S3E4 – Law In The Times Of Social Justice With Jayna Kothari

• Practising law in the supreme court
• How senior mentors can help you
• Who should join CLPR?
• Satisfy different parts of you at an early age

Transcript: Law in the times of Social Justice

Welcome to small talk with RainKraft. I’m Subha, a leadership and career-growth coach, and I’m Hasita, I’m a marketing strategist. We’re just two people who love to talk and love to learn. And this is us being curious about the world around us. Join us!

Subha: Hi, small talkers. Today, I have a special guest Jayna Kothari. Jayna is a senior advocate and practices in the Supreme Court of India. She graduated from university law college and read the BCL at Oxford University. Now she runs her own private practice and CLPR center for law and policy research.

I’m looking forward to a conversation with Jayna to talk about the legal profession, senior women in the legal profession, and what that looks like, and also to understand how it is when social justice forms a large part of the work that you do. Listen on. Hi, Jayna. Welcome to small talk with RainKraft. So happy to have you here.

Jayna: Hi, Subha, happy to be here. I do listen to your podcast and find it quite useful. So thanks for having me.

Subha: Thank you so much. I think a lot of us, we couldn’t really imagine courts being online. COVID has forced online hearings and E-courts. How has that experience been so far?

Jayna: There have been a lot of myths about online courts not being able to have long cases, serious constitutional law arguments, or having multiple lawyers in large litigation but it all happened online now and the supreme court has been hearing very complex constitutional cases with 20 to 30 lawyers. We’ve had a lot of old cases being disposed of and heard because lawyers need to show up. Judges have been able to see the background of the witnesses and where they are. It’s been amazing and is working out way better than expected. This is something that we hope courts continue even after COVID.

Subha: It’s amazing how we adapt when we are forced to, and something better emerges. It’s nice.  you know what you said about the lawyer’s demeanor and the body language of the witness. For those of us outside the profession, it’s a very glamorous profession. What attracted you to law?

Jayna: There is great excitement in going to court in litigating, and pleading your client’s case before a judge. It was that excitement that pulled me to law and the promise that you could bring about change and that you could fight for the rights of people who need it and that’s what really motivated me.

Subha: That’s a very powerful motivation, right? The impact that you can make through what you do  to start at the top, is you speak at the Supreme Court. In our mind, it’s a very elite space where extremely well-versed folks speak to judges of very high caliber and discuss the utmost important things. It’s very different from lower courts.

Jayna: The Supreme Court is certainly very different from the high courts. I had the privileged work right at the beginning of my career, in the Supreme Court with a senior lawyer. And I wanted to see that when I started my legal profession and even for practice, it’s very different. In terms of lawyers, in terms of people who have access to the Supreme Court certainly are far more exclusive. As a lawyer, when you first start appearing, it can be very daunting because the Supreme Court has its own Fe of the senior council and as a new, younger person, it’s unfamiliar and scary. But now that I’ve appeared quite frequently, a little bit of fear and uncertainty goes away.

Subha: What would be your most cherished case? If there was one, because I know in the social justice space, you have touched a lot of very important areas.

Jayna: I’ve had a lot of different cases that have been quite big and important for different reasons. But I think possibly one that stands out was the case, of the independent thought versus the union of India. And this was a case where there was a challenge to the exception of child marital rape. In our law, we have the whole kind of debate on marital rape now going on because, in India, criminal law doesn’t recognize rape within marriage as rape.

There was another exception for a bride or wife who is between 15 to 18, the sexual assault is still consensual. It was recognising that if your wife is under 18, it’s okay to have sex with her. So, it neglects to recognise marital rape and child marriage which are prohibited. There were arguments in which I represented the child rights groups. The supreme court finally held this unconstitutional and it opened up the argument for recognition of marital rape. The judges heard us patiently and it was a set of very fulfilling and many parts of it, progressive arguments.

Subha: I’m sure the impact of this obviously stays on the system and even for you as a person, to be able to argue something that you feel so strongly for and so important for the girl child population. So is that how it came about that you have a private practice today and you also have a not-for-profit child? How do you balance that?

Jayna: I worked earlier as a junior lawyer with different lawyers. And then when I started to monitor my own practice, I was always taking up cases, pro bono or NGOs, or for people referred by NGOs on human rights issues, but they were all non-paying. So I couldn’t survive on that. Therefore I did need a private practice, which would be remunerative and I also wanted to do a wide range of work.

So I always started with my private practice and I would do whatever other cases that came my way even if people were not able to afford legal fees, I would still do them because for me it was okay to do a few cases which are free. So that’s really how I started out.

Only later around 10 years ago, since we got a lot of other work, we set up an organization called the Center for Law and policy research where one of the areas of work was strategic litigation, human rights litigation, which would be pro Bono or most of it.

Subha: I think that institutionalizing it is important also because you need people with very different mindsets for the two. Today a lot of youngsters even in the legal profession have different opinions on what is important whether it’s the case or what the company stands for or the service, etc. So do you find that you’re attracting a certain kind of youth today for CLPR different from the private practice? In a way, what are they doing?  Are they coming in with the right mindset?

Jayna: Yes, certainly. People who apply to join any senior lawyer practice would want a wide range of work and some lawyers could have specialties in corporate law or criminal law, etc. But there’s a chance they don’t have the exposure and the sensitivity to many of these issues and have to learn from scratch.

