 Okay, good evening friends. See, so far as our legal profession is concerned, we understand that law goes very well with various other disciplines and walks of life. One is say accounting, finance, economics, political science, sociology, psychology, even psychiatry, and various other sciences. But unfortunately, people don't believe that law goes extremely well with management principles. Those are the business management principles, which are taught in business schools, and we don't have them in our textbooks. Now friends, our legal system has stood the test of time. So far as substantive law is concerned, but so far as the practice and the procedure is concerned, we have come under flag. We have got some say four crores, some say five crores cases pending in our courts, pending in our courts. And we know that in so many of the cases, the main relief has already been granted, but the case remains, and these statistics go on. How does that happen in a criminal trial? A bail is granted or refused in a civil trial or a civil suit, an interim order is given or refused, and the final yearning does not take place. So far as reputations are concerned, they are admitted and some stay is granted, and the final yearning does not come up for final yearning. Now friends, there are several business principles that if we adopt this kind of a stalemate and a situation which is quite a shame would not come to be. For that, there should be some kind of management principles. And these management principles are of planning, organizing, directing, coordinating and controlling the system and each one in the system. So when we talk of lawyers and we talk about how delays are there, how defaults are there, etc., we talk about individual management. When we talk about cases in courts and how they come up and what are the e-courts doing and the grid that is come up, then we think of the entire system. Now friends, for this, there are various business principles and let's go straight to them. They are taught in business schools, as I told you, the very first and the most important principle that we can adopt in our legal practice for litigation practitioners is non-value added items or activities. Now in a business, there are some activities which are value added, which give profits to the business, which businessmen always want to do. And there are some items and activities which don't bring any profits. So the businessmen do not want to do any of those. Now that is being street smart, I would say, which we lawyers and judges are not. So when we consider a model court and for grassroots MBA, we have to see what are our non-value added items and not use them. That is very important. And if you really think about how your day starts and finishes and what all you are doing, you will come across many of these in a day and you may not do them at all. And I would like to show you this by way of some kinds of stories by which you will always remember these principles. One is the story of the big rocks, a very interesting story in Harvard Business School or somewhere there, where the professor in the business class brings in some big rocks, some stones, some pebbles, gravel, sand and a jar of water. He starts putting the big rocks into the jar. Then he puts some small rocks around it. Then he throws some pebbles and he asks his students, now is the picture full? And the students look and it has come right up to the top. So they say, yes sir, the picture is full. But the professor laughs and then puts in sand, puts in some gravel, shakes up the picture. Then again asks, now is the picture full? And the students are quite intrigued. They say, oh yes sir, so much has gone in after the picture was full, but now it is really full. And then the professor pours in the entire jar of water until it comes to the brim. And then he asks his students, what is the moral of this story? So students, business students as they are, very smart, tell the professor, yes there is always time and space to do still more. The professor laughs and smiles and says, yes that is a correct quote, but it is not the moral of this story. The moral of this story is that if you don't put in your big rocks in the picture first, you will never be able to put them in your day. In your picture afterwards. So he tells his students that when you get up in the morning, each day ask yourself, what are my big rocks for today? And put them in your picture first. All the other small rocks and pebbles and stones will take care of themselves. You can fit them into your day. Now friends, if we see our court practice anywhere in our country, we know about so many unnecessary applications that are made by lawyers and unnecessary applications are hurt by judges, orders are passed, which require only our online sentence or a direction. And all of these take up the entire day. There is no time to put in the main rock. And that is the final hearing of a given case when litigants are waiting and wanting and just go home with a date. So please remember friends, the big rocks for today. Okay. Then we go to the next principle, which is the principle of core competence. Now there are many youngsters in our profession, three are all infants who say they specialize in so and so law. I specialize only in ITR. I do only criminal law, you know, all that. And we tell them that in the beginning, it is good to have a purview of all the laws. And then you can decide which you don't want to do so that you can have your core competence. But as you grow into the profession and as you are sort of, you know, coming into it with all your guts and you have your juniors, then core competence as a business principle plays a very important part. Because if you are going to rush from one court to another in five courts and do all sorts of little, little things, you are not going to be able to really devote your attention, time and real efficiency to any one of those fields. Now so often we feel in arbitration, for example, that lawyers and arbitrators must do only that. When they do only that, and they are there for the whole day and they slowly the practice develops that way, it becomes their core competence. Then so many of the judgments