Now that lawyers are subject to service tax, perhaps we should dispense with the elevated self-validating hoopla about the righteousness of what we do and pause instead to examine the warranty card that accompanies this service. Would the following be a fair summary?

• Services will be provided only on receipt of 100% advance fees by the consortium of service providers including court, lawyer, process servers, photocopiers, typists and others.
• Service applications will be received in customized forms incomprehensible to the customer, drafting of which shall attract a
• No customer complaint will be entertained that service is rendered employing arcane processes entailing substantial delays.
• Services are rendered without delivery due date: time is not the essence of the contract.
• Customers may not enjoy the benefits of service deliverables received by them for further indefinite periods if any of the consortiums of service providers determines that the matter ought to be appealed against.
• Customers have the obligation to contribute unlimited additional factual input and investment of time and personal presence at the sole option of the service provider.
• Service shall be rendered at the convenience of the service provider.
• The service provider shall be sole judge of the quality of service rendered.
• Any dispute pertaining to the service rendered shall be subject to the final determination of a committee of similar service providers constituted under the Advocates Act.

Okay, enough of truly tasteless jokes! If this warranty card came with a mobile phone, consumer courts would be littered with blood pressure veins that had exploded in rage. What bothers me though is that this is not perceived as the biggest issue facing the legal profession today. I think we should, as a community, be deeply concerned about the credibility of the service we render.

As a community, we should also be gravely concerned that we don’t have customer friendly solutions to basic problems. Businesses everywhere in India have perennial problems we offer no solutions to. For instance, businesses are frequently forced to contribute cash, favours or jobs to the nominees of statutory regulators. When companies get to that point of absurdity where they either appoint an aromatic milkmaid fresh out of the heart of the cow belt as the CEO’s secretary at an extortionist salary or face prosecution for violating a bewildering plethora of absurd rules impossible to follow, they need help. We should be gravely concerned that we don’t have a solution to provide to this fledging market. Instead, the overwhelming majority of lawyers are compelled to simply throw up their hands and plead helplessness against rogue government departments: a small helpful minority claim expertise in facilitating these improper payments!

If we think about it calmly, we must surely wonder whether we have unwittingly devalued our service in the eyes of our potential clients by failing to secure a legal system that provides relevant products to quality service standards at realistic prices. Like every service provider, our fate is inextricably bound up with the value we deliver to our customers. If speed and quality of service is not our central obsession, we could not be in business. As a community, where is that service provider forum focused only on aggressively trying to improve the system of legal service? Instead, some of us still strike work to resist changes in the legal system that improves service quality.

This brings me to the heart of the matter. As a community, we must ask if we have failed to collectively understand that we are not selling our legal skills: the product we are selling is our legal system. Our ability to sell this system is only as good as the quality of the legal system. It’s very hard to sell a bad quality car. This is the main reason why resisting foreign law firms in India because we don’t get reciprocity may be missing the point. When you go abroad, you don’t sell your intellectual ability or acumen: you sell your legal system, your jurisdiction. For instance, English Law Firms dominate Russia because they go there and sell English law and legal system, persuading clients to execute their contracts under English Law. Disputes are then decided in English courts. Managing Partners of German law firms for instance will tell you that they can’t compete with English Law Firms because their legal system can’t equal English courts for speed, quality, efficiency but most of all commercial pragmatism. In our case, we must pause and ponder because leave alone selling our jurisdiction to foreigners, are we even able to sell it to Indians? We simply don’t appear focussed about fixing our legal system on a war footing. Would you say that this constitutes professional suicide?