CLAT madness descended on Legally India kicking off perhaps the largest and most sustained virtual law student brawl in the history of India. But first, cast an eye over the excitement that lawyers get up to when they grow up.
The Ashok Paranjpe of Naik Paranjpe & Co has joined the M Dhruva start-up to create MDP, which has mapped out an ambitious full-service growth strategy.
But Naik Naik & Co (as it is now known again) has not been sitting still and has thrust into Mumbai suburbia with an office right next door to all the Bollywood glitz in Andheri and no less ambition.
Bombay’s Advani & Co has ventured further out and merged with three-partner Delhi start-up Accendo.
Hemant Sahai has hired two indirect tax partners.
The foreign lawyers in India saga took an unexpected twist as the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) faces a Delhi High Court action by the same lawyers’ organisation that is suing 41 foreign law firms in Chennai for illegal practice. The word “London Court” in the LCIA’s name is claimed to be illegal, as is probably the fact that as institutional arbitration bodies grow, advocates and arbitrators making a living out of lengthy domestic ad hoc arbitrations could be out of jobs.
And as the Monsoon season is about to fully let rip across India law firms have been closing a raft of corporate deals – see below for more.
However, one lawyer has looked outside the law firm hustle and shuffle and decided on a Life Less Legal: Ex-Trilegal lawyer Vibhuti Kabra has opened up a retail boutique specialising in women’s dress shirts in Delhi.
Now back to what’s been troubling those yet to get into the profession.
The NUJS Kolkata-conducted Common Law Admissions Test (CLAT) was surely under a cursed star after the results website crashed badly on Saturday, the initial results were close to useless for students and only by late on Monday night was there any certainty about the outcome. Also, in an innovative initiative future law students’ preferences for the top CLAT colleges would be made after the results were out, in a few days time from today following online counselling sessions.
Cue the kind of frantic lobbying by law students last exhibited by foreign and domestic law firms around ex-law minister Bhardwaj.
Confident as ever the NLSIU students, whose brand and recruitment committee are arguably as powerful as many mid-size law firms in India, set up a creative Facebook page called Ask NLS to share friendly advice about the self-styled ‘Harvard of the East’ for CLAT toppers, who are all but expected to join the oldest national.
Other younger law schools’ students, however, have begun an offensive and allegedly contacted some top CLAT students directly to poach them out of the traditional pecking order, while bloggers have blogged, counter-blogged and retracted blogs on Legally India.
Cue apparent outrage from some NLS students and alums, suggesting that any option other than NLS is tantamount professional and academic suicide.
Let’s take a step back and avoid some of the hyberbole.
As our latest analysis of the 2nd Mooting Premier League sponsored by Allen & Overy shows this week, students are clearly bright at many top colleges, and there is a good spread of talent and performance across the tiers.
Legally India also completed a preliminary recruitment analysis of most of India’s top CLAT law schools this week. In terms of jobs there is not much distance, if any, between the national trinity of NLSIU, Nalsar and NUJS (although the latter is yet to formally disclose its recruitments). When it comes down to it they all have it comparatively easy and high-paying recruiters line up at campus doors to pick up a majority of students. A few years later, it will be impossible to guess at the alma mater of any associate at a top law firm.
Nevertheless, this has bred an entitlement culture and expectation where many entering law do so to for eventual salaries of Rs 10 lakh plus and meteoric careers, which has no doubt contributed to the popularity of the CLAT. But once you move outside the purported top three brands it quickly becomes apparent that there are very few large law firms or recruiters that have need for the kinds of fresher numbers that would make partners fly to far-flung corners of India for milkround interviews.
Some like to blame this on the absence of foreign firms on Indian soil. But if you ask the big foreign firms only a handful say they would like to open an office in India one day, and those that do would all deny that in the short-to-medium term they’d hire more than one, two or three students each year (take the size of firms such as Talwar Thakore Associates or Platinum Partners as an indicative benchmark). And right now those foreign firms almost exclusively pick up one or two students from the top three or so law schools.
