004 Why should Junior Advocates be made scapegoats?

WHY BLAME A JUNIOR ADVOCATE?
NEWS HEADLINE : "SC PULLS UP MAHINDRA SATYAM FOR 'ARROGANCE' "


The SC here refers to the Supreme Court of India.
Pulling up refers to the Supreme Court censuring the Company "Mahindra Satyam".

Brief Details : A dispute between the Company 'Mahindra Satyam' and the Income Tax Authorities regarding the earlier order of the Income Tax Department demanding a tax of Rupees 6170 million (617 crore).

The Income Tax Authorities seem to be re-examining their demand of Rs. 6170 million and probably trying to reduce it.

A letter addressed by the Company to the Income Tax Authorities asking them to withdraw their demand, has been interprted by the Attorney General Mr. G.E. Vahanavati as highly offensive.


A three-judge-bench headed by the Chief Justice of India remarked :

"You cannot do this in such manner. Instruct them (Satyam) to withdraw the letter. This is not the way."

The Bench seems to have taken an exception to the 'more-than-once-use' of the word 'shall'.

The Senior Advocates representing Messrs. Satyam Mahindra -- Mr. Harish Salve and Mr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi, plied themselves out of the controversy by saying :

"We have not seen it. We want to withdraw it and apologise for it. This is not the way the letters are to be written." They were indicating that it was the work of some junior advocate.

Supreme Court :
"We are quite sure that you have not seen the letters; otherwise it would not be so. The present generation is very competitive but is crippled with arrogance."


My views as a blogger
The Senior Advocates charge hundreds of thousands of rupees or even hundreds of hundreds of thousands of Rupees for each case they take up, as against the pittances they in turn pay to the junior advocates. Besides, the Junior Advocates will be constantly under pressure from the clients to show results.

It is good that the Seniors wriggled out of the controversy by apologising to the Court. They might have admonished their juniors after going back to their offices. Or, they would have treated the matter as closed, if they had in the past, approved the drafts of the letters. Anyway, onething still remains needing correction. The Seniors seem to be accepting more number of cases than than the optimum they can handle. There is bound to be a ceiling to human capacity and efficiency, howsoever, great workaholics and intellectual giants the Seniors may be. This "trying to chew more than one can digest" results in under-supervision and leads to recurrence of the errors of the type mentioned above.

Why not the Seniors reduce their intake and allow the middle-rung advocates to eke out their livelihood? The Juniors also deserve better treatment, than being made scapegoats. (Had the Seniors done their supervision properly in scrutinising the letters drafted by the Juniors, this unpleasant need for rinsing before the Supreme Court would not have arisen.)