that are used in those kinds of arbitrations are same and they are on the tips of his or her fingers. Similarly, it of course applies to judges who take up civil matters or criminal matters and you know how some judges have an edge in some of their assignments, but never all. Nobody knows all. So specialist judges and lawyers become very important. Then comes the business principle of time management, which is itself a whole topic and I cannot go into time management that way because only a real manager from a business school can do it very well, but it is that you manage your time well by practicing all of these other principles of business, which I will be telling you. So at present, we leave aside time management, which will take up an hour. We go to the next principle, which is procedural simplification, an extremely important principle and which business people follow. Whatever is the simplest of the things to be done is what they want to do because they want to get over a particular thing so that their time is not wasted, that itself is time management and they can get more profits. So we have got our codes, the civil procedure code and criminal procedure code, which have some very salutary provisions, which we don't follow. That would lead to simplification of our procedure. Now friends, even for this, I would like to tell you a story and that is the moon story. We know that Russians had gone to the moon much before the Americans. In 1957 Leica Dog went and then Yuri Gagarin went. In 1969, the Americans went to the moon. When they came back and they made an entire review of whatever is this to be presented to the government, they learned and they said that they had learned in space that a ballpoint pen does not work in space because of lack of gravity or rather no gravity. So the American government set aside $250 million in 1969 to make research on which pen will work in space. They did not realize that the Russians had already gone and what did they do? They had used the pencil. Now it is as simple as that. So when we make something very simple in our things for our litigants and get what our litigants would want to get, it's much better than all those fancy names of fancy applications that we make, which take them nowhere and the litigant just punders what is happening that he is getting nothing. Okay. So that is procedural simplification. Then friends, now that we know that our systems practice is just no good and that we have come to a stage when we want to overall all our laws. I don't know for what because the laws are very good. The practice of law is not good. We require a paradigm shift. A paradigm shift not in our laws but in our practice and that is the business principle always taught to business managers that wherever you go and you find that there is something lacking, something slow, something not working, don't make cosmetic changes. Give a paradigm shift to the whole thing and see how it flourishes. Okay. So now this paradigm shift also can be very simply done. One was the, I'll tell you another story for that and one was the story of a wars. A king loved a wars very much. It was of blue color. He wanted it in his own room and he wanted that wars to match the color of the wall which was blue in his room. The wars was of a different color but blue, different shade but blue. So the painters were called and the best painter started to paint and the color did not stick. He and his son were painting the entire day they painted but the exact color of the wall which the king wanted could not be brought on the wars. Now the son goes to sleep. The father keeps on working. In the morning when the son gets up he finds that that wars is exactly the color of the wall and it's a blue wall and a blue wars. So he says father how did you do it? And the father looks at the son and quietly says I painted the wall. The wall could take that color. The wars could not take the color. So this was a paradigm shift. The king wanted that color and he got it. Okay. A similar story is of a sitarist. A sitarist in India played the sitar and went to his Guruji to give his test. The Guruji was not satisfied. Again and again he tried. The Guruji was not satisfied. So the student says that I will give up playing the sitar because I can't do any better than this. And Guruji tells him take out the sitar from your right hand. Put it in your left hand and now start and you could do it. Now this was a simple paradigm shift. No matter what he did with his right hand it could not come. It could come with his left hand. There are many other such stories I don't want to waste much of your time. Then comes the principle of decentralization. Now we are all very good at certain things and we are no good at some others. But our clerks, our staff, our juniors are good at some of the other things. Just now for example Mr. Vikas Chhatrat was right on the webinar and his junior was trying to set me up on the webinar. Now he had to call him because he knows that work better. So this is decentralization of work. So remember friends that you cannot do everything. And therefore each day you must think what you can decentralize. This is good not only for lawyers but also for judges. You must decentralize give some things to the staff etc, court managers etc and then the system works better. And in our procedure course itself for example in the CPC Order 18 Rule 4 is the appointment of a commissioner to record class examination. Now this is an excellent decentralization which several judges don't abide by, don't do and several lawyers don't want. It is a matter of making that thing better if it is not up to the mark but it is not a matter of giving up. It is decentralization of work so that somebody records the evidence. The judge can read it even at home. He is prepared, the lawyers are prepared and then they can argue upon it. So many things of decentralization can take place not only making your juniors go to the courts to get adjournments. You can have law clerks also. Now friends then comes the principle of a package deal. The package deal is what you charge. Now when you are going to charge separately for each appearance, for each adjournments, for each application