No advocate should be assaulted, intimidated or threatened for fearlessly representing a client. But the Goa Advocates Protection Bill, 2026, passed by the Legislative Assembly on September 1, invites an altogether different question: when extraordinary statutory protection is fashioned for advocates, who protects the litigant from the advocate?
The legislation creates cognisable offences for assault, intimidation and harassment connected with professional duties, with punishment extending to seven years in specified cases. Compensation, medical expenses, property damage and police protection are contemplated. Where a cognisable offence is alleged against an advocate for an act done while discharging professional duties, registration is preceded by an inquiry by an officer not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police, to be completed within seven days.
Protection is legitimate. Professional superiority is another matter altogether.
The profession already knows its temptations
The Bar Council of India Rules reveal something important: the law has never proceeded upon an assumption that advocates, by virtue of professional status, are incapable of exploiting litigants.
Rule 18 expressly prohibits an advocate from being a party to fomenting litigation. Rule 20 prohibits fees contingent upon the result of litigation or sharing its proceeds. Rule 21 prevents trafficking in an actionable claim. Rule 24 prohibits abuse of the confidence reposed by a client. These restrictions recognise the enormous informational imbalance between lawyer and litigant.
A litigant usually approaches an advocate because the litigant does not know whether another suit, appeal, application or proceeding is necessary. The advocate possesses that knowledge while simultaneously earning from professional engagement.
Therein lies the ethical danger.
An advocate must advise litigation because litigation is necessary, not because litigation is profitable, professionally visible or capable of advancing a career. The administration of justice does not exist to provide advocates with litigation. Advocates exist to provide litigants with access to justice.
Follow the client's money
The BCI Rules become even more revealing when money is involved.
Rule 25 requires accounts to be maintained for money entrusted by a client, recording receipts, expenses and debits towards fees. Rule 26 requires money to be identified as having been received for fees or expenses and prevents litigation expenses from being diverted towards fees during proceedings without the client's written consent. Receipt of money on the client's behalf must be intimated under Rule 27.
Only after termination of proceedings does Rule 28 permit unspent money to be appropriated towards a settled fee. Where fees remain unsettled, Rule 29 regulates deduction and requires the balance to be refunded. Under Rule 30, an account must be supplied to the client on demand, subject to copying charges.
These are not insignificant bookkeeping formalities. They embody a fundamental proposition: money entrusted for litigation does not become the advocate's discretionary purse.
Why are such elaborate ethical rules necessary? Because professional privilege creates opportunities for professional abuse. The rules themselves recognise it.
Seven days on one side, one year on the other
The contrast becomes uncomfortable when enforcement is considered.
For qualifying allegations against an advocate concerning professional duties, Goa's new legislation provides for a DySP-level preliminary inquiry to be completed within seven days. Where offences are committed against advocates, the criminal machinery may be activated through cognisable offences, with significant imprisonment, fines, compensation and other consequences.
Now consider the litigant alleging professional misconduct.
Section 35 of the Advocates Act, 1961 entrusts disciplinary proceedings substantially to the profession's regulatory structure. The disciplinary committee may dismiss the complaint, reprimand the advocate, suspend the advocate or remove the advocate's name from the State roll.
Section 36B says that such proceedings should be disposed of expeditiously and concluded within one year. But failure to do so does not automatically compensate the aggrieved litigant or determine the complaint. The proceeding instead stands transferred to the Bar Council of India for disposal.
The distinction should not be exaggerated. Where an advocate independently commits a criminal offence, ordinary criminal law remains available. Equally, a cognisable offence does not guarantee an instantaneous conviction of a litigant.
Nevertheless, the institutional asymmetry is difficult to ignore.
The litigant who assaults an advocate may rapidly encounter the coercive machinery of the State. The litigant alleging that professional confidence was abused, entrusted funds were improperly dealt with or ethical obligations were violated may find himself navigating professional disciplinary machinery whose statutory one-year deadline can culminate merely in transfer to another disciplinary forum.
Accountability delayed does little to restore confidence.
Privilege was supposed to mean responsibility
The traditional conception of professional privilege imposed more restraint upon an advocate, not merely greater protection.
Rules against fomenting litigation, contingency interests, abuse of confidence and appropriation of client money exist precisely because a lawyer occupies a position of trust. Professional status therefore historically meant that conduct permissible for an ordinary citizen might still be unacceptable for an advocate.
That equation must not now be inverted.
Professional privilege ought to mean greater ethical obligation, not greater insulation from the ordinary equality of citizenship.
If Goa considers advocates sufficiently vulnerable to deserve a dedicated protection law, a corresponding conversation about litigants is overdue. Time-bound and effective disciplinary adjudication, transparent accounting of client funds, meaningful remedies for proven misconduct and vigorous enforcement against fomenting litigation deserve at least as much legislative imagination.
Protection without accountability risks becoming privilege. Accountability without timely enforcement risks becoming theatre.
