SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AT THE DISTRICT COURTS.

The article presents an insight to the colleague relationships among Indian lawyers. For the litigants of an Indian district, the court is an important occasional social arena. In the lives of lawyers outside the courts, caste is significant. In general, however, caste does not have the role- summation significance for city professionals that it has in village life. For almost everything that goes on in the courtroom, there exists somewhere a set of written rules namely government manuals on court upkeep and organization, textbooks on advocacy, codes and case law. Colleague interactions here are highly legalistic in content. The constant struggles of lawyers to prevent conflicting hearings from getting on their appointment books suggest that there is scope for some division of labor even if not amounting to formal specialization in fields of law. Unlike, the linkages of an action set, the alliance does not have a variety of possible bases. All the ties that are used in alliances are those created by mutual involvement in the day to day working of the courts.