you are getting almost nowhere because you want to earn and you just go on doing that non-value-added item. But if you make a package deal and if you ask your litigants your own clients what will they want? You rest assured they will want a whole deal because when a litigant comes to court he doesn't come to court to get an interim application for an amendment of the pleadings. He comes to court to get his reliefs and he is prepared to pay you for the smaller application. It is impossible that he would not pay you for the larger application. So go to the main thing first that is your big rock. See how you can avoid the unnecessary applications which are being made especially in writing which can be also oral and make a package deal and ask the client that if I give you an adjournment I'll charge this much. If I finish up three applications I will charge this much but if I give you the final relief I will charge this much and the client will most certainly ask for the final relief and he will pay you. So you certainly can earn nobody says don't make money but make money by doing good. Now friends one story even for this and that is what we all know. We know about the tourism industry. Initially it started the two operators were only giving us what we were calling the flights. So they would book our flights because there was no internet there was no online booking. We had to go to some tour agent and he would book the flight for us. He would ask us so many questions about you know what we want etc and ultimately book. Then came the period when he said that I won't only book the flight I will also book the car. So as soon as you get down from the flight you will get a car and the car will take you to the place that you want your office or your holiday home or whatever. So that was extended. Then the tour agent said well I'll also give you the hotel. So he looked up some of the hotels and he gave the hotels and after going to the hotels what do we do. So the tour agent says well I'll book up tours for you. So sightseeing tours and now what do we do. This is a package deal. We pay that tour agent not only for booking the tickets but all the flight tickets but also the car also the hotel and also the tours and we tell him we've got this budget and this much time. Now you make up our holiday. This is what lawyers can do. This is the client. He wants these reliefs. These are the minimum things that I must do first to get the reliefs and then go whole hop to get it. Then friends comes the principle of the UDA loop. UDA stands for observe, orient, decide and act. Okay. So these are rapid decisions to ensure success. How rapid decisions can you take? This was shown by one John Boyd. Now the American fighter planes and the Russian fighter planes always competed when there was Soviet Union and America in the Cold War days. The American fighter planes brought down many Soviet fighter planes. Now how did they do it? There are many people in the Army, Navy, Air Force and whatever said that it is because of our training. We train our officers so well that they do it. But this gentleman John Boyd was not satisfied with this kind of an answer. He knew that there is something else to it. So he started observing this. He went to various such launches and then the fighter planes would collide and he found out that though the Russian fighter planes were faster and they could go higher, the American fighter planes could manipulate very well. So they could, they may not go as high, but they can manipulate their altitude and get down the other plane. So this was what he observed when he oriented and he decided and they decided to act that this is our forte. So this is our core competence, another business principle and that would our loop worked. Then friends is another business principle of sharing best practices. Now we all work in a cohesive atmosphere. There is one court building which has got, let us say 20 courts. It has got some 2000 lawyers, several court clerks, interns, juniors. We all work together in the building. We don't work like architects or even doctors who work in their own clinics and in their own chambers. We are very attuned to sharing best practices. Instead of sitting down and gossiping in the library, it is much better to actually share best practices. When you have found something good in a junior or a senior in your opponent, in a judge, wherever, just share it with the others and propagate that. So when you emulate the habits of the most successful people, you also become successful. The next principle is blame storming. You know about brainstorming. I'm talking about blame storming and this is not blaming others. Blame storming is to identify the problem areas, identify what went wrong and that is the blame that you ultimately pinpoint. So you find out why did that go wrong because I made too many applications because the other side was always asking for adjournments because the court calendar was not done well because I put too many matters on one day because I have not given my matters to my juniors various things and you identify those problem areas even in a litigation by itself that what are those problem areas? Why is the other side doing this? Will I not change my mind, my attitude to the other lawyer so that we can sit down, we can settle, we don't have to all the time have aggressive attitudes, those kind of things come in for blame storming. Then comes what the businessman would call systemic challenges. They all face systemic challenges from the government, from the competitors, from their customers everywhere. We also have our systemic challenges, in fact far more than the businessman would have but we are in the business of getting justice and doing justice, of knowing the law and propagating the law. So we have also these kind of systemic challenges of how we can get through to this. Now for this friends, there are three circles that we must remember. The small circle is a circle of control. That is where each one of us can exercise control. A judge can exercise control by saying I'm not going to agile after this much. You just have to go on for example and you know that he or she means business therefore you will