Beautiful post. Typing's perfectly clean, far as I can make out (am blind, using a screen reader, so perhaps some things I am missing). But the substance is what matters. And the substance is that you have given a very comprehensive, though not an exhaustive, list of different types of bad managers.

I have been in this profession for about 10 or more years now. Something I absolutely hate are lazy bosses. I think if you look at totally anecdotal statistics, the bad bosses outnumber the good ones 10:1. These guys and girls, make many a brilliant minds leave the practice. Make work environments toxic, cause divorces, health issues, and god knows what else.

If you are a junior (1-4 PQE) and have a lazy boss, who has the qualities I will list below, run, run for your life. Get another job, change teams, but do not be their associate.

(a) Lazy Instructions - One of the biggest red flags. They will give you half assed instructions, without context, without information without proper briefing - despite them having the knowledge that you may have never done it before or do not have experience in something. For eg. One fine day, your boss calls you and tells you to review an ISDA Agreement and cuts the call, but you are an IPR Lawyer.

(b) Expects you to do all the work - I mean I understand the youngsters are supposed to do the grunt work, but if you are a partner, you ought to work bro, not expect everything on a silver platter, perfectly plated and served to you, so that you can just put your sign on the platter and serve it to the client. This is especially present in very young partners.

(c) Is a passive aggressive whiner - I had this one boss who used to be passive aggressive. He used to send long whiny texts on WhatsApp or an email at the end of the day for any mistake that I would make. These texts would be very hurtful, and sometimes he would make personal judgments, now I realise he was just projecting his insecurities. This sort of person is a pain to work with, because they will never accept any fault of theirs. Everything will be your fault. You will have to take the fall for many of their faults. He will tell the client, my associate XYZ fucked up. Mine did, when I was just 1 PQE.

(d) Has a target on someone's back in the office - If you notice that your boss targets one person in the team repeatedly. Like shout at them, berate them in person or email, just targets them for the smallest of things which are forgiven for others. Be on notice. They will come to target you eventually. It will happen. Until the day you quit, like the previous guy who was harassed. I don't understand the psychology behind it, but that's but I have seen this happen multiple times. I don't know if its a churn and burn strategy or just plain inability to regulate one's emotions.

(e) Absentee Boss - If you partner rarely comes to office or comes in very late - in the afternoon or evenings without good reason. Then yeah, summarily disqualify them from every becoming your boss. Because you will have to end up managing a lot of fires yourself, clients will harass you for deliverables. Which your boss hasn't properly reviewed, or reviewed at all, because they were sleeping in or doing something illicit or being a drunk or partaking in a hobby. Whatever maybe the reason, if your boss is absent when there are fires, or fires are caused due to their absence, client deliverables are delayed because they wanted to take a sudden unplanned trip. Say your goodbyes, because this will keep happening. And you will be thrown under the bus. Remember, this advice is for those between 1-5 PQE, of course this is subjective and depends on the context and matter. A 1 PQE can't be left to manage client expectations and deliverables when the Boss is AWOL. Similarly, a 5 PQE can't be left managing regulatory issues when the boss is unreachable for a silly reason.

(f) Lack of Mentorship - This is my biggest red flag in a boss for a junior. And lord knows I have faced this, and it caused me a lot of pain in terms of slow progress, exposure, training and knowledge. Any boss in this profession who sees a junior as a resource that does not need input, but like an AI bot that comes ready made with skills is not fit to lead others. These people forget that a person graduating from a law school is not a lawyer, he has just studied the law, not lawyering. It takes patience, training, nurturing and a whole fucking lot of mentoring to make a law graduate a lawyer, who has the skills of a lawyer.

When you are a graduate, you don't know what needs to be looked at in a contract, that comes with experience, which is very practice area specific, you don't know what the court does in practice. Some of these people need to marinate in this information, because, some even after 15-17 years in practice don't seem to understand it.

My then boss who used to think like this destroyed my confidence completely. It took me a while to gain it back. I realised what an incompetent fool that man was.

(g) Inability to handle and deflect pressure - If you are a boss, and a small unreasonable stinker or demand from a client comes in and you lose your shit or panic and move the deadline to 3 am in the morning from the day after, then fuck you. Really fuck you. Your job is to deal with the clients, and the senior partners and keep your juniors away from that pressure, if you can't do that, then why are you even in this position? Let the junior handle the client and the senior partners. While you're at it, please leave the building and the firm. This applies especially to Principal Associates, Counsels or whatever they are called nowadays.

(h) The Screaming Banshee - There are some bosses who like to scream and be mean for no particular reason, after doing all the above, they will scream at you as if you were the one at fault all the time. The Screaming Banshee boss is almost always accompanied by a junior minion who behaves in a similar manner. This junior most probably has been mentored to be a mean screaming banshee too. So that the load of the screaming doesn't completely fall on the senior banshee. Sometimes they will both gang up and scream at you. They are best ignored. I had the misfortune of having such a boss who was a combination of all the above bosses.

Sorry for the dirty typing, I typed on notepad on the phone and ctrl c + ctrl v ed it. Ciao.

