Legal profession has changed for the better

Camille Vasquez — a graduate of Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, more popularly known to the world as the 38-year-old lawyer who represented Johnny Deep in the high-profile defamation trial against Amber Heard. Her videos, especially the one objecting to Heard’s lawyer, took the internet by storm. Vasquez, who turned into an overnight celebrity after winning Depp’s case, has been named among 2022’s Best Lawyers in America by the prestigious The Best Lawyers in America panel. Recently, the Hollywood Reporter said Vasquez has joined NBC News as a legal analyst for their news division.

Soon after she won the trial, Vasquez was promoted to partner at Brown Rudnick law firm and several news channels showed interest in her services as a contributor. Hollywood Reporter also mentioned that Vasquez secured a significant $15 million win for Depp’s trial.

Who said you can only become a lawyer or a judge if you study law? Well, Bollywood films are to be blamed to some extent for their exaggerated ideas of a courtroom. But the reality is far different from the glamourised versions. From legal consultants, civil servants, journalists, insurance lawyers, policy analysts, professors, real estate advisors, diplomatic agents and general counsel, there are several career alternatives for a candidate who may not wish to become an advocate or a judge.

In India, it might take a lot of time to get a judgment but studying law remains one of the most popular traditional career choices after engineering and medicine. Now, the tenacity required in a legal profession makes students move away from it. But today, law is not only limited to the courtrooms. Given the rising number of opportunities for law graduates in India, interest in pursuing law has increased.

“It can be said that the traditional role that a student of law is expected to perform in a courtroom either as a pleader arguing a case or as a judge, has undergone a 360-degree change with the ushering in of new technologies, new forms of businesses and newer challenges that spring from such combinations. Post 1990s, the way of doing business has changed with the advent of LPG. This has, in turn, opened new vistas of operation wherein a student of law after passing the UG course undertaken by him can be seen working in other roles such as law officers in government, semi-government organisations, banks or corporate houses. They also serve as arbitration and mediation personnel as insolvency professionals. They adorn many more important functional roles and thus we can surely say that the change is noticeably very positive and for the better,” said Dr Debashree Mukherjee, professor and HoD, Department of Law, Sister Nivedita University, Kolkata.

Advocate Sandipan Kundu, who has been practising civil and criminal law for 22 years at Sealdah Civil Court Bar Association, told Millennium Post how the change of law syllabus has opened windows for various career opportunities for young batches with a law degree. “These days, companies pick up law graduates from the college/universities during their final year as legal advisors,” he said.

Advocate Rananeesh Guha Thakurta, who handles service matters at Calcutta High Court, said the technological advancements have helped law graduates to flourish. “With the aid of technological tools, it has become possible for a law graduate to sit at his office and also appear in most courts of India. He/she can also advise clients, who have varied requirements from the historical laws on contracts to the developing fields of IT and IPR, etc. It can be said with certainty that change has been for good for the law graduates,” he said.

Sunny Deol’s long impassioned monologue ‘Tarikh pe tarikh, tarikh pe tarikh’! from Damini (1993) in the courtroom is hard to forget. Later, Amitabh Bachchan’s famous dialogue “No means No” from Pink (2016) also cemented the popularity of Hindi courtroom dramas. Most of Bollywood’s courtroom dramas make for an engaging watch with the lawyers arguing in high-pitch voices, giving long fiery speeches and the judge always saying, ‘order, order, order’ as he bangs his gavel. But the reality of the courtroom is different.

Both Mukherjee and Kundu admit how far removed the representation of the lawyer and the judge in a reel setting differs from a real-life one. “The agility and the ability are in most cases seen as compromised in the former which may not be true in many cases. Also, the speed at which justice gets delivered may not be as it happens in real life,” said the SNU professor.

An increasing number of law graduates are also taking to blogging on legal issues. Also, several journalists covering law for their publications with a thorough understanding of the Indian Constitutional Laws and the Indian Penal Code (IPC) have taken up roles of legal analysts in firms too. Then, there’s always the option to teach law at universities. And the law graduates can always explore the opportunity to work in government services like the Department of Legal Affairs and the Legislative Council.

“Law graduates having expert knowledge of tax laws and banking laws, apart from individual private practice, are often working for various companies in the corporate world as legal advisors. Real estate companies are maintaining legal advisors, experts in land laws, as salaried employees. In the field of practice at the court of law, there are various streams such as civil law, criminal law, tax, Writ, Arbitration, and mediation. Various new subjects have come into play like environmental law, IT law and sports law,” said Kundu.

Mukherjee stresses the new openings as cyber law, sports law and fashion law experts. “With companies operating more in the digital space, the role of cyber law experts has gained momentum. With IPL and other such activities, sports law, and IPR law have begun to be forayed as niche areas of application of legal acumen. Another very upcoming and promising area is fashion law, which has great prospects in near future. Today, media does not include print media only but has gone further to include digital media. Animation and graphics are growing to provide promising careers but with such professions, managing such spaces without infringement of the right to privacy or conducting oneself without being subject to copyright issues or protecting oneself from facing data protection issues are areas of concern. These situations can be addressed only by legal professionals. Hence the career scope of law students today is manifold and it is sure to grow even more with the advent of new businesses and newer professions,” she said.