Blawg-osphere
Back in school we’d done our share of campaigns relating to various social causes which generally dealt with awareness building among our fellow students. Interning at an NGO was my first hands-on experience on dealing with societal problems. Though my job mainly included analyzing data and making reports, it also gave me an insight into how these institutions work and more importantly the extent of their impact on the society. Also, since I was away from home for the first time in life, it was quite an experience handling stuff on my own. One day, I had to get some official documents verified at a public office and the official demanded a bribe. It was a petty amount but it sure got me riled up and I got into an argument with the officer. Eventually I didn’t have to pay in the end but it was quite an experience for me, especially when the request was so frank and my so very utterly helpless feeling.
In fact, a 2005 study done by Transparency International (TI) in India found that more than 50% of the people had firsthand experience of paying bribe or peddling influence to get a job done in a public office. Several NGOs fighting this disease have sprung up. Collectively they’ve succeeded to a certain extent in bringing about a change in the attitude and mindset of the people. The RTI has empowered the common man to legally question the tasks performed by a public office. The onus is on the citizen now and his cause needn’t be taken up by an NGO. I believe in change at a grass root level. And it doesn’t always have to be initiated by those at the top of the ladder. The 5th Pillar, an international NGO with the Indian HQ in Chennai has a unique concept of ‘zero pay for public services’. You may think about the futility of this very obvious statement but have a look at the zero rupee note right below.
Zero rupee note- A social ally
When a public servant encounters a common man thrusting this note towards him, it becomes a mark of silent protest and an assertion of the fact that he is aware and can’t be exploited. More importantly, people are willing to use the note. The NGO has opened up a path that can pave the way for relatively simple ideas like the zero rupee notes to turn into a powerful social statement against petty corruption.
For more information, check out their official website-http://india.5thpillar.org/
Blawg-osphere
The name is Popat…LegalPopat! After a hard day’s of work, I don’t mind it either shaken or stirred.
Who are you? : I am a lawyer at a leading law firm in India. A friendly neighborhood ass-0-ciate.Every partners dread and every associates weapon, your darkest side- that’s LegalPopat!
Why are you shrouded? – I obviously love my job and love the money which follows even more. I am not giving it up for you guys.
So what is your blog about? – A “frank blog” is how I would term it. A blog on everything law, non law, love, sex, pornography, casting couch and ouch!
This being the first post…I say the mandatory “hello” to all the LegallyIndia readers. I shall try squeeze in a post at least once every week.
Peace
LP!
Blawg-osphere
KK Luthra Memorial International Criminal Law
It all started on 7th November 2009 when after ranking 3rd in the Intra-College selection rounds of National Law University, New Delhi, i was selected for the KK Luthra Memorial Criminal Law Moot Court, 2010, which happens to be the the very first moot on International Criminal Law, to be held in India, with 48 teams participating including Cambridge University and team from Pakistan. It was conducted by Campus Law Center, Delhi University.
I had previously participated in a no. of Model UN Conferences, especially in Security Councils, so I already had an inherent interest in Human rights and matters of International Humanitarian Law. This years moot problem was based on the crime of Genocide in a certain country, which had domestic laws similar to that of India, and the applicable statute was that of the UNICTR. To summarize the factual matrix: It was a medley of the Genocide in Rwanda, Yugoslavia, the Godhra-riots, Sikh-riots, and The Bombay Riots. All in all it was a well-balanced and compelling problem, wherein the accused, the CM of a State, was convicted by the trial chamber of an International Tribunal, set up in his home country, and the moot was to take place in the Appeals Chamber.
My Team comprised of myself as the 1st speaker, Aditya Sharma as 2nd Speaker and Mohit Sharma as researcher. We first of all started, by reading and re-reading the entire problem and critically analyzing and interpreting factual issues. The best way to do this is to keep writing your interpretations of each fact, for both the Appellants and the Respondents side simultaneously. After having sufficiently internalized the factual situation, we started drawing parallels to similar factual situations as stated above. After further research on each precedent, we shortlisted ones which closely resembled the given factual matrix. Then we turned to case law on the these factual situations. The International Tribunal judgments proved very useful in this regard, since they contained an in depth discussion of arguments from either sides, and discussion of past -precedents. This helped us divide legal arguments from each sides perspective. To brush up our knowledge on International Criminal Law, we referred to several manuals of the same subject. The late night heated discussions on applicable law and interpretations and countless cups of coffee, are a sweet reminder of the beautiful experience that mooting is.
