A citizen has protection of law, this is the most common perception of law, which everybody has.
A member of society comes to think about law only in a situation when either faces some inconvenience or wants to change his/ her routine/ schedule.
Law has evolved out of common sense and rituals. Daily practice of one’s routine generally does not come across thinking about law but change in one’s practice make him/ her think about relevant law.
Superficially we tend to consult lawyers only for defending or attacking and no sooner we find one, we leave everything on that lawyer.
Here, it is very important to note that we also need to know law in order to be doubly sure about advice.
The standard of advice is very important, for example, for consultation on matrimonial law, we need to precisely look for a particular lawyer.
Today the need has arisen when speciality is the most sought-after quality in profession.
Citizen are protected but they are protected only by law enforcing agencies but, in a time, when citizen is feeling helpless in the hands of law enforcing agencies only then they look for appropriate forum for submitting their grievances and Hon’ble courts are the only fora where they can submit their grievances.
To approach to the courts, they need lawyer and lawyer first take information from aggrieved citizen and then prepares a brief of it, means writes the contents to figure out the gist and essential ingredients are incorporated.
It begins with five W and one H.
W= Who, When, Where, Why, What
H=How
It is very necessary for a lawyer to remain ready with appropriate law and precedents on the points of determination because their brief is submitted to the court then court calls the other party to defend the accusations.
It is expected that the truth shall prevail but first of all, the litigant should ensure that he/ she is coming to the court with clean hands meaning that no more act befooling anyone, not yourself.
Once the case is presented/ submitted the notices are issued to the defendants and they are expected to submit befitting reply and point of determination are ascertained and both parties adduce evidence to support the claim/ allegation and the decision is given by court by dealing with each point of determination.
The above write up would enlighten all of you in very raw manner about how litigation runs in the country.
In the entire write up the role of lawyer is apparent from both the sides. Now even if one is filing/ suing the other party, the lawyer has a great role and the defendants also need a lawyer because from both the sides, lawyer present the case and before presenting it, prepare the case/ reply.
Lawyers are expected to work reasonably impartial and are also expected to bring truth before the judge and cite the precedents. Precedents are the alike cases decided earlier and contain principles laid down by different courts on important points.
Judges also largely depend upon lawyers because lawyers keep appearing in different cases and at different hierarchy of courts.
Hierarchy of courts means different levels of courts / judges based on their level of experience or number of years of experience.
The important question is when one should indulge in litigation. In my humble opinion, litigation should be the last resort and before initiating litigation, all the efforts should be put in to resolve the dispute first out of court only.
Our courts are already overburdened with thousands of cases and in the already going on litigation also, efforts are made to resolve the cases, then filing new cases should be discouraged.
Let’s come to an experience of avoiding litigation. Once a party sent a notice of recovery to its customers, who after receiving the notice, went to his lawyer, who in turn after talking to his client the real situation, replied that, yes, the party owes certain money and intends to return in certain number of instalments and could not return so far because of financial crunch and sent the reply alongwith first instalment of payment and both the parties were happy.
Concludingly the author, wishes to put it on record that be it litigation or any process of court, we cannot afford to now overload our system of judiciary any more.
The concept should revolve around one rule of thumb that avoid litigation as far as possible and this practice will be very helpful in evolving alternative mode of finding justice like Arbitration, Mediation and Reconciliation.
(Views expressed here are private and personal views of Author who is a practicing lawyer)