Drawing up any kind of list is fraught with danger, especially a list of the country's ten top lawyers! We will almost certainly be accused of acts of omission and commission. On our part, we've tried to be as thorough as possible — asking senior and junior lawyers and retired judges for their opinion; examining the track record of short-listed candidates; comparing their knowledge, acumen and court craft with that of others. How good are they at retrieving seemingly impossible situations? Can they persuade a judge to appreciate a point of view that is diametrically opposite his initial understanding? What role have they played in the seminal cases of our time? How have they shaped the opinion of government, the judiciary, the public? In our final list, we left out those who currently hold positions in government, such as attorney general Goolam Vahanvati and solicitor general Gopal Subramaniam. We also didn't consider Kapil Sibal and Arun Jaitley, because as HRD minister and leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, respectively, they don't practise anymore. In the end, we based our judgement primarily on what we saw and heard, first hand, in the courts.
Thanks
