[blindLaw] legal practice

[Rahul Bajaj]

Hi All,

 +91 98902 81068 ~Rahul Bajaj: The way law is practiced in India, I think
it is almost impossible for a blind litigating lawyer to truly excel in a
traditional set up, such as a law firm or a senior’s office. The only way
that she can do so, to my mind, is by having her own model of working in
place - an extremely effective junior to assist her on a realtime basis and
a pathway that allows her to express herself [in terms of areas of law,
forums and the pace of the proceedings]. The traditional way, in which
juniors are basically shuffling papers and showing specific paras on
specific page numbers to a senior in a fast-paced manner in a conference is
next to impossible for a blind lawyer. And I don’t think being better
prepared is realistically an answer to this predicament, given the sheer
volume of documents that one is faced with. It is the judge or the senior
who dictates the terms of the conference/hearing, and it is impossible to
have anticipated and read before and be able to recall at will most things
at will.












 The context here was that we had a conference yesterday to brief senior
advocate Dayan Krishnan for a big personality rights matter where he is
leading us. it is an appeal in the Delhi High Court. The paperbook, owing
to the voluminous filings made to date is 2500 pages plus. the file is
simply not opening with my PDF software, and I had asked around extensively
for help last time when this matter had come up, to no avail. I asked a
colleague yesterday to extract what I perceived as being the most crucial
part of the file, so I could review it before the conference. However,
during the conference, he focused on something totally different. And was
just quickly jumping from one document to the other. While my sighted
colleagues had access to the file and could keep pace with him, as I could
not open the file itself, I could not keep up. And showcasing static
knowledge [this is what x judgment or provision says] is much easier for a
blind legal professional than dynamic knowledge [show me what page
so-and-so says].



Rahul







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Rahul Bajaj
Attorney, Ira Law
Senior Associate Fellow, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy
Rhodes Scholar (India and Linacre 2018), University of Oxford
Co-Founder, Mission Accessibility
Special Correspondent on the rights of persons with disabilities, Oxford
Human Rights Hub
Coordinator of the working group on accessibility, e-Committee, Supreme
Court of India