THE JOURNEY

Teaching had entered my life much before I began thinking of myself as a teacher. My first experience was in the same school where I had once studied as a child. Later, while working, I gave private tuitions after office hours. At that stage, I did not think of teaching as a career. It was simply something I enjoyed doing.

Professional teaching began with one student, Pankaj Kamal, who was preparing for his ICWA (Inter) examinations and needed help with Business Law. Until then, whenever I opened a book, I was studying for myself—to understand a subject, prepare for an examination or clear a course. Teaching changed that. It was no longer enough that I understood something; somebody else had to understand it through me.

That made me study differently. I began preparing my own notes, breaking concepts into smaller parts and looking for examples that could make them easier to understand. If a student remained confused after an explanation, I had to find another way of explaining it. Very often, that process showed me where my own understanding needed more work.

One student became several, classes became batches and Selection Academy gradually became a significant part of my life. Over the years, my students have included professional-course students, law aspirants, law students and young people trying to find their own place in the profession.

I enjoy students who ask questions. I particularly enjoy the why. Why is one answer correct and another wrong? Why did a court interpret a provision in a particular way? What would happen if one fact were changed? A student who begins asking these questions is no longer simply memorising a subject; somewhere, the process of thinking has begun.

The classroom also became something more for me over the years. Students began staying back after class, sometimes with a doubt and sometimes simply because they wanted to talk. There have even been occasions when, in the middle of a conversation, a student has accidentally called me “Maa.” The student would realise it immediately, we would smile and move on, but that word would stay with me. It was never planned or consciously spoken, and perhaps that is precisely why it meant so much. Somewhere, the student had felt comfortable enough to be himself or herself without being judged.

I don't think a teacher needs to know everything. There have been questions to which I have simply said, “I don't know. Let me read and come back.” Some of my own learning has happened because a student asked something that remained in my mind long after the class was over.

After all these years, I am still not entirely sure where being a learner ends and being a teacher begins.

I enjoyed studying law before I understood what practising it would actually mean. As a student, I was fascinated by arguments and interpretation, particularly by the fact that the same set of facts could look quite different depending upon where one was standing.

Practice gave those facts names, faces and consequences.

A legal file usually looks organised. There are agreements, emails, dates, notices, pleadings and provisions of law. The events behind those documents are rarely as organised. By the time a dispute reaches an advocate, much may already have happened between the parties. A payment has not been made, an agreement has been understood differently, an employment relationship has deteriorated or a commercial arrangement that worked for years has suddenly stopped working.

One experience from the earlier years of my practice stayed with me. I was advising a company in an employment matter involving a young woman who was leaving the organisation. There were issues concerning her full and final settlement. I remember the expectation with which she looked at me. For the organisation, it was an employment matter that had to be dealt with correctly and in its interest. For her, the issue was much more immediate—she had worked, she was leaving and she wanted her dues settled.

It made me think about the kind of advocate I wanted to be.

My duty was towards my client and there could be no ambiguity about that. An advocate cannot compromise the legal or commercial interest of a client merely because she feels sympathy for the person on the other side. But I also could not see why protecting my client's interest required me to stop seeing that person.

That thought has stayed with me through commercial and business matters, MSME disputes, employment and workplace issues, corporate advisory, arbitration and negotiations. Even today, employees in organisations I advise sometimes feel comfortable approaching me when they have a concern. They know that I represent the organisation. They also know that I will listen. I have never found the two positions contradictory.

There are disputes where a firm legal position is necessary and litigation is unavoidable. There are others where the client may ultimately want payment, performance, closure, preservation of a commercial relationship or simply an end to a dispute that is consuming more time and resources than it deserves. Understanding what the client actually wants has therefore become an important part of how I approach a matter.

Protecting my client's interest remains my responsibility as an advocate. I simply do not believe that doing so requires me to forget the human being on the other side.

My interest in mediation developed gradually through legal practice. I had seen enough disagreements grow much larger than the issue with which they had originally begun. A difference of opinion becomes an uncomfortable conversation, communication moves to emails, positions become harder, an email becomes a legal notice and the notice gets a reply. Proceedings begin and, somewhere along the way, the original problem can become buried beneath everything that followed.

Advocacy trains us to identify the strengths of our client's case, anticipate the arguments on the other side, assert rights and protect a legal position. Mediation does not take any of that away, but it asks us to look at the conflict from another direction.

My training through the Mediation and Conciliation Project Committee (MCPC), Supreme Court of India, gave structure to questions that practice had already made me think about. I had begun wondering why relatively small disagreements sometimes turn into disputes lasting years, what happens when people stop listening to each other, and whether winning a case and resolving a dispute necessarily mean the same thing.

I do not believe that every dispute should be mediated. Some matters require adjudication, some rights need to be firmly asserted and sometimes one side is simply not willing to engage. Courts have a purpose and so does litigation. But where there is a genuine possibility of conversation, I believe it is worth exploring.

Mediation has also changed the way I think about listening. Lawyers listen very carefully, but our listening usually has a professional purpose. We listen for facts, contradictions, admissions and the sentence that may strengthen or weaken a case. Quite often, while the other person is still speaking, we are already preparing what we are going to say next.

Listening without immediately preparing an answer is different. It requires patience and, perhaps more importantly, the willingness to accept that understanding another person's position does not necessarily mean agreeing with it.

That distinction has become important to me, not only in mediation but in advocacy as well.

Mentorship entered my life quietly. Students would stay back after class to ask about a course, an examination or an internship. As the years passed, young lawyers began approaching me with questions about drafting, litigation, court appearances, chamber practice and how one actually finds a place in a profession that can feel rather overwhelming when one first enters it.

With time, I realised that many of these conversations were not really about law. A question about which field to choose was sometimes a question about whether the person was making the right decision. A question about an internship could be hiding a fear of not being good enough. Someone asking what to do next was often simply unsure whether it was all right not to know.

I understand that uncertainty because my own journey gives me very little reason to believe in straight roads. I did not begin with a master plan. Some of the most important parts of my professional life came from directions I had never expected to take.

That is also why I hesitate to give young people rigid answers about what they should become. I can share what I have learnt, including the mistakes I made and the things I understood much later. I can discuss a case, correct a draft, introduce someone to an opportunity, point towards a possibility they may not have considered or simply listen while they work through their own confusion. But what worked for me may not be their answer.

For me, mentorship is not about asking someone to follow the road I travelled. It is about sharing enough of what I have learnt to help them make better sense of their own road.

Perhaps that is why mentoring has never felt like the final stage of this journey. Every student and every young professional brings a different question, a different experience and a different way of looking at something I may have taken for granted.

And after all these years of studying, teaching, practising, mediating and mentoring, I still find myself returning to where it all began—as a learner