?Let Bar have role in selection process?

FORMER ALLAHABAD High Court Bar Association senior vice-president RK Shangloo has suggested changes in the procedure for designating an advocate as ?senior advocate?.

FORMER ALLAHABAD High Court Bar Association senior vice-president RK Shangloo has suggested changes in the procedure for designating an advocate as ‘senior advocate’.

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He said the High Court Bar, through its executive, should be allowed to sponsor the name of an advocate and recommend it to the Full Court of the High Court for being designated as ‘senior advocate’.

“The High Court Bar knows very well the value and competence of its members and to ignore it completely, to my mind, is not proper and desirable. Why cannot we trust that the Bar Association will recommend proper names for designating as senior advocate. Ultimately, it will be the High Court which will put the seal on the Bar’s recommendation and then it can be said with pride that the person concerned has been designated a senior advocate, after approval by both the Bench and the Bar alike,” Shangloo said.

Elaborating his stand, Shangloo said no one had an objection to the fact that the final selection would be made by the High Court.

“But I feel no member of the Bar should be designated a senior advocate over the head of the Bar Association to which he belongs. When we declare from the housetop that the Bench and the Bar are two wheels of the same chariot, then unless both the wheels are equally balanced, the chariot cannot ply properly and smoothly.”In addition to it, Shangloo, who has spent sixty years at the Bar, has urged the Bar Council of India to re-introduce the system of one year’s training to all newcomers with recognised senior advocates.

He said, “Our present generation of young lawyers are deprived of the valuable assistance and guidance of their seniors, which is no longer in store for them ever since our Bar Council has discontinued the training period of the newcomers in the legal profession’’.

Emphasising on the importance of the senior-junior system, he said, “There is no denying of the fact that one year’s training which we had in our days with our seniors enabled us to learn so many things about the legal profession at the feet of our guru, who was all the time teaching and guiding us how to deal with clients, the courts, and other colleagues at the Bar. It was there that we learnt what we call tricks of the trade which made our foundation in the profession a little more solid than it would have been otherwise,” Shangloo said.

“The senior used to discuss his case with us and thereby taught us how we should prepare a case or draft an application or even argue a revision, bail and an appeal, which instilled great confidence in us from the very beginning of our career. We had a diary to mention our each day’s work which was signed by our senior,” said Shangloo.

But now, ever since the training period has been discontinued, the young entrant i.e. newcomer in the profession finds himself ploughing a lonely furrow with none to guide him to teach him even to draft an application much less an illness slip. I do not blame juniors, but I blame the system that we have chosen to adopt.

It looks very irksome and I really feel bad when a court pulls up a junior for not drafting his application properly or not coming well prepared with his case. It is because the poor man had no proper training under a senior which is always necessary in every profession,” Shangloo said.