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“Are you working on anything right now?” I hesitated and said, “No sir.” So he handed me some work on the Societies Registration Act and a bit of stamp duty stuff. As I was about to leave his chamber, he stopped me and casually asked, “By the way, do you know what a society means?”
Now, I had this terrible habit back then of saying “yes” to everything just to sound smart. So I confidently said, “Yes sir.” And then I explained: “Sir, a society is like… where people live. With parks, roads, buildings…” (Basically I described Gokuldham Society from Taarak Mehta 😭). The Partner just stared at me for two seconds. This man was an Oxford grad.
Then he calmly asked - “Which year of law school are you in?”
I went - “Sir… first.”
He nodded and said,
“Dude, you better brace up.”
I replied,
“Thank you sir.” 😭
And I walked out like I hadn’t just ruined my own career in 30 seconds.
Also, a research note on costs for the consumer forum? That's the real amusement.
tread with caution
Like, which office has been allotted (virtual) to you
One of my senior interned there virtually and later was called for an offline internship. Later, he was confirmed as an associate.
Also, as the broader risk appetite is shifting, more wealthy families are now allocating a sizeable chunk of their wealth for equity linked instruments.
Such growth in corporate law practices are always a result of an underlying economic phenomenon. Study.
Bharat is nice.
It all because of one partner who all of a sudden starts feeling very hot, ▮▮▮, that he orders the admin to reduce the temperature.
2. NALSAR has been very good, and its students are quite sensible folk. Smart students, as you'd expect. Well represented in the law firm world and in other career paths, too. Recently been going through a period of institutional decline after VC change.
3. As NLS is there, the other two mentioned unis may as well not exist. It is the best of the lot (I didn't go there), especially now. It is the best of all worlds: good students, good institutional administration, excellent faculty and a VC who is a genuinely good academic. And yes, NUJS is (and will be for a while) "10x worse than NLS", to use your framing. Anybody who doesn't realise this has a problem in their lives and needs to hang out with their friends more often.
How different is it in Noida though?
a. I did internship (1 month) as well as a Call-back Internship (2 month) with this firm.
b. Now when I am in my final year, I was told that the firm has vacancies for that matter my interview was scheduled (for an Assessment Internship). Interview went really well. The partner has taken it, gave all positive signs, even insisted on joining a specific team because it has vacancies. HR conveyed that you'll receive a confirmation email either by EOD or the next day.
c. From the next day onwards, I was reaching out to the HR continuously, but she kept on hanging me saying she'll send the email.
d. I had some really high hopes just because the partner gave all the positive signs as well the HR.
e. To my surprise, all of a sudden the HR ghosted me completely, she neither picked up the call nor responded on email. In between almost 10 days were passed.
f. On the 11th day, I got to know (through my connection that I made during my Call-back) that the vacancy got filled.
g. In all of that, I missed all the potential opportunities that could be availed by me in those 10 days (being a final year law student).
f. Not because I am blind, but because they made me hope really high.
g. The HR department used to be really transparent when people like ▮▮▮ Ma'am were there (they use to accept applications on the basis of your worthiness not by mere connections). Now the current HR (▮▮▮ ▮▮▮) only accept applications through connections and nothing else. She'll make false promises and then will ghost you completely without giving any importance to the crucial time of a final semester student.
I'll confirm your internship right away.
Only if I were the HR.
I have interned at Saikrishna and Associates (including Call-back) as well as Hammurabi and Soloman Partners (including Call-back) and without referrals, all by myself (begging HRs).
I am a final year law student, having no legal background and unfortunately an unknown law college.
Now when it comes to hiring, your Connections will speak louder than your CV. Trust me, no matter if you have exceptional outstanding CV, a mediocre brat having partner referrals will eat up your position. Both of these firms will exploit you in return of free labour but when comes to hiring only candidate with mediocre employability skills with partner referrals get hired.
My advice would be, don't just intern, work on your connections.
Also, when it comes to vacancies, reach out to people on LinkedIn. Reach out to HRs initially, only then intern, don't waste your tine providing free labour.
Above all, idk what is so wrong with current HR. She'll make promises and then she'll completely ghost you.
PS - I've done Internship as well as a call-back internship with Hammurabi and Soloman Partners (without any referral), along with some decent Tier-1 Internships.
