Practical skills in litigation: a guide for law students

This is the written version of a workshop Samaanta Law Firm runs at law schools, delivered to fourth and fifth-year students. It is published here because the material is useful beyond the room, and because most of it is not taught anywhere in the syllabus.

Why this exists

Law school teaches you the law. It does not teach you what to do when the matter is called, the Bench asks a question you cannot answer, and there are forty people behind you waiting for their turn. There is a gap between knowing the Contract Act and being useful in a courtroom, and almost nobody addresses it before graduation.

Nothing here is difficult. It is simply not written down often enough.

The structure of the courts

Before anything else, know where you are standing and what that court can do.

• District courts — civil judges, senior civil judges and district judges on the civil side; magistrates and sessions judges on the criminal side. Most litigation in India begins and ends here.
• Specialised fora and tribunals — family courts, consumer commissions, the Debts Recovery Tribunal, the NCLT, the Central Administrative Tribunal, the National Green Tribunal. Each has its own procedure and its own culture, and confusing them is obvious immediately.
• High Courts — appellate and revisional jurisdiction, writ jurisdiction under Article 226, and inherent powers under Section 528 BNSS. Also the supervisory authority over everything below.
• The Supreme Court of India — appeals, special leave under Article 136, and the writ jurisdiction under Article 32.

Know which court you are in, what relief it can grant, and what the next forum above it is. A surprising number of arguments fail because they were made in a court that could not give the relief asked for.

What a junior advocate actually does

The honest description: you keep the matter alive and you keep the senior informed. In practice that means maintaining the case diary and the next dates, ensuring filings are complete and within time, taking accurate notes of what the Bench said, tracking the orders as they are uploaded, and telling the client what happened in language they can use.

Two skills matter more than they sound. The first is knowing the file better than anyone else in the room. The second is reporting accurately, including when the day went badly. A junior who softens a bad order is far more expensive to the case than one who states it plainly.

The court staff are part of this. Registry officials, readers, ahlmads and the filing counter decide whether your matter is listed correctly, whether the defect is cured in time, and whether an urgent mentioning is even possible. Treat them with courtesy as a matter of habit, not tactics.

Courtroom decorum

Decorum is not decoration. It is how a court establishes that everyone before it will be heard on the same terms.

• Address the Bench as “Your Lordship”, “Your Ladyship” or “Your Honour”, depending on the court and the local convention. Never “Sir” or “Madam”.
• Open formally. “May it please Your Lordship…” is the conventional opening and it costs nothing to use it.
• Never interrupt the Bench. If the judge begins to speak, you stop, whatever you were in the middle of.
• Stand straight. Keep your hands still. Gesture is distracting and reads as agitation.
• Do not read your submissions out. Refer to notes only when you must. An advocate reading from a page has stopped arguing and started reciting, and the Bench can tell.
• Speak clearly and at a pace the court can follow while writing.
• Dress correctly, arrive before your matter is reached, and stay until it is called.

Researching a next-day hearing

A systematic method, in the order it should be done.

1. Understand the brief and the direction. What did the court last say, and what is listed tomorrow? Research aimed at the wrong question is wasted however good it is.
2. Use the databases properly. Manupatra, SCC Online and Indian Kanoon each behave differently. Search by provision as well as by phrase, and read the paragraph, never the headnote alone.
3. Identify what is binding. A Supreme Court judgment binds every court. A High Court judgment binds the courts subordinate to it. A judgment of a different High Court is persuasive only. Three well-chosen binding authorities beat twelve assorted ones.
4. Check whether it still holds. Has it been overruled, distinguished, doubted, or decided on statutory wording that has since changed? After 1 July 2024 this last point matters constantly.
5. Print and mark. Flag the paragraphs you will actually read out, with the page and paragraph number written on the flag. Fumbling for a passage in court loses the Bench’s attention immediately.
6. Use research tools with care. Software that summarises judgments or interprets statutes can save real time, but everything it produces must be checked against the judgment itself before it goes anywhere near a court. A hallucinated citation ends a career faster than a lost case.

