IT is quite unjust of our justice system, particularly the civil and district courts, to hear the representatives of parties to a dispute at different, unscheduled times for the rendering of decisions.

`Ex-parte` literally means from one party only. While the concept of justice requires that in any dispute both sides ought to be heard before a decision is rendered, it so often happens here in Pakistan that those parties are heard at entirely different times. This raises due process concerns and also injects unpredictability into the system.

For the uninitiated, the proceedings in the lower judiciary are conducted thus: in the morning, the judge, and in many instances the reader, runs through the cause list a list with the number of cases fixed for hearing on that date. This is the first call. Rarely are both sides present during the first call, nor are they expected to be.

There may be disputes in which one side is invested in pursuing the case,usually the plaintiff or litigant seeking something from the court. The plaintiff`s counsel may send his clerk or a junior proxy, an under-training lawyer, who conveys to the reader the will of his employer whether he is going to be present that day and at what time. If the senior lawyer is not available, that is the end of the matter for that day; a time may be fixed for later.

The respondent, the answering party, rarely has any incentive to proceed with the case. Therefore, the respondent`s lawyer is perennially busy before the Supreme Court, the high courts, other courts, tribunals, or may even be at a wedding, funeral or parent-teacher meeting.

His underlings are tasked with getting adjournments, which often come easily.

The ad hoc scheduling is done by the reader. The reader is kept busy with the constant inflow of lawyers, clerks and litigants who come either to seek an adjournment or fix a time, or to obtain information about what the other side has communicated. The reader`s tone and manner are often contingent on whether or not he is being taken care of with a few coloured notes bearing the image of the Quaid.

The judge, meanwhile, is often not that interested in deciding any matter on his cause list for the day, unless for some odd reason, both sides are pursuing the matter diligently a thing that our judicial system is just not designed to encourage. With his bandwidth often occupied with the merits of a case or two, the judge does not really involve himself in the administration of his docket, which includes haggling with lawyers, andnegotiating times and dates.

This can give a reader quite some leverage. He can squeeze a few bucks here and a few there, accommodating sometimes this side and sometimes the other. Money can also be made by keeping a party misinformed.

This scheduling conundrum normalises and mainstreams the existence of exparte proceedings. For instance, a lawyer from one side may have communicated that after his duties at the high court, he will be available at, say, 11 am at the civil court. If the judge is not resting in his chamber at the time, he may hear that party. The other side would probably not even be there. Most likely, the other side, with an incentive to delay, may not argue at all that day, or on the next date of hearing, or even the next. This could take months, and by the time the other side starts its arguments, those of the first side may well have been forgotten. And so it goes on. The order on a particular day may, in fact, be rendered after hearingjust one side. In many cases, the lawyers do not even get to rebut what the other side may have said, because hearings are taking place at unscheduled, disparate times.

Those who have had the misfortuneof interacting with us lawyers in Pakistan can attest to the fact that a large section of the legal community is neither that bright nor very principled. But the successful ones amongst us have developed a greater tolerance for, and more efficient mechanisms in, dealing with this unpredictability, with a structure in place to manage the readers, stenographers and even the judges. This network is invaluable and can fetch big money. And this is precisely the reason why generational lawyers have such a massive head start because of enduring relationships that have already been forged.

The lower courts in Pakistan are not only places where people`s hopes for a timely resolution of their disputes are extinguished, but also where the ambitions of many lawyers to be upright professionals are crippled. The required skill in thesecourtsisnotlegalreasoningbutpeople management. • The wnter is a lawyer based in Islamabad.

The views expressed are his own and do not reflect those of his firm.

awahid@umich.edu