Leaving aside the well-known concerns around the team's culture and leadership, the numbers suggest another uncomfortable reality: this practice may simply not have had the volume of work it projected.

For context, the team moving to SAM consists of 4 partners and just 8 associates, including 4 senior associates. Around 5 associates are understood to be staying back at CAM. This follows the departure of approximately 12 associates from the team over the last 12 months.

On the face of it, these numbers do not add up. If a team has already lost 12 associates in a year and is now seeing another 5 walk out, any genuinely busy practice would be facing a major capacity and execution challenge. Yet there appears to be little discussion about how the remaining 8 associates are expected to absorb the workload.

There are only two possible explanations. Either the team is staring at a serious resource crunch, or the volume of work was never substantial enough for the departures to create one.

People can make up their own minds, but in a practice that was truly running at full capacity (if at all) the loss of 16-17 associates in roughly a year would be impossible to brush aside.

I got a job a T-2/3 GC- M&A team after college but very quickly I realised that there was no work for me. I used to go to work and sit around every other day which really started killing all my drive, productivity and speed. It didn't help that my team was unnecessarily mean to me, it was almost like they were so bored they would just bully me to pass the time.

For a number of reasons I decided to quit (I actually just couldn't stand the thought of going back to that office again) and move back home. I thought getting another job will not be very difficult but it seems like it is impossible to get a job now. I have 9-10 months of PQE and almost an equally long career gap and I don't know what to do. Goes without saying, I left on really bad terms too.

What is my most realistic next steps? Money is a big issue and I cannot keep depending on my parents like this.

I am an India-qualified lawyer with two years of post-qualification experience. I recently returned to India after completing an LL.M. at one of the top universities abroad and am seeking opportunities in general corporate advisory and M&A.

Before my LL.M., I worked at a small Delhi-based practice that operated largely as a chamber. My experience was predominantly in IP litigation, including trademark and design disputes, alongside matters handled through my senior’s government panel engagements. I also worked on general corporate advisory assignments, although these formed a smaller part of my practice.

A key objective of pursuing the LL.M. was to support my transition into corporate law. Since returning, however, I have found it difficult to secure interviews despite direct applications, cold emails and engagement with legal recruiters.

Several recruiters have reviewed my CV, which highlights the corporate advisory work I handled, and provided positive feedback. However, this has not translated into interviews or concrete opportunities, and communication has often tapered off without substantive feedback.

I secured one interview through a referral, but the firm was seeking someone with greater seniority. I also recognise that my preparation for that interview could have been stronger.

As a non-NLU graduate with predominantly litigation experience, I appreciate that entry into a tier-one corporate practice may be challenging. I am keen to explore smaller and mid-sized firms that offer substantive general corporate and transactional work, structured learning and opportunities for professional growth.

My professional network is currently limited, and I am making a conscious effort to improve this. I would value guidance from practitioners who have made a similar transition, as well as those involved in recruitment, particularly on:

- 1. Positioning a combination of IP litigation and corporate advisory experience for junior corporate roles.
- 2. Identifying firms that are receptive to candidates transitioning between practice areas.
- 3. Addressing practical skill gaps and demonstrating readiness for corporate advisory and transactional work.
- 4. Building professional connections and approaching teams beyond conventional applications.

I understand that an LL.M. does not substitute for practical transactional experience. I am willing to invest in developing the necessary skills and would appreciate candid advice on how to make this transition effectively.

as a symbi student it's hard even for us top batch rankers- everything these days is mostly through connections. quite bleak for a first gen lawyer struggling to survive even after excelling in moots and studies and extra curriculars :( if any leads tho, pls lmk who to cold mail because i have cold mailed sm. i am tired now :/

Criminal law has very little earning potential for lawyers because most criminals who get caught are poor (rich crooks in organised crime at most order poor ones to do their dirty work), and rich people who occasionally get in trouble with the law are better served by bridging the IO or pulling contacts to ruin the investigation, after which even Salve as prosecutor cannot jail them.

Criminal law earns well when your clients are in long term organised crime in a nation with strong rule of law and high levels of integrity in public service especially in police. This only really exists in the US.

Part of a firm where most partners were together in a T1 as associates, SAs or PAs. They all promote, encourage those bros who were under them as associates when they were SAs/ PAs. When partners jump firms, their little bros jump with them - practice areas are changed in the blink of an eye. Women are noticeably not a part of this ..

