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September 12, 2004

Law Management Skills

An approach to legal capacity building

Dr Belal Husain Joy

Law and Management are two separate disciplines in social science. Management is vital to all professionals, with no exception to lawyers. All professionals like doctors, engineers and lawyers are required to have sufficient management knowledge, especially on the essential management skills irrespective of their specialisation, need to know about themselves, their values, behaviour, assumptions, aspirations and beliefs; they need to know how well they utilise their most valuable and an irrecoverable asset time; they need to be able to identify their stress level and its positive measures to keep themselves aware of their health condition; they need to know the techniques of influencing clients and the people in general through effective listening, reading and speaking; they are the leaders of their individual professions and need to know the leadership qualities, decision making processes, team-effectiveness, performance management, delegation and coaching; chamber management, above all, they must know the client-care skills. These are all Management Skills, essential to all professionals to use them in their day-to-day professional planning, organising, implementation and controlling to provide better service to their clients, to achieve fruitful results and to attain higher quality productivity. Application of these management skills by the lawyers in their professional actions and activities will help developing uniquely combined Law-Management skills, to further their legal capacity building.

No one can deny that management of law and the legal profession is a highly humanistic exercise. Law and the lawyers are the discipline side of human enterprise; and Law and order is the core concern of this discipline in individual, national and international levels. Hence, help in maintaining law & order and managing bars and benches, Law-Management Skills are undoubtedly vital to legal professionals which should be an integral part of the courses designed for Legal Capacity Building.

The 'law-management skills' was found to be actively in existence from the very inception of the legal practice as a profession, and they are inseparable from each other. The concept can be equally helpful to all the members of the judiciary, law-makers and government law officers, in addition to lawyers - the practising advocates. I felt the necessity of such concept to be published when I first faced the problem of learning Bangladesh law and tried to acquire knowledge on practising skills, styles and systems in Bangladesh perspective.

First of all, let me extract the exact scenario of the judicial practice in Bangladesh from the keynote speech delivered by Mr Justice Mustafa Kamal, former Chief Justice of Bangladesh, on 'Introducing ADR in Bangladesh' on 24th July 2003. He stated, " … the issues of a case are seldom framed following the Code of Civil Procedure, the case takes several years to reach a settlement date and on the date of positive hearing half a dozen or more ready cases are fixed for hearing, resulting in the hearing of none. In the meantime years roll by, presiding judge of a single case is transferred a number of times, witnesses of a single case may be heard by more than one presiding judge, arguments are listened to may be by another presiding judge and judgement may be delivered by a presiding judge who had had no connection with the case ever before. Our legal system has thus been rendered uncaring, non-accountable and formalistic. It delivers formal justice and it is oblivious of the sufferings and woos of litigants, of their waste of money, time and energy and of their engagement in unproductive activities, sometimes for decades. When they win a case the result is much worse than winning it. …"

This statement clearly shows us the exact picture of the legal system and the process of judicial actions and activities in practice today in our country. Hundreds of judges and thousands of lawyers from all over the country, are used to of the above legal and judicial malfunctioning, they all know this is not the right system, but almost all of them surrendered themselves and say that nothing can be done about it. It is also important to note that we have limitation act to make sure that the legal proceedings start within a specific period of time but we do not have any time limit to complete the proceedings within. In this respect, Mr Justice Mustafa Kamal said again, " we are drifting into a stage of aimlessness, inertia, inaction and helplessness. Many conscientious judges and lawyers have done what they could under the circumstances, but their sincerity has been drowned into the general morass of malfunctioning of the court system."

The legal and judicial professionals in Bangladesh are greatly suffering from inadequate education and training, backed up with appropriate research, books & publications and training facilities with manuals to promote professionalism and help the legal professionals in building their careers and in discharging their professional duties effectively.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no book or publication in the market at the moment, specialising on Law Management skills, guiding the Advocates with ways and means of managing the legal profession efficiently and effectively. This article attempt to familiarise the concept 'Law Management Skills' to the lawyers in Bangladesh.

Who are the law managers? Law Managers are the group of experts; working independently or collectively; directly involved in managing law, linking client's case right through from initial legal advice to the courts via law enforcing agencies (if appropriate) and arguing the case on their behalf for fair justice and finally guide the clients implementing court's decision, and help maintaining law and order in the society as a whole.