Preparing when there is no time

Sometimes the brief reaches you the night before, or the hour before. A reliable sequence:

• Read the brief twice. The first reading tells you what happened; the second tells you what matters. Almost nobody does the second reading, and it is where the case is found.
• Write a one-pager. Facts, the issue, your best two points, and the relief sought. If it does not fit on a page you have not understood it yet.
• Carry the bare Act. Being able to hand up the provision is worth more than describing it.
• Have two authorities ready. Two you have read beats ten you have collected.
• Keep the client’s number to hand. Instructions are sought in court more often than students expect.
• Rehearse the opening aloud. The first thirty seconds set the Bench’s expectation of you for the rest of the hearing.

Answering the Bench

Questions from the Bench are not interruptions to your argument. They are the argument — they tell you precisely what the court is worried about.

• Listen to the whole question before you begin to answer. Answering the question you expected rather than the one asked is the commonest error in the room.
• Answer the question that was asked, then return to your sequence. Do not deflect.
• If you do not know, say so. “I do not have that instruction, My Lord, I will take instructions and revert” is a complete and entirely respectable answer. Guessing is not, and a court that catches you guessing will discount everything else you say.
• Concede what must be conceded, promptly and without drama. Credibility is the only asset you carry from one matter to the next, and it is spent very quickly.

Arguing a criminal matter

For a defence brief, the material is almost always in the documents rather than in the rhetoric.

• Read the FIR and the charge sheet completely. Not the summary. The documents.
• Build the chronology. Date of incident, date of FIR, date of arrest, date of charge sheet, date of charge. Unexplained delay between the incident and the FIR is a standard and frequently effective line of cross-examination.
• Mark contradictions between the FIR, the statements recorded during investigation, and the charge sheet, with page references you can produce instantly.
• Know the current numbering. The FIR provision is Section 173 BNSS, statements before a magistrate are recorded under Section 183, anticipatory bail is Section 482 and quashing is Section 528.
• Come back to first principles. The burden lies on the prosecution, the standard is proof beyond reasonable doubt, and the presumption of innocence is not a formality. In a trial court, saying so plainly at the right moment is often the whole defence.

Arbitration: the clause decides most of it

Students are rarely taught how much of an arbitration is settled before any dispute arises.

• Read the arbitration clause first. The seat, the governing law, the number of arbitrators and the appointment mechanism determine which court can help you and how quickly.
• Appointment matters. Independence and impartiality are governed by the schedules to the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, and an ineligible appointment can undo the whole reference.
• Interim relief. Section 9 lies to a court before or during the arbitration; Section 17 gives the tribunal comparable powers once constituted. Applying to the wrong one wastes weeks.
• The statement of claim carries the case. Plead the contract, the breach and the loss with documents attached. Arbitral tribunals are unforgiving of vagueness in a way trial courts sometimes are not.

What clients actually expect

Ask any litigant and the answers are consistent, and none of them is about brilliance.

• Clarity about strategy. What are we doing, why, and what happens next.
• Regular updates, without having to chase for them. A two-line message after each date is worth more than an eloquent argument they never hear about.
• Punctuality — in court, in filings, and in returning calls.
• An honest assessment, including when it is unwelcome. Clients forgive a lost case far more readily than a lost case they were told was certain.

A lawyer who does these four things reliably will hold a practice. A lawyer who does none of them will not, however good the arguments.

Common mistakes in an internship

• Sitting silently through a hearing you do not understand. Ask afterwards. Nobody minds; everyone minds the intern who pretended.
• Submitting research without checking whether the judgment still stands. This is the fastest way to lose a supervisor’s trust.
• Writing to impress. A note that is short, accurate and directly responsive is worth ten that demonstrate reading.
• Avoiding the dull work. Indexing a paper book, checking whether an annexure is complete, and confirming that the filing is within limitation are the tasks on which cases are actually lost.
• Not keeping a record. Keep your own notes of what you saw and what you drafted. In your first year of practice they will be the most valuable thing you own.

Samaanta Law Firm takes interns throughout the year and delivers this workshop at law schools on request. Details are on the internship programme page and the Media page.