What Makes a Lawyer Change Their Mind? A Conversation with Garvita Mishra

 

If you've ever thought legal research is simply about reading statutes and citing precedents, this conversation might challenge that assumption.

Our next guest believes that the law reveals itself only to those willing to read beyond the obvious. Currently pursuing a B.B.A. LL.B. at the India International University of Legal Education and Research (IIULER), Goa, she has explored diverse areas including constitutional law, banking law, family law, aviation law, cyber law, arbitration, and ADR through internships, moots, and legal writing. From interning at the Supreme Court of India and Meti Legal & Advisory to representing her university at the Leiden–Sarin International Air Law Moot and publishing research on contemporary legal issues, her journey reflects a commitment to asking better questions before reaching conclusions.

Joining us today is Garvita Mishra, a law student, legal researcher, and writer who believes that the strongest legal arguments aren't built by finding quick answers—they're built by questioning assumptions, embracing complexity, and never stopping at the first interpretation.

Let's dive into a conversation about legal research, advocacy, emerging areas of law, professional growth, and the discipline of thinking beyond the bare text.

Q1. Across your constitutional law, family law, banking law, and aviation law research, what has been the biggest instance where your initial legal conclusion changed completely after deeper research? What caused that shift? 

My Section 138 cheque bounce research humbled me. I went in confident: the section punishes you when a cheque bounces because there's no money in the account. So if someone tells their bank “stop payment,” no offence. The bare text basically said so. Then I dug in and the case law flipped my position. Courts don't let the drawer hide behind a stop-payment instruction. They ask whether the money was actually there, or whether the instruction was just a device to dodge the cheque. And this still isn't settled — there's a live split between courts on how to treat these cases. My clean answer turned out to be neither clean nor an answer. I'll take credit for one thing: I caught the split myself, because I kept reading past the first line of authority that agreed with me. That habit stayed. Now the bare text is where I start reading a statute, never where I stop.

 Q2. You have written both academic legal articles and LinkedIn posts for a wider audience. How do you decide what level of legal complexity to simplify without compromising accuracy?

 One rule: I simplify the language, never the substance. Writing case commentaries and LinkedIn posts side by side trained this into me. A journal article lets me sit inside the nuance. LinkedIn gives me maybe one sentence to carry the real stakes, no jargon allowed. So I run a quick test: if I strip away the legal language, would someone outside law still get why this matters? If yes, I simplify. If the nuance itself is the point, I keep it and explain it better instead of cutting it. I've done this across enough registers now that it's instinct. And I genuinely believe you don't understand a concept until you can say it simply. 

Q3. In your Article 19 research, you observed that judicial rulings and ground-level enforcement can diverge. If you were advising policymakers, what practical institutional change would you prioritize to bridge that gap? 

What genuinely shook me during that research: the Supreme Court struck down Section 66A of the IT Act in 2015. Fully unconstitutional. And people were still getting arrested under it years later — so much that the Court had to step in again in 2022 just to enforce its own judgment. No textbook says this out loud, but a judgment doesn't enforce itself. The constable filing an FIR at midnight is not reading Supreme Court reports. So my one change wouldn't be a new law. It would be plumbing. The moment a court strikes down a penal provision, that should automatically update FIR software, police training modules, and prosecution manuals, with a compliance report going back to the court. Boring, yes. But India doesn't lack rights on paper. It lacks the pipeline that carries them from the law reports to the police station. 

Q4. Looking back at your Supreme Court internship, can you describe a task that initially seemed routine but eventually changed your understanding of how legal practice actually works?

My very first internship, at the Supreme Court, in my first year of law school. I was assigned research on bankruptcy and insolvency, which sounded dry until it turned into me digging through bank failures going back to the 1900s to understand how the current framework came to be. I also got to watch e-courts function up close, which you only appreciate once you see it in motion. I sent my findings to my mentor knowing the work was thorough — I'd gone several layers deeper than the brief asked. She confirmed it by asking me to extend the internship. I said no because I had other commitments, but the offer told me something I've held onto since: “just research” is never just research. Done properly, it's how you start earning trust in this field, right from year one. I earned some of mine early and I plan to keep compounding it. 

Q5. Many of your experiences involve emerging areas like aviation law, cyber law, arbitration, and ADR. How do you decide whether a niche legal field is worth investing your time in versus focusing on a broader practice area? 