To clarify further, lets see how the law managers use the management principles in their legal profession in dealing with client's legal problems; they plan the legal steps, allocate appropriate resources (specially people), communicate with the concerning authorities and individuals, undertake problem solving exercise, lead managing changes and challenges, manage team and hold meetings to effectively activate the plan into action for fruitful solution to the legal problems, and of course, finally take all possible corrective measures for the best possible satisfaction of their clients.

Through out the above process, the lawyers and advocates take help of and work closely with the law-makers, law enforcing agencies, government law officers and mainly the judiciary to apply the rule of Laws for fair justice. Needless to mention that the Law-makers, members of the judiciary, government law officers and law enforcing agencies, they all are also managers in their own capacities, in accordance with the basic definition of management. In addition to the above, considering the facts that the advocates are the first and the last direct contacts of their clients, involved with the entire justice delivery system, and they are the voice to answer questions of the media and the public in general (within the professional code of conduct) on the progress and decision of the case; ideally Advocates are the Law Managers with wider responsibilities and accountabilities.

Management is the process of getting things done by other people. The lawyer who handles the case in its every step, he remains the top manager, but he gets most of the jobs done by the other people using his own expertise, like initial research and fact finding exercise by a junior lawyer, law clerk to communicate with the clients and courts concern, financial transactions are done by finance section, getting all administrative jobs done by secretarial and administrative staff, and finally he himself is presenting the case to the court of judges and justices (as appropriate) to achieve the final goal. These are all functions of management. That is why the management is an integral part of the legal profession.

We as lawyers perform all those functions sometimes without realising that we are not only legal professionals but also at the same time managers. Our legal skills, techniques, experience and attributes backed up with management skills are the essence and that lead to effective performance in our professional role as Advocates. The combination of knowledge, skills, know-how, experience and attributes are the measuring rode for our professional competence.

In the management process, to manage every single case independently and effectively, it follows a circle of events, ie. Receiving instruction, case planning, organising resources, directing team work and controlling the progress of the case and implementing the court's decision and finally, deal with the review matters if be needed.

In every single stage the concerning Advocate and/or his firm/Chambers must ensure setting of appropriate service level, professional standards of service and highest possible client care. Ensuring those stages, will help the individual lawyers and their chambers to monitor their own performances, and take corrective measures by way of developing training schemes to improve their professional competence. In deed, only through this systematic approach the Law-Management Skills can be effectively incorporated and applied throughout the whole legal system and the legal personnel.

In Bangladesh, almost every single practising Advocate works independently. There is only a few in numbers those who formed law chambers and are working under self styled Chamber Management System. With the influx of a considerable number of young Barristers to Bangladesh, alongside with a good number of progressive locally trained Advocates, the Chambers Management System is being installed to create a new and positive image to the Legal Profession. Some of the existing chambers, including ones formed by senior members of the law community, are found to have aired their legal services to the world through website (whether they are within the professional code of conduct or not!). This is, in fact, another step forward for building professionalism among the lawyers and publicising their products, facilities and services available to their prospective clients from home and abroad. All these mean, that a concept of law chambers is also being developed in Bangladesh. Precisely, this is why management principles and actions are integral part of the legal profession, and hence it is imperative that Law-Management concept is adopted in the legal profession adequately and skills are developed as rapidly as possible, to achieve professional excellence.

The rights and privileges the lawyers enjoy, and to meet their obligations they encounter with, the legal professionals must equip themselves well enough in terms of education and training. Because of increasing competition in the profession, the legal education in Bangladesh has undergone significant changes over the past ten years or so to prepare the students for the practice of law. A lawyer with a reasonably good law degree supported by a few weeks of legal skills training, entering into legal profession, is expected to have grasp of general legal knowledge, with potentiality to earn sound knowledge of practice and procedures including ability to argue the case and find the appropriate law, through pupilage and subsequent experience. Vital part of a lawyer's job is to transform the facts into law, if one fails to click this part of the job during his analytical exercise at the initial stage of interviewing the clients, he may not turn out to be a lawyer. To be a good lawyer, it is not only transformation of facts into law, but also needs to be accurate in citing quotations, cases, statutes etc. with appropriate sources. All these legal skills, right through from legal research, client conference, negotiation, drafting, opinion writing, case preparation solving legal problems, are the core areas to be covered in the syllabus of the 'Legal Capacity Building'.

Being the researcher of higher level management experience and as a law-management faculty, I firmly believe that, 'only law knowledge is not good enough to be a good lawyer, in addition, a profound knowledge of management skills with commitment and integrity is vital in managing law and legal profession, to contribute effectively towards its professional excellence.

The columnist is the director of Law-Management, London International Business School.