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[Mod: such image does not seem to exist. But this is an interesting read on Tagore and Rakhi https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/art-and-culture/how-rabindranath-tagore-used-raksha-bandhan-as-means-to-prevent-1905-bengal-partition-4785042/ ]
SAN, we expect you will make a speech outlining what the future holds for those not in Tax and Trade - including the support staff. Please broadcast your speech to all ELP offices (including the NOIDA office) through a VC.
And re your point about CA firms, unlike your comments, number of CA firms have maintained a best friend relationship with law firms and vice versa. Look up other instances, by actually doing some work, instead making such comments which expose your lack of knowledge and understanding. Minds far more knowledgeable and experienced than you are would structure the deal so that the final structure is compliant with all regulations.
Let me repeat. Bar Council of India rules do not allow lawyers to partner with any non-lawyer, including CAs, just as Indian advocates are not allowed to partner with foreign attorneys or solicitors.
The two Co-Founders of ELP are prominent members of SILF which lobbies against the entry of law firms. ELP has been regularly contributing to SILF’s coffers so that SILF can resist the entry of foreign law firms. At the same time, ELP has been merrily hiring CAs, and not just in its Tax practice, but also in Trade.
By the way, we could use CAs in Corporate and Banking too, d’ya know?
I’m all for modifying BCI rules so that Indian advocates can partner with CAs and other professionals and also with foreign lawyers.
However, until the rules change, I would like to follow the law.
Come Diwali, once the 60% withheld bonus is in my bank account, I will leave ELP (God willing).
I assume the new law firm to be formed by the TnT partners, which will be controlled by Dhruva Advisors (in violation of BCI Rules) will also become a member of SILF and resist the entry of foreign law firms?
The Trade team includes qualified CAs as well. Welcome emails are sent for freshers too. Please don't spread misinformation or unnecessary negativity, ▮▮▮ ▮▮▮. (#iknowyou)
Also, who are you to drag AB CD through the mud? Just because you add a caveat at the end does not mean that the rest of your comment is dripping with derision at the mere thought of this lowly non-law CA entering the law firm you had to get a law degree to get in. Get real and grow up.
But less toxic workplaces also exist, it's all relative. Good luck on your journey!
I have escaped from a horrible team at CAM, ▮▮▮ (insane work pressure, weirdly toxic politics, and super moody partners) and am looking for new gigs. But all the recruiters in the market seem to be staffed to get hires for the most toxic teams in the market that hire all year long (understandable due to high attrition). And when I come to the lovely people of LI, I see that almost all of the teams and their partners have horrible reviews going for them.
I understand anonymity of LI might make people meaner and more critical, but more and more, it seems like finding a nice, sane team is a very utopian idea as either they don't exist, or are never hiring.
Would love to take your read on this!
(free beverages at Gokul {sorry utna hee budget hai} for actually referring or providing some nice leads).
Thanks :)
SBA
STATEMENT OF CONDEMNATION
We, the students of the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, unequivocally condemn the demonstrations organised at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on 21–22 August, 2026 under the banner of ‘Reservation Hatao Andolan’ against affirmative action policies guaranteed to members of marginalised caste backgrounds. The demonstration, as well as the actions of the attendees, contained numerous violations of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, and we call for appropriate action against the organisers and the errant participants who made casteist remarks.
The reservation system is an express constitutional mandate. Articles 15(4) and 15(5) permit the State to make special provisions for the advancement of socially and educationally backward classes, and for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, in matters of admission to educational institutions.
Articles 16(4), 16(4A), and 16(4B) extend the same principle to public employment, recognising that formal equality guaranteed under Articles 14 and 16(1) is insufficient where entire communities have been historically excluded from access to education, employment, and dignity. Moreover, the Supreme Court has time and again upheld the constitutional validity of reservation schemes.
However, we are very clear that Constitutional provisions will hardly suffice to explain the relevance of reservations for marginalised groups in the country since these protests, at their core, are anti-constitutional. It is, however, still pertinent to point out that these protests often seek to paint reservation as one of the primary hindrances to the ‘nation's development,’ the logic being that they somehow temper this country’s meritocracy. We do not seek to counter this flawed and casteist understanding of ‘merit’ through this statement. Scholarship on the same is quite accessible, and those who have convinced themselves otherwise are hardly going to change their minds after reading this statement.
Nevertheless, the complete lack of introspection bordering on hypocrisy on the part of groups and individuals who level such allegations against provisions reflect the hegemony of upper caste savarna individuals over almost all political, bureaucratic, academic, economic, and cultural spaces in this country and still having the short-sightedness to pin the blame of all of this on reservations which empirically affect only about five percent of educational and job opportunities in this country. This is the fundamental dishonesty at the heart of the Reservation Hatao Andolan. It treats reservation as though it were an aberration imposed on an otherwise level playing field, rather than a modest and partial correction to a playing field that remains tilted in ways its beneficiaries have simply stopped noticing because the tilt has always worked in their favour.
