Shadi Lal
Indian jurist

Sir Shadi Lal (14 May 1874 – 27 March 1945) was an Indian jurist in British India. He served as the Chief justice of Lahore High Court between 1920 and 1934.
Lal was the first Indian to become a Chief justice of any High Court in India.
Lal was born in Rewari, Punjab Province (now Haryana in India) in an Agrawal family. His father, Lala Ram Prasad, was a wealthy businessman. Lal was educated at Punjab University Law College and Balliol College, Oxford. He was called to the English bar at Gray's Inn in 1899. Returning to India, he was called to the Lahore bar, and became Principal of the Law College, Lahore, and dean of the law faculty of Punjab University Law College. He was elected to the Punjab Legislative Council by Punjab University in 1909, and was re-elected in 1912 and 1913.
Lal was appointed a judge of the Lahore High Court in 1919, and promoted Chief Justice in 1920, becoming the first Indian to head an Indian High Court.
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This entry incorporates text from “Shadi Lal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.