Jindal Global Law School (JGLS) wants to redefine India's academic study of law. Its ambitions are high but so is the price of admission – the college has costlier tuition than any other major law school in the country.
Legally India has asked JGLS' founding dean and vice-chancellor of O.P. Jindal Global University to explain the law school's fees and its vision.
Professor C. Raj Kumar (pictured) has by all accounts been instrumental in creating JGLS out of nothing in less than two years.
With the muscle and roughly Rs 250 crore ($50m) of cash from steel tycoon Naveen Jindal, to whose late father O.P. Jindal the university is dedicated, JGLS now has a near-completed campus close to Delhi, a full roster of faculty and is due to receive its first batch of students in September.
Currently offering five-year and three-year LLBs, ultimately JGLS wants to include LLM programmes and doctorates, housing up to 2,000 students in total at the university at any one time.
There are more than 900 law schools in India and a large number are allegedly not performing - does India really need another private law school?
Kumar strongly believes so. He says that the creation of the national law schools in the late 80s was a "massive leap" forward for legal education and coupled with the liberalisation of the Indian economy in the 90s, this had made law an attractive career for young Indians for the first time.
In founding JGLS, Kumar hopes to continue this development and emulate and compete with US and UK law universities particularly on the academic front, where he feels that most law schools and Indian universities in other fields are currently ill equipped.
"We strongly believe that universities are knowledge institutions. They are not teaching institutions – although of course that should happen," says Kumar, "but there is a larger obligation to create knowledge."
He argues that you can not create knowledge without engaging in serious research, which requires faculty members who have the ability to "undertake research, publish it and go through a rigorous academic process and actually produce scholarship".
JGLS therefore worked hard to build up a faculty from top international universities and already launched the first issue of its annual JGLS Law Review.
This is a partial explanation for the 500+ applications the school received for only 140-odd places on its five-year LLB course, despite the institution's untested nature, its high price and relying on a bespoke admission test separate from the CLAT (Common Law Admission Test).
Money
JGLS professors receive around three to four times the remuneration of professors at national law schools, says Kumar. "We just don't believe that concept of supreme sacrifice which people can make to be in academia."
However, students pay for the privilege – the five-year course is Rs 5 lakhs ($10,500) per year, coming to an effective cost of Rs 6 lakhs ($12,500), according to Kumar. The three-year course costs even more, at up to around Rs 7 lakhs ($14,500) per annum all in.
This is around three times more than the most expensive national law schools, even leaving NUJS (National University of Juridicial Sciences) far behind, which is currently facing a battle with students over hiking its fees by up to 100 per cent to Rs 1.8 lakhs per annum.
However, JGLS receives no government funding and relies entirely on fees and investors. Nevertheless, break-even from just the tuition fees income is budgeted to happen in three years' time.
Is JGLS elitist as an exclusive preserve for the rich?
Kumar says: "Nowadays people have recognised that good education costs money and you have to invest in it." Law graduates' salaries have increased hugely, he explains, and at US law schools, whose standards of education JGLS hopes to match, the tuition fees can be ten times as high.
While he concedes that the fees could still price some students out of the programme, he says that JGLS has negotiated preferable terms with banks for student loans and the fees are guaranteed to be fixed for the duration of the course for each student.
JGLS also currently offers five scholarship schemes, although only one of these is currently means tested. Kumar hopes to attract law firms to sponsor a great number of endowments for students in future.
A number of law firms have currently signed memoranda of understandings (MOU) with the law school, pledging cooperation and support.
Gutted
A concern will be that large Indian firms will simply treat JGLS as their latest recruitment ground, depriving the Indian bar and academia of the best of its talent – which is one of the main bones of contention between the Bar Council of India and law firms.
Despite the word 'global' featuring prominently in the law school's name, international law firms could inflict even more damage on the Indian market as a whole by snapping up JGLS graduates for even larger pay packets.
Kumar makes it clear that he would be pleased if a large number of his future graduates were to do grassroots work, bolstered the voluntary sector or flowed back into academia.
"I believe we are letting 1,000 flowers bloom out there," he enthuses, "and when it comes to people's ideas they might themselves be persuaded to do something else other than corporate law."
