Between Law and Justice: The Vanishing Art of Courtroom Oratory.

The contemporary situation in advocacy is changing, and nowadays, the use of the art of oratory by orators is more focused on resolving commercial disputes on a large scale. Best of lawyers are withdrawing from the court practice because the nature of litigation is changing, and more importantly, commercial cases rarely reach court decisions. Big business people compromise their difficulties with the help of alternative dispute resolution techniques rather than entering into litigation, which will remain dormant in the Courts for years and years with their overcrowded calendars.  

            Modern-day jurists are also more inclined towards forming estimates and making distinctions rather than acting on their own passions and prejudices. Ensuring whether the law is upheld or not, this can be achieved by being rational. However, to ensure that justice is served or not, one must act on passion.

The conduct of presenting a case in the Court is a peculiar art for which many men, despite having a domain of knowledge in law, are not fitted to do so; there is no shortcut, no royal road to earn the proficiency in this peculiar art of presenting a case in the courtroom. It's experience, and I am of the opinion that experience alone, that brings success in this field. The one experienced lawyer will not require at utmost, more than a quarter of the time taken by a most learned inexperienced lawyer to develop his facts.

I think, to ensure the speedy and intelligently conducted litigation, we should confine the court practice to a limited number of trained lawyers and bring the specialised categories for practitioners having an adequate amount of experience and domain of knowledge in a particular branch of law. The distinction between general practitioners and specialists is already established in the medical profession, and it is widely accepted by the public. Will you let the family physician conduct the surgery on you, instead of calling an experienced surgeon to handle the knife? Obviously, no, right? Even if the family physician has learned surgery in medical school, he has not entered into that domain for so long, except under circumstances where there is no alternative, there should be a similar distinction in the legal profession too. Advocates or even the judges who were advocates before, if they have experience and a domain of knowledge in a particular area of law, for example, let's say criminal law, they cannot argue or adjudicate well in matters of a civil nature, as compared to someone who has proficiency in civil law. Conducting such intelligent and segregated litigation practices can make advocacy continue to serve not only the letter of the law, but the living spirit of justice.