A lawyer's life is a journey of experiences. You may start from a hut and you may reach to castles of Gold.
How?
Well, I saw such qualities in Late Shri Suresh M. Shah, advocate of Gujarat High Court.
He recently passed away at age of 82. Till last, he continued to work and argue in courts.
From Rajkot he shifted to Ahmedabad. To practice in High Court.
Small house. Low rent. No place to read. A lawyer is feeble if he does not read cases. He has to have a place to read.
The house had a roof. He used to climb on roof and read on roof.
Here, you can see two rules of success. 1) A lawyer who does not read, does not have a grip on his case. He is a feeble warrior in court 2) Lawyer must read, however adverse conditions may be. It is no use to give excuse that you have no office where you can read. It is no excuse that you have small house and there is no space in house to read case. There will always be a roof where you can climb and read.
In early years he concentrated only on cases civil revisions and appeals arising from civil suits. He focused here. Here there are only interim orders to challenge. No party loses no wins. Whatever be the result of his case, main case will be still going on in High Court.
Soon he became master of Civil Revisions. People begin to know him as such. Here, his third law of success can be seen:- 3) Be master in any one branch of law. Take so many cases in this branch of law, that others can start looking at you as master.
4) His fourth rule was never skip your meal. Court life is hectic. Sometimes lawyers have so much tensions and conferences, that they either skip meal or they take it late after court work is over. This leads to diabetes and other problems in life of advocates. So rule is, you may be a big and busy advocate. Fine. But never skip your meal.
5) Someone once told me that everyday after court work, he will go in Registey of High Court to see that necessary steps are taken in his "Not Urgent Today Matters". This rule has tremendous benefit in legal practice. But not all advocate can do this. Most of all are concerned with "Matters to day on board", "Matters where deadline is passing", "Clients who are waiting for conference".
We seldom allot a fix time to go in Registry to look into "Matters which are not board and which are not urgent"
To avoid procrastination, he had a simple rule 6) Do a thing as soon as it comes to mind.
He had many other good qualities. But I interacted him for few years only. I knew that the Judges used to fear his knowledge. I saw that judges used to feel insecure when they see him appearing in case.
Today his work is being carried by his son Mehul S Shah in Gujarat High Court.
Haresh Raichura
29/8/2013
He had many other good qualities. But I interacted him for few years only. I knew that the Judges used to fear his knowledge. I saw that judges used to feel insecure when they see him appearing in case.
Today his work is being carried by his son Mehul S Shah in Gujarat High Court.
Haresh Raichura
29/8/2013
