THE prime job of the legal community is to provide legal assistance to citizens in criminal and civil matters. The legal profession used to be a noble profession and the lawyers, being part of the judicial system, were held in high esteem. To the contrary, this profession has fallen from grace due to the unwarranted attitude of lawyers at different times.

In 1997, an international jurist conference was held at the PC, Bhurban, Murree, in which senior-most lawyers and constitutional experts from Pakistan and abroad participated.

The occasion was also graced by honourable judges. The participants getting tired of delivering and listening to monotonous and complicated legal complexities engaged in using taunting remarks against each other’s behaviour by using poetry as a means of expression.

Another group, with highly overcharged emotions, performed a ‘bhangra’ while singing the song ‘asaan te jana ay Billo dey ghar’.

In 2007 the legal fraternity, with the media and civil society, fought and won a battle for the restoration of deposed judges of the superior judiciary. During the movement the lawyers raised the slogans of ‘Iftikhar, lakhon tere jaan nisar’.

But after the restoration of SC judges, the ‘jan nisars’ broke the law, thrashed their colleagues who disagreed with them, and quarrelled with lower court judges.

They even locked some of the judges in courtrooms in different cities, wrangled with the police and mediamen without any let or hindrance from any quarter. They have not dispelled the impression that the judges were restored because of their effort only and that the movement was not for restoration of a certain set of judges but it was for independence of the judiciary and the rule of law — a commodity in short supply.

The result is that the noble profession has not only lost its dignity, but also has tarnished the image of the judiciary.

Surprisingly, now the same lawyers boycott courts against the judicial policy, asking lower courts to dispose of old cases by Dec 30.

I wish that the Pakistan Bar Council, the Supreme Court Bar Association and other bar associations in the country try to educate young lawyers to devote their time and energy to come fully prepared before courts and provide honest legal aid to their clients to bring lost dignity to this noble profession.

RAJA SHAFAATULLAH Islamabad