But even at supposed non-first-tier law school brands students can do well and pick up jobs at top domestic firms, albeit more sweat and effort will be required.
HNLU Raipur is a prime example where a heavily interning batch managed to impress enough law firms for solid placements. Smart and enterprising students can prosper almost anywhere when not excessively stifled by college administration and bureaucracy. The most successful colleges usually also have the most active and independent student bodies. All law school administrators would do well to recognise that, although sometimes adversity can even breed strength.
Prospective students would do well to recognise that a multiple choice exam itself should entitle you to nothing: build your own career and go where your heart tells you to go, tempered by your own research and perceptions of the objective qualities of an institution and its student culture.
If India’s brightest students stopped joining just a small number of colleges by default according to the brand, institution’s age, alumni network and marginal differences in recruitment pay packets, India could see more than just a few ‘centres of excellence’ grow up one day, despite new national law schools opening every year, such as NLU Assam that is facing its own question marks.
But even NLS Bangalore and the rest will decline one day without a competitive market for legal education where they too have to innovate, improve and prove themselves to the brightest students every single year.
All colleges, from the very top to the very bottom need you and will get shaped by you if join them. The choice is yours if you think a college deserves you.
Campus recruitment data
- More ‘desk jobs’, Amarchand offers for GNLU’s mammoth batch than NLS, Nalsar
- HNLU Raipur batch innovates via PPOs to negate location for 75% ‘desk jobs’
- Nuals Kochi’s national maiden batch: 24 non-lit, 7 foreign LLM, 4 senior lit
- NLIU Bhopal recruitment nearly measures up to last year with 33 desk jobs
- Easy money for NLS Bangalore: 100% jobs, strong domestic, int’l firm interest
- National Law School Assam Guwahati: 6-day deadline, other details a mystery
Deals of the Week
- One year on Dua’s made projects comeback in Hyderabad, looks to corp
- JSA joins India’s Camlin for Rs 186 cr to Japan’s Kokuyo with AZB
- Blackstone exits $634m BPO: TTA-Links, WadiaG, Simpsons, Simmons involved
- JSA racks up second American client masala buy for $115m
- ILS arranges $350m loan for Tata Teleservices
At the bar and bench
- 700,000 prisoners-waiting-for-trial released in 18 months, claims Moily
- Electronic voting machines invalidated SCBA election, claims Delhi HC suit
Best of the Blogs
- Being smart inspite of a lousy teacher: freemium, quality legal education by Legal Poet II
- GNLU: A preview/ An Insider's account! by napster
- NALSAR - City of Justice by Pacman
- The Private School Brat by ThePrivateSchoolBrat
- The Law of Franchise and Distributor Agreements by legaljunction
- Classification of Tax Structure in accordance with the Indian Constitution by legaljunction
- CLAT Special: Challenging NLSIU’s supremacy. And the Right to be recruited for other NLUs by Legal Poet II
- A letter to law aspirants. Also NALSAR v. NUJS & NLIU Bhopal v NLU Jodhpur & GNLU v. HNLU by Legal Poet II
- Importance of evidence in "Dowry Death" by legaljunction
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I"n terms of jobs there is not much distance, if any, between the national trinity of NLSIU, Nalsar and NUJS (although the latter is yet to formally disclose its recruitments)".
"But even NLS Bangalore and the rest will decline one day without a competitive market for legal education where they too have to innovate, improve and prove themselves to the brightest students every single year".
What is the road to a more competitive market for legal education? Please let us know your views.
Funnily enough, I have no perfect solutions and if it was easy it would be done already.
One step that could help is greater transparency about the way the colleges operate, as we are trying to create with this and other coverage. Rather than students relying faithfully on rankings published by magazines or the brand-name, this would enable prospective applicants to make an educated call on where they want to spend the next five years.
