IN Pakistan, becoming a lawyer has never been free from navigating a labyrinth of class divides and systemic inefficiencies. The system was never equitable, and its failings have deepened over time.

Today, once a student finishes high school and opts to pursue a career in law, two distinct paths emerge: the three-year University of London (UoL) programme a degree as much about privilege as legal education or the five-year local law programme, a commitment often made out of necessity, not choice. The former equips you to dazzle elite firms; the latter, with one exception, prepares you for the grind of litigation in the district courts and beyond.

Let`s begin with the UoL graduates: polished, articulate, and trained in legal systems far removed from the realities of Pakistan. The only comparable cohort among local law graduates is from Lums, who are in fact better rounded, with training that combines academic rigour, practical exposure, and an understanding of both local and international legal frameworks. UoL and Lums alumni stand out in critical thinking, research, and English fluency, securing them top-tier jobs.

In contrast, local law graduates, besides the chosen few from Lums, are churned out as statute-spouting machines, their education rooted in rote memorisation and devoid of analytical depth.

Many UoL and Lums graduates see the mess, leave, and thrive in jurisdictions where the law is respected. Since they land cushy jobs and secure their futures, this piece is not about them. This is about the majority: local law graduates, particularly first-generation lawyers, from institutions the world has never heard of, struggling to navigate a profession thatis seen as a `kala-coat` mafia. For these students, the finish line is not a top-tier firm or a glamorous Supreme Court or Islamabad High Court clerkship; it is a desk (or corner) in a district court chamber, handed down by a `senior` who reminds them daily of their inferiority.

Litigation is presented as the only career option because the Pakistan Bar Council, responsible for setting the standards of legal education, remains entrenched in its old-school mentality.

Populated by a generation steeped in rote learning and adversarial litigation, it views modern legal avenues as alien, pursued only by those who can afford international training. Ironically, the children of the council`s elders are immune from this thinking. For everyone else, the council feels that a lawyer who does not appear in court is not a lawyer at all. Never mind that the world has moved on to arbitrationand mediation. In Pakistan, if you are not shuffling papers in a courtroom or grovelling before a judge, you are doing it wrong.

For first-generation lawyers, training begins with survival. They join chambers not for mentorship but exploitation.

`Mehnat` (hard work), they are told, will make them great, as if greatness is forged in the fires of unpaid labour.

Their first mentor? The chamber clerk, or munshi, who teaches them how to ask for adjournments and grease the right palms. Over time, they learn the unwritten laws of flattery, fear, and shortcuts in district courts. Efficiency, innovation, and integrity are not part of the syllabus. Nor is basic legal drafting just go to the tens of photocopiers at the courts premises and get a sample plaint, written statement, or complaint.

Enter the bar associations and provincial bar councils, the bastions of democracy and fraternity. Here, elections are less about service and more about securing future clients. Officeholders are notabout lawyer welfare or regulation but influence, their roles riddled with inertia and political machinations. Together, these entities ensure that Pakistan`s legal fraternity remains a pressure group, not a profession.

Judges, of course, are not always seen asinnocent bystanders.

Many ascend to the bench with the backing of these very bar associations and councils, and their gratitude is evident.

They are seen tofavour bar leaders and `senior` counsel while dismissing `junior` lawyers. The term `junior lawyer` itself is a tool of subjugation. Once admitted to the bar, you are a lawyer, period. Yet, in Pakistan, it is not your skill or merit that defines you; it is your surname, your connections, and how often the judge has seen you at weddings or on the golf course.

Before we look at why the 26th Amendment has come about, why it will inevitably be protected by a constitutional bench, and why the Supreme Court is apparently toothless, we must first confront the decay of the legal profession itself. The problem begins in law schools, where students are taught to memorise rather than think; it snowballs into a judiciary that rewards the powerful. What remains is a profession that no longer serves justice but perpetuates privilege. • The wnter is a lawyer.