Congratulations and compliments on organizing such a good competition – very relevant and timely

subject. I am sure the participants would have had a lot to know, read, research, write, prepare,
introspect, debate and ultimately learn. Learning is the ultimate outcome behind such endeavours.

It must be sounding a cliché – but winning or losing a competition is not as important as it is made out to
be. Participation and learning are more important. You have to assess your success or failure in a
competition through your learnings – have I learnt something new ? Has there been an improvement or
addition to my skillset? Am I more confident after participating in this competition.

I win or I learn should be the key factor.

You must have seen ‘Chak De India’. ‘Yeh 70 minutes tumse koi nahi chheen sakta’ should ring in your
minds. No one can steal your learnings from any competition. Whether you won this competition or not
will not matter after few years from now. My advice, therefore, is to approach every event, every
competition, every debate, every writing opportunity with a mindset towards learning new things.

What you learn through these competitions is a million dollar skill – you cannot buy this skill by paying
any amount to anyone. Your family name, your law firm’s name or anything else you think is very
important will not come to your rescue to substitute your soft skills. You have to invest your time and
energy in harnessing, developing, cultivating and nurturing certain soft skills. You cannot expect dividends
or profits without making an investment first.

The legal profession is very attractive, well paying and glamourous, or so it seems. Many students
approach law as a subject of study half heartedly assuming I’ve got admission in this wonderful college, I
have spent 5 years, I have mugged all the bare Acts and case law, so I am going to be the most successful
lawyer of my batch / generation. Certain amount of overconfidence creeps in.

The real world is quite different, my dear. Your knowledge of bare Acts, case laws, etc. will help you to a
limited extent. Every assignment you will get to tackle will be different – different people, different
mindset, different approach, different resources, different bargaining power, different clout, different
stakes, and so on. You certainly will have to tackle all of this by adopting a different approach each time –
static knowledge will not be of much help. No college, books or courses can instill this in you – you will
have to learn this on your own by being open to ideas.

This is all experiential learning. You have to learn on the job. Prepare yourself towards it as soon as
possible, from your college life itself. Participate in as many events and competitions as possible. Sit in the
front, be on the stage, even the centre stage. There is no pride in being a backbencher. If you wish to be
on the centre stage or a speaker as a professional, why not start practicing as a student. Mere participating
in events as a mute spectator may not help you much.

Dare to ask questions. It is better to sound stupid once and be learned for the rest of your life rather than
pretending to be knowledgeable, keeping silent and remaining stupid for rest of your life. There are no
stupid questions, only stupid people who don’t dare to ask questions or stupid teachers / speakers who
can’t explain or answer in simple terms.

As law students and lawyers, our endeavour has to be towards finding solutions – raising issues and
questions is alright but ultimate aim should be to find answers. You may even have to don the hat of an
investigator or a spy, but do try to find the answer.