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...
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