I have the feeling that to date 90% of CLAT takers simply automatically by what CLAT training tutors tell them about what to note down as their first, second and third preferences when they fill in the application form. Please correct me if I am wrong. And to a certain extent, this serves them and the 'top-ranked' colleges well.
The new format of the CLAT, where students only decided after their scores where they go, may go some way towards levelling the playing field, since students can now apply their minds in real terms rather than in the abstract.
As I had mentioned once before, more controversially and radically, and perhaps unworkably, perhaps the importance of preferences should even be decreased altogether.
Germany, for instance, for certain subjects with high demand at publicly funded universities runs (or used to run) a lottery of sorts where applicants give several preferences that are allocated by a central board and rules. I think that you do have control over which college you do NOT want to go to in Germany but not necessarily certainty about your top choice.
If there were some objective way to decide that say 5 or so national law colleges are in a similar tier and impart a minimum required standard of education and quality (as the BCI has said it wants to do), the CLAT therefore could force candidates to give five, six or more college preferences, in addition to a veto on a few colleges. Out of those, providing the student makes the cut-off, one college will be randomly allotted to the candidate. This would presumably have to be introduced very gradually.
The theory behind this could be that national law schools are supposed to be a public good that are available to as many people as possible and not just constrained to a few elite institutions / 'centres of excellence'. Ideally, if all institutes were up to a certain minimum mark, a good student could become a great lawyer wherever they gained admission.
The results of this could be manyfold:
1. Each college will still get good candidates of a similar level that they would have had before, but there will be less of an us-versus-them mentality once there.
2. Recruiters will be more ready to look outside of just the top 1, 2 or 3 schools, because going perceptually by CLAT scores alone the talent pool will be distributed more evenly.
3. Colleges will be forced to focus on improving the campus experience and teaching so that their graduating students are more competitive and employable in the market place when they graduate, rather than just focusing on improving the brand to chase toppers.
4. The standards of all colleges will gradually be elevated as students realise they are not at a law school by entitlement but that it is up to them to raise the bar and keep improving the institution.
On the flipside:
1. This could also decrease the competitiveness of legal education as arguably a fifth-ranked college in preferences will still get good students so they may have less incentive to improve.
2. In the short term, it could marginally decrease the quality of graduates from a few top schools, although I believe there in terms of IQ or legal ability there will be only little to tell a CLAT rank of 10 and a rank of 250 apart.
3. Perhaps fewer students would take the CLAT?
4. An element of randomness feels less meritocratic, then again this proposal is more socialist than free market anyway.
5. It may be unfair and create resentments to some students when an institute burdened with an incompetent administration declines badly and they are stuck there for five years.
6. In the short term it does not help any of the colleges outside of the 'new first tier' of 3, 4, 5 or 6 colleges, and standards there would decrease further.
Just some thoughts - would be interested in other readers' ideas of how to improve competitiveness and standards across the spectrum.
Best regards
Kian
As we've seen placement figures of almost every n-school, why are colleges like GLC, ILS, Symbiosis, etc. ignored? Safe to say, students there do quite well for themselves, whilst maintaining a low profile. They don't need fancy infrastructure, nor an N-school tag.
With all the frenzy and hype around CLAT results, maybe you should consider giving a perspective on non-CLAT law schools as well, most of whose admissions are underway.
Colleges like GLC & ILS have a huge batch strength, and cater to every level of the legal fraternity, from an Amarchand to the smallest family run firm. Litigation is more in vogue with these colleges than in N-schools, and a nominal starting packages as compared to corporate law packages does in no way make litigation an inferior line. Everyone knows that a senior counsel at the Bombay/Dehi/Calcutta/Madras HC or the SC rakes in more for a hearing than a mid-size law firms's partner's monthly salary.
It's because of this impression created that people create a ruckus when ILS wins the Jessup India Rounds, not realizing that these colleges too have talent, they just don't boast it enough.