This brings us to the second stage, the memorial writing stage. We visited the ISIL library, which is right in front of the Supreme Court, and got hold of a no. of books and texts on specific sub-issues involved like jurisdiction, crimes against humanity , Joint criminal enterprise, instigation etc. We then turned to writing arguments, having with us piles of photocopies, random notes taken during discussions, criminal law manuals etc. We had divided the five issues in question between the three of us, depending on who has a better grasp of it. The writing of the memorial went right into the night till dawn. It took us around 7-8 days to finish the memorial from the day we actually started writing. The result, after printing and spiral bindings was far from perfect containing several un-avoidable typographical errors due to last minute hassles. But that didn't end up being an impediment in securing us the 4th Highest marks in the memorial 30.5/ 40, the winning team had 32 Marks. Preparation for the oral pleadings was spread over 5 days, which included reading the memo several times. The actual pleading included a single piece of paper containing an authority cheat sheet, with the footnote no and page no. of the authority in the memo. This proved to be quite useful especially during the grilling questions posed by the judges. We had quite a memorable stay at the DU hostel, details of which are a story for another day. During the inaugural ceremony we met with legal stalwarts like Siddhartha Luthra, who happens to be an extremely humble and a gregarious human being. He took personal interest in each team and asked for feedback and other inputs. We also met with other teams we had met at the ISIL library, who were equally nervous about the next day event. The first day ended with an exchange of memorials, and we spent the night taking apart the memorials for both the prelim rounds, which really made us feel like real lawyers, reminding of the scene from A FEW GOOD MEN,the one with the day before trial.
We were scheduled for the Session-II prelims, so the morning was spent frantically cross-referencing and revising arguments. We were the respondents in the first round, and it turned out to be quite an easy affair, considering the Appellants had erred on several points of law and fact. We won that round by a margin of 120 marks(A=309, R=430), which really boosted our confidence. The second round was comparatively easy with the judges being quite passive, and less inquisitive. We won that round with a margin of 110(A=460, R=350). Soon afterwards, we were told that we have made it to the Top 8 teams, based on our memo scores, since there were 13 teams with 2 wins each. The teams that lost out in the prelims were Cambridge University, NLIU bhopal and NUJS. We were pitted against 3rd and 4th year students from NALSAR in the quarter finals, which eventually won the Best Speaker and Runners-up award. The quarter-finals had a set of extremely talented judges who mostly tested your general knowledge of criminal and constitutional issues, rather than on main issue. One of the judges, who seemed like an accomplished trial lawyer, asked questions(many of them leading) as one would cross-examine a witnesses and ultimately make you say something which in retrospect would seem quite incorrect. Since, the quarters took place at around 9 in the night, the judge were very hostile and testy. All in all, to prevail in the quarter finals one requires an in depth knowledge of all areas of law, in depth knowledge of basic fundamentals, and presence of mind which comes only from experience. We lost to NALSAR with a margin of 20 marks. The biggest consolation, was that just before the results came out, the opposing counsel came up to me, and said: ''It's gonna be really close, you guys very confident up there, and we screwed up really bad! Which year are you in?"
First Year. The look on his face after my response, and the compliments that followed, are one of the best memories of that moot. The judges from that round also congratulated us on our convincing abilities, including Mr. Siddhartha Luthra himself. Even though, my journey into my first moot has ended, i went to Indian Habitat Center the next day, to witness some stellar mooting from the GLC team, who very clearly very experienced and much better grasp of the legal issues in question. The first speaker, was so confident that he even evoked a couple good laughs from the presiding Delhi High Court Judges, from his witty retorts.
All in all, this was one my most memorable in my still short but quite eventful life in law school, promising a great many more in the next 4 and a half years. I would like to thank our mentor Mr. Apar Gupta, who in my belief is one of the best mooter i have come across. Thank you Apar, for taking time out of your busy schedule and spending time with, and providing us with those useful nuggets, that made our experience all the more enriching. I would also like to thank my team mates Aditya, for his un-ending arguments, Mohit, for being an emotional and moral supporter through this ordeal, The Registrar, the VC and the librarian for providing us any books we needed for an indefinite period, and finally my fellow students at NLU, Delhi who constantly counselled and motivated me.
Blawg-osphere
An Indian law student has taken up the baton to defend Indian legal process outsourcing (LPO) against an onslaught of anti-Indian-lawyer comments on self-styled US legal tabloid AboveTheLaw.
