In 1982 the Punjab Bar Council enrolled me as an advocate, and I began to practise before the lower courts of Lahore. I was born in this city, matriculated in 1969, passed my intermediate in 1971, took my BA from the University of the Punjab in 1976 and my LLB from Punjab University Law College in 1980. More than forty years later I am still at the bar, and I want to set down what those first years taught me.
What the lower courts taught me
The lower courts are where the law meets the poor. In the civil and magistrate courts of Lahore in the 1980s I learned that a case is won or lost on the record: the FIR, the site plan, the witness statements, the certified copies. A young lawyer who reads every page of the file will, in time, beat a senior who reads only the summary. I learned patience too, because a lawyer who loses his temper loses his client’s case.
I learned that a Christian lawyer is watched. Colleagues and judges knew my faith, and I decided early that they would also know my honesty. That decision has sometimes cost me, and it has gained me something better: a name that opens doors for the persecuted, which is worth more than any brief.
1996 and the High Court
In 1996 I was enrolled with the Lahore High Court, and in time became a Senior Advocate High Court and a Life Member of the Lahore Bar Association and the Lahore High Court Bar Association. The High Court is where the Constitution lives. A writ petition can compel a police officer to register an FIR, a habeas corpus petition can bring a missing girl before a judge, and a bail order can bring a blasphemy accused out of a cell where his life is in danger. Every tool I now use for the persecuted, I learned to hold in those years.
Faith and the law were never separate for me. I prayed over my first brief and I pray over my latest. Scripture tells me to do justice and to love mercy; the Pakistan Penal Code and the Code of Civil Procedure tell me how the state expects it to be done. A lawyer needs both. Faith without law is sentiment; law without faith is a trade.
In 2020 I gathered younger believers and founded Christian Lawyers Alliance Pakistan (CLAP), so that what I learned would not end with me. Its members serve under my patronage as Founding Patron in Chief, and its work is at clap.com.pk. To the young Christian lawyers in Pakistan who will read this after I am gone: read the whole file, keep your hands clean, fear God more than men, and stay.
— Founding Patron in Chief Advocate Soba Sorya, Senior Advocate High Court, Christian Lawyers Alliance Pakistan (CLAP)
