The Supreme Court shortcut: Why fresh law graduates skip the ground floor

Step into any law college placement office in India during the final semester and you’ll hear the same dream over and over: I want to practice at the Supreme Court.

Ask a first-year student where they want to intern and you'll get the same answer. It’s odd, really, how so many young lawyers aim straight for the Supreme Court before they’ve even argued a case at the district level. This isn’t just about ambition; it reveals much about how legal education is structured and the pressure students feel.

When lawmakers designed the 5-year integrated law programmes, the idea was to churn out practice-ready graduates. But instead, it has created a psychological ticking clock. Students who enter law school at 18 and finish at 23, spending 5 intense years studying, interning and watching their friends in other fields start earning money. By graduation, there’s this overwhelming urge: enough theory, it’s time to “settle.” Except, settling doesn’t mean spending years slogging through district court cases. Everyone imagines signing up with a Senior Advocate, showing up before a Supreme Court bench and bragging to their family that they’re “at the Supreme Court.” Instead of nurturing patience, the degree squeezes ambition into a compressed timeline. Everyone wants the shortest path from graduation to the big leagues.

This Supreme Court obsession starts way before graduation. By the second or third year, students gravitate toward internships in Supreme Court chambers or at High Courts. District court internships? They’re just backup or, frankly, ignored. If you look through LinkedIn profiles, CVs and placement records, the imbalance is glaring: out of the dozens of internships applied for, the vast majority target Supreme Court or High Court advocates. Very few seek out trial court engagements. And it’s not because trial courts aren’t educational - actually, they offer more hands-on training. But district court internships aren’t glamorous and don’t make for impressive LinkedIn posts.

Same is the scramble toward law firm internships. More often than not, such internships are just to add a fresh line in a CV, rather than learning anything new. A student doing photocopying and proofreading due diligence reports in a prestigious law firm learns less on a practical front than one preparing a bail application in the district court, but he has the name value of the firm to boost his resume. Students come out with experience about constitutional hearings while still not having prepared a legal notice, seen an FIR quashing petition being argued, or seen the progression of a civil suit.

One big reason for this Supreme Court rush is rarely talked about: the insane cost of legal education. At top National Law Universities or private schools, tuition fees alone can run into several lakhs per year. Add coaching, hostel fees, travel and moot competitions, families often shell out ₹20-30 lakh over 5 years. When you’ve spent that much, you expect a serious return. Nobody wants to tell their family, “I am practising in district court, running after files for a salary of ₹10-15,000 a month,” after handing over a fee slip for ₹30 lakh.

The expectation, unstated but powerful, is that an expensive law degree translates into high status work right away. And nothing says status quite like “Supreme Court.” Here’s the problem: legal education economics and the job reality of litigation just don’t match up. Unlike corporate law or judicial services, litigation takes forever to pay off. Most trial lawyers say it took them years to become financially stable. A system that markets “instant professionals” is badly out of sync with a career track that’s all about grinding it out over a decade. No wonder students are anxious and impatient by the time they graduate.

The irony? The Supreme Court is not actually the right place for a fresh graduate to learn how to be a litigator. It deals in appeals, constitutional questions and points of law, not facts. Sit at the back of Court No. 1 for two years and you’ll pick up polish in oral advocacy, sure. But you won’t learn how to draft a plaint, cross-examine a witness, understand procedure and evidence, build a client relationship, or handle the chaos of daily listings.

These are trial court skills - built by getting your hands dirty in lower courts where cases are argued on facts, evidence is led and every day is different. Most top Supreme Court advocates started their careers doing groundwork in the trial courts. The practice that new graduates dream about is almost always the reward of 10-15 years in trial and appellate courts; definitely not step one.

Jump straight into Supreme Court chambers as a junior and you’ll likely spend your days researching and preparing briefs, cut off from actual courtroom drama. You’ll get good at reading judgments, but not at making arguments under pressure or handling a judge’s tough questions.

The scale of this mismatch becomes clearer when placed against actual numbers. According to the figures the Law Ministry has placed in parliament, as of 2023, India has about 20 lakh registered advocates enrolled with state bar councils. Of those, just over 3,100 are Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record (AoRs) - the only ones allowed to file matters directly at the Supreme Court. That’s about 0.155% of enrolled qdvocates.  According to the Supreme Court rules, you can’t be an AoR unless you’ve put in at least 4 years at the Bar, trained under a Senior AoR for one year and passed a tough exam that has a 20% passing rate. The gate the ambitious graduates want to walk through is locked tight to anyone who hasn’t slogged away for years. Starting at the Supreme Court isn’t just difficult, it’s statistically impossible.

Early-career earnings make things even clearer. A survey conducted by Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy shows that young lawyers at Delhi High Court earn between ₹5,000 and ₹20,000 a month in their first 2 years. At other High Courts - Allahabad, Bombay, Kerala, Madras, Patna - figures are as low as ₹2,000 to ₹5,000 a month. Anecdotes from Delhi say juniors earning ₹5,000 are lucky; the most prestigious chambers of the country sometimes pay nothing at all in the first year. Compare that to 5-year law degree fees: ₹8–10 lakhs at some NLUs to ₹20–25 lakhs at NLU Delhi and NLSIU Bangalore. Families spend years of hard-earned salaries, only to see their kids earn less than rent in any major city. This mismatch is what nudges graduates toward the Supreme Court’s glitter and away from the gritty work of district courts.

Few students from India’s 1,500-plus law colleges stick with litigation long-term. The rest head for corporate jobs, in-house positions, or leave legal practice entirely, usually blaming the low, unpredictable incomes and lack of access to quality briefs. According to the Harvard Law School Centre’s research, many junior lawyers avoid litigation because getting into a good chamber is seen as requiring social connections and even then, there’s no income security. Ambitious, well-connected graduates rush to the Supreme Court’s visible world, instead of the trial courts where the real training happens.

The lawyers who struggle or run out of steam mid-career are often those who started only in the Supreme Court or High Courts, or specialised tribunals like the NCLT. They never built their own practice or client base at the district court level. The district courts let young advocates handle everyday matters (bounced cheques, family fights, small civil suits), which is where you earn steady income and get real courtroom experience. Appellate practice doesn’t offer that to beginners.

Hard data tells the story: the qualification to argue at the Supreme Court comes after years of groundwork, the money during those years comes mainly from district court cases; and the lawyers who thrive are those who follow this slow path, not the ones who chase shortcuts. Graduates who skip lower courts are, by the numbers, knocking on a door that will stay closed for almost a decade. The open door, where the bills actually get paid, is the one they were trying hardest to avoid.

Sanyam Garg is a second year B.A LL.B (Hons.) student at NMIMS University, Kirit P Mehta School of Law, Mumbai.