Although the majority of comments on ATL are intentionally offensive and ironic, it has been a while since anybody has stood up for Indian Law Inc.
Indian guest commenter writes:
"As an Indian law student, I've had a good time reading some of the comments above.
Firstly - Suck it up. Okay, we get it. Some of you are pissed off, you're losing your jobs / work. But - your rant on a blog is hardly productive. Your time is better spent moving along and exploring ways to be more efficient with whatever work you have left. Until then, yes. You're going to keep getting your ass whooped by a 24 year old law student.
Secondly - Considering all the hostility directed towards the Indian lawyers - you should know that we are pretty good at what we do. The steadily increasing number of trainee-level recruits to your bigger firms from our law schools should also tell you something. It would be heartwarming to see you try and not pretend otherwise.
Thirdly - We don't give a shit. There's enough work for us Indian lawyers. With a booming domestic market, we have enough work to keep us occupied. What you should really be thinking is - if your firms are looking to come and give us work - outside of the "economic rationality" which has already been spoken about, it must mean that we're doing something right? Also, as for the "economic rationality" itself, most Indian firms pay pretty handsomely. It's just that the work that the LPOs are taking on - well, even the low - mid level associates can take on that work.
Well said.
But it still makes me wonder - why exactly is there so much animosity towards Indian lawyers doing US work for a fraction of the price?
Surely, it is nothing new and the business model and demand are now beyond question. So when will US lawyers face up to market realities instead of sticking their head in the sand?
Blawg-osphere
Read about all the important changes in Indian corporate laws in the past year, in this comprehensive round-up of the latest laws and regulations by the as-ever excellent Indian Corporate Law Blog.
Covering everything from LLPs, Satyam-fallout-related changes in corporate governance, SEBI reforms, the Takeover Code and M&A, exchange controls, taxation and commercial arbitration.
A little something for everyone in a corporate law firm, in short.
Happy New Year!
Blawg-osphere
Many law firms would probably pay consultants an arm and a leg for this advice. Inspired by FoxMandal Delhi's recent cash flow woes, regular Legally India commenter Legal Dodo posted an interesting list for law firms to save money. For free!
While Legal Dodo is happy to admit that some of these points are obvious and may not necessarily apply to every law firm, his/her points are nevertheless worth thinking about:
"Here are some random thoughts/tips on cost cutting. They are in no particular order of priority and may not necessarily apply in every situation. Some of them are borne out of experience. Of course - some are very obvious.
1) Assess all the infrastructure you are using - especially the real property. Do you own excess space? Have you leased excess space? If yes, ensure that all your staff work together. Keep the excess space unoccupied. This helps save electricity costs. If you use air-conditioning - believe me - the savings can be substantial.
2) In case you are paying an above average rent for the space you are
occupying, negotiate with your landlord for a downward revision of the rent. After the recent global meltdown, there are hundreds of office spaces lying vacant.
Your landlord will be put on the defensive and is likely to accede to your request, especially if you threaten to vacate.
3) Alternatively, negotiate for a right to sub-let. If you have excess space and your growth plans are not as aggressive as they were when you first leased your office space, short-term sub-letting makes a lot of sense.
4) Is your office located on a main road in a prime business location? If yes - then reconsider whether it makes sense continuing from there. For a law firm, such a location offers little advantage. Consider shifting into a suburb or into an office off the main road. Rents are considerably lesser in these areas. Perhaps, your staff's efficiency may also increase.
4) Do you have multiple telephone connections (landlines) or multiple
Internet connections? If so, it makes sense to cut down on them.
5) If your office has good ventilation and natural lighting, consider making optimum use of the natural air and light. This could help cut down your electricity consumption.
6) Cut down on your marketing and promotional spending. Avoid sponsoring seminars, conferences, moot-courts, local-events and/or business-round-tables.
In my experience, these are a colossal waste of time and money.
7) Similarly, stop attending such seminars, conferences or other events, especially if you have to pay through your nose for it. If you are invited, and do not want to miss out on the networking opportunity, offer to speak at the conference. Often, organizers are short of speakers. If so, they will be more than happy to
get a free speaker and perhaps may also give you a few free delegate passes, which you can share with your colleagues.
8) Avoid wasteful travel. If you have to travel, then do so and stay economically. Staying in five star hotels and commuting in expensive chauffeur driven cars burn a significant hole in your pocket. You can stay just as comfortably in good service apartments and save on transport by using city taxi. Avoid overnight stay, if possible.