I think this is a very privileged take to have. I understand some may not need it, but i also know the world it opened up for a lot of people. A large part of NLUs are also students from middle class backgrounds, whose parents might be able to afford but it would also come at huge sacrifices. The sheer opportunities and doors that it opens up for someone without having to worry about the financial burden is incredible

You can find several legal AIs in the market catered to each industry. For instance, Lucio is generally much more effective for corporate law practice (due diligence, redlining, general legal research). Litigators would much rather find Lawberry useful (for judgement- based research, litigation management, chat with docs, etc). Source: been in legaltech for the past 5 years.

So.. I kid you not.

I used to date a girl in school and junior college. We broke up around the time I joined law school.

She later went on to do Bsc. Nursing worked as a Nurse in a large Mumbai hospital for some years.

Last week I came across her profile on a social media platform. And I saw that she had moved to London to work as a nurse under the NHS, and then later got married to a guy who also is an allied healthcare dude, along the lines of a nurse.

Now I got curious and did a little stalking and some research. Per mine and AI estimates, the couple together makes 135k+ GBP per year. With pension, with a lot of time to spare, WLB. Max 50 hours a week with extra work. 37.5 with only NHS work.

They can buy a 550k house on mortgage comfortably at this point in time. And also have money for an okayish BMW because it's only 7 months of their savings.

And in INR terms still have savings of 3+ Lakhs per month. That they can invest in India.

You as a corporate law partner can max have a sea facing house in Mumbai. But they can invest in a 4bhk house in London or some other city.

To match their current earnings and lifestyle as an Indian you'd need to earn a profit, of 1.5 crores per year, assuming you're a businessman. Meaning a turnover of 8-12 cr with healthy profit margin.

Don't, as long as you are not directly being harmed by it. Just put your head down and carry on, and collect evidence for later. If you are being harmed, then leave after a period (after having collected evidence), and join some place else. Once you are in a stable position, name and shame, with videos and photographs to prove it.

Pays exceptionally well for a disputes team. In any event, irrespective of how things are why does anyone care about “what the work is like” when trying to get into a tier 1 firm? There are thousands of more interesting jobs or hundreds of counsels or lit practices that have more I diverse work.

All disputes teams across every firm have some niche or the other and in most cases they grow boring and repetitive. That’s how these teams can pay out so well because they can churn out a ton of work because of the nature of repeat games. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that any other team is better or for that matter worse. It’s all the same. Please leave these juvenile questions aside and ask yourself where you are placed socially and economically and then take a decision that gives you the best of both.

If money isn’t a concern

i have a info of a few-

1. kco bombay cap marks - 2 (1 nalsar, 1 nujs)

2. cam - 1 nliu and 2 more

3. spice route blr - 1 (nujs)

4. kco bom (competition)- 1 slsp

5. kco del (competition) - 1 nujs

6. azb bom (competition) - sad to hear what happened but it is a fact (jgls)

7. saraf bombay - 1 nlud

8. saraf delhi - 1 nujs

I am an A2 at a T1 currently. I am looking to move laterally, since I will be moving cities soon. Any M&A/GC teams in NCR that are not half bad (i.e., no screaming, non-toxic seniors)? Don't mind the workload as long as I get some sleep, most nights. I have just been hearing terrible things about the market on the grapevine - so any input is appreciated. Slightly wary about pool systems in general, though.

Got an internship offer from Naik Naik & Co. for May. Since I’m in my final semester, I had asked them if there are any openings and whether the internship could convert into a retainership, but haven’t heard back yet.

Would really appreciate any insights on their work culture and what freshers are typically paid.

I have secured a litigation internship at Trilegal for the month of May, and I am looking for guidance on how best to prepare beforehand. Having completed two years of law school, I understand that my knowledge may not yet be as advanced as that of a fifth-year student or someone with more practical exposure. However, I am confident in my research skills and eager to learn.

I would really appreciate any advice on how to prepare effectively, as well as insights or experiences from previous interns that could help me make the most of this opportunity.

Selection on juniors on merit ❌

Assessing memos objectively ❌

Attention to citations and correct format ❌

Preference to friends and chelas ✅

Bonus marks for sucking up ✅

Preference to kids from elite backgrounds ✅

Preference to good-looking and fair junior girls ✅

Overlooking correctness of citations ✅

Yes, it's true.

So play the cards you are dealt with, till the time you don't become a dealer yourself. Spend your energy to become dealer, instead of cribbing about cards. That would be the best way to achieve what you want. Btw, despite the undercutting from lalas, new firms keep on coming and grow to thriving stages. Be the best what you can and who knows, one day, you would be the lala who would be cribbed about here (since you can never satisfy everyone).

No. Ironically, the freshers apparently earned way more in bonus than the A1s (now A2s) because of the guaranteed payout for clearing AIBE and probation (seriously, just why?). While their increment was low in terms of percentage, their fixed was higher than what A0s were getting the year before, so the firm just balanced it out the next year to meet what A1s were already getting.

Pretty pathetic that this happened really. No one deserves money to clear AIBE or probation.