However, evidencing a trait that has no doubt been useful in building a law school from scratch in record time, he remains ever the realist. Ultimately he wants his graduates to decide themselves what they want to do, he says, adding: "It is naturally a tendency for human beings to move where the money is."
If that holds true, Jindal could prove to be very popular indeed.
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also, even for nls's money is an important consideration, something known as "govt funding". This funding comes from the tax-payers money, paid by both the service class people and the rich. So what exactly is your argument? also, besides the govt funding there is an NRI quota, private sponsorships in certain events and the fee that they charge, which if you see is atleast Rs1 lakh pa.
Do you mean to say schools like JGLS or even law schools abroad, where people go and study and which are expensive, are only catering to rich kids..!!
Do yourself a favour. And just go to the website of JGLS. Please browse through the website and look at the tie-ups they have, the faculty's credentials, the programme, the intake, the infrastructure and the location. It has everything needed to be a top law school. I very much doubt that institutions like Harvard and Yale will tie up with any run of the mill institution, for it affects thei reputation also. And reputation or goodwill is what the ivy league institutions charge thousands of dollars for.
However, there is just one question, will the very best students go to JGLS? When someone qualifies through both the Big 3(NLSIU, NALSAR, NUJS) and JGLS, will they choose JGLS? I very much doubt it. Students like to stick with the tried and tested. And when you have institutions with a great track record like the aforementioned Big 3, the choice is made all the more easier.
I think the first 5 years will be crucial to JGLS's candidature as a credible institution at par with the NLSes. But, that being said, if it performs up to even a fraction of its potential, you're looking at the best law school India's ever had.
Based on your post, I happened to check out the faculty's credentials, tie-ups etc. I must say, leave alone being impressed, I am frankly disappointed- especially considering the "focusseed approach" towards getting the right faculty. Most of the faculty laid down do not have much experience (another understatement) and/or teaching experience in India.
Admittedly, the faculty needs time and will prove themselves. But, the same logic applies for the other National law schools where the alumni are getting back to teach. The lack of quality faculty is a problem faced across law schools in the country. What I dont see among the fanfare here at JGLS is the difference that they are making. Why should people pay such an exhorbitant amount for a law degree- on the basis of tie-ups (and none of the tie-ups have been crystallised yet). Surely not...I think any law school can create a "fancy dan" website and have tie-ups, but they till they prove themselves, they are the same. I note that you have rightly suggested a 5 year period at least before their pedigree is established.
Kian- i wished you had asked Prof. Raaj Kumar why JGLS opted out of the 3 year program that they were offering and have accomodated a 5 year program? This, I recall (and I could be wrong, though I doubt it), was done as the response to the 3 year program was not good (some sources from the field of legal education and I do trust these sources)- if this is the case, isnt this a clear pointer that JGLS is not all as well planned as being bandied around...
Also, may I request people to address the economics in the "bar vs. law firm" dispute? Can anyone please explain to the respected members of the bar that the reason why a lot of law grads from the law schools across the country work in law firms is because senior counsels dont PAY???? I wish that you had addressed this... "GUTTED" indeed would have looked a lot better, although you would have pissed off a lot of powerful people...
Look at it this way, the national law school grads have to pay an enormous fee (and higher for JGLS) to qualify for the bar and then are expected to rot without pay till you start making your money through your own clients!!! Akin to telling a software engineer, you get paid when you get projects into the company...this harsh truth is always left unspoken leading to breast beating from the members of the bar. Time to wake up to some reality. Why is it that the bar has never set up rules for treatment of apprentices/young lawyers by senior lawyers at the bar? Talk is cheap, paying juniors is not (why, god knows, considering each of these senior lawyers make lakhs per appearance).
I understand that there are only 20 students enrolled on the three-year course right now, vis-a-vis around 140 on the five-year course.
I recently got hold the copy of the inaugural issue of Jindal Global Law Review. It is absolutelyy fascinating. My immediate reaction was how could a Law School even before beginning its first academic session imagine to launch a journal. On closer reading of the journal, I noted that my view is shared by many people including the great jurist Professor Upendra Baxi who says, "Nevere before in India, and perhaps in the wider world of legal education, has a new law school commenced its existence with the publication of a learned journal..." There are many more people from India and abroad who haev amazing praise for the journal. It is indeed refresing that an academic institutiin is so obsessed with research and raising the standards of legal academia.