I test before I commit. I built that system deliberately. A niche always looks shiny from the outside, so instead of deciding from a distance, I run a cheap experiment first. Aviation law is my honest example: I competed in the Leiden–Sarin International Air Law Moot, which meant weeks of researching and arguing actual international air law problems. By the end I knew what the field feels like from the inside, not from someone's LinkedIn post about it. After the experiment, three filters. Is the field growing? Does it reward what I'm already good at? Does it build on my existing work or reset me to zero? International trade law passed all three, which is why it's my long-term bet. One caveat: contracts, the Constitution, procedure — that's the foundation, and no niche stands without it.

 Q6. Suppose you're given two assignments with the same deadline; one requires exhaustive legal research and the other requires drafting a client-ready note. How would you allocate your time, and why?

Research first. No debate. I've run multiple internships at once with overlapping deadlines, so this is a system I've stress-tested, not a theory. A client-ready note is only as strong as the research holding it up. Draft first, and if the research shifts things halfway through, you're rewriting from scratch. Why draft twice? I front-load the thinking when my head is clearest, then draft once I actually know what I'm saying. One guardrail: a hard research cutoff. Past a point, more digging stops improving the work and just delays it. I learned that the expensive way, by once digging too long and drafting too late.

 Q7. Can you describe a situation during a moot, internship, or research project where you disagreed with your team or mentor's legal approach? How did you handle the disagreement while maintaining professionalism?

Honest admission first: I'm not naturally a team person. Left to myself I'd do everything alone. Teamwork is something I force myself into, deliberately, because law doesn't get practised solo no matter how much I'd prefer it. That got tested early, while building a compendium for a moot. Our researcher and I hit a sharp disagreement: she had confused terrorist activities under the UAPA with acts of war between countries. Two completely different legal frameworks, and the mix-up sat at the heart of our argument. I knew I was right. The question was how to say it, because my first instinct was to snap — patience is something I train, not something I was born with. So I caught myself and walked her through the distinction the way I'd explain it to a friend: the UAPA is a domestic criminal framework targeting terrorist acts, while armed conflict between states lives in an entirely different body of law. Then the part I didn't see coming. During the round, the judges asked us that exact question, and because I'd already broken it down once out loud, I answered clearly and confidently on the spot. That's why I keep forcing myself into teams. Explaining something to a teammate turned out to be rehearsal for explaining it to a judge. 

Q8. Your profile reflects strong research and writing. If you could improve one professional skill over the next two years that isn't evident on your profile yet, what would it be, and how do you plan to develop it?

Oral advocacy. Explaining my research out loud, in real time, under pressure, not just on paper. My research and writing systems are genuinely strong; I built them deliberately and they deliver. Arguing a position live in a room is a different skill, and I want it at the same level. This connects to something outside law too. I'm a cinephile and I write scripts in my personal time, and storytelling out loud is something I want to pull into my legal voice rather than keep separate from it. The plan is more client-facing and negotiation-style work during internships, and deliberately putting myself in rooms where I have to defend my position live. Uncomfortable on purpose — that's the point

Explore Garvita's Work

Alongside her research, writing, and advocacy, Garvita is also building Advocado—a legal-tech platform created by a law student, for law students.

Advocado brings together resources that law students often spend hours searching for, including moot court competitions, memorials, legal research materials, and an AI-powered memorial review feature that provides feedback before submission. The project reflects Garvita's belief that students should spend less time searching for resources and more time learning, researching, and advocating.

Explore Advocado: https://advocata-orcin.vercel.app/

If you'd like to connect with Garvita, learn more about her work, or follow her journey, you can find her here:

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Conversations by Brains in You is a curated interview series featuring students, professionals, entrepreneurs, creators, researchers, and changemakers whose journeys offer meaningful lessons beyond conventional achievements.

Rather than focusing solely on titles or milestones, each conversation explores the decisions, experiences, challenges, and perspectives that shaped the individual behind the profile. The aim is to create a growing repository of practical insights that help students and young professionals navigate their own careers with greater clarity, productivity, integrity, and purpose.

Every featured conversation is thoughtfully selected with the belief that authentic experiences can inspire informed decisions, lifelong learning, and better human development.