Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud urged lawyers across the country to ensure fair compensation for their juniors. He said that senior Bar members must support and nurture talent by providing them with adequate financial remuneration to maintain their dignity and livelihood.
Speaking at an event to commemorate the completion of 20 years of the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court, the Chief Justice said, “I would also like to re-agitate an issue faced by our legal fraternity. Remuneration paid to young lawyers by their seniors. I believe that paying low amounts ranging from Rs 5,000 onwards per month leads to gatekeeping of our profession.”
CJI Chandrachud quoted a verse from the classic Tamil text, the “Thirukkural”, that says that “all the wealth that the good men of this world accumulate must be distributed to deserving people around them.”
The CJI criticised the common defence used by firms for paying junior lawyers poorly that their initial years are a period of learning under senior mentorship.
“We must shed this paternalistic approach,” he said.
The CJI said that while junior lawyers seek knowledge from their seniors, they also provide valuable insights into the legal profession and current realities.
“Every day that I interact with my own law clerks, one of whom is a lawyer from Madurai, I learn so much more from them. Because the day-to-day and the future truly belongs to the young in our society. It is to the young in the legal profession that we turn to understand the contemporary realities of our times,” the CJI was quoted as saying.
He also stressed the need to stop over-romanticising hard work, particularly when it comes to underpaid labour.
“Hard work and sound ethics are vital to every person’s growth, but to brush aside the systemic social and economic barriers is an unnecessary oversimplification of how success is achieved…This over-romanticisation of hard work, specially work without sufficient pay, is not merely rhetorical but leads to people being expected to work long hours with less sleep and lesser monetary value. As the famous saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child. Similarly, it takes the entire Bar to raise competent lawyers, unfettered by their social and economic backgrounds,” the Chief Justice said.
This is not the first time the CJI has called for fair treatment of junior lawyers. In November 2022, he had stressed the importance of not treating juniors as slave workers just because senior lawyers had to endure similar hardships.
At a Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa event in May last year, the CJI highlighted the need to provide adequate compensation and recognise the valuable contributions of young lawyers.
