to Bar & Bench, Founder and Managing Director of RFGI, Kanan Dhru said, “The entire theme of the report has been taken up initially from my own personal experience and after talking to various stakeholders in the judiciary in Gujarat. I started practicing law after coming back from LSE and observed in the High Court that a lot of youngsters wanted to join litigation, but entry barriers like lack of financial incentive prevented them from entering the system. The present influence of family connections also discourages the bright youngsters. Initially I thought is it just me who’s thinking on these lines or there are many others who also get affected by this?.She added on to say, “As part of the institution, I took up the survey and the results were extremely shocking. We then decided to approach the Chief Justice and he was very encouraging. Professor Madhava Menon also encouraged us and said that the issue is worth pursuing. The whole survey came together and was thoroughly discussed at all levels. The idea was then to develop a concrete paper bringing all these aspects together. In law schools a lot of youngsters participate in Moot Courts, thinking how exciting the aspect of litigation and arguing on law is, but the survey revealed hardly a percentage of them end up pursuing litigation and that too only if they have a family background”..The methodology was based on the outcome of three surveys i.e. the law students, recently employed law graduates and lastly senior advocates and judges. The first survey which spearheaded the report comprised of senior advocates and judges with 100 lawyers from the lower courts, 150 lawyers and judges from the High Court and 30 Supreme Court lawyers and judges spread across the cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. The second was carried on law school students from all the National Law Schools and from some of the three year law courses. This was based on an online questionnaire. There were 152 responses made up of 19 first years, 39 second years, 33 third years, 22 fourth years and 38 fifth years. The third survey was done on employed National Law School graduates who had completed their law degree between one to five years ago and comprised of 20 passouts..On the methodology, Kanan said, “As far as the methodology is concerned we have tried to cover as many aspects concerning the law students as well as the practicing fraternity, as possible. The main focus has been on the National Law Schools because the idea behind these schools being set up was to encourage youngsters to join the Bar and the Bench, but is this really happening? The objective is to make people question about the basics of the practicing law and to encourage youngsters to participate actively in the process. In Gujarat, things are moving as we have tried to take this up very seriously, but it is also necessary that it gets implemented elsewhere. For instance in Gujarat, the Bar Association has involved us in a couple of projects because they feel this is an area which has not been explored so far”..Here are some of the excerpts from the report:.1) 74% said no to litigation while only 12% answered “yes” to litigation as a career..2) A recent survey of final year NALSAR students, conducted by Rainmaker, which asked what they intend to do after graduation found that 44.26% want to work at one of the top-5 corporate law firms. The second most popular option was working in-house for a large corporation and the remainder predominantly intends to work for small or medium firms. A mere 6.56% are intent on joining the office of a Supreme Court litigator, and working for an NGO, policy group or social activist even at 4.92% is still a more popular option than joining litigation in the High Court or lower courts. Supposing that this is a general trend throughout National Law Schools, these results suggest that only 75 – 100 graduates out of the total 1105 intend to enter litigation..3) When asked whether a family background helps students to become successful advocates, 92% of lawyers and judges answered “yes”… As one interviewee said “litigation has become like the caste system, only the person having a father can enter it”, which can be verified by another respondent who said “This is where your godfather comes to play to get you placed with highly recognised lawyers”..4) When students were asked in the second survey whether a family background was necessary to enter the profession, 65% answered 7 or above, where 10 was “absolutely necessary”, and when asked why they chose not to enter litigation 33.6% cited “lack of family background” as their main reason. This clearly showed that lack of family background is an entry barrier, however, the survey included a broad range of law students who had not yet attempted to pursue a career and who may not have a better choice for their career path. Therefore the final survey was made up entirely of excellent National Law School graduates who had a choice of career path, and posed the question “why did you not choose litigation”. As can be seen below, 46% answered “lack of family background”..5) In the third survey there were a number of respondents who had originally intended, and attempted a career in litigation, but gave up after a few months. Thus, only this survey could display the full extent of the role that family background plays in discouraging or encouraging entry to the profession. The results, displayed in fig.4 below, show that every respondent with a family background entered litigation and almost every respondent lacking this background opted for an alternative career..6) Law students were asked whether “juniorship” should be regulated, only 5% said there is no need for regulation. 66% of the students assured that they would prefer a standard of minimum wage and 70% chose to do good quality work than being made to end up with menial tasks. Surprisingly when judges and senior advocates were questioned on need for regulation, 48% agreed to a regulations being there and 26% said there is no need for any regulations. The survey further showed that a majority of the judges and advocates stood at being unpaid during their initial stages of litigation..7) A comparative analysis of salaries in India, US and UK was carried out to show that a National law School graduate in India would get a starting salary of Rs. 1.5 lakh in litigation and comparatively a law graduate in the US would get 35 lakh and 27 lakh in the UK. The corporate side fared much higher with a starting salary of Rs. 11 lakh in India, 37 lakh in the US and 33.6 lakh in the UK..8) Lawyers were asked why they chose litigation and 86% said its exciting and thrilling and rest equally said because of family background or their desire to help and cater to the needs of the society. Surprisingly 78% of the law students said they would be more interested in litigation only if there was a Voluntary Code of Conduct to ensure quality of work by seniors..9) The survey ends by giving recommendations on improvising the current system of entry to litigation with a comparative analysis on the systems used in the US and the UK and recommends suggestions on how to overcome the entry barriers to litigation..Attached is a copy of the report with the survey showing shocking results on the entry barriers to litigation in India..Kanan Dhru is the Founder and Managing Director of the Research Foundation for Governance in India (RFGI: www.rfgindia.org)). She is a graduate of the London School of Economics.