SJ Berwin - PLUM 2009

Having studied away from home for the last six years of my student life,
I decided that taking eight months off after law school was the best
opportunity I had to spend time with my family, discover my own country
and experience an alternate profession before moving to London to begin
my training contract with SJ Berwin. Soon after graduation, I began work
with an NGO called MARG based in New Delhi, which focuses on legal
empowerment of women. As an intern with MARG, I travelled to villages
in North India to research issues such as female foeticide and domestic
violence. I also conducted several legal literacy workshops for women selfhelp
groups in these villages and in the process gained a lot of knowledge
about life and local self-governance in rural India by listening to stories that
these women shared with me. Other than field work, I was also an assistant
researcher for a publication on the right to shelter. Along with working in
MARG, I was also a volunteer for the Teach India campaign which is a large
corporate initiative to spread literacy among young underprivileged
children. Somewhere, shuttling between the slums where I taught young
children, and the villages, I found the time to take several trips with friends
around North India and I used any spare time to learn tennis and even tried
learning jazz dance!
I never thought that my ‘time off’ would actually be so productive; and my
efforts in interacting with children and women across the sections of
society alongside meeting some very inspired social workers, activist
lawyers and researchers taught me more about the realities of the
implementation of the law in one of the world’s largest democracies than
any textbook at law school ever could.
Swati Tripathi
First year trainee
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