Feeling The Problem Of Your Client As Your Own Is Crucial To Succeeding As A Lawyer: Senior Advocate Vikas Singh, President, SCBA, Former ASG Of India

What is the secret to making money in the legal profession? Should you be chasing money or is money a by-product of what you do and how you do it? 

Emphasizing on how empathy towards your client’s problem is the number one skill needed to succeed in the legal profession, Senior Advocate Vikas Singh, President SCBA and Former Additional General of India, said that feeling the problem of your client as your own is crucial to succeeding as a lawyer

"When I say feel the problem of the client, I mean that even when you are in the shower, you still have the problem in your mind. And you get an answer to the problem in most unusual of places. If you sincerely believe in solving the problem of the client than money is actually a byproduct". 

Recollecting his experiences with his former clients, Singh said that when he was a junior lawyer in the Supreme Court, my clients sent him demand drafts two years or three years later as an acknowledgement of what I felt towards the problem of the client. That is what litigation is all about.

Speaking at the BW Legal World Summit And Awards 2022, the SCBA President took the audience down memory lane and shed light on how a visit to Tirupathi inspired him to resign from his job of selling steel. On his 6 months leave in 1989, he came to Delhi and there was no looking back after that. Singh fondly remembered how six months of rigorous work under his senior gave the latter confidence in Singh’s ability to argue before the Supreme Court. 

Taking a detour from his journey, the renowned Senior Advocate and public shared his thoughts on the debate surrounding the collegium system. In his view, the most deserving person to be considered for elevation often goes unnoticed and is often invisible. 

The person who does the drafting and has impeccable knowledge of the law is the most deserving, he said.

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