Criminal Law: What The Field Offers A New Entrant

A criminal lawyer is a legal practitioner whose area of practice and expertise is crimes and the litigation surrounding them. Criminal Litigation has two basic divisions or levels — trial and appellate. The two make materially different demands on a legal professional and require different skill-sets even though there is considerable overlap in that respect.

For instance, a criminal trial lawyer has to have the ability to think on his feet and make crucial decisions on the spot, particularly during the cross-examination because a decision to put a certain question to the witnesses or not can pretty much decide the fate of the entire case. That’s just one of the skills that a career in criminal law demands of a criminal lawyer.

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At the appellate level, a sound understanding of the basic principles of criminal law and a thorough mastery of criminal jurisprudence are indispensable requirements together with the ability to be clear, precise and effective in presenting the arguments. It goes without saying that analytical abilities are required at both the levels to be successful in making a career in criminal law.

Trial lawyers practising on the criminal side are fundamentally defence lawyers and are involved in defending the accused and sometimes even those who have not been formally accused of any crime but might only be lead suspects. The other side of the aisle is also open, in which case you are the prosecutor, and your job is to charge and prosecute an accused mainly on behalf of the state. Ideally, the position is best suited for those who have trained as defence lawyers and have put in a good number of years punching holes into the story of the prosecution and calling into question evidence produced to support it, but one can still pass the requisite exam and start out as a prosecutor from day one without such experience.

Specialisations In Criminal Law

Criminal Litigation is fundamentally about facts, evidence and arguments before the criminal courts. However, apart from considering a career in criminal law, there are other areas of criminal law practice that do not involve as much hardcore litigation work as a dedicated criminal lawyer might have to undertake. One might assist the defence counsel in building a defence, or assist the prosecution in building a case against the accused. In some cases, the courts might also require the assistance of these experts to take into account the particular circumstances of the accused in a fitting case before passing a verdict or before sentencing a convict. But these areas of professional legal work are relatively new and are still evolving in India whereas a career in criminal law has existed since the time of British Rule. So one can definitely explore such fields as criminology, penology and forensic science, and make one’s mark in these relatively less competitive areas.

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Within the career in criminal law practice, there is a large number of specialisations for one to pick from, depending upon one’s temperament and skills. A few of them are listed hereunder although the list is far from exhaustive.

Cyber Crime

Simply put, where there is a crime involving a computing device or data storage device/facility committed, cyber crime law is invoked to punish the offender and the wrongful act so committed is loosely referred to as a “cyber crime”, which is a generic expression that covers such crimes. The specific crime a cyber offender commits depends upon the nature of the act committed and the intent. In some cases, where the syphoning off of the data or information is involved, the crime committed might also depend upon what is done with the stolen data/information.

Cyber crime is a developing field and a sound understanding of how computer networks and digital data storage technology work can certainly help one turn into a cyber crime lawyer/specialist. However, for now, in India, we do not have many such experts and a specialisation in cyber crime law is still not a formal specialisation though the future, given the extensive digital penetration, looks bright for cyber crime lawyer/crime specialists.

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Human Rights Litigation

You might have heard of Human Rights activists, for they have been in the news quite frequently of late. They are generally lawyers who concern themselves with human rights law, protecting the rights of the underprivileged, which is frequently against state excess or the parties tacitly supported by the political establishment in power, which is why it’s not comfortable work. The job has become even more uncomfortable in recent times for reasons a little too obvious to mention to anybody who reads or watches “news” (a rare commodity that demands some finding these days). So only those with genuine passion for justice and human rights law, join the crusade. If you are one of them, you might want to explore your options with the Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) involved in such projects. Such NGOs are not having a great time either, and the international organisations such as Amnesty International and Greenpeace that had been working in the area have shut shop in the past few years. Why, you say? A quick Google search might be pretty illuminating.

Human Rights lawyers concern themselves with human rights law and protecting the rights of the underprivileged.