While I have all the admiration for Mr. Naveen Jindal and other academics who have established this University and Law School, there are serious challenges:
1. JGLS will have to examine ways to attract bright students regardless of their affordability into their school if they are serious about raising the standards of legal education;
2. JGLS needs to recognise that people in India may not be willing to pay for good education in India, even though the fact of the matter is that it is almost 10 times more epensive than JGLS to study at a mediocre law school in the USA;
3. While JGLS is playing such an amazing role in taking a lead role in conferences relating to terrorism, climate change, corporate governance and more recently global education, it needs to engage with the parents and indeed the larger society in India that its aspiration is to create the intellectual vibrance that prevails at Harvard, Yale and Stanford. The vision is so deeply inspiring, but I am not so sure how much of this vision is shared by the parents of students who will be joining at JGLS;
4. JGLS has to offer a lot more scholarships and fellowships and further expand its endowment plans so that the students from relatively less well off backgrounds can also apply to JGLS.
There is a lot more to say about JGLS, but at this point of time, I am most impressed with what these people have pulled off!
The fact that they jumped from a 3 year program to a 5 year program in double quick time is a serious worry to me, at least. Planning a 5 year program for me means the courses and curriculum have to be thought out. They have effectively squeezed the planning of an entire extra program spread over 5 years and supposed quality education in about 2-3 months or less...And if they can plan a journal out, surely this should have warranted a lot more time...
Surely, this does not augur for the quality of the courses. In all likelihood, they have aped the courses/system of the other National Law Schools. Then, I guess the only way to improve it is to have excellent faculty (to go ahead on the quality front)...which is the same situation that I believe that the other are in and I have already expressed my thoughts out in earlier post.
Mr. Sharma, obviously I don't agree with you...yet. The roadshows have been fantastic, but the real deal does seem to be quite short. They have done the right marketing things, but whether sufficient attention has been paid to the right stuff (the stuff which needs to be got right in the muck) remains to be seen. I hope that I completely wrong and hope to eat my words, but for all the ritz, there is not much to show yet.
I guess its easy for me say all this where I sit and type, but still...
At the same time let us do some introspection. In India education is a big business. Let us admit it. In the early 60s and 70 s we had typewriting and shorthand schools. Later we saw mushroom growth of Engineering colleges. Now we have in every village Nursing, Dental, Medicine and what not ... all courses availabe for a fees. All that one needs to do his to find out he right contat and fix the Capitation fees, Campus Improvement charges, donations etc. Some of the promotors of these academic institutions have dubious background.
In the case of legal education there is no need for laboratory, workshop and hence it is all the more easy.
Let us look back and assess the status of all these National Law Schools started with great ambition. Some of them have not even found proper shelter, class rooms, hostels and some have no good academicians in their faculty list. Some of them used the photos previous presiden,t who inagurated their schools in their prospectus and are marketing them.
Therefore it is too early to compare us with Harvard and Yale. Let us get down to business and revisit our present status !
Exactly. And to see that JGLS has managed their basic campus in less than a year,speaks volumes about their commitment!Especially considering a national like RGNUL which has been in the business for 4 years or so, is still functioning in its interim campus.
And I completely disagree about the faculty not being up to the mark. Even NUJS happens to have local faculty, that is, if you notice, most of them are Bengalis from Kolkata. Thus, it is pretty evident that the nationals haven't really gone out and out to get the best faculty.
As per the fact that JGLS hasn't managed to get the brightest students, apparently a lot of them in the current year have declined admissions to established Universities like Symbiosis and the lower rung Nationals to be at JGLS. This is information from a niece who has enrolled for this academic year.
JGLS had only 400-500 applicants out of whom 100 got in. So its a college for the wealthy only. Its just an average indian classroom at work at JGLS.
I remember when JGLS started it bandied LSAT as the CLAT killer, some even predicted that it would lead to the fourth gen legal education rev, but from past few yeras exp, it seems that JGLS has turned into one of the private collges with fantastic campus and ridiculously high price tag in the dustbowl of northern india.
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