All in all, I just request you to give a slightly more balanced approach to legal education in the country and the fraternity, and not tagging N-schools as the 'be all and end all' of the same. This of course is not intended to demean or lessen the importance or challenge the intelligence of N-schools & their students.
Cheers...
We have lots of non-national recruitment figures in the pipeline for next week, as many of those have been slower to respond with authoritative data than the NLUs.
Do get in touch any time if you can help.
Best regards
Kian
LOL, exactly!! The term "Harvard of the East" was originally used by Bill Clinton to describe Beijing University. Like idiots, NSLIU suddenly started using this term to describe themselves, even though there is NO INDIAN UNIVERSITY in the top 200 of the world. If you compare NLSIU to univs in Japan, China, South Korea, Singapore etc, it's worth nothing. NLSIU is p**s compared to them. This reminds me of Suresh Kalmadi's claim that India's Commonwealth Games was the best ever. Keep living in your dream world guys!
What about creating an "Indian Institute of Law" (IIL) with all the NLUs acting as branches of IIL? So we have the Bangalore branch, the Hyderabad branch...and the Assam branch.
Every student gets to study in 5 branches, 1 for each year. You get to travel a lot, network a lot and learn a lot from different people. Should be exciting?
The top CLAT rankers get to choose the 5 branches they'd like to study in. This will obviously require a huge administrative exercise and (more importantly) a uniform syllabus and course content.
I am worried that the feeling of being an alumni of a college might get lost; but then will it be cool if you are an alumni of IIL?
Agree that you would lose the benefits of the tight collegiality and college ties though (and the MPL would probably be dead in the water), although it could be offset by the additional networks one creates across 4 or 5 campuses.
Perhaps most realistically in the short term, what could work is if several of the top national law schools decided to offer optional exchange programmes between a few schools for say 10 students every year, as long as they meet certain academic requirements.
Those students could, for example, spend 1 (or in future more) years away from their home campus. As soon as you sign up, you would have to commit to go wherever the lottery told you to go.
The benefits are many, since it is voluntary.
1. It would allow students to give back.
2. It would spread best (and worst) practices throughout the national law school system.
3. It would be a great cultural and learning experience for the student, with good CV points, and it would increase their network of contacts.
You are right about the curriculum though - but I do believe that the BCI has that on their agenda...
You are either naive or dishonest. Do you really believe that foreign law firms don't want to open an office in the world's tenth largest and second fastet growing economy? And they will obviously claim that they have no intention to poach, otherwise SILF will go crazy and do a Baba Ramdev-style rally at Ramlila maidan!
I see your point but I think it's more complicated.
Most foreign firms would initially have a hard time in India and would presumably target only the big ticket work at which they can try to bill at rates comparable to London.
At the moment there is not a huge amount of big ticket M&A work around in India, and the big firms in India do have that market sewn up fairly well.
So a foreign firm that entered in the short term would likely build a very lean team that could get try and pick up the top work and do it profitably by charging billing rates closer to London or the US, so the local partners could integrate into existing locksteps.
Firms such as Talwar Thakore or Platinum close to UK firms clearly follow such a strategy. Those firms are not the largest recruiters at the moment.
Something similar happened in the London market, for example, when US firms came in. Unless they merged with a local player, most US firms did not take more than a handful of graduates to start with. They built lean outfits to support their overseas office. They did pay very large pay packages, which forced the rest of the market to up their rates to compete, but a US law firm job in London back in the day (and still to an extent today) was hard to come by.
Unless they merged with a large domestic firm, the Magic Circle would therefore not look to build a 400 lawyer office anytime soon, even if they were allowed.
In the longer term, however, I agree that more jobs for juniors would be created by the foreign firms, if they manage to make their offices here work.
Smaller international firms - perhaps some of them may have more interest in opening up here. Again, however, it won't be a swathe of them but they would likely trickle in by ones and twos and set up fairly niche practices.
Perhaps I have the wrong perception here and would be interested to hear your views, but dishonesty is not at work.
Best
Kian
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