I want everything, everywhere but perhaps not all at once. I sometimes don't understand the point to the Tier 1 law firm life. If one wants a conventionally large career, to get married, to have kids, to be around to raise them. How does one do that?
I'm also not sure that doing more years at a T1 law firm will be the way to achieve it (currently at ~6 PQE). The lives of my partners at my firm truly truly scare me, I don't want to wrangle with an SPA at 3 am while my 1 year old is at home, what is the point of putting in all this hard all your 20s and 30s if they still get on calls over Sunday because you can't say no to clients and your child keeps crying in the background?
Might as well do a good in house job and live a normal life right from your 20s? While Tier 1 firms pay well, they will never let you build wealth meaningful enough to let you take it easy when you're 45. Why is everyone doing this? Why are in house jobs not more popular
Such childish behaviour from proff side to impose his ideals on a first year student
the environment is too fragmented, too many PhD tests, some are irregular, some completely opaque, some have changing question pattern
future academics need some stability
A successful DRT/DRAT advocate might make around ₹50 lakhs in annual profit, and some even make ₹2 to ₹3 crore in profit. However, such profits typically come from running a chamber or firm more like a high-volume shop than a traditional advocate’s practice. They employ a large number of juniors, often freshers, who may be paid around ₹8,000 per month in cities like Bombay. That is essentially how many of these practices are run.
These are the points to remember, there are people who have done well from both the places, so you would not be badly off no matter which one you choose.
There is not much to choose between NALSAR and NUJS to be honest right now. Faculty are comparable, so are the VCs now that OVN has replaced NKC at NUJS, placement is close enough to be similar, location-wise NUJS will have advantage over NALSAR. NALSAR had kept its batch strength steady though for some time, so things would be stabler there.
We all have gone through this at some point in our life. I am working in a law firm and can have a chat with you. Mail me if interested on hanish.talsania@pandyajuris.com
Also, another thing I have come to realise is that since Bangalore does not have a lot of good institutes asides, NLS of course and Christ, the competition is already low and the city presenting a natural barrier for outsiders vis-a-vis language and cultural environment, the ones who have accustomed to or are locals have an edge when it comes to the home-grown market. Delhi and Mumbai are already saturated with local college and students flocking from outside cities, meanwhile Bangalore's legal market is still largely pristine and is expected to grown in the future. The only issue is, how to transition there from other cities.
The work itself also isn’t monotonous; almost every day brings something new. While that’s great from a learning perspective, it also means there’s constant pressure to learn quickly, retain a lot of information, and perform immediately. On top of that, it feels like the quality of our work alone no longer speaks for itself, which makes the environment even more pressuring, because you are expected to know. I have covered whole semester worth of portions in one night trying to understand the work.
I also want to be clear that I’m not trying to complain, whine, or sound entitled. I genuinely want to do well here, and I’m trying to understand how to make this environment more manageable for myself without overburdening myself any more than I already am.
I guess what I’m really struggling with is whether this is just part of being early in my career, or if this is something I should expect long-term. Will I always feel this overwhelmed and behind, or does it get better with experience?
For SAM, I remember my friends getting the joining email/offer letter somewhere in April.
https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/haryana/row-erupts-at-jindal-varsity-over-comparing-modi-with-hitler/amp
Join the firm, work for a few years and then make the switch to in-house if you do not enjoy the work.
Unfortunately, litigation is perhaps the most exclusive gated profession in the country. Not everyone can start out with 10k salary - I come from a small town and relocating to delhi would literally starve me with that income. Hence, corporate law is my only alternative.
If you're from the 2026 batch, then you haven't experienced being a lawyer. I get your sense of disillusionment - I've been down that road. But here's the thing; law school doesn't (and can't) teach you how to become a lawyer, and it makes little difference how many "professors of practice" have taught you. Realistically, law school can never teach you the realities of the profession, because each practice area in each city in each country will turn out differently. Law school will help you understand basic concepts, and that's pretty much it. Becoming a lawyer is something you start learning the first day on the job and then keep learning till you quit or die - it makes little difference if you're a corporate/transactional lawyer or a litigator. You will have boring days and you'll have riveting, intellectually stimulating ones. You need to learn to plough through both.
