Heat or Dust : Lawyers Will be There

I am a lawyer. And I think it is my first hand right to say something about lawyers. Though it is unwritten rule that only a lawyer would write about the lawyers, as we hardly allow others to speak, especially against us. Before I say anything North and South, let me tell you that people really love us. They like us. And on many occasions they prefer us to others. I think you would not believe this one. OK. Here is one proof of it.


Once a gentleman was asked. “Suppose you are with Adolph Hitler, a hungry tiger, and a lawyer. And you are given a gun with two bullets in it. Then whom will you save?”

The Gentleman immediately replied, “I will shoot the lawyer twice.”

That’s pity. Ours is the age of misunderstandings. You know, people have several misconceptions about our tribe. They say that the advocates take huge fees and they make money as fast as the hungry bullocks eat grass. Don’t believe in such rumors. Everything is for misguiding the people, especially our potential clients. We are straightforward people, very straight and very forward. Though our uniform is of dark color, we hardly keep our clients in dark. We, the lawyers, talk directly and we like clarity.

Take a page from the book of my own life. It was the day of my early practice. There came a bank manager in my office and talked about the cases to be filed by his bank.

“What will be your fees, sir?” He was a rational man.

“If you pay at a time it would be two lac thirty thousand. Only. And if you want to pay in monthly installments, it would be twenty installments of Rs. 12444.”

“Do you accept fees in EMI, too?”

“No. My car financier accepts so.”

Next week I had a new car. You know, the clarity works.

But in no way our job is easy. We have to turn hundreds of books, ink out our pens, and get rims of paper typed. We get very much upset when we write a detailed argument of thousands of words and people call it a ‘brief’. Even though we respect the people. Hardly any other professional may be respecting their clients as we do. Whenever we win a case in court we immediately phone our client—no miscall this time. We first laugh a lot and then say that WE have won. By WE, we mean the lawyer and the client. And if we did not win, we say him/her that YOU have lost. You know, everyone saves his/her own skin.

But whenever we win, our client wins a lot. Say when a lady wins her case for a divorce. By winning the case she wins, freedom. She wins a ticket to be happy without her husband; she wins an opportunity of deciding about when to awake in the morning and when to go for sleep at night. She is now not required to count her husband’s salary and smell his shirt if he comes late at night. [He might be working for extended hours in office, but to be vigilant is a virtue.] After winning the case, she only loses her bank balance. You know, the advocates charge very reasonable fees.



Now a day we are not at our best, so far as the repute among the people in general is concerned. But there was time when the lawyers were everything in India. We cannot read the freedom struggle of India without reading about the lawyers. Remember Gandhiji, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, and even Mr. Jinna: they all were lawyers by caste. These all gentlemen have practiced in courts before they had joined the freedom movement. I do not know whether Jawaharlal Nehru had practiced in any court, like his father. But he had written his own testament. It’s the act of an advocate. But these were the men, and some women too, who made us free from the clutches of the foreigner’s rule.

There is another specie of lawyers, too. Look at this gentleman.

There goes a man in a lawyer’s office. “Sir, I want my tenant out of my house.”

“What’s the problem?” The lawyer asked.

“He demands $100. And I will not pay a single cent to him.”

“But my fees will be $100.”

The man pays $100 as fees. Then the advocate immediately goes to the tenant. He gives him the same $100 he has received from his client, the landlord. The tenant agrees to vacate the house. What a virtuous practice.

Name of the lawyer was Mr. Abraham Lincoln.

If you want to be remembered forever, you must have something special in you. We remember our heroes; we remember our virtuous leaders.

No one forgets his/her lawyer, too.


“If there were no bad people there would be no good lawyers” --Charles Dickens

Originally posted at :
HUMOUR ZONE

 

From Navaljee to Ms. muzna

Ours, the lawyers', is a profession that has the minimum counts of humour. People look at us and turn sad. I have tried to make it a lighter one.

Navaljee

 

From Navaljee to Ms. Shanvy

I am happy that the concept about the advocates's is becoming clearer. I think I should write more about the real difficulties we face in our problems. I would like to quote one incidence of my life. On that day I had virtually shed tears when one of my clients had approched me for divorce and told me her story. Subsequently I had gone to meet her husband, talked as a family member. And thank god they are now living happily together.

Navaljee

 

From Navaljee To Ms. soumyakans

Yes, Rajaji was the statesman we need badly in today's time. Had we had a man possessing his negotiating techniques, the issues like Kashmir and terrorism might have not gone so out of proportion.

Navaljee