9) Avoid expensive lunches/outings and/or throwing lavish parties.
10) Cut down on the freebies that you give to your staff. Do they have free telephones? Are they provided with expensive cars? Impose a limit on their telephone usage. Consider car pooling for the staff.
11) Cut down on your excess security and maintenance staff. Keep the minimum staff required to ensure security and cleanliness of the office. Invariably, these employees are sourced from a security or house keeping agency. Therefore, you are not firing anyone, and even better, they are not losing their jobs when you relieve the security and maintenance personnel of their duties.
12) Cut down on unnecessary subscriptions, especially foreign publications.
13) Hire interns, instead of fresh employees, for doing routine work or carrying out support functions.
14) Use Skype or e-mail to communicate and reduce telephone costs. Reduce stationary usage by printing only if you have to. Use both sides of paper while printing. For rough drafts, you can use the printer option to print multiple pages per sheet.
15) Cut down on giving corporate gifts.
16) Use the courier service only for important documents. For routine mails, use the postal service. It's much cheaper.
17) This is the most contentious point. Chop dead wood. In other words, identify the non performing staff and encourage them to leave. Almost every organization lands up making hiring mistakes and taking on people whom it should never have hired. Employees with an "entitlement culture," i.e. those who cannot look beyond their own nose, are the worst people to have around at any time, more so during an economic crisis. Such employees shirk work, avoid responsibility and mysteriously develop high fever or a severe tummy ache whenever a complex assignment crops up. They stop looking for work the moment they are employed.
Once employed, they are the first to approach the HR Department to ascertain how many sick leaves, casual leaves, paid leaves and national holidays they are entitled to. They expect hefty pay hikes every six months and fudge their time/work records to show how well they are performing. While at "work," they spend time chatting, surfing the net, taking long coffee and smoking breaks and complain about just anything they can complain about. Invariably, whatever little work they do requires to be entirely redone. Such employees are a big nuisance and extremely demoralizing to have around. It's a big mistake to consider them as "family" and put up with them. Invariably, they go around bad-mouthing the organization at every given opportunity. Such employees are perhaps the greatest liability any organization can have, especially a service oriented organization like a law firm, whose human capital is its greatest asset. It's wise to be diplomatic while doing away with such employees. Give them glowing recommendation letters, if necessary. Words are free. Won't you be glad that your worst performer lands up joining your rival?
As I mentioned earlier, these are just random thoughts. Constructive criticism welcome. Feel free to add to the list.
Legal Dodo."
And as requested, I'd like to add a couple of extra points to this very comprehensive list:
18) Institute reasonable pay-cuts. A lot less painful that outright lay-offs and a sensible option for unsustainable salaries that were pegged after blind competition in a boom market.
19) Introduce a part-time working option for employees who are interested for personal or other reasons. Someone on a four-day week will save a firm 20 per cent and if the employee is good they could end up managing their time more efficiently than a full-time employee. On the flipside, it can be a headache to manage from an HR and client service-level perspective.
20) Consider outsourcing your back-office operations (which is perhaps my most contentious point). Clifford Chance, for example, was targeting £8m (around Rs 60 crore) annual cost savings with its offshoring of document production (and now also paralegal fee-earners) to Gurgaon.
Please do add your ideas, suggestions and comments.
Blawg-osphere
Good news: no lawyers were laid off in US Biglaw last week - the first time since records began (this year). But how have Indian lawyers fared in the downturn?
US blawg Abovethelaw.com teamed up with fellow blawgers Lawshucks to produce a beautiful graph of number of lawyers retrenched versus time.
And lo-and-behold, a trend is clearly visible - lay-offs spiked heavily in March, then began dropping off gradually until this week, when for the first time this year all US lawyers apparently held on to their jobs.
Although the US economy and lawyers are unlikely to be out of the woods yet completely - almost 600 US lawyers still lost their jobs in July and the country overall saw an increase in initial jobless claims to 558,000 last week.
Nevertheless, in the US and UK, lawyers' jobs were amongst the first professions to get hit by the downturn, exhibiting as they do exposure and sensitivity to many sectors.
This could also mean they will be at the vanguard of the recovery.
In India, by contrast, retrenchment has often been talked about in hushed tones with many firms denying any took place whatsoever.
What has been your experience?
Blawg-osphere
A new university course offering a qualification in legal process outsourcing (LPO) has been launched in a barrage of acronyms.
