Men facing cruelty from their wives and wish to seek legal recourse must adhere to the prescribed legal and societal channels. Similarly, men who have faced criminal charges filed by their wives, including charges against their parents, must come forward to defend themselves against such accusations in one or more courts often involving civil and criminal litigation. This process is emotionally taxing and the involvement of various forums including courts, police stations, and family is required.
For litigants, their lawyer’s office becomes a destination for frequent visits, and their lawyer becomes a crucial figure in their lives, as their freedom and happiness highly depend on their lawyer’s performance, competence, and ethical intentions. And therefore, incompetent lawyers have no place in this profession and should not be allowed to practice. But, unfortunately, such individuals are too common in our country due to the uncooperative attitude of the bar council.
Those lawyers who politely cheat their clients are akin to smooth criminals. While the lawyers who are both rude and deceitful are practitioners of blatant thuggery. Among them, it is too tough to determine which category of a lawyer is worse as all three have their own unique characteristics. And in most cases, litigants frequently realize too late that such lawyers are pervasive in our country and many practitioners fall under at least two of the three categories. While some fulfilling all the three major criteria of incompetence, dishonesty, and rudeness.
Lawyers with questionable ethics are not uncommon in other countries, evidenced by the prevalence of negative jokes about them worldwide. Mario Puzo is not the only one who has called lawyers ‘thieves’, and numerous thinkers have also compared them with people engaged in illegal professions. Even lawyers themselves keep on warning that their profession is full of opportunistic individuals with no ethics. In many cases, lawyers who collude with the other party are often viewed as traitors. There is also an open secret about some lawyers that they don’t hesitate in going so far as to sabotage their clients’ cases by passing information to their opponents. Someone once made a remark that lawyer and goldsmith are the only two professions where no one can succeed without cheating.
Litigants who have come into contact with a lawyer for the first time often believe that their lawyer will competently fight their case to help them seek justice. However, experienced litigants know that he is the litigant, not the lawyer who ultimately determines the outcome of the case. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of incompetent lawyers who don’t have proper knowledge of the law and therefore hiring such lawyers means ruining your case. Furthermore, there are many such lawyers who deliberately harm their clients’ cases in order to make money. These lawyers often remain unnoticed and do their act of ‘fraud’ without getting noticed as most litigants are so frustrated in their own case that they don’t want to invite any other legal troubles as they are already dealing with so many things.
In the Indian legal system, if a client wishes to make any complaint against their lawyer, they cannot do so in the usual format of a complaint to the bar council. Instead, it is a must to file a petition and hire a lawyer to fight the case. Unfortunately, this provision seems to have been framed by lawyers to favour themselves.
The bar council is aware that a person who has been let down by one lawyer will hesitate to engage another. The situation also highlights the influence of lawyers in our country’s legal system, as evidenced by the number of lawyers in the parliament and the union cabinet which supports the fact that the judiciary is entirely composed of lawyers. Even a group of lawyers are given the title of ‘Founding Fathers’. Though there are competent, honest, and courteous lawyers, it’s still rare to find a lawyer who meets all three criteria and charges reasonable fees for the case.
Lawyers are acutely aware of the fact that the clients who come to them are in a vulnerable position, consumed by trouble, pain, and grief. This is the reason, lawyers have been compared to birds of prey on carrion eaters. Litigants often have other urgent problems to deal with and therefore they don’t want to engage in another act of legal fight against the inappropriate behaviour of the lawyers.
There is also a type of lawyers who misguide their clients by sending them on wild goose chaos. Lawyers mostly fool their clients in a matrimonial case by telling them to file many unnecessary petitions claiming that they will protect them from immunity from dowry, harassment charges or a quicker divorce, etc. Other tactics include failing to provide logical arguments in court, providing specious legal arguments in chambers, and forcing the client to take devious legal ways. Unfortunately, during matrimonial litigation, a large chunk of the population experiences more harassment from their lawyers that their spouses.
Have you ever thought why a lawyer would try to end a litigation quickly if he/she can make more benefit from a prolonged litigation? It’s something like expecting a realtor to negotiate a lower price for you when their commission is tied to the price. That’s the reason, some people try to avoid this situation by opting for a package deal from a lawyer, but even that may not always work, as discussed above.
The lawyers also used scare tactics and frighten the litigants by introducing them to some other litigation processes that are irrelevant or unnecessary in their case. They do it by playing on their clients’ anger, greed, or ego. Unnecessary litigation also known as luxury litigation, is specifically prohibited by the bar council rules for lawyers, but many lawyers continue to flout this directive, particularly in matrimonial cases.
Moreover, many lawyers expect their clients to address them as ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam’ while treating their clients with contempt and disrespect by using the familiar word ‘You’ in Hindi. Such lawyers are rude to their clients and don’t even respect their colleagues or juniors. Such type of lawyers is also over-argumentative and keep on arguing continuously with their clients and deriving pleasure from their clients’ helplessness. They also aim to keep their clients confused and financially exploited, often by staying on both sides of every argument and fence.
Avoiding such lawyers is the best way to deal with such lawyers. Since they are so common, it’s challenging to find a competent, and honest lawyer.
Very very true. I engaged as many as 4 lawyers. All of them sold out due to my really solid evidence against the fraud woman. Sahodar may try to create a pool of trusted lawyer.
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