It has always been a tough challenge for junior lawyers to learn the intricacies of the law and start their own independent practice. But experts say it was a lot tougher in the past, before the advent of internet, than it is today.
First, they had to contend with the intimidating presence of experienced seniors who would come to the court rooms with a sweeping command over case laws -- knowledge of past judgments of various courts.
It took years to glean and memorise this knowledge from bulky law reports and case judgments. Many seniors expected their juniors to assist in small ways for years before passing on the ability to take part in courtroom battles.
Ramesh Itagi, 59, who entered the legal profession as a junior lawyer in the early eighties says,” Our main job was to get the relevant information our seniors needed. We hardly understood the significance of our work.”
There was another handicap. It would take months for official law reports to record judgments of higher courts and make them available for a larger audience. The lower courts would usually be clueless about the cases the higher courts were grappling with.
When the raw copies of judgments did arrive after months, it would take the full force of the seniors’ experience to analyse and deploy them in their arguments. But over the last 10 years, the advent of internet has dramatically changed the legal landscape in India.
The case laws and other legal resources have gone online. With efficient search engines you do not really need years of experience to locate the relevant information quickly. The judgments of the Supreme Court and many High Courts are posted on their web sites the same day. There are legal portals which provide excellent summaries of these judgments, helping even novices grasp them easily.
Lawyers have become more productive as the time that was earlier spent on searching and tracking down cases is now spent on reading them, say experts. More importantly, internet is closing the experience gap between senior and junior lawyers. If you know how to search and analyse quickly, you don’t have to be a walking encyclopedia of case laws anymore.
Ganapati Bhatt, partner at Kumar & Bhatt, a Bangalore-based law firm, says the advantage that a senior lawyer held in the past is fast diminishing as the net-savvy younger lawyers are usually as informed as their seniors.
”Earlier, it took a lot of effort to track cases and dig out information from bulky law reports. Now, thanks to internet, information is available at your fingertips,” he says. Until about a decade ago, legal research in India was still conventional. To prepare for their cases, lawyers had to immerse themselves in law reports such as the All India Reporter (AIR) and Supreme Court Cases (SCC). But as digitisation crept in, the printed material migrated to CD ROMs initially and later to daily-updated legal portals.
Manupatra, a widely used legal portal in India, launched an online legal database in 2001. Natraj Gowda of Manupatra, says the legal portal has grown to support a daily average of 4,500 users running 18, 000 searches.
Explaining the advantages of legal portals he says, “You can get brief summaries of judgments without going through the entire document. Given the number of pages judgments typically run into, you can definitely save a lot of time.”
”Portals also provide hyperlinks to related material, an advantage books can’t beat. They also make searching for cases easier as anyone can find the right information by using relevant key words,” adds Gowda.
Sensing the game-changing nature of technology, the legal community has quickly embraced it despite the obvious cost. A single user account costs Rs 46,000 annually at Manupatra, while an IP access - typically used by large law firms and corporate offices - could cost around Rs 2.5 lakhs a year.
Sreekanth Katti, a corporate lawyer at Fox Mandal’s office in Bangalore, feels that an internet connection has become a necessity for a law firm to function. “The junior lawyers of today are faster and more efficient in their work. We rarely feel the need to go through books these days as everything is available online,” he says.
“Without the internet our work literally comes to a grinding halt,” he adds. Lawyers are also finding that internet is giving them speed. “Just the other day I needed information pertaining to a circular in the insurance sector. I went to the relevant website and got the information in no time. Earlier, it would have taken days to get its hardcopy,” says Katti.
The turning point in the digital shift of Indian legal system arrived when the courts started going online and started posting schedules of cases and judgments online. Along with the lawyers, judges also have reportedly begun to use online resources.
Many lawyers say during informal discussions judges prompt them to refer to legal portals through mobiles to resolve an issue on the spot. Viswanath Angadi, Secretary, Legal Services Authority, Karnataka, says judges now insist on having access to legal portals for speedy disposal of matters. “The advantages of technology are hard to ignore. The judges are increasingly using online services and this trend is on the rise,” he says.
The 13th Finance Commission has earmarked Rs five crore to upgrade legal infrastructure in every state of India. Some of this money is being used to set up online accounts for judges at legal portals.
The Legal Information Institute of India (LII), which was launched recently, is working to provide free online access to Indian legal resources. It has already gathered a database of over 300,000 decisions from 37 courts and tribunals, over 800 bilateral treaties and about 500 law journal articles.
Buy many point out that technology has its downside as well. Academics say internet has triggered rampant plagiarism by students and scholars alike in recent years.
Dr. Asok Patil, associate professor of law at the National Law School in Bangalore, says the easy access to online journals has severely dented the authenticity of any research that gets published. To curb plagiarism many universities have begun to buy expensive software.
“It’s a double edged sword, no doubt. To resolve a problem you invest in technology. Then that develops a problem, you again invest in a better technology to resolve it. It goes on,” he says. However, Dr. Patil also says his university has cut down expenditure on books and is using the same money for digitisation. “It is easier for a researcher to do his research through a softcopy,” he adds.
Reflecting the mood of the next generation of lawyers, Rakesh Bharadwaj, a law student at Christ University, says it’s just a matter of time before everyone goes online. “No one has the patience to flip through books that literally weigh a tonne,” he says.