The black coat and the tattooed arm

There is a particular kind of advice that every young litigator receives sooner or later. Nobody puts it in writing. It arrives instead as a look, a warning over coffee, a passing comment from a senior, or a family member's anxious reaction to a photograph posted online: "Be careful what you put out there."

The concern is usually dressed up as professional advice. Litigation, we are told, is not merely about being competent. It is also about looking like the sort of person who ought to be competent.

The lawyer with tattoos, coloured hair, piercings, a visible taste in music or an Instagram account that does not resemble a chamber notice board may be gently advised to become less visible. The advice is not entirely irrational. But it is worth asking what exactly it seeks to protect and at what cost.

There is a reason the legal profession has traditionally been conservative in its appearance. The black coat, the white band, the gown are not merely costumes. They are institutional signals. In court, an advocate is meant to appear as an officer of the court, not as a private individual flaunting taste or identity.

That much is neither oppressive nor outdated. A courtroom is not a nightclub or an extension of one's social-media feed. But the trouble begins when the line between professional appearance in court and private self-expression elsewhere disappears.

The black coat is meant to be worn in court. Somewhere along the way, it has become a demand that lawyers live in black and white. Every generation of lawyers seems to believe that the next one is insufficiently serious. Earlier, it was long hair and speaking too freely. Today it is Instagram.

A young lawyer may be in court at 10.30 AM, prepare a brief through the afternoon, attend a conference in the evening, work on drafts late into the night and still post one photograph from a Saturday outing. Yet, it is that photograph that becomes the basis for an unspoken assessment of seriousness. The first part is ambition. The second part is indulgence. But why?

The answer is not always professional ethics. Nor is it necessarily concern for the young person's career. Much of it is simply an inherited discomfort with visible enjoyment. The profession has long rewarded those who look burdened by it. The ideal lawyer is not merely diligent; the ideal lawyer is one whose entire life seems to have been annexed by the profession. That is not professionalism. It is a particular aesthetic of sacrifice.

Take a place such as the iconic 4S Bar, which is both a familiar refuge and, depending on whom one asks, a cautionary tale. Lawyers have always gathered after court. They have traded war stories, found mentors and occasionally made decisions that seemed excellent at midnight and less excellent by morning. The difference is not that young lawyers have invented social life. The difference is that their social life is now documented. The older generation had the benefit of plausible deniability. The younger generation has Instagram stories, tagged photographs and screenshots. A lawyer leaving court for 4S is not making a statement about commitment to the profession. In many ways, it is part of the profession.

A tattooed arm or a visible piercing can still produce hesitation in some professional settings. One can pretend that this is no longer true, but it plainly is, especially in litigation. The young lawyer has to navigate that reality, particularly in the early years, with little power, little independent clientele and a great deal to prove. Covering a tattoo in court may be sensible. Choosing restraint for a client conference may be sensible. But sensible strategy is not the same thing as accepting the premise. The premise is that personal style is evidence of professional deficiency. And if concealment is always the sensible strategy, the premise is never tested.

A tattoo does not make a lawyer careless. A piercing does not make a lawyer unprepared. A social life does not make a lawyer less capable of reading a record, anticipating a question from the Bench, or drafting a precise note of submissions. At most, these things challenge an older visual language of credibility. And perhaps that is the actual issue. Not whether the young lawyer is serious, but whether the profession is willing to recognise seriousness in forms it did not create.

Lawyers do need discretion. Client confidences do not belong in group chats, Instagram captions or clever stories. Courtroom interactions should not be converted into content. Nobody should be humiliated in the name of personal branding.

A young lawyer who uses social media recklessly can cause real professional damage. But this is a question of conduct, not personality. There is a meaningful difference between being indiscreet and being visible. Between being irresponsible and being social. Between compromising professional dignity and admitting that one enjoys music, travel, friends, art or a life that cannot be explained through a cause list.

Justice Vibhu Bakhru captured the demanding character of the profession in his farewell remarks: "There is no work-life balance in this profession. There is only work and that's life." The line resonates because it is recognisable. But it also deserves a little resistance.

Not every demanding judge has seen it quite that way. Justice GS Patel's famously unsparing Interns' Starter Kit asked for a passion that "must be the stuff that makes you want to deny yourself sleep". It is also remembered, in chamber folklore, for a gentler proposition: that anyone still in office on a Friday night is a loser. The two ideas are not in conflict. They never were. Serious work and a Friday night off were never meant to be alternatives.

There may be no perfect work-life balance in litigation. But there must be a difference between a profession that demands commitment and one that demands surrender. There must be room for a young lawyer to give the prime of their twenties and thirties to the profession without being required to postpone living until some unspecified point at which they are sufficiently established, sufficiently respectable and sufficiently tired. The difficulty is that this point often never arrives.

A profession should not confuse a young person's capacity to endure deprivation with evidence of professional promise. Nor should it make the performance of deprivation a condition of acceptance. The lawyer who leaves court to go to a concert is not necessarily less committed than the lawyer who stays back to be seen staying back. The better question is whether the work is being done well.

None of this is an argument for carelessness about standards. Courts need formality. Clients need confidence. The black coat has its place. But it should remain a uniform, not an instruction to flatten every other part of the person wearing it.

A lawyer can be tattooed and trusted. A lawyer can go to 4S on a Friday night and still be prepared on Monday morning. A lawyer can have a visible, colourful, occasionally messy life and still take the profession with complete seriousness.

The law does not need young lawyers to become less alive in order to become more credible. It only needs them to be good.

Shaurya Sahay is an Advocate-on-Record and a Standing Counsel for the State of Uttar Pradesh.