Its a rebuttable presumption after a certain point. Do a network analysis of how NLS faculty all know each other from before being hired and you'll find a lot of these ties go deep.

Some of these professors will resent the patronage system that led to corruption in previous generations but essentially engage in the same thing themselves.

There was a person involved in teaching law subjects at the university who did not have an LLM. They had an MA. According to BCI regulations they were explicitly not even qualified to teach law courses or to be hired as an assistant professor of law. They have recently left the university to go pursue a phd somewhere else but it was clear to their students that the legal training was just not there and instead you just got social justice pablum.

The point is that you shouldn't confuse polish for value. Candidates who paid their way into fancy degrees abroad who do not have publications or did not win scholarships and who often have nothing to recommend them at all are being preferred over equally qualified if not more experienced candidates. You draw this binary between - foreign llm good/ indian llm bad- maybe. to some extent. Yale llm is better than NLS. Sure . is a UCLA/QMUL/ Melbourne/ Random European University ? I'm not so certain. Thats not even a function of how much english you have- thats a function of how much money you have. How many of the young people hired even have a decent publication record or any teaching experience? This is the jindalification of NLS to be honest.

I understand why people are defensive of Sudhir- he came in when there was deep rot within the system and seemed to remedy some of its worse excesses. The kind of people he has hired- would never even have applied to NLS in years prior. But that doesnt mean hes perfect and we need to ignore all the corruption that goes on. Sunlight is a disinfectant always.

because other NLUs aren't the only universities in the world. Many of these people are in private universities, some are in universities abroad. Do you know what it means to have books be published by OUP/CUP ? do you know what it is to have publications in nature? do you know what a small percentage of academics in India ever have that? You're dismissing these candidates without even knowing who they are- exactly what nls might be doing- because what? arrogance? if someone isnt in sudhirs immediate orbit are they by definition not good academics? i'm talking about people who are internationally competitive who have told me these things.

Why is your knee jerk reaction not- yes we should have transparency? why is it- oh youre just talking about people who might be gaming the system instead of people who are very credible? you dont even know who they are!

Oh absolutely, everyone knows registration fees cover admin costs, judges, prize money, etc. and no one’s disputing that. The point is that most moots don’t bundle everything together and quietly label it “non-refundable.” They charge a nominal reg fee first, and only the teams that actually qualify for oral rounds are asked to pay for accommodation. Because, logically, you pay for accommodation when you’re… you know… going to be accommodated.

If ₹8,000 “includes accommodation” but 75% of teams never reach the stage where accommodation is even relevant, then what exactly was that component for? Either the accommodation cost was negligible (so why advertise it as included?), or teams paid for a service they were structurally eliminated from accessing.

lets understand some basic logic propositions. a person can be designed a senior advocate, get briefed by the top firms and still be a hate monger.

and attempting something does not make a person an intellectual or worthy of being platformed. to spell out the most basic issue, he cant even distinguish between descriptive and normate claims. to make it clear, my issue with him is not his ideology. i think all intelelctual work is ideologically driven. my issue with him is the basic lack of respect for theory and method. a bricolage of things that sound interesting is not intellectual work. its what we did in school for our 8th grade projects.

You will have to weigh the pros and cons.

5 Years vs. 6 Years

A BA Hons / Program degree and then an LLB degree vs. An integrated BA.LLB degree

Who knows after spending 3 years doing a BA, you change your mind and don't want to pursue law.

Further, there is no guarantee whether you will make it to CLC, the competition at PG level is quite intense. While it has the greatest litigation legacy in the country (most judges and senior advs are from CLC/ LC-I / LC-II), it lacks in placements.

I'm a first generation law aspirant, currently eyeing MHCET and CUET UG. Couldn't do well in CLAT due to multiple reasons. I live in Delhi and currently feel like corporate would be a safer option for me, given my situation.

I'm very confused about which colleges to consider rn:

For MHCET, I'd have to travel all the way to Maharashtra, get a place to stay, travel to my exam center and then return back to Delhi. All this for roughly 25 seats in the open category.

From CUET, my option would be to opt for the BA hons program and then go for 3 year LLB later. Either that or go for a partial drop for CLAT again this year.

My father suggests that I consider CUET rather than MHCET due to several reasons:

1. Literally everything is stacked against me in MHCET - travelling, accommodation, less seats etc.
2. I already live in Delhi so DU would be a safer option
3. DU is much more prestigious than Maharashtra University, and so is their law program (so he says)
4. He's also concerned about the mob culture and culture war against outsiders in Maha but that's a concern for later

I'm not exactly fond of the idea of pursuing a non professional degree for the first 3 years. I also haven't really heard much good stuff about DU's CLC or it's placements, or even it's litigation legacy.