The course is a joint venture between Indian legal training providers/recruiters Rainmaker and the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) School of Law.
The Rs.18,000 one-year on-line taught course is snappily entitled P.G.D.L.P.O. (or Post-Graduate Diploma in Legal Process Outsourcing, to give it its full name).
According to a press release published on LPO blog Legally Yours, the syllabus will cover: "Professional English Proficiency (“PEP”), Virtual Intelligence Methods (“VIM”), Legal Education and Proficiency (“LEAP”), Skills, Personal Effectiveness and Enterprise Development (“SPEED”)".
Catchy! (even though VIM's long-form is slightly confusing).
Apparently, according to the press release, 500 students have applied already for the first semester and the University is going to roll out a second intake in August to meet demand.
This programme could very well catch on and it could also be something that LPO providers facing high staff attrition have been clamouring for.
The main question will be whether law graduates will really be up for spending another year studying and losing themselves in an acronym jungle.
Photo by vlima.com
Blawg-osphere
Will limited liability partnerships (LLPs) actually work, asks Indian Corporate Law Blog, notwithstanding the recent tax changes.
Lead blawger V Umakanth uncovered an interesting academic paper analysising what the Limited Liability Partnership Act could actually mean in practice for lawyers.
One possible conclusion is that, hindered by the Indian Companies Act 1956, it in fact won't do anything to alleviate one of the main reasons for law firms to turn LLP in the first place: breaking through the technical 20 partner limit.
A commenter disagrees with the analysis and writes that the Indian Companies Act's section 11 provides "a carve out for associations 'formed in pursuance of some other Indian law'."
The "some other Indian law" in this case would presumably be the LLP Act, but it remains to be seen how lawyers will interpret (embrace?) the law.
Legally India has currently not had any luck accessing the original article directly (linked to from Indian Corporate Law), but will be sure to read it as soon as it is back on-line.
Blawg-osphere
Blawger Legally Infantile dishes out some choice legal advice to an old school colleague about being fined Rs 5,000 for getting caught cheating at exams.
Never mind that the school will allow him to remain at the school as well as retake the exam, the culprit now wants to sue the school.
Legally Infantile, being a sensible young corporate lawyer, tells him to go away. Somewhat politely.
Do you have any stories of relatives and old friends coming out of the woodworks asking for obscure legal advice, as soon as you qualified as a lawyer?
Were you able to help?
Blawg-osphere
If you were left behind by SEBI's whirlwind of activity last week do not fret: the Indian Corporate Law blog has a crash course in SEBI reforms.
Blawg-osphere
Indian blawg Law and Other Things posted a brilliant article dissecting the statutory framework that is being used to deprive suspected swine flu cases of their liberty. But, asks the blawg, is the Act actually fit for purpose?
Probably not: although swine flu is frightening and has reached global pandemic status, it is technically unlikely to be an epidemic in India and would thus not fall within the Epidemic Diseases Act 1897.
While some of the powers of the Act are suitably draconian to allow the state to deal with diseases serious enough to destroy it (although the maximum Rs 200 fine is unlikely to hurt much), does the 100-odd-year-old legislation leave public health officials defenceless against the virus until it is too late?
Blawg-osphere US legal blog Above the Law has published an in-depth interview with an Indian legal process outsourcing (LPO) company, providing a good insight into where LPO could take the US and UK legal markets in future.
Above the Law talked to Gururaj Potnis, the director of Manthan Legal, which claims "over 700 man-years of experience in the LPO industry".
Potnis said that US firms would have to wake up to LPO if they want to survive and offer value to clients. "Some law firms are just wanting to be blind," he told Above the Law. "There is a tremendous value potential. But people do not want to take an open view."
The business case he makes is sound on many fronts: clients will increasingly request low-level legal work to be outsourced, LPO can solve headaches for management such as underutilisation and high fixed costs, as well as keep the legal work-flow ticking over 24/7 – although one imagines many US white shoe firm associates already work almost as many hours in the week, or at least did, before the downturn.
In typically ironic, vociferous and often offensive fashion (you have been warned), Above the Law readers commented on the story in droves – currently the thread runs to 123 comments and counting.
They include the good ("Again, outsourcing is not a magic solution to every problem. But properly used, it can be a very useful tool."); the bad ("These Indian lawyers are helping to BURST THE BIGLAW BUBBLE!"); and the ugly (from a "parody of a xenophobic hick").
See today's story on Legally India about the Scottish, who see the future of Indian outsourcing in Scotland.