come running. The lawyer would say that this is my circle of control. What will I do? This is my main application. I must get an order on this then everything will turn in my favor. This is your circle of control. Your client is with you. After this there is a bigger circle and that is the circle of influence. You don't have control over it but you can still influence it. You can as I said act better with your opponent, get him to the negotiating table, see if you can get something instead of wasting time in the court. You can also exercise influence by having your juniors do your work for your research and you can find out. You can understand what a judge wants. Various judges want different things. Some judges want discipline, punctuality, preparation. Some judges would want very nice smile, whatever. So you know that you can influence them by under this circle of influence and the biggest circle for all business people, for all lawyers, judges, all professionals is the circle of concern. You know you can't do much with it. You know you rely upon somebody else to do that. Lawyers may rely upon judges. Judges may rely upon their own law clerks. Various things and that concern must be addressed. That is the biggest circle that we have of the systemic challenges. Okay now for this there is another business principle. How to get around this and that is the single and double loop thinking. Single stands for what? Double stands for why? So you know it is that system of goal versus task. The goal of a businessman is to make profit. The task is to make a machine. Okay now how will he do this? So he must think that they're not only making the machine but how do you make the machine work so that the machine will not require repairs, there will be no after sale service etc. What is our goal? Our goal as lawyers is to get the best for our client and our task is to see look up the law, find out the facts, show the facts to the court, make your applications, give your evidence, argue that thing. Okay so you have to change the task to reach the goal that you can do even by the UDA loop. Okay but by this double loop thinking of asking why this is happening, why is it that the judge is always crossed with me. You must find out that and once you find out that you know that you will be able to get around to him or her because you will change your way of working and you will do what the judge wants. I had a very very fine and a senior counsel when I was a very new judge and he used to have elaborate arguments very tenacious and it is to get on my nerves because I could understand what he wants to say much much earlier than when he finished his entire paragraph of saying it. Once twice twice four times I said now this person is going to come in my court all the time and I'm not going to be able to bear this kind of arguments. He was a senior counsel but I didn't like his arguments. I told him one day I said Mr. So-and-so please don't go on and on with one topic don't go on reading your affidavits. You are a lawyer you are not a reader so please argue and overnight he changed. I told him what I wanted this was all that I wanted and then after he would come to my court. He would not even tell me about what is the history of this matter or anything like that. Quite often he would say this is a specific performance suit. Now your leadership can go to paragraph 33 and now this is in say exhibit C so you go to page 34 whatever that is and he would show me pinpoint the exact thing which I wanted. Now this was his double loop thinking. He knew he was doing this all the time maybe it works in other courts but in my court I wanted quick answers to what I was thinking about and I wanted to find out the truth quickly. So this is how a lawyer must shape his practice and then there will be definitely success. Then we come to a small thing like continuous education. Now we must always thank people like Vikas Chaturad right from the COVID days who are giving you and me continuous education and that is very important even if you can find out one point from each of the lectures that you have seen and you actually apply it in your life it will go very far and the last of the principles that I would like to tell you is team work TEAM is together each achieves more okay. So you make a team there should be a team of judges and lawyers also as a team you can work judges lawyers and another lawyer also judges lawyers and their juniors also even with the court staff make a team and work as a team you can be the captain of course in the court the judge will be the captain. So this friends is ultimately what we call in our profession case management practitioners and judges becoming better at what they do achieving the same end with less resources and in less time. So you see you make good of all your resources time management the core competence the paradigm shift if you cannot do by double loop thinking by UDA loop then find out the systemic challenges make simplification of your procedures and decentralize the work you are really on the success mode okay. So friends I would end by saying that the ambit of this is both infrastructure and sensitivity for you the procedural and the substantive law and you can say if it is to be it is up to me thank you. I command for sharing your insights like you have rightly said they said you got to unblock the blocks make it simple so that everybody can understand and that's why even in the drafting to say the session which we had taken with Mr. Dalvi wherein he had said that it should be very simple it looks very different they say it is like this keep it short and simple so that everybody can understand to the effect that the para phrasing the paras should be not with the jargon words but simple words simply delegating like you as a lawyer if you delegate to our associates and some managerial staff or ministry of staff the staff can handle it all this does help and whenever you have come to this platform it has always been so encouraging to see that you always come up with fresh bright ideas may you continue to gloom and keep on sharing your knowledge thank you for sharing your knowledge. Namaskar. Thank you. Good day all the best to everyone.