Roles and responsibilities of an Advocate in the Court of Law

Advocacy is not a craft but a calling; a profession wherein devotion to duty constitutes the hallmark. Sincerity of performance and the earnestness of endeavor are the two wings that will bare aloft the advocate to the tower of success. Given these virtues other qualifications will follow of their own account. This is the reason why the legal profession is regarded as a noble one. [JS Jadhav v. Mustafa Haji Mohammad Yusuf, AIR 1993 SC 1535]

A lawyer, being a member of the Bar should always conduct himself properly in a court of law and exert his least at all times to maintain the dignity of the Court but the Court has also a reciprocal duty to perform and should not only be discourteous to a lawyer but also should try to maintain the lawyer’s respect in the eyes of his clients and the general public with whom he has to deal in his professional capacity.

As observed in R.D. Saxena v. Balram Prasad Sharma, [(2000) 7 SCC 264], In India, admittedly, a social duty is cast upon the legal profession to show the people beckon (sic beacon) light by their conduct and actions. The poor, uneducated and exploited mass of the people need a helping hand from the legal profession, admittedly, acknowledged as a most respectable profession. No effort should be made or allowed to be made by which a litigant could be deprived of his rights, statutory as well as constitutional, by an advocate only on account of the exalted position conferred upon him under the judicial system prevalent in the country.

According to Justice VR Krishna Iyer, the lawyer shall be an instrumentality of the Republic in securing to the whole people as promised in the Preamble, Justice, Social Economic and Political and Fundamental freedoms and Rights incorporated in Law India. He uses the rule of law and moulds the legal system so as to deliver to every member of the populace, even the humblest have/not and the depressed pariah, his constitutional title to justice.