Hello,

Good to see you people taking an interest. But I would like to add two things:

1. Neither Legally India, iPleaders or BarHacker are in any way affiliated or connected to the BCI or Rainmaker. And unfortunately I highly doubt we will get a leaked question paper.

2. iPleaders and BarHacker is run by two bright, hard-working and enterprising NUJS students.

They had a great product and we decided Legally India would be a good place to spread awareness about it to some people for whom it may be useful.

We will tell you a bit more background about BarHacker and the philosophy soon.

In the meantime, feel free to give the mock exam a spin, it's quite fun and we are adding more content rapidly.

Best wishes,
Kian

Thanks for your comment but this post is clearly marked as a sponsored post in the title, as are other posts that are not editorial but commercial or advertising.

I have known the NUJS students for a long time but when in Kolkata I happened to chance across the material they had prepared, which I thought was an excellent idea and would be helpful to graduates who did not have time to study yet or were worried about passing the exam.

Legally India helped to build the product and was closely involved in launching the site and I think it is a great initiative and a wonderful product we are offering.

It may not be useful to everyone but why don't you try the free mock test and see if it works for you? And download one of the indexes for free - they really will come in very handy for the exam. And for the full course there is also a money back guarantee if you do not pass and we waive the course fees if grads are below the poverty line.

Look forward to hearing your feedback.

Best wishes,
Kian

Thanks for your comment.

I don't know whether it's necessary to go into this in detail but I think RM and LI are in quite different verticals, although inevitably sometimes overlap will occur since this is such a small market.

First off, Legally India was, is and will always be about independent and unbiased news and facts first and foremost, as best as we can manage.

Like other publications, however, Legally India too has to find a way of monetising its platform in order to enable the news portion to continue being independent and unbiased - journalism unfortunately does not pay for itself.

There are many commercial areas worth exploring in the Indian legal market and as long as they do not conflict with our first mission we will try to explore them, whether by ourselves, with partners or simply with advertisers.

In fact, I should add that Legally India and I personally have been offered a variety of commercial roles and ventures which would have conflicted with our news mission, and we have therefore turned them down.

By way of clarification, we do not offer recruitment but a jobs posting platform, like Monster or Naukri but more tailored. This has been running for close to a year now.

As for bar exam preparation we identified a clear need and demand for mock tests and instruction surrounding the bar exam. Since no one else was filling this need, what is the harm in using the Legally India platform to publicise this, help a few people and also making some money in the process?

Offering training services such as this does not pose a conflict for us since we generally do not report about training companies or other legal industry services providers (RM having been the exception since the Bar Exam became a topic of general and national importance, but even so we have never indulged in any "bashing").

I hope this explains things well and if you have any feedback about our strategy, please let me know anytime.

Best wishes,
Kian

Glad to see two sponsored posts on LI today.

At least, some revenue must come to LI to keep this wonderful portal going and becoming more and more strong and popular..inviting and involving even non-lawyers to the world of law.

I saw one of my IIT Bombay friend at LI and it was a pleasure.

Further, I am surprised, why Indian Legal Industry is not advertising adequately with LI which is arguably most popular legal portal today. I have already recommended LI to the management of my Institute. All good wishes Kian!

N.B. I strongly believe the Bar Exam is wholly unnecessary, forcibly imposed on young law graduates in an arbitrary manner and it must be scrapped for the benefit of one and all.

Thank you for your comment and for the introduction! It would be wonderful if all journalism could exist without any commercial pressures but I am glad some readers seem to understand and continue to trust us that we will try to do a good job.

@18 - I agree with your point. That is partly why we have an editorial policy not to write about study tools for example, unless in very rare cases.

The core target we write about are law firms and lawyers, not the dozens of products and services that are being sold to them. For one, it'd be boring, and second of all it'd be a potential conflict and more difficult to maintain independence as you rightly point out.

Our current policy therefore means that we shouldn't be facing any difficult decisions about whether to write about a potential competitor or not, because we simply don't write about those markets at all unless they are marked as sponsored posts.

Hope that makes sense.

Best wishes,
Kian

Hi - yes, it is 100% true, is not a gimmick and we fully intend to honour the money-back guarantee.

Make a free account on BarHacker for the full Terms & Conditions, which are very benign.

In a nutshell you need to contact us within 8 days of your failing the bar exam and we will send you a cheque for the course fees within 28 days. And you need to have taken pass two of the mock exams and downloaded our materials. That's it :-)

If we do not do this, I promise that you can take us to the consumer court! :-) Read our FAQs for more info:
www.legallyindia.com/barhacker/mod/resource/view.php?id=31

Best wishes,
Kian

Thanks #25, glad you like the material and the site!

We do strongly believe that the product will help the vast majority to pass.

@22 - yes, you are right. BarHacker is run by the same students who set up CLATHacker. They have not yet graduated but have produced courses for leading CLAT training institutes and have spent months poring over the Bar Exam materials and mock tests and analysed good strategies to pass it.

Best wishes,
Kian

Thanks for your comment. It does slightly amuse me how much some readers suspect conspiracy wherever they look with respect to the bar exam or legal profession.

I'll state again, just for the record, that Legally India is not in a tie-up with the BCI or RM. When we have tie-ups we disclose them transparently, just as we have done in the past, now and will do in future.

We have videos of RM on the site because they were interesting and publicly available on YouTube. Would we be in cahoots with the Times of India if we cite one of their articles or link to a blog or to an analyst report?

In terms of timing, sure we could have offered a course earlier but there were still doubts about the date of the exam and we hadn't thought of doing this tie-up with iPleaders yet, although they've had most of their materials ready.

In any case, the course is perfect for a few days study and I expect that many grads will have left it to the last minute anyway so this could be very useful.

Best wishes,
Kian

Nice one BarHacker - coming from two guys still in college, this is a commendable effort. I perused through the free preview for a bit and then decided to sign up for the paid course. Many thanks for the further discount Kian.
Haven't written an open book exam yet, and for those of you referring to your study materials now, i'm sure you'll find that managing and knowing where the answers are over twenty different subjects is quite a task. I'm hoping the indexes and videos help out considerably.

Just waiting for my account to be verified - i'll come back and post a review of the study materials tomorrow.

Props for the money back guarantee and the referral system too.

There are now a total of 14 indexes on the paid site since yesterday; as promised the rest of the indexes will go live tonight and tomorrow.

We have also uploaded additional mock tests and more! The course has been getting really good feedback by the way, which is nice!

Great job Ramanuj and Abhyudhay!

Best wishes
Kian

Hiya - you can actually pay by Visa and MC debit card, by cheque, demand draft or online transfer too...

Unfortunately the internet banking gateway would have taken 3 weeks to set up so it was not doable in time for the exam.

Call us if you have any questions on payment - check the BarHacker site for more details... If you really want to take the course and pay for it, we will make it possible for you!

Best wishes,
Kian

Hi - sorry about that - some debit cards do work on PayPal I believe... Please give me a call on 0900 405 6651 and we can arrange an alternative payment method if you like - I will still be up for a while.

Best,
Kian