Growth

A strange thing happened today.

My brain was absently revisiting an old memory, but instead of me agonising about how the events had panned out back then, as I had done far too many times, something different happened.

The memory was of an incident that occurred during a tea break at a public policy conference I had attended while in college. The keynote speaker, an economics professor at some foreign university, was mingling with the attendees and jhadoing gyan on our young impressionable minds. We were all lapping it up. Until she said something that pissed me off.

“You know, you lawyers should petition for the right to receive a share of the damages your client wins. The Advocates Act doesn’t allow it — but it should! That way lawyers will pick winning cases, and will also earn more.”

Pick winning cases? Excuse me?

At the time I had begged to differ with her and we had a back-and-forth that drew a small crowd around us. I was trying to explain that even the most talented lawyer could not predict the outcome of a case with 100% accuracy, simply because the final judgement was not in his hands. Had he been running a race to a finish line, carrying his client on his back, the result might ostensibly be attributed to him. However, that was a far cry from the dozens of factors that influence the outcome of an actual trial.

Apart from this, the ethics of the profession forbade an advocate from having a stake in the outcome of a case. A lawyer must provide the same quality of services and put in the same amount of effort regardless of the client or the subject matter of the case. In fact, decades ago advocates used to hang a glove behind their backs, into which their clients would place their fees. The idea was that the lawyer was to perform his services blind to any reward he may receive for them. A small, vaguely glove-shaped flap of cloth can be found hanging at the back of some modern-day advocates’ gowns as well, harking back to this tradition.

An advocate’s job is to do his level best to portray his client’s case in the most favourable light possible, and then resign to the decision making powers of the bench. The worth of his efforts is independent of the final judgement delivered.

On top of this, if lawyers picked only those briefs that looked like “winning cases”, what would happen to those poor aggrieved souls who had perhaps less chance of winning, but a chance nonetheless? Who would fight for their rights? And what about cases where the stakes weren’t high and there wasn’t much scope of monetary award?

Simply put, it was plain wrong for an advocate to be personally involved in the outcome of a case. What this lady was proposing seemed preposterous.

The tea break ended, and we paused our verbal sparring with a promise from her that “We will resume our discussion later.” It didn’t happen, for which I was glad.

The memory of that day had bothered me for years because I felt inadequate in the way I had explained something that was so obvious to me. I had struggled to find the words that accurately captured why I found her suggestion so absurd, impractical and unethical.

Today, the image of her insisting “You lawyers must pick winning cases!” popped wantonly into my head. And then something magical happened.

To my absolute surprise, facing her was Present Me and not the Student Me that had struggled to articulate her thoughts.

Present Me heard her and laughed. Two sharp, derisive ha-ha!s.

The professor froze. Her emphatic fist stopped mid-air.

Present Me retorted, “That’s like telling a football team to only play matches they can win.”

Present Me looked at her gobsmacked face, smiled, turned and walked away. The scene faded.

How often are you awed by your own growth?