Law Schools

Jindal Global Law School’s debut 5-year-LLB class secured 57 jobs for its 83 graduates this year, including 12 Big Six law firm jobs.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) plans to fix a maximum limit on the number of law schools that can be started in each state of India, in a move to curb the growth of law schools with bad infrastructure adding to the already standing 1,200 law schools in India.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) plans to double the inspection fee for national law universities and law schools in metropolitan cities to Rs 3 lakh, while keeping the amount constant at Rs 1.5 lakh for other law schools.

NLSIU Bangalore and Nalsar Hyderabad final year LLB students Mansi Sood and Sanya Samtani are, respectively, among nearly 85 scholars selected by the Rhodes trust, for its Oxford University class of 2015.

A Delhi University sociology student and one economics student and one Bangalore medical student are the other Indians selected for the class. The five Indian's who have made it to this year's Rhodes class include four women.

Samtani’s profile on Oxford’s website states:

“Her primary area of interest lies at the intersection of public international law, constitutional law and critical theory. Having been a teaching assistant for public international law and constitutional law, she envisages a career in academia. Whilst in NALSAR, she served as senior editor of the NALSAR Student Law Review; editor of the Indian Journal of Intellectual Property Law, having edited a special issue on the Global South, and student editor of ILSA's International and Comparative Law Quarterly. Furthermore, she has been on the organizing committees of the NALSAR Film Festival and the NALSAR Inter Varsity Debating Championship.”

Sood's profile on the website states:

"Her interest lies in commercial law, with a primary focus on arbitration and intellectual property law. Currently serving as the Chief Editor of the National Law School of India Review, Mansi has helped in organising the Annual Symposium for the past three years. She has participated in several national and international moot court competitions and recently won the 5th International ADR Mooting Competition at Hong Kong. Besides mooting, Mansi also enjoys parliamentary debating and writing. A trained Kathak dancer, she likes to play sports, particularly badminton."

Last year law students from NLSIU and NUJS Kolkata won the Rhodes.

Hat-tip to Lawctopus for first breaking the news.

EDIT 1 December 2014: Due to an incomplete list of profiles uploaded earlier on the Rhodes class link, this story had erroneously stated that only three Indians - all women - were selected for the class of 2015. This has now been corrected.

NLU Delhi students are currently debating introducing buffalo and pork meat in its mess food menu, after the mess committee proposed the move for “diversity” in the menu, and invited student comments.

The law school’s unofficial student newspaper Glasnost states in a post from yesterday:

In a historic and bold move, the student run Mess committee is considering offering Buff (Buffalo meat) and Pork on the menu. They announced it in an email to the student body yesterday, in which they recognised it to be a contentious issue and invited opinions and objections from the students. The Mess committee in a later email stated that this move was intended to increase diversity in the menu to cater to the needs of everyone on campus. This started a lively debate with heated opinions, the email thread hit a century within a few hours. While many students responded with shouts of joy and expressed complete support, some opposed the move strongly, including threatening to leave the common Mess.

Hat-tip to Lawctopus which first reported the news.

Shamnad Basheer has won the Infosys Science Foundation 2014 prize in the humanities category today.

The former NUJS Kolkata MHRD chair professor for intellectual property (IP), founder of the Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access (IDIA) initiative and the SpicyIP blog, was awarded the prize “for his contributions to the analysis of a range of legal issues, including pharmaceutical patent injunctions and enforcement”, according to Infosys’ press release.

He has in recent years been involved in the Novartis-Glivec patent case in the Supreme Court, as an academic intervenor, and in the Delhi University textbook photocopying case.

The prize, conferred on individuals in six categories, consists of a purse of Rs 55 Lakhs, a 22 karat gold medal and a citation certificate for each category. Nobel prize laureate Amartya Sen was on the six-person jury for the prize in the humanities category. In previous years the prizes have been won mostly by academics and professors.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) yesterday notified Delhi University that it’s graduates would be allowed to enroll provisionally as lawyers, in a letter sent under the BCI’s previous chairman Biri Singh Sinsinwar, who was replaced on Saturday by his predecessor Manan Kumar Mishra, reported the PTI.

The letter signed by the BCI secretary said that enrolment would be provisional pending the decision of the BCI’s legal education committee and the BCI’s upcoming executive meeting, after the BCI had decided to derecognise DU’s three law centres in September.

Supreme Court justices SJ Mukhopadhaya and NV Ramana have set aside declined to interfere with a Calcutta high court order that declined to cancel the bail of former NUJS Kolkata assistant registrar Siddhartha Guha, who is accused of having sexually harassed another staff member at the college, reported the Times of India.

Correction: We understand that the Times of India story was erreneous and we regret republishing their report. The Supreme Court did not interfere with the lower court's order, but said on 11 November:

There is nothing on record to suggest that the petitioner brought to the notice of the High Court that the accused/Respondent No.2-Siddhartha Guha who has been granted bail is threatening the petitioner. In that view of the matter, we are not inclined to interfere with the impugned order refusing cancellation of bail but give liberty to the petitioner to move before the High Court for cancellation of bail, in case of threat given by accused-respondent No.2. If any such petition is filed for cancellation of bail on the ground of threat given by the accused respondent NO.2, the Court may consider the same uninfluenced by the earlier order passed by the High Court or this Court.

The alleged victim, represented by advocates Siddharth Dave and Phiroze Edulji, alleged before the apex court that Guha had threatened her with an acid attack, as set out in a police complaint. The Supreme Court told her to approach the high court with evidence of why Guha should not be granted bail.

Nalsar Hyderabad performed better than all national law schools, including NLSIU Bangalore, in finding placements for its 2013-14 graduates of its class of 2014, according to Legally India’s new rating of law schools recruitment results.

IDIA diversity initiative scholar and NUJS Kolkata third-year student Shivam was selected to represent the law school at the 12th William C Vis (East) International Commercial Arbitration Moot, after he secured the third rank in NUJS’ intra university moot selection rounds.

Having represented NUJS at the 24^th Manfred Lachs Space moot last year Shivam was lauded on the IDIA’s website as “one of the most promising IDIA Scholars”.

IDIA has requested for sponsorship for him since the expenses for his participation at the moot, which is scheduled for 15 March, will run up to an estimated Rs 1,50,000.

The Delhi University (DU) has submitted a proposal to the Delhi high court for construction of a single campus for the three law schools under its umbrella that are currently operating from separate buildings, reported The Hindu and others. 

The new building, 75 per cent of which is allegedly ready, will house DU’s three law centres — Campus Law Centre, Law Centre-I and Law Centre-II — adjacent to the faculty of law on the North Campus, next academic session onward.

When a seven-member Bar Council of India (BCI) team visited the law centres for inspection on Tuesday, the Delhi University Students’ Union presented it with a memorandum demanding better infrastructure.

The BCI inspection was pursuant to the university’s application for re-affiliation filed with the BCI after the regulator ordered the rejection of advocate enrolment applications of recent graduates of the university.

The BCI had similarly cracked down on Osmania University and forbade its graduates from enrolling as advocates after the university protested the Rs 1.5 lakh inspection fee demanded by the regulator.