Sidharth Luthra: On the early struggle of being a lawyer

I studied mathematics in college. However, I found it dry, and then switched to law. In our time, the options were medicine, engineering and chartered accountancy. In my case, my late father, Mr. K K Luthra, being a senior advocate of eminence, I had an understanding of the field of law, and that prompted me to consider the study of law. I did my LLB from Campus Law Centre after my Mathematics honours at Hindu college.

While in law college, I was interested in research and academia and thereafter went overseas to do an MPhil in Criminology which further spurred my interest in academia and research. My desire was always to be a teacher and not necessarily practice law and I did teach at the Campus Law Centre at Delhi University in the year 1997. I am currently a visiting professor at Northumbria University, UK and I often also teach at judicial academies, to government officials and to corporate lawyers (in-house lawyers). However, since I lost my father in 1997, financial constraints restrained me to continue to teach law and I gave it up after a year and focused on the practice of law.

My father was an eminent criminal lawyer and I did not want to grow up under his shadow so after finishing my masters in 1991, I worked in Bhasin & Co. under Mr. Lalit Bhasin and his team including Ms. Nina Gupta Bhasin, Mr. Atul Sharma now of Linklegal, Mr. Vijay Gupta, Mr, J K Das and others for a year. I started civil and consumer law with them and continued to do civil law till the year 1996. In 1994, I began getting occasional criminal lawyer briefs but in 1996, my late father fell ill and I began to assist him in his matters. At the same time, one of my father’s old associates had left after three decades with him, so my father began relying upon me for assistance and research.

However my desire was only to do civil commercial law So, in that period till 1996, I did a lot of corporate advisory work, set up companies, applied for an industrial licence and got it. While I did go to court and enjoyed it, that was not the end of my practice and I focused on documentation and transaction work. In October 1996, my late father fell ill and as I said, I began doing criminal work with him, and I lost him in May of 1997. When he passed away, most of his existing clientele gave me junior briefs in the matters he had been doing and I continued with those cases.

My next break came when I did the Classic Computers case in Bangalore in 1997 which I, lead by the late Mr. P. R. Vakil, Senior Advocate, succeeded in getting discharged in the High Court for our client who was the supplier of the computers which was upheld in the Supreme Court. About the same time, I got a chance to do a tribunal under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 and more importantly, I became the lawyer at the Tehelka Commission for the portal Tehelka.

By this time, my wife, who is also a lawyer and I had two children, the younger one being born in 1998 and the older one being born in 1995. The loss of my father lead to certain financial constraints. So, while my mother had rental income to run the house, I had to take care of the office establishment and my wife and I had to take care of our personal expenses and that of our children, though they have a very generous grandmother who looked after us and even at 92, continues to look after us. The years 1997 onwards till 2000 were years of struggle, financial constraints. I would go for two months not being able to pay the salary of my staff and would borrow from my friends. The work would come in fits and starts and we would not take summer holidays since we could not afford to take them and if at all we would take a vacation, it would be at the holiday home of a relative or some other generous benefactor. Ketki and I used to sleep about 4.5-5 hours a day and the rest of the day used to spend looking after the practice and also keeping a watch on our little children. Between 1998 and 2000, I used to be in Bangalore for 15 days a month while Ketki was here, as a result of which we could not get even our elder son’s forms filled in for a lot of the schools in time who took children at kindergarten and we got our elder son in the next year in the few school that took in children at a later stage.

Till about 2002, there was a lot of struggle, Ketki was working with a senior advocate, Mr. P. V. Kapoor and he used to pay well by the standards of that time; whereas I was dealing with my fledgling practice but we were happy. The first time we bought a car was a Hyundai Santro of which part funds were given by my mother, part by my brother-in-law, part by a friend and we had a loan of about 3000 rupees a month which was stressful. It was a Santro and Ketki and I used to laugh that we only owned one of the four tyres of the car. After Tehelka, things started opening up and I got recognition and acknowledgement and public acceptance as a lawyer practicing criminal law.

So my criminal law practice really began in 1997 and I still have more recollections of the provisions of the Civil Procedure Code or so I believe, than of criminal procedure code! My work began picking up after 2002-03, when I began getting lot of opportunities in junior briefs and by 2003-04, I was being briefed extensively. Ketki and I had our independent practices- she doing civil & commercial work and I doing criminal work, though between 1998 and 2000, she had done a lot of my criminal matters as well, while I was away to Bangalore. But, after 2003, this large office of about 15 lawyers was doing its own work and I was getting a lot of junior counsel briefs and by 2003-04, judges in the high court would not giving me a Passover. I took it as a challenge and started accepting a lot of junior counsel’s individual briefs and began building my work.

In December 2006, I was sounded out to apply for designation as Senior Counsel. I applied for designation in July 2007 and was designated when I was 41 years of age. That became a time to reinvent myself and it was harder and more challenging since one was not competing with younger lawyers but with more able and more capable, experienced and knowledgeable senior counsels. I began picking up work as a senior counsel, I was always flexible on fees which helped me in good stead. Also, I would always do my own research and I continue to have my own research done, irrespective of whether the briefing junior has done research or not. My reliance is on my own work largely and my inhouse junior’s research, though sometimes there is a lot to learn from what the briefing counsel brings to the table, since they have naturally a larger and more comprehensive picture format.

In 2009, I got a big break, which was being appointed as government advocate under the Judges Inquiry Act regarding the impeachment of Justice Soumitra Sen, where we succeeded. The Rajya Sabha upheld the judgment but he resigned before the motion could be taken up in the Lok Sabha.
One thing I must add that I was offered judgeship when I was 43, in the year 2009 and thereafter again later but I took a personal and conscious decision with the support of my family especially my wife that it was not the stage for me – the reason really was that we have too many family members in the profession at Delhi and I was not really willing to leave Delhi with an aging mother and aging in laws. 

Thereafter, I got a chance to become Additional Solicitor General in 2012, having been sounded out in 2011 and I did two years as Additional Solicitor General, doing a variety of work which was very challenging and which gave me a lot more confidence building me for what I am today.