Jaitley was an Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) student leader in the Delhi University campus in the seventies and rose to be President of the University Students' Union in 1974. During the period of proclamation of Internal Emergency (1975–77) when civil liberties were suspended, he was under preventive detention for a period of 19 months. He was a prominent leader of a movement against corruption launched in the year 1973 by Raj Narain and Jai Prakash Narayan. He was the Convenor of the National Committee for Students and Youth organisation appointed by Jai Prakash Narayan. He was also active in civil rights movement and helped found PUCL Bulletin along with Satish Jha and Smitu Kothari. After being released from jail he joined Jan Sangh.
He has been practicing law before the Supreme Court of India and several High Courts in the country since 1977.He is a designated Senior Advocate. He was appointed Additional Solicitor General by the V.P. Singh Government in 1989 and did the paperwork for the investigations into the Bofors scandal. His clients cover the political spectrum from Sharad Yadav of the Janata Dal to Madhavrao Scindia of the Indian National Congress to L.K. Advani of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He has authored several publications on legal and current affairs. He has presented a Paper on Law relating to Corruption and Crime in India before the Indo-British Legal Forum. He was a delegate on behalf of the Government of India to theUnited Nations General Assembly Session in June 1998 where the Declaration on Law relating to Drugs and Money Laundering was approved.
