Interviewee | Advocate Bharat Chugh (Former Judge & Founder of the Chambers of Bharat Chugh) |
Interviewer | Paankhurie Shrivastava (Junior Editor, RGNUL Cosmos) |
Introduction: Advocate Bharat Chugh is an exceptional lawyer, who has established himself as a role model for budding lawyers and law students. He graduated in Law from Jamia Milia Islamia in 2011 and in 2013, went on to secure the first rank in the Delhi Judicial Service Exam. He spent 4 years on the bench and in 2016, resigned from his judgeship and returned to the practice of law. He currently practices as an Independent Counsel and authors his blog which, as he likes to call it, is “A humble attempt to make complex legal issues understandable to the younger members of the Bar, law students, and the laywoman.”
Q.1) Sir, you have a varied experience in the field of law, as a civil judge, a corporate lawyer, an independent counsel and then as founding your own chambers. Was this always a part of the plan to exploreand then settle somewhere or it just happened over the course of time?
Answer: It was not planned that I will just take up a judgeship, spend a few years being a judge and then practice law. Being a Judge allowed me to engage with law, contribute to the development of law and more than anything else be a part of the solution and not just the problem. I have seen a lot of injustice upfront and close. I absolutely loved the idea that I was at a place where I could contribute and do things differently. So, I took it up as a challenge and spent about three and a half years and I was really enjoying that. But at some point, I realized that advocacy is dearer to me. I identify as a lawyer more than anything else. I thought there were things that I wanted to do with my life that may not be entirely compatible with the life of a judge, in the sense that I like to travel, I like to speak publicly on issues that I feel strongly about, I like to write publicly, I like to teach, and we all understand that there is a certain amount of reticence that comes with being a judge and you must limit your interaction with the society at large. I thought that was a life that can be examined at a later point in life but maybe not in my 20s or 30s. This is the time when I want to keep the canvas as wide as I can.
Q.2) As law students, we are often expected to have a very clear road map or blueprint of where we want to settle after college. So, considering what you told us about your story, how much do you think it is important for law students to have an idea of where they want to go in life?
Answer: I think the best way for a young law student is to not have an idea of where they want to go. The difficulty for a young person is not “not knowing”, I think the problem is knowing and knowing too rigidly. Sometimes very early on in life you pick up something and then you say ‘this is me’ but the problem with that is that you have not seen enough in order to take a decision. The idea in the first initial years should be to experience as many different facets of the profession as you can and then take a call because you simply cannot take a call until you have had some experience. I am not saying take everything as a career option, maybe intern with different people, something outside your comfort zone and then take that call.
Q.3) After all the shifts that you have had, you will agree that securing the first position in such a prestigious exam becomes an inseparable part of your identity. Please share with us the moment when you found out and how was your journey as an aspirant.
Answer: I personally feel that yes of course I had the great fortune of topping the exam and when I say fortune, I do not mean entirely the divine forces or anything like that. But something that you achieve is primarily because of a lot of forces around you. I do not feel that a first ranker is qualitatively different or better than any other ranker. I think it is just a number and all the people who make it are worthy and those who do not are also worthy. Being selected or rejected in an exam is not a criterion for anyone’s merit or worth. Despite being a beneficiary of the same I am skeptical of ranks or selections being a criterion for merit.
An exam like DJS really tests you so much on your intrinsic knowledge, of the intricate aspects of law and interpretation and so on. So indeed, it is very demanding and it takes a lot of sacrifices. So, my message to the aspirants would be that the exam requires you to study law, advocacy requires you to study law, anything that you do in the profession requires you to study law and if this is something that you have taken up for yourself you might as well put your best foot forward. Love your law. Asking the question ‘why’ is also extremely important. When you ask the question ‘why’, you are thinking what is the story behind it. That is a beautiful way of learning and engaging with it.
Q.4) After leaving that position, are there certain aspects of the same you miss in the new phase of your career?
Answer: I found being in that position extremely fulfilling and I was giving back a lot which is very important to me. This is the part that I missed the most in that sense. We take a lot of pro bono cases today, we try to give back in terms of law-making, policy, training people or sensitizing people or taking up the right cases. Having said that, the kind of difference that judges are able to make on an everyday basis is incomparable. Because when the judges sit there the only compass or the only metric by which you assess a judge is their ability to do justice. A judge is supposed to do nothing else but dispensing justice, relevant, responsive, and therapeutic justice to people. So that is the part of judging that I miss the most. I try to make up for it through a lot of other things, for instance, working with people who want to be judges and to try and share the little that I know and make my contribution to their thought process.
Q.5) One can sense your love for books by going through your social media. How according to you, the habit of reading, both legal aspects and otherwise, is very crucial for budding lawyers?
