Did you hear the one about the difference between a vulture and a lawyer? Well, the vulture doesn’t get frequent-flyer miles. Irrespective of all the wisecracks and digs they provoke, the practitioners of the world’s most despised vocation are, in India at least, having a big, fat ball. We’re talking of the ones who make their mandatory Page 3 appearance without fail every week, have high-profile clients, from film stars and politicians to charismatic, wealthy con-men. They are the benchmark by which younger and upcoming men of the bar are judged, and lead elite-club, so-rich lifestyles. No one is quite sure when the lawyer clambered this far up the social ladder. But what’s known for sure is that these people have managed to inject doses of power, glamour and pizzazz into musty courtroom appearances. There’s Delhi’s R K Anand, for instance, whose clients include former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao and Justice of Delhi High Court Shamit Mukherjee. The live wire Anand is also equally well-known for the mega parties he throws, at his four-acre farm in Chattarpur. Fellow Delhiite Raian Karanjawala, another of those who work and play hard, says he attends almost 400 parties a year. “When you are high profile it means you are well known. So the chances of a client picking up someone they have heard of rather than not is greater,” says this serious health freak, whose office also sports a treadmill. The Karanjawala client base includes, among others, the Tata group, Hindustan Times, and another former PM V P Singh. Rani Jethmalani, who hogs regular space on Page 3, is extremely selective about the parties she attends. Daughter of Ram Jethmalani, Rani says she doesn’t even go for her own father’s parties. “I am on Page 3 only because of parties that are official and that I have to attend,” she clarifies. Her clients include Tehelka’s Tarun Tejpal and Richard Holkar of the Maheshwari Sari fame. Her brother too figures among the invitee list for many a bash. Mahesh Jethmalani, who operates from Mumbai, handles people like Ketan Parekh, the Indian Hotels and Bombay Dyeing, but is modest about the entire celebrity-high-profile lawyer image. “Unlike my father, I’m not a party animal. I handle cases that attract public attention, and that I’m in the news in incidental,” says Jethmalani who’s not at all averse to shaking a leg at most of Mumbai’s hot nightspots like Athena or Insomnia, and patronises couturiers such as Tarun Tahiliani. Most lawyers do feel that irrespective of whether they like it or not, being in the news has become second nature to most of them. And the five-and-a-half-feet tall Satish Maneshinde who loves V S Naipaul and Arundhati Roy and has the likes of Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, and a host of film stars, besides Nusli Wadia and Sunil Alagh, as clients agrees. “Yes, somehow, you cannot divorce it from your personality. The media has made me so large due to all the rich, famous and infamous clients I handle that many people are wary of coming to me. They think I am highly expensive.” Mahesh Jethmalani agrees that the client profile and the image works both ways. “The high-profile cases get hyped and the lawyer is in the limelight. The glamour sticks,” he says. But Maneshinde, who completed his higher studies through National Merit Scholarships, feels that dealing with celeb clients is a tightrope walk. “The rich and the famous think that once they engage a lawyer, he is theirs. Sorry, but I do not let such clients dictate. Besides, unlike the poor clients, these rich and the famous have to be reminded of the money they owe you,” says Maneshinde. Most lawyers are also of the opinion that they don’t just party for the heck of it—it serves a very serious professional purpose. Ask Delhi’s Amir Pasrich, who handles Delta Airlines, the Canadian government, and has also advised Octavia Quattrochi of the Bofors kickbacks fame, and he’ll tell you that socialising helps one learn the other side of the story. “Attending parties helps to fire your outlook and hone the imagination of a lawyer. These are important aspects when working on a case,” says this amateur polo player and brother of author Shauna Singh Baldwin. The glamour in his life, he says, is due to his wife, model and TV anchor Shivani Wazir Pasrich. In almost the same breath, he also acknowledges the easy reference and publicity lawyers get by appearing in newspapers. Karanjawala too echoes Pasrich’s sentiments that parties are avenues for broadening one’s social and business profile. “I’ve always been outgoing. I like meeting people and parties are a good avenue for that,” he explains. “I never socialise with the intention of meeting people who will give me work. But making contacts is a natural outcome of meeting more people. Your social circle widens and you become a more rounded personality,” says Karanjawala. Balancing both their work and after-hours is what most people aim at. And nobody does it better than the stylish, pipe-smoking Mohan Jayakar (actress Smita Jayakar’s husband). This member of the bar leads a happening life in Mumbai, mixing appearances in courts and at night clubs with equal vigour. Jayakar, who has the likes of Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosale, and Saif Ali Khan on his client list, says, “When you do a high-profile case it is extensively reported and thereby the association with glamour starts. Clients come to you because they get the feeling that you can handle the publicity. Maintaining an image is very important, you can’t falter, it’s the package that counts.” Mumbai’s Majeed Memon, a man who has diamond merchant Bharat Shah, Tiger Memon’s family and Anna Hazare in his burgeoning kitty, makes sure he is packaged well, and maintains close associations with politicians and actors. “There is a definite link. The big cases and clients are covered extensively by the media. A lawyer gets a happening image because the media ensures he is the cynosure of all eyes,” says Memon. While Pasrich is of the firm opinion that ‘glamour can’t buy you clients’, he does agree that the criteria for selecting a lawyer in India largely includes the ‘with it’ quotient. “In India, well known people only use lawyers who have arrived. Being in the limelight therefore, plays a very big part in this.” Which is why come night time, out goes the dreary black coat, and the staid white trousers. They are substituted by Guccis, Boss and numerous other designer brands, as the best of our lawyers spread out into the evening. They may well look like unlikely bedfellows, but as far as our lawyers go, glamour and law do have one rocking relationship.