Let’s just say this is not a great time to be a Human Rights lawyer, especially if you look at the legal profession as a means to earn a livelihood. But we do need such lawyers who are willing to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves, which does bring a lot of moral satisfaction, yes, but very little of any other comforts.

Crime Against Women

This is not a formal specialisation, and most of the cases in this area of practice are domestic violence cases, which happen to be the offshoots of such matrimonial disputes that are either in the court or with the investigation agency or are all geared up to set the wheels of justice in motion. This means that most of the lawyers specialising in crime against women cases are matrimonial or divorce lawyers. This is not to say there are no crimes against women outside the four walls of the matrimonial home, but most of those are argued by regular criminal lawyers, and it is unlikely for them to identify themselves as specialising in crimes against women.

However, there are NGOs that focus on providing support and comfort to battered and abused women, and they could certainly use a helping hand with the legal process. Some law firms have a wing that specialises in such cases without charge as a form of social service though there are not many NGOs that can pay a substantial legal fee, which means that specialisation in crime against women is not financially gratifying. Not in the beginning at least. Domestic violence, sexual abuse, stalking, sexual harassment and other such offences against women form a part of this category of offences. However, the very same offences can also be committed against men, but it is usually women who are the victims in such cases.

Bail, Revision & Quashing

There is a sub-category of lawyers who specialise in bail, and it might seem like a narrow field but it is not, which is because bail in different categories of offences is granted and denied on different parameters, and that makes the bail category sufficiently wide.

Scope

Furthermore, there are regular bails, interim bails and anticipatory bails, and bails (although not all three of them) are filed before all courts ranging from the magisterial court to the Supreme Court. So the scope is very wide, and one can practise at any or multiple levels of the court hierarchy.

Bail is generally well-paying because the client is either already in custody, police or judicial, or is apprehending arrest, and is, thus, quite willing to pay for all trouble the counsel applying for his/her bail has to undergo to keep him/her out of prison. In most other cases, the clients tend to haggle like master-bargainer housewives (house-husbands, a rising minority, are yet to earn the reputation). It’s a different matter that most of the “good deals” in this regard make the clients pay dearly in the long run, for a messed-up trial means an expensive appeal with an uncertain outcome. But that realisation dawns upon the clients much too late and doesn’t help the pockets of the trial lawyers.

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Criminal revisions are legal challenges to an order passed by a criminal court before the higher court. Revisions lie at both the district court level as well as the high court level. Mostly, criminal revisions at the district court level are argued by the trial lawyers whereas those at the high court level are argued by the appellate lawyers.

Criminal revisions are legal challenges to an order passed by a criminal court before the higher court. They lie at both the district and high court level.

Quashing

As for quashing, only the constitutional courts have the power to quash the FIR and proceedings in a criminal case. So the appellate lawyers at the High Court and Supreme Court level argue applications for quashing, mostly. In most cases, quashing is filed when the opposing parties strike a compromise and the compromise is not inconsistent with any enacted laws or binding judicial rulings. In a few cases, where the offence the accused is charged with is not made out even from the allegations levelled by the prosecution, a quashing is maintainable and may be allowed by the High Court or the Supreme Court in a fit case. The compromise-based quashing does not ordinarily require much contest; however, the one where quashing is sought on merits requires substantial arguments because the state or/and the complainant are most likely to resist the plea, which means that lawyers with considerable arguing skills are required to press such applications.

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Criminal litigation is both diverse in scope and interesting in its own way, but not everybody has a stomach for it. So if you wish to enter the field as a litigator, it’s best to first have a feel of it under a practising lawyer specialising in criminal law before you decide to jump in so that you don’t regret choosing a career in criminal law a few years down the line.

HemRaj Singh is a Delhi-based trial lawyer, specialising in both civil and criminal trials, and writes mainly on law, policy, diplomacy, and international relations. Apart from writing for magazines and websites, including Careers 360, practising law and teaching Legal Reasoning and Critical Reasoning, he is Editor-at-Large with Lawyers Update, a monthly magazine on law and legal affairs, and was Legal Editor with Universal Law Publishing Company before he started practising law.