[blindlaw] Seamlessly procuring relevant pieces of information

[Rahul Bajaj]

Hi Everyone,

I hope this message finds you well. One key challenge that I have been
facing, since the time I started practicing law last year, is that I
am often unable to seamlessly procure the information that is needed
to answer a lawyer's questions when preparing for oral argument or
during the course of the argument.

I am not sure how these processes operate in the US, but in India,
during the first few years of one's career, one spends a significant
amount of time briefing senior lawyers who are slated to argue a given
case. During such meetings, called conferences, you have to walk them
through the facts of the case and, more importantly, help them
identify the relevant annexures that form the subject matter of the
dispute. These are usually in the shape of correspondence between the
parties, notices and other pieces of information, depending on the
nature of the case.

Indian courts do make the pleadings available in full before argument,
but these are typically in the form of inaccessible PDFs. While I am
able to grasp the content of most written submissions on converting
these documents into word, the quality of the conversion is typically
quite bad insofar as other annexures are concerned.

At the same time, it is infeasible to get everything read by a sighted
person, as these files run into at least 3-400 pages and a large chunk
of the material is irrelevant.

Similarly, during the course of argument, judges often ask questions
in order to answer which one has to be able to refer to the relevant
documents in an expeditious and seamless way. As a junior lawyer, you
are expected to help the arguing counsel in this pursuit. This also
becomes challenging on account of the factors I outlined above.

Finally, when you convert documents from pdf to word, the page
numbering of the document goes haywire, so what was page 10 in the
petition would be something totally different in your version. I am
wondering if those of you who are seasoned litigators could comment on
how you deal with these issues, in case you have faced them.

Best,
Rahul