Social Media Popularity Not Same As Credibility : CJI Surya Kant To New AoRs, Warns Against Overreliance On AI In Drafting

Chief Justice of India Surya Kant on Wednesday urged newly inducted Advocates-on-Record to build their careers through the quality of their work rather than social media visibility, stressing that lasting credibility is earned inside courtrooms through preparation, ethics and hard work.

Addressing the felicitation ceremony for the 2025 batch of Advocates-on-Record, the CJI congratulated the new inductees and said they were joining a fraternity that has, for decades, assisted the Supreme Court in preserving the highest traditions of advocacy and the administration of justice.

The CJI told the new AORs that while their qualification opened the door to the profession, it would not build their careers.

“Titles may open a door, but they do not build a career. What builds a career is the quality of your work,” he said, adding that lawyers should aim to earn a reputation for being thoroughly prepared whenever their names appear on a case file.

He cautioned young lawyers against equating online popularity with professional success.

“Nowadays, I also see that it is very easy to become visible and known. So how you become visible and known, that is through social media. But my dear friends, remember such visibility is not the same as credibility. Avoid the temptation to measure your success by online popularity. You are not to run like a TV channel where you are worried about your TRP”, he said.

The CJI added that the respect that matters is the respect earned inside the courtroom and from colleagues, clients and members of the Bar. He emphasised that a long legal career is sustained by hard work built in chambers and not in social media comment sections.

The respect that truly matters is the respect you earn inside the courtroom and from your colleagues, clients, and the Bar. What eventually sustains a legal career spanning decades is somber and unglamorous hard work. The kind built in chambers and not in social media comment sections,” he said.

The CJI also stressed that becoming an Advocate-on-Record was not merely a professional advancement but also an expansion of responsibility. He urged the newly inducted AORs to accept legal aid matters whenever possible and ensure that the poor and marginalised were not denied representation.

“I also believe that being Advocate-on-Record is not only a professional upgrade, it is also an enlargement of duty. You are uniquely positioned and I would say duty bound to ensure that the poor and the marginalised are not denied representation. Therefore, whenever you can, do take the legal aid matters. Help someone who has nowhere else to go. Sometimes one case handled sincerely can change an entire family's life. That satisfaction is something money can never bring to you,” he said.

Emphasising the importance of drafting, the CJI described it as the soul of the profession and advised lawyers to treat every petition like a work of fiction in terms of narrative flow.

He said that a well-drafted petition should create enough curiosity in the reader to continue reading from one paragraph to the next, making it difficult to put the brief aside. He highlighted that judges read pleadings before hearing oral arguments and a lawyer's drafting introduces both the case and the advocate to the court.

Sharing his own experience from his early years at the Bar, the CJI recalled that after starting independent practice, he would charge ₹550 from his own clients for an entire matter. However, several leading senior advocates in the High Court began engaging him exclusively for drafting complicated matters and paid him ₹1,100 per draft.

He shared drafting became his principal source of professional income and kept him busy even before he had a large independent practice. Over time, he had to stop accepting drafting work from senior advocates because of the volume of his own cases. The CJI said that this experience demonstrated how strong drafting skills could accelerate a lawyer's professional success.

The CJI also cautioned against excessive reliance on artificial intelligence in legal drafting.

He clarified that he was not discouraging the use of AI altogether and acknowledged that it could be useful for legal research, locating doctrines, identifying case law and studying developments across jurisdictions. However, he said AI should only remain a secondary assistant and not replace a lawyer's own application of mind.

He observed that while AI could produce a serviceable draft within seconds, lawyers should remember that clients engage them for their professional judgment, not the machines in their offices.

He added that only a human lawyer could understand a client's hardships, mitigating circumstances and emotional background and translate them into persuasive pleadings.

“Never forget, when the client engages you, he engages you as a human being. He knows that that he is engaging so and so advocate on record for drafting. He does not know how many machines you are keeping in your chamber and he does not engage your machines…There may be hardship, there may be mitigating circumstances, there may be extreme difficult circumstances in a case that client will narrate to you and you will translate those narrations, those incidents, those hardships, those mitigating circumstances, those events into a draft. It's only a human being who can understand the emotional background and then can translate it into the kind of language will communicate what you really want to say through your pleadings. So therefore, my suggestion will be that artificial intelligence should be only a secondary assistant in your office. It should not be a substitute of your own in the matter of drafting of the cases,” the CJI said.

Concluding his address, the CJI urged the new AORs to uphold professional ethics, moral values and best practices associated with the legal profession. He said that senior lawyers should lead by example because their conduct would be closely observed by their juniors.

He expressed confidence that the new batch of Advocates-on-Record would strengthen the values of the institution and prove themselves worthy custodians of the standards and traditions of the legal profession.

The CJI's remarks come days after the Bar Council of India (BCI) issued a comprehensive circular regulating the use of social media by advocates, law students and legal educators. The circular cautioned against promotional reels, indirect solicitation of clients, unauthorised recording of court proceedings and the misuse of AI-generated content. The Supreme Court has also recently sought BCI's response in a PIL seeking regulation of advocates' use of social media for advertising and solicitation.

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