High Court Asks Senior Lawyers To Pay Enough Stipend To Juniors
The Delhi High Court has urged experienced attorneys to make sure that the stipend they give to their juniors is sufficient to alleviate financial strain and enable them to live more honourably.
The top court urged senior attorneys to be more understanding of and sensitive to their junior attorneys’ financial circumstances.
A bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad said, “This court also makes an appeal to seniors in this profession to ensure that the stipend that is paid to their juniors is enough for their juniors to evade the financial stress that is associated with this profession and allows them to lead a more dignified life.”
The court made its views while rejecting a petition asking it to order the Centre and the Delhi Bar Council to take into account financial hardships and provide freshly enrolled advocates in the national capital with monthly aid of 5,000 during their first year of practise.
The top court ruled that bar councils must establish plans to provide some form of financial aid so that the young attorneys, who are the future of this honourable profession, can support themselves.
“Other than making an earnest appeal to the Bar Council of Delhi and the Bar Council of India to make provisions for providing stipends to the young advocates, who have recently enrolled themselves in the profession, so that they can overcome the financial stress in the initial years of practice, this court cannot pass a writ of mandamus directing them to mandatorily provide stipends to the young advocates,” it said.
The bench noted that there are advocates with 10 to 15 years of experience at the Bar who are unable to get chambers for working. Every bar association or court has criteria for their allotment, which is often done based on seniority.
The court emphasised that many of these young individuals either do not get paid by their seniors or their incomes are so poor they hardly cover the cost of living in a major city, and that it is in fact quite difficult for young advocates to endure expenses for lodging, food, and travel.
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