Besides, the tentative dates for both the exams is somewhat close, so chances are that I might have to prioritise one over the other. Please help me out here.

It should be State name + NLU + City. For example...

Maharastra NLU Mumbai

Maharastra NLU Nagpur

Maharastra NLU Shambhajinagar

I do condone one NLU per state only. But it's not possible for larger states like MH and UP.

The reason for state name first is because at the end of the day it's a state University. The only way we remove that is if NLUs become central universities, IoI or IoE. Till then State first.

Currently NLUD, NLUJ, NLUO, NLUD (Tripura, NLUS (Sikkim) and NLUP (formerly RGNLU) use this branding. It will be easy for GNLU, MNLU, TNNLU and HPNLU to change to this branding: just bring the state name at the end. NLIU can also change easily to NLUB, by dropping "Institute".

But what about NLSIU, NALSAR and NUJS? Will they change?

More complicated will be certain NLUs that have been named after different people for votebank politics: HNLU, DSNLU (Vizag), DRBNLU (Haryana) etc.

https://www.barandbench.com/news/lawschools/rgnul-initiates-removal-of-rajiv-gandhi-from-name-to-become-national-law-university-punjab

It is very common, the senior I once worked with literally used to earn almost 70% of his income from this modern day dalali (albeit legal dalali nothing that involves bribes etc.) . yes, generally such lawyers take a cut from both parties and help them settle outside courts. Contacts in the judiciary could literally only be the ahlmad or readers who would verbally inform about date, provide order dasti more fast or otherwise inform verbally what took place before order is uploaded etc. Judges never indulge in such things. These seniors also have contacts with actual senior advocates and take a cut to connect parties with senior advocates, the senior only appears while the drafting, filing etc is all happening at a lower rate with said advocate, party pays senior only appearance fees and said lawyer gets a cut from that too. Rest as long as its not illegal I dont see the harm.

Mohit is a wonderful guy. Soft spoken and knows his stuff.

Akila is nice but always treats everyone like a junior associate. You win her approval and you will learn a lot.

Anchal.... brilliant but anger management issues. Thick skin needed.

Anshu... Anchal part 2 in the making hope doesn't get to that. Otherwise a wonderful person.

In the end it doesn't mattwr who you work with. All that matters at CAM is who is in the circle of trust or the flavour of that time. If you work for someone in those categories, you got it made. Else youre just there for the stamp, to learn whatever max you can learn and then just go somewhere else where they actually treat merit as merit.

I am currently in the 5th year of the BA,LLB at NALSAR (2021-2026 batch). I can name at least four current faculty members at NALSAR Hyderabad who have earlier completed their BA,LLB at the same institution:

1) Dr. Anup Surendranath - BA,LLB 2006

2) Dr. Aymen Mohammed - BA,LLB 2015

3) Anindita Mukherjee - BA,LLB 2015

4) Sunishth Goyal - BA,LLB 2019

At the same time, it is also true that some of our best faculty members have moved out of NALSAR in the last 2-3 years. Most of them have gone to NLSIU. Since I was directly taught by some of them, I will readily admit that people like Sudhanshu Kumar (Company Law), Pranav Verma (Criminal Law, Evidence), Sidharth Chauhan (Constitutional Law, Comparative Public Law) and Varun Malik (Contracts, Civil Remedies) were heads and shoulders above most of the new Assistant Professors hired by Prof SKDR. I have no doubt that people of that calibre will prosper at NLS as well.

However, all is not lost. NALSAR still has some very good teachers like Dr. Neha Pathakji (Taxation), Mr. Sourabh Bharti (Administrative Law, Intellectual Property), Dr. Srijan Sandip Mandal (Legal History), Dr. Balu Sunilraj (Political Science) and Dr. Rohan Cherian Thomas (Intellectual Property Rights). Some of the seniors like Dr. T. Kannan (Sociology), Dr. N. Manohar Reddy (English), Hota Agni Kumar (History) and Dr. Murali Karanam (Political Science) are also very good classroom teachers. They may not have the research output or the external visibility that some of the better known professors at NLSIU have, but they have given us a good education. Prof. Sitharamam Kakarala has also joined last year and has taken charge of the Ph.D. programme and is concentrating on the LL.M. students. In short, there is still a nucleus around which the institution can be rebuilt and improved.

