Law as career

CAREER IN LAW: Manish Arora; Universal Law Publishing Co. Ltd., C-FF-1A, Ansal's Dilkush Industrial Estate, G. T. Karnal Road, Delhi-110033.

Rs. 95.

LAW TODAY, as a lucrative profession, and glorious career, fills the bill of an ambitious talent. To add to its attractions is another facility. No law of limitation by way of age bar exists for a member of the bar, says Harnett in Law, Lawyers and Laymen: ``So long as the lawyer remains mentally dear, he can work effectively. His experience becomes increasingly important, and palliates diminished physical stamina. It is not surprising, then, that great numbers of older people practise law. The lawyer, in his late sixties, is often in his prime while his associate-executive friends may already be consigned to compulsory retirement. It is now believed that almost half the lawyers in the United States are over fifty years of age, and, of these, a quarter are over sixty-five years of age.''

The bar beckons to the bright youth because the potential for infinite ascent is more in sound lawyering than in any other vocation. And, above all, the prospect of elevation to the Bench makes law a career beyond compare.

Manish Arora, now well known through his Universal Law Publishing Company, has turned author and has written this tiny but lovely book. He rightly remarks that this profession has multifarious openings. A little over hundred pages of practical information about law as a career are furnished in this book. I am surprised that he is able to pack so much material in so few. The book, as the author claims, is a step by step guide explaining all about the legal career that any young entrant into the profession would like to know. He begins with Dharma and Nyaya, (righteousness and justice). Law never stands still and is in fast track locomotion. In our technological age law broadens day after day. Legal education must, therefore, keep pace with the march of the law.

There is scholarship in the brief book. While it is not heavy it is weighty. Every page contains a progressive unfolding of the legal system and the legal profession. He takes law and justice as the first topic and in three pages tells you what textbooks take 30 pages to tell. The gamut of the jural system, from the ancient period to the current judicature, takes only six or seven pages - a feat which makes me wonder why huge tomes of law are ever written except to frighten the laity.

Switching over to the legal profession, the author refers to the statutes governing the legal profession. The law schools and the law degrees of several countries find place in the book in striking brevity. How do you choose a senior, what are the career opportunities in law, women lawyers in court and career opportunities are not omitted by the author. Pictorial and diagrammatic devices are a novel feature of the book. Success at the Bar and tips to win it are condensed in a few pages. What is innovative and interesting is the chapter on the cyber connection. There is modernity in this chapter which explores the role of technology in the practice of law.

As a bonus to the reader, the author deals pithily with where to study law in the U.K., the U.S. and Australia. Where to study law in India has also been furnished, giving names of law schools and related information. These days young graduates like to travel abroad or in India to get relevant information about where to study qualitatively sound law. Instead of knocking at every door, he offers the requisite information in around 50 pages - a universe in a nutshell. I agree with the author that anyone seriously searching for good law schools must possess a copy of the book under review priced at a petty sum, for quite a quantum of useful information which can be imbibed cheap and with ease. I am sure the author, in writing this little book, must have spent much time. Why? Brevity demands more study. Pascal, in writing a lengthy letter, mentioned in extenuation: ``The present letter is a very long one, simply because I have no leisure to make it shorter.''

Our long-winded authors had better remember that economy of words is a great art and what is heavy in pages may not be weighty in worth. Did not Pliny the Younger write 2000 years ago ``I apologise for this long letter. I did not have enough time to shorten it.'' Judges, indulging in avoidable prolixity, have a lesson from Pliny.

V. R. KRISHNA IYER

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