My frustration - doesn't matter how hard I will work or how much I put in by sacrificing family life - bros will take their bros ahead and I will probably be forced to peak at SA, maybe PA and then would have to navigate inhouse.

Gadha mazduri for a bunch of entitled bros

Generalist are more valuable for laterals anyway. 90% of work that a so-called specialized team does can be done by literally any other competent lawyer; rest can be learnt in a short time.

Specialization is only valuable for very niche specialties likes admiralty or tariffs.

Here's the thing. If you want to enter a T1/upper T2 via the merit route you need to be among top 10-15 of your respective course (BA/BBA/Bcom) at the least.

Uptil your senior batches, the batch size was some 400 with just BA and BBA so being in top 10% of the either course worked, however, by the time you enter Day Zero, AI will have impacted the fresher roles. Adding on, your batch size is some 800 with the newly introduced BCom LLB course.

Further, we are seeing a massive shift in how hiring works with PPO system being the main chunk of hires compared to Day Z, hence, you need to be a ranker among the top 10 from the very beginning and each sem counts. By the time you finish Sem 5, rankholders get the opportunity to intern at T1 firms via college (other things in the CV are secondary but still need to be focused upon). The same thing happens by end of Sem 6 but it's mostly the same lot of students since batch ranks hardly changes.

Now, the bigger question, what is a safe CGPA to land in top 10 of your course? The requirement is different for different batches altogether for instance, during my time it was roughly 8.3. Since you guys have a bigger pool of students in the bell curve, so absolute number of students achieving above this GPA will be more. My estimate is roughly somewhere around 8.7-8.9 to secure a top 10 position.

Remember, good batch rank doesnt equal a good job for sure but it does have an impact on your probabilities. I was among top 11-20 and secured a T1 via Day Z.

The good part, achieving 8 GPA in all semesters is not that tough especially for your humongous batch. Do not fall for those who cope and say a bare minimum of 7 is fine, it is NOT! If you cannot even get top 30% (A grade = 8.0) in all your subjects, then you are not doing things correctly. Symbi has good NLU level students but they are only the cream, rest aren't as capable.

Good luck!

First statement is half truth. Lot of Rich are rich because they started business and elevated themselves from middle class to Rich, now you may argue that they have the privilege of being middle class atleast because of them being UCs, but at the same time poor UCs also exist why didn't caste help them in uplifting their financial status

Hi man. Thank you for this comment. As for my MBA plan, basically there is a sort of preference in my mind.

Corplaw> Consulting/similar less mathematical yet wellpaying corp sectors > Law related Government Jobs> Litigation.

That's the reason why I put MBA as an option

26 yo female, 2026 ~ switched careers from teaching & did a 3 year llb from a tier 3 govt college (my bad ik). So my CV goes like - 2 certifications/publications/ moot-courts, Internships- in litigation chambers ( gurgaon - long term for 1 year, and 2 short term (2months) in a law firm & chamber of a sr adv. in SC. ) and 3 corp law firm internships - one was for 2 months, 2 of them were upper tier 2 but only for a month, couldn't get a PPO or call- back & one tier 1 in-house internship 1 month. Been hunting for a decent (preferable in corp law firm/in-house and pays atleast 30k+ or if below, the learning/growth curve is good) job - done everything : cold dms on linkedin/asking seniors/relatives, applying for every vacancy, for so many months now but no luck. Please advice - its taking a toll on my mental health badly now~WHAT TO DO?

26 yo female, 2026 ~ switched careers from teaching & did a 3 year llb from a tier 3 govt college (my bad ik). So my CV goes like - 2 certifications/publications/ moot-courts, Internships- in litigation chambers ( gurgaon - long term for 1 year, and 2 short term (2months) in a law firm & chamber of a sr adv. in SC. ) and 3 corp law firm internships - one was for 2 months, 2 of them were upper tier 2 but only for a month, couldn't get a PPO or call- back & one tier 1 in-house internship 1 month. Been hunting for a decent (preferable in corp law firm/in-house and pays atleast 30k+ or if below, the learning/growth curve is good) job - done everything : cold dms on linkedin/asking seniors/relatives, applying for every vacancy, for so many months now but no luck. Please advice - its taking a toll on my mental health badly now~WHAT TO DO?

