Criminal Defence
Bail applications at 9am, cross-examinations that decide a life, sessions courts that don't wait.
A day, honestly described.
A bail application at the Patiala House sessions court, listed at 11 AM but called at 2:45 PM. Your accused has been in judicial custody for 19 days. The PP opposes; the IO is present; you have read the FIR, the case diary disclosed so far, and the medical report. You argue for ten minutes. The order is reserved. You walk back to chambers with the family, who do not understand why "reserved" is not a refusal.
Cross-examination begins at 2:30 PM in a sessions trial that has been running for fourteen months. Your senior leads. You sit second-chair and prepare for tomorrow's witness — the IO. You will spend the night re-reading the case diary against the chargesheet, looking for the contradiction you noticed last week, deciding which two questions to lead with so the IO commits before he sees what you are doing.
Criminal defence is the most physically located of all legal practices. You are in court — sessions, magistrates, high court — most days. You meet families in police-station waiting rooms. You read case diaries in cramped chambers under fluorescent lights. You will not enjoy the architecture of the work, but the work itself is unmistakably consequential: the person you are defending may go to prison or come home depending on whether you found the right contradiction.
Where the work happens. Who hires. What you'll be paid.
Where the work happens
Recruitment pathway
Criminal defence is overwhelmingly a chambers practice. You join a senior counsel's chambers as a junior, learn the procedural code by daily exposure, and begin appearing on bail applications and procedural matters in your first six months. White-collar criminal defence at firms like AZB is the exception — that track recruits like other firm practices.
NLU and non-NLU candidates compete on roughly equal terms after the first year. Moot performance helps; a published comment on a recent CrPC or BNS judgment helps more. Direct application to a senior's chambers with a one-page letter and a writing sample is the standard route. Most chambers do not advertise; word of mouth and persistence are the recruitment mechanism.
First-year vs senior associate
Bail applications, procedural matters, drafting under partner review. You will appear in lower courts on uncontested mentions almost immediately. You will not lead a cross-examination. You will read every chargesheet that comes through chambers. The skill being built is procedural-code fluency.
You lead bail applications independently. You conduct cross-examinations on second-tier witnesses with the senior present. You draft and argue revision and appeal petitions before the High Court. You begin to take small briefs in your own name. Your name is known at the bar.
Compensation bands (approximate)
What law students consistently lack — and how to fix it.
Each gap below is something we have heard from Criminal Defence hiring partners. The simulation column is what closes it before your first internship.
Students treat the CrPC / BNSS as a textbook. The actual practice is procedural: which section authorises what, when, and against whom — under daily time pressure.
A timed bail-application drafting task forces you to inhabit the procedural code rather than reading it.
Cross-examination is taught as an abstraction. The actual skill — drafting questions that commit a witness before they see the trap — is not on any syllabus.
The Iura criminal simulation gives you a witness statement and a chargesheet, and asks you to draft your first ten cross-examination questions.
Inability to read a chargesheet for what it does not contain — gaps in the chain of custody, missing FSL reports, contradictions between police statements.
A reading task with a real-shape chargesheet and a model annotation showing the defects an experienced advocate finds in five minutes.
Work your first criminal defence brief — free, in your browser, in 45 minutes.
We're shipping Criminal Defence simulations soon. In the meantime, try one of our published simulations to see the format.
Browse simulations →Get the full Criminal Defence career guide.
Six pages: firm rankings, internship timeline, the skills checklist, salary bands. Sent as a PDF.
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Criminal defence is the only practice on this list where the human stakes are immediate and individual. The first five years pay poorly. The work compensates with a directness no other practice has. If this is the right area for you, write to two seniors this week.