[KNOW THE LAWYER] Geeta Luthra’s Journey to Becoming a Distinguished Senior Advocate!

In advocacy, women have to work harder than male lawyers. This is to say, Geeta Luthra, Senior Advocate in the Supreme Court, who in her 40 years advocated and won all manner of cases in court. The Legal Reporter, through his program Legal Legends, spoke on all aspects of Geeta Luthra’s advocacy.

Geeta Luthra’s life and career are studded with milestones of success. She was the head girl of her convent school, won the principal’s medal as a BA political science student at Lady Shri Ram College for Women, went on to study at Law Faculty of Delhi University, and eventually won the Inlaks scholarship to Cambridge.

She completed her LLM and M.Phil at Cambridge, and returned to India to set up her legal practice.

Luthra was also the sports captain while at LSR, only to be succeeded by Geeta Mittal, the first woman chief justice of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court. Her love and aptitude for hockey was so outstanding that Luthra even played for the Delhi state team.

Geeta Luthra belongs to a family of eminent lawyers — her brother Siddharth Luthra is also a renowned senior advocate in the Supreme Court, and the Luthra siblings are the children of late K.K. Luthra, who was himself a celebrity senior advocate in his time.

Her path to the legal world was laid by her father’s legacy, whom she considers her biggest motivations behind joining the profession.

Incidentally, Siddharth Luthra represented Supreme Court judge Swatanter Kumar in a criminal defamation case against media houses related to a sexual harassment case. He also defended Energy and Resources Institute (Teri) director-general R.K. Pachauri, when he was facing sexual harassment allegations from a woman employee in 2015.

Luthra has made it a point to take a large number of pro bono cases, and has also worked closely as legal aid lawyer for female prison inmates in Bihar in the past.