Thank you. I sure will try this method. Honestly I am in somewhat same boat as the OP. I did work in recovery matters but realized soon enough that its not for me. Anything else I will have to start from zero, but yes thank you so much. I hope to find something which works for me.

Yes, I think AI use is growing in law firms, especially for legal research, document review, drafting, and summarizing. From what I’ve seen, these tools work best when they support lawyers rather than replace their judgment. Accuracy, data privacy, and human review are especially important when dealing with legal information. I’ve also used AIToolHunt to compare different AI tools and see which ones fit specific tasks.

Official link << https://www.nls.ac.in/news-events/call-for-applications-nlsiu-research-fellowships-multiple-positions-2/ >>

JSA will stop giving decent work, will not give proper increment or bonuses, will stop including that individual on important projects, meetings and discussions. There will be no promotion. And then will patiently wait for you to leave.

If you are a counsel or salaried partner then you will have no work or if you have work then you won’t have a supporting team. Even if you have 1-2 associates they will be snatched away from you and will be put on matters run by your peers. You are not included in BD meetings, your peers get good projects and not you. Your salary will be cut because without EP feeding you work and with no BD and no team you will not meet your targets. Your salary will keep getting slashed till it reaches PA level. You will be criticised for no BD and will be constantly compared to partners who are fed work by the senior EPs. There will be lot of negative publicity about you like a proper negative PR campaign and everyone will believe that one narrative circulated by your EP/peers. They will also make sure someone is informing you about all the negative comments made about you. And then they will patiently wait for you to leave.

Privileged kids doing performative wokism. That's all. Wait till placement season comes. Will all flock to CAM. Then end up advising Adani, Ambani etc. Then eventually become full right-wing BJP supporters: for lower income tax, for privatisation, against subsidies, for expelling Bangladeshis and Rohingyas etc.

This is what has happened with previous batches as well.

Try using connections by reaching out to your extended family/your parents' friends who may know someone's someone in the firm. You can also cold-email partners or reachout on linkedin, but ensure that you personalize each and every mail. You can also try asking your RCC to put in a word for you or call them to your college but from what I know, Kco gives out (directly-through-college) internships in only the top few NLUs and Symbi and Jindal so this may be tough. All the best!

There is no guarantee that your applications will convert to jobs, if you have a ready opportunity in a local firm, I say confirm it for now. You still have time to get better jobs via applications/internships, in which case if something better comes along, you can ditch the confirmed firm. Sure, it's not the best move ever but the safest. As for MBA, depends on how much you love the law and want to practice it. Do not make this decision purely on a financial basis but also basis what you wish to do in the future.

Sure, we loved the holiday and extended weekend. But should we have it as a holiday? Does he deserve one? Why not Bose Jayanti, Patel Jayanti, Vivekananda Jayanti, Tilak Jayanti, Tagore Jayanti, Rammohan Roy Jayanti etc?

Or, a combined National Day to remember everyone?

For in house jobs the rankings or CGPA barely matters as most ppl hired for in house were all mostly 6 of 7 CGPA holders.

But yes for law firms, you have to be in top 50 to get shortlisted in the first round. And yeah don’t rely too much on placements as the figure goes up because of in house company hiring, the law firms barely take 1-4 ppl max each. There were firms like JSA, DSK and Bharucha who came and took 0 ppl.

Graduated from T1 NLU without placement. Ended up in a boutique where I am being paid poverty wages although the practice area is super lucrative (m&a and gen corp advisory). I have to pull all nighters daily. Upside of this job is faster learning curve in comparison to my peers in T1 law firms, very close mentorship from partners who did well at former T1s. I am also learning the art of rainmaking from them by observing them closely. This is the good. Now, talking about the bad. I don't see myself working in this job for long. The hours are unsustainable, expectations are unrealistic and while I enjoy this work, I don't know if climbing the corp ladder will make sense. I can jump to T1s after a stint here, but I am questioning if the T1 law firm life would be worth it. In past few years I have seen people leave law firms- they do LLMs and masters but end up in the same situation post masters. The only time outcomes are decent is when MBA is involved. I am hesitant to jump to the MBA bandwagon immediately because I don't have full 12 months experience, and I genuinely am not able to gauge if MBA would solve my current problems. I am also realizing that half of the time unrealistic deadlines come up because work is not streamlined. There are so many inefficiencies in the way we operate and the leadership is often times so ego driven and set in their ways that working as status quo makes things 10x difficult for the junior in the team. Not saying these things won't persist in post MBA roles but global orgs and companies generally are more streamlined even if the work hours are as bad as law firms. There is a lot of chatter about AI in transactional work and I feel I am at the right stage to decide if this is something I would like to continue doing given that if AI is truly at a level where it can decimate even 40 percent of work, most juniors would have a hard time justifying their value add to the law firm machinery.