Not everything depends on the personality of the VC. Prof. SKDR will at the most be in charge till 2030. He does not have a very good academic judgment (especially needed for selecting teachers) but he is exceptionally good at networking with Supreme Court Judges, Ministers and Bureaucrats. That also carries certain benefits for the institution at large. In comparison, Prof. Sudhir Krishnaswamy is a much better academic, but when it comes to administration, he has repeatedly made decisions in a hurry without thinking about their practical consequences for the students at NLS. However, I must be objective and accept that on current form, NLSIU has a much stronger faculty pool and the main reason is the regular hiring efforts led by Prof. Sudhir.

Hi, happy to hear about your transition into your new role. This is probably a long shot but I'm in quite the opposite situation. Currently in-house (T1 NLU, 2025 batch) but want to move to a law firm [T1/T1/Boutique] very soon. My current compensation and growth prospects will not support my family situation and the learning curve has also been disappointing to say the least. Could you please provide any guidance on how to proceed? I have started emailing HRs, partners but no response yet. Almost all recruiters require prior law firm work ex. So I feel I'm on my own for now. I'd genuinely appreciate any help. TIA.

I totally understand. All 6 years I abhorred work. But I was given to understand that it will be career suicide to move early because you will be stuck with a certain pay. My family situation meant I kept at it till I reached a level where the same till the end of my career will also do. Additionally, competition doesn’t have much in house scope. You must try exploring other practice areas in law firms if the ultimate goal is to move in house or if it’s okay with you considering what I said earlier to still move then you can move to a junior position. But you will have to relentless look. It can take months and years to figure out something that works for you. Make profiles on naukri and the like.

It all depends. In house folks don’t usually hire at lower levels. They start looking at the 4 year mark. There are specialised recruiters who just do in house hiring. There are more general ones too. It’s about being in the know and being present in the right place at the right time. Let your law firm recruiters know that you are looking to move in house in the long term and maybe a couple of years from now you will get the magic call.

As someone who is new to this profession, the workplace culture I’m witnessing feels jarring and deeply unsettling. The stories, and at times the conduct, I’ve observed in Tier-1 law firms suggest a pattern of behavior that seems normalized, even expected.

Why are young professionals taken so much for granted? Why does no one meaningfully speak up?

Is this profession structured in a way that discourages dissent? Or are we conditioned early on to believe that tolerating mistreatment is simply the price of entry?

What troubles me most is that such abusive dynamics seem increasingly archaic in many other professions I encounter, and yet here, they persist. I’m no longer just frustrated; I’m genuinely curious about the structural and cultural roots that allow this to continue.

My firm is a laggard at AI adoption and we cannot even access any AI tool on a browser. But I have been using Claude Cowork outside of office for a month now. What I found is that if you give Claude Cowork a set of facts, refer certain laws that Claude Cowork must refer to, allow it to carry out further research, and put across detailed queries, just like a request for opinion, Claude Cowork provides you with detailed answers and can even create a memo for you with a disclaimer that the output does not constitute legal advice. One must check Claude’s output for correctness anyways, but the level of detailing, structure, and thought process applied by Claude Cowork each time blew me away. The output at this stage seems to be as good as a first year associate’s, and sometimes even better. I also tried another feature where I saved all the relevant legislations and case laws in a folder and gave Claude Cowork access to that folder. I instructed Claude to only refer to the material in that folder for generating output. It again did a fantastic job on the queries. All in under 30 mins every time. It does exhaust tokens very fast, which get reset every 5 hours. But Claude Cowork picks up unfinished tasks from an earlier session and can complete them in the next session when tokens are reset. If it continues to improve in the coming weeks and months, then I guess by the end of this year, Claude Cowork could be a legitimate contender for wider adoption in law firms.

Hey!

An ex placement rep from the outgoing batch here. Like any other law school this year- we had bad numbers in terms of Big name coming in that too coupled with the Big Guns going towards PPO structure. Given our Programme structure, the entire 6-7 months long internship window was designed for people to go under assessments.

Now with the market having the situation it has- whatever non T1s and in houses that we could get for assessments- students either backed-out; or those were not as good for them so they let those go washed out, with zero applications.

Yes there might or might not have been institutional oversights. However the people who were not just chilling or not being a good for nothing for the past five years are currently under assessments in good firms and in house teams, rather than feeling depressed and pathetic on an anonymous site.