Whereas, we get fresher applicants who have interests and are oriented towards issues like gender disability, inequality, or other issues for CLPR. We may still have to handhold them since they may have not worked on the particular issues of the center but there’s a mindset and focus on these issues.

Subha: What about a youngster who isn’t sure but interested in the work? How do they know if it’s for them?

Jayna: Oh, we get a lot of people like that. 20 years ago, if I wanted to join a research organization on social justice issues, there weren’t any organizations, or opportunities. It’s only 10 years that there are organizations that are able to support and are able to hire people to work on policy, human rights, and strategic litigation. It sounds exciting and sexy to work on these issues. The reality is you may be motivated or interested in them but working on it is a different ballgame. People have to figure out if they can sustain it, do the hours, and put in 2 or 3 initial years before they get to do the cream work.

Subha: And you have to give yourself the time to figure it out. It’s not something you can decide on a 2 months summer break, it probably takes 2 years to figure it out. I think one of the things that you mentioned is about working and starting at the Supreme Court, having that opportunity. So I know that you had very strong mentorship early on, can you just tell us a little bit about that and how that impacted your career too?

Jayna: So when I started, I finished my masters and then I immediately joined a  very well-known senior counselor in the Supreme Court, who did all the work that I was so excited to work on such as the big constitutional law cases, but also a very wide-ranging practice in other fields. It gave me complete exposure not only at the supreme court but also to the issues I was interested in working on like gender and labor rights, etc in the nearly 2 years that I worked with her.

Her motto was that you have to be prepared like crazy. The lesson that stayed with me is to be fully prepared and to be on top of the game and that there are no shortcuts to the law and the hard work of reading. She also taught me to be fearless and to embrace the aggressive and hostile nature of work because otherwise, I won’t be able to do my job as a lawyer. And then I worked with another senior advocate in Bangalore who handed bustling work, 20 cases a day in a calm, relaxed manner. Working with him gave me amazing exposure to a wide variety of work but also taught me to be calm while getting things done. Those are the extremely helpful learnings I keep to this date.

Subha: That’s amazing. I think you have mentors who really “walk the talk” and embody that over the years which you carried away and now the people under you will carry from you. Now that you have appeared in the Supreme Court, what’s next for you?

Jayna: That’s an interesting question, which I do think many lawyers at a midpoint or some point in their career would think about. And a lawyer’s career life doesn’t really end if you pop it. We’ve had famous lawyers arguing till their eighties and nineties. I was designated as a senior advocate a few years ago and that has brought me opportunities to appear in a wider range of cases in the Supreme Court and other high courts.

With COVID and online courts, it has become much easier to spear in other high courts. I’m really enjoying the challenges and intellectual stimulation right now. I’m also writing articles and books. My first book was a decade ago and now I’m working on the second book. Hopefully, a lot more exciting work in the Supreme Court will come my way and I look forward to it.

Subha: You’re right.  As a lawyer, there is no age limit as in other sectors. As long as you’re able and your heart’s in it, you can still work even after 60. Tell me. As a profession, at the end of the day, does it feel like a solo endeavor or are there amazing lawyers in the Supreme Court club that you can pop into once in a while?

Jayna: It’s a solo career art if you are arguing council but being in court, it has its kind of community with the bar. I certainly have my own community of lawyers where you can catch a coffee, or be within the corridor. And I think that’s the charm of the legal profession really, because you can go to any bar in the country together and be together.  So, in that sense, that community and the camaraderie is also there, it has its solo endeavor.

Subha: And by nature, especially on the social justice side, the lot of the work that you do, itself is so intense that you would need those spaces to unwind a little bit and take your mind off the matter.

Jayna: It’s good to be out there and unwind but also I find it useful to bounce off some ideas with my other lawyer friends. Also, I started learning dance as a child and have been dancing all my life. I love dancing and the intensity, beauty, and discipline that dancing brings to me. It became unintentionally unwinding while doing my complex dance lessons.

Subha: It’s so important. As a coach, I hear a lot of mid-career professionals saying I didn’t develop any hobby or anything that could help me through stressful times. I think we should teach our kids that doing a profession or something towards earning is not all and to keep 2 or 3 things that satisfy different parts of you at a very early age.

Jayna: I’m lucky to have been able to keep dancing and I didn’t give up even though it’s easy to do so. I have never been a sports person but running has become another way of unwinding for me. I joined a running group in 2012 and have been running ever since. Running is the easiest thing most people can do and I found that very rejuvenating.

Subha: Thanks. It’s been an amazing, wonderful, and inspiring conversation. And like you said  I’m looking forward to seeing you grow and blossom even further years ahead of you. You’ve really worked on so many important constitutional challenges, adultery, you spoke about child maritage rape section 377 and I just hope the future brings a lot more to you and for you to create a deep impact long-lasting impact.

Jayna: Thank you so much, Subha. First of all, I really think it’s an amazing time where we are seeing so many women who are doing what they really believe in, like you, able to pull up other women. And I think that’s why it’s an exciting time to be doing a lot of this work. And a lot of my inspiration comes from seeing all of you, so many of our friends from school just branch off on their own and just do amazing really well.

Subha: So wonderful chatting with you. Thank you.