Tldr: 26F from a T-1 Law School considering MBA. Want to hear experiences from lawyers who made the move. Please don't tell me that money is the same in both fields. I know that with right moves, and jumps I can probably turn my poverty wages to FU money. The question, here however is about few factors: stability, better hours, more optionality, just a sense of contentment. Please help a lost soul.

Profs are fine. Some are good, some are meh.

We get profs for the bba and ba part of the degree from colleges of the north campus, so the non-law subjects are also taught pretty rigorously.

Exams are mostly pretty easy to fly through if you are considerate enough to atleast attend 60% of the classes. Not much is required to pass. Would say that the teaching quality may br slightly better than T2 nlus (especially the lower ones) so dont be worried about it a lot if you plan on joining.

Marital rape in Nepal is penalized under the law. Muluki Criminal Code, 2074; Section 219 sub-section (1,4,5) penalize marital rape in Nepal. The notion of marital rape in Nepal came from the precedent established in the case of Meera Dhungana vs. HMG, NKP 2058. In this, the Supreme Court declared “marital rape as a punishable

▮▮▮.

There is a reason even pro-reservation idealogues are saying that there is a need for reform. Do you actually think foreign companies and firms would themselves consider candidates with unequal entrance scores at an equal footing? Would you ask these firms to understand how many marginalized groups have struggled to come into universities and be tokenized as the DEI group?

Hi Unknown,

I am the same 30 yr old who ended up giving too much gyan. If you haven't already, scout for 30 partners who do or are related to the work you have done. Don't restrict to T1 pleasd. Figure linkedin and emails. Cold email and message. If you don't get replies, keep sending mails every 4th day (obviously make it look like follow up). This has helped some of the folks I know. Cover letter should be strong.

This is exactly the problem.

When I talk about Starbucks' customer service, I don't limit myself, and I feel good comparing it to CCD/Blue Tokai. I can compare Starbucks to British Airways or Citibank as an organization (completely different businesses, but still business organizations serving customers, nonetheless).

Your comment is naive and preaching denial.

Try NYAI. They have a pay as you go system for any feature you use, starting with a minimum price of INR 500. I have found it useful for research and drafting as it showed my accurate citations with answers. I feel summary feature does not support very heavy docs butig that is same with the LLMs too.

I am a SA2 at a tier 2 law firm (earlier a tier 1). I work in two practice areas and feel very insecure about not mastering one. I worry that tier 1 firms won’t understand my experience. Please help.

I’ve been told I’m doing well by partners I don’t even work with, but there’s a feeling I haven’t specialised in a particular type of transaction and I’m not a master of a specific legal field.

i am looking for a TMT/IP internship during my sem 4 break.

can anyone provide any suggestions (based on experience or otherwise) about firms with the city that have a great work, learning environment and would be willing to take a second year. i have a couple of publications in these areas but no internships as of yet. also please dont suggest any tier 1 or tier 2 law firms.

thanks in advance!

I think everyone understands the point fine (although note this is a point about economics and wealth not caste). The question is how is the problem addressed.

Why is it a good thing to admit people who can’t cope or handle the course? It’s not their fault that they were born poor and not given the training wealthier kids got but the result is the same - either they are unqualified and fail or do badly in tbr course or the whole course is dumbed down for them and overall standard is dropped.

Neither of which sounds like a good idea. The real answer is to improve standards at the grassroots and improve opportunities for bright but poor kids and basically catch them and train them much earlier - but that is much harder than passing a reservation law and picking up some quick votes

I am a first year student at SLSP (Batch of 31). Our externals are next month and I am very nervous and good portion of my batchmates have started studying. I am not the studious kind and am sure I will rank somewhere in the middle.

My desire is to land a Tier 1 Job and seeing my seniors from 27 batch doing well in placements, I am quite hopeful of making it.

So, what is a desireable CGPA and Batch Rank in SLSPune to land a good firm job by end of my college? How to achieve the same?