Answer: Somebody has put it very beautifully that you can lead any number of lives through reading. You can, from the comfort of your living room, without leaving your bed, live infinite lives, meet infinite people, travel across the world and beyond and feel things that you possibly have not had the occasion to feel in your own life by your own experiences. Reading to me is a proxy for living in that sense. I personally feel that reading not only makes you more articulate and knowledgeable because you pick up facts but in essence, it gives you the quality to appreciate otherness. You try and understand what it means to be the other, then once you do that, it increases your emotional bandwidth so that you can appreciate it better and that helps you to be more tolerant of the people around you. I think it especially helps lawyers and judges because they deal with people all the time. They are not sitting in an ivory tower where they are doing something in the form of an experiment that has no bearing on the world at large. Everything that they do or do not do has a bearing on people’s lives and much of our job is understanding their problems and putting ourselves in somebody else’s shoes.
Q.6) Being the founder of your chamber, how do you manage to maintain a work-life balance?
Answer: I burned the candle at both ends for a very long time. Right after I graduated in 2011, independent practice then judgeship, and after working at the firm, being a partner there, and then the first year at the chamber, especially starting something new, I have all these years done that but I also realized that this is not a sustainable model. The time off is as important as the time in, because it is the time off that helps you to be better at what you do during your working hours.
Q.7) Being a guest lecturer/resource person, and after conducting so many training programs for aspiring and serving judges, what are your views about competitive exams in India? Also, as an aspirant what according to you is the one thing that an aspirant should always have in their mind to keep them going?
Answer: I think when you are looking for people for a specific job or skill you obviously need to have some sort of a filtration process and that’s competitive exams in a nutshell. They need to be perfected over a period. Delhi judicial services exam is something that I have seen from several different angles and I believe that a competitive exam in a lot of ways brings out the best in you. It is a very good test of your mental acuity, keenness, knowledge, and ability to apply the law. I like that format and not only because I am a beneficiary but also because I have seen it working out well during my engagements with young judges. We have extraordinary young judges who are doing phenomenal stuff on an everyday basis. My message to the aspirants is that you need to love your law, at the end of the day. If you really study only with a view to clearing an exam then that is not the way you should be doing it.
Q.8) Your way of inviting applications for internships is unique and unusual. There is a lot of scope for creativity and individuality. As your website says, “Template/Format based applications, are a strict NO. Also, I am not a “Sir/Madam.” Never have been, and do not intend to be. I am not going to read another line of your application if that is how you start.” Please tell us about the thought process behind this idea.
Answer: I will tell you what the problem is and then how this process helps. The problem is that we have been creating lawyers who tend to think in similar ways, they are all in a lot of ways cut from the same mould. I am not saying that the mould is good or bad, I am just saying we have not been encouraging free thinking and innovation. So many fields or disciplines have seen a lot more innovation than law. The reason primarily is too much convention, formalism, and tradition. Good and newer ideas only come if we break free from patterns and customs. I have had the great fortune of meeting some people in my life who made me challenge all my assumptions and look within on what is my story, why am I doing this, why I want to be a lawyer, and why I want to intern at this place. Every law student applying for an internship has a very distinctive story in the life that they have led. It is so unique, full of emotion, and full of sometimes trauma. So, when someone applies, I want to understand what made them the way that they are. I am not looking for a fancy CV but people who are keen to learn and who have that relentless curiosity and zeal to learn. I think the process that we have tried to make encourages that.
Q.9) Your website is a great insight into legal developments and complex legal aspects and is sure of great help to people who wish to remain updated. How would you like to introduce your blog to new readers?
Answer: At the very outset, I wish I could write more often. I write with a view to make sense of things to myself first and then of course in the process try and illuminate something that may be helpful to certain people. We try to demystify and make it fun. We started a series called ‘judgments without tears’ where you can read very complicated judgments easily and then you can apply them. Not everyone can freely understand the aspects and sometimes things become a little too doctrinaire. So, we try to make a story out of it and then explain it. It is almost like you are talking to your nine-year-old niece and telling her ‘Let’s talk about law’, or ‘what’s res judicata, it simply to stop beating the dead horse’. I have been encouraging more and more people to write like that. We started a series called ‘Law in 100 words’ where we take a very difficult concept and try and make it accessible and fun. So, I think that is my humble contribution to the discipline of law. If I can demystify say a few 100 or 1000 concepts of law and share, that is what I hope to do.
Q. 10) As many readers of this interview would be college students, lastly, what would be your message to them regarding college life and what according to you is a better way for students to sail through their college life?
Answer: The most important thing to remember is that nothing happens overnight in law. Law requires commitment and efforts spread out for a long period of time. The arc of a lawyer’s life is very long. So do not be in a hurry, things would take their own time. It is a marathon, not a sprint, as somebody rightly said so be prepared for that. Do enjoy the journey. Is not beautiful that you get to create how societies work, what should be the governance structure, and how should the constitution work. There is beauty to law, everything in life is a legal interface and you are there to negotiate a layman’s life with the law. It requires hard work.
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