There is no introspection here, no willingness to ask why sectors with zero reservation, chiefly the private sector, continue to reproduce the same caste concentrations at the top that reservation was designed to address in the public sphere. The silence on this point is not an oversight. It is the entire strategy. Hence, we do not condone demands for dismantling reservations that refuse to reckon with the caste inequalities that necessitated such measures in the first place.
Bump
I've been coming to LI for years now, and the first time I opened the convos page was yesterday when I tried to post this. While I'm sure my experience may be different from others, I think the classic home screen is comfortable as well as efficient. The two column layout displays more threads compared to /convos while conveying all of the same information.
If a revamp is necessary, I'd argue the best source of inspiration (which may seem like an unserious suggestion but I fully mean it) are other long-standing anonymous forums such as 4chan. The default view on 4chan is similar to how convos/ looks right now, but it includes a preview of the latest replies on the thread – something that can be considered if the convos view is the default going forward. Catalog view (preferred by its users) has the advantage of displaying more threads simultaneously which is something the current LI homepage is good for too.
In any case, thank you for being this open and transparent, and I'm sure if the users and the mods discuss the type of changes they'd like to see, the new site will be in great shape in no time.
How? Why?
I understand if this is a passion for some of them (HR-styled roles), but most I know are looking for better work-life-balances, and just generally want to leave law.
My question is: does legal recruiting pay anything remotely close to what a T2/T3 law firm in India pays?
Have I been living under a rock of some kind?
1) I learnt the business side of things, which was very refreshing. My Legal Head encouraged me to talk with the business team before beginning to draft any contract/agreement.2) The exposure was immense. Legal teams in companies tend to be small. I attended a few meetings with the CEO and CFO. This was also due to the fact that the company I was interning at was a Mahindra subsidiary, and hence every team was small in general. But generally too, legal teams in-house work directly and constantly with the business heads.
3) However, the quality of people who I worked with was...bad. To say the least. Apart from the GC, the Assistant GC, and the Legal Head, the legal managers in the team were subpar at best. They did not have any working knowledge of law, in general. Some of them were put there by their campus recruiters and some had absolutely no experience apart from in-house jobs in their lives which stunts a person's growth. Many a times, the GC would directly assign drafting to me. But this in no way is to say they were bad people, no one had better knowledge of the business than them. My GC told me this is the exact reason why he needed people like the legal managers in his team so that they help him with "business legal" and he does the "contractual legal" stuff. Which is a pattern I have seen in most companies apart from some tier-1s. I personally found no intellectual stimulation there.
4) The starting salary was dehumanising. The place I interned at paid 3.4LPA to freshers. That threw me off. Tech Mahindra pays some 6-9LPA for freshers, Wipro pays 10LPA, my point being, it does not go beyond 10LPA unless you're in ICICI Bank.
That being said, I was the happiest in those months when I interned. After coming from a brutal tier-1 internship where 1am and 2am was the norm, learning about the business, having team lunches, doing impactful work and being involved in substantial stuff was refreshing to say the least. AND I GOT STIPEND MORE THAN ANY LAW FIRM EVER PAID ME!!??? It made me consider whether I should actually fcuk money and live in peace. Yes, it is an average life (compared to a law firm - money wise), but it's not bad!!!! If you stick by the right people and know your stuff, you could get promoted pretty fast. My GC told me that the trick was to jump ships fast and efficiently early in your career and build and expertise slowly. For eg, if you start out at Tech M, you could move on to Infosys and then on and so forth, basically in the IT/Service/Software legal industry.
I believe, the choice is between money and sanity. Choose wisely and never feel inferior for doing in-house. You're doing a job at the end of day ffs, you're employed. what does one even need in this economy?
What I find more uncomfortable than the course itself is the power dynamic. If your senior someone who decides what work you get, how you are evaluated and what opportunities you receive tells you that a course he is selling is “mandatory”, it isn't really a choice anymore. And isn't mentoring juniors supposed to be part of what a partner does anyway? Ofc there are paid external courses and professional programmes, and people are free to choose them. But asking your own team to pay you separately for a course, while having the authority to make participation compulsory, just feels wrong to me. There is a very thin line between mentoring your team and monetising the position of authority you hold over them. I mean a partners job is to mentor his team and not make them pay for it.
I suggest you go for boutique IP or media and entertainment firms. Even though it's not the same, you'll at least be closer to something you're actually passionate about while still utilising your law degree.