Threatened by pandemic: The livelihood of lawyers

Large numbers turned to bar councils for ration, financial help in desperation

In May, when the deadly second wave of Covid-19 was raging across India, the Bar Council of Delhi (BCD) provided 4,000 grocery kits to lawyers who had not earned a single rupee for months and whose families were fighting hunger every day. The council spent ~4.26 lakh in additional cash relief for nearly 2,700 lawyers who were either in home quarantine due to the infection or in hospital. Covid-19 has shut court rooms for months on end and even when hearings have resumed virtually, the number of cases being taken up has fallen drastically, leaving lawyers with unprecedented financial difficulties.

Himal Akhtar, vice-chairman of BCD, says, 90 per cent of the work comes to the top 10 per cent of lawyers. So, while those with a steady stream of cases and the wherewithal to attend multiple hearings in different courts across the country (and even across the world, now that cases are being heard virtually) saw their earnings multiply during the pandemic, a majority of the lawyers had to struggle to survive each day.

One lawyer came to the BCD during the second wave, demanding a ration kit for his family of five, saying he could not wait for the kit to be delivered home. Another chucked it all and migrated back to his paternal home in Bihar to take up farming. He is tackling small cases virtually while tending to crops, and currently has no plans to return to Delhi.

The BCD has 133,000 registered members and Akhtar says up to 50,000 have faced distress. “The government needs to create a mechanism for helping out lawyers. We are an educated but a highly unorganised sector,” he says. “The government should give us some guzara bhatta (subsistence allowance).”

The situation of lawyers need not have been this precarious. After all, most high courts and district courts have been conducting hearings through video conferencing. Why then should lawyers’ livelihoods be threatened?

Arghya Sengupta, research director at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, says the pandemic has sharpened the existing divide between the top 1 per cent of lawyers (senior advocates in the Supreme Court and high courts) and the rest. New cases are down drastically, he adds, due to restrictions because of successive lockdowns and court closures.

There are primarily three issues that a majority of lawyers are facing:

Digital literacy: Most lawyers may have a smartphone but may not be able to set up Zoom or video conferencing facilities.

In the lower courts, a lot of lawyers get clients physically, through walk-ins, and they have small stalls in the court premises. Getting new work has stopped since court visits are not allowed.

Courts are not hearing all kinds of cases; they are only hearing urgent matters. Since many lawyers charge clients on a per hearing basis, their incomes have suffered.

Data from Vidhi shows that in the absence of any clear criterion for determining what can be classified as an “urgent” case, the actual number of pending cases has risen meteorically across the country, hurting earnings of most lawyers (see table). In the 12 months till March this year, more than 9,000 cases got added to the hundreds of thousands already pending before the Supreme Court. In the high courts and district courts, another 1.22 million and 34.7 million, respectively, cases were added.

Rohit Bhattacharjee started practising at Calcutta High Court just after the national lockdown last year. He says youngsters are happy with virtual hearings but older advocates face difficulties due to digital literacy gaps. Also, inadequate infrastructure, especially at the lower courts, makes it difficult to conduct smooth hearings virtually. Uploading of voluminous documents is also problematic sometimes.

I P Singh, president of Tricity Consumer Courts Bar Association in Punjab, says the state consumer dispute redressal commissions were initially using the Vidyoconnect app for hearings. This app did not allow more than 15 people to join in at one time. “But more than 50 advocates have their cases listed on any given day. Even if a lawyer logged in early, he would be logged out by the person managing the app if the case was not among the first 10 for the day.” Singh says. “It was very tough to log in thereafter. The day was wasted; sometimes cases were adjourned and sometimes adverse orders were passed.” The state commission has since adopted a different system for video conferencing and these problems have been resolved.

Bhopal-based lawyer Yadvendra Yadav says different apps are in use for different courts even within Madhya Pradesh. Some courts are using Microsoft Teams and some others use Jitsi. “So if a video conference is to be done between two courts simultaneously, then multiple devices are needed.”

But virtual hearings have proved a boon for “big” lawyers. Yadav says before the pandemic, a lawyer residing in Delhi but fighting a case in a Mumbai court needed to take leave and travel, but can now attend these hearings with minimal time and effort. So those with billing of ~10-15 lakh a day are now making up to ~60 lakh a day.

For a majority of India’s lawyers, however, it’s a struggle for survival.

“90% of the work comes to the top 10% of lawyers. So a majority of lawyers had to struggle to survive,” says Himal Akhtar, vice chairman, Bar Council of Delhi