The "profession is built around talking jargon and moving documents"? How does that make it any different from other white-collar professions? You're just using different jargon and moving around different pieces of data. That data you're "mechanically" moving around may be stultifying to you, friend, but it means a LOT to your client's commercial or personal prospects. And, for the record, NOBODY talks more jargon and moves around more pointless documents than litigators, since you harbour the impression that litigation involves more skill than a corporate law.
You feel that your friends are more "skilled" because they're finance bros or tech bros? They're not. They just have a different set of skills than you and they're as untrained and inexperienced as you are. Besides, who will they turn to down the line when they want to restructure their businesses, or want advice on navigating new SEBI regulations, or when they're being sued for a breach of non-compete? They're going to turn to you. Your skill is helping these people get out of trouble, or get to where they want with their lives and their businesses. If you help them, they'll come back to you again and again, because they trust you. It's the same reason why most of us prefer to go to the same accountants or doctors or hairdressers - because we trust them with stuff that is personal, sensitive and really important to our well-being. A lawyer's true skill is the trust that they build - with clients, with colleagues, with courts and tribunals.
Is practicing as a corporate lawyer mechanical compared to a litigator? Up to a point, yes. But I know plenty of litigators who got pigeonholed into specific types of disputes who have the same complaint. You want an example of mechanical? Try doing merger/demerger scheme matters year after year and you'll see what 'mechanical' truly means.
I've dealt with all sorts of clients in my two plus decades of practice - startup CEOs not old enough to buy a drink, flash hedge fund managers, algotraders, genius programmers, civil servants, cops - you name it. Many of them would be bankrupt, screwed over by unethical investors or in prison for being frauds or just stupid and overconfident. They're not - because of us, unskilled, banal lawyers.
I started life as a gen corp/M&A lawyer, then did some cap markets, and then became a litigator (which I currently am). One of the reasons I moved to litigation was because I too felt that a corporate/transactional practice was process driven and boring. To my surprise and delight I discovered that my new litigator colleagues, while more familiar with court craft, didn't know how to read financial statements, thought ROFR was a dog's name and were clueless about FEMA other than it existed and the ED could come after you if you violated it. This was a huge disadvantage to them while dealing with a particularly tricky shareholders dispute. So, yes, I got bored with corporate law, but I had learned skills that were (a) not taught in my premier NLU and (b) none of my coworkers had. You see where I'm going with this?
This is somewhat out of context, but I feel this applies to our profession. One of my favourite movie monologues from Margin Call:
"If you want to do this with your life, and do it well, you need to believe that you are necessary. And you are. If people want to live like this...with their big cars and these houses that they haven't even paid for. Then you are necessary. The only reason they can continue to live like kings is because we've got our fingers on the scale in their favor. And if I were to take my finger off...then the whole world gets really fing fair, really fing quickly."
If you still want to get a degree in another discipline, sure, you be you. But remember that you're doing it after spending 5 years studying for a profession you want to ditch before even spending a day practising it. Good luck.
We were working on an advisory for a foreign client and I had done a shit ton of research for the matter. My practice area is smaller and more niche so not a lot of research comes as easily as Gen Corp / disputes.
Turned over the research, sat with my seniors, finalised everything into one doc and got ready to send it to the partner. Started proofreading the doc on a whim right before sending and realised that I had switched the appeal status for two cases with the same party name (one of these was a writ and the other an appeal).
Completely lost my shit because I knew that it had the potential to change our legal opinion (which could take days longer) and hyperventilated for a full hour - finally summoned the courage to message my PA - who promptly got on a call with me - only for both of us to come to the conclusion that it didn’t really impact our assessment and a couple of words had to be changed. Apologised to the PA about 10 times only for them to say it was completely fine, and it caused no issues. Made the change - sent out the doc to partner and subsequently to the client - life went on.
Moral of the story is that fuckups are only as big as we make them out to be (usually).
My anxiety however, continues to pervade my daily work life, and I do check a case status thrice before I open my mouth about it now :p
Your comment about too many NLUs is also correct. When tier 2 IITs and IIMs are struggling with placements, what hope do tier 2 and 3 NLUs have? We should have has no more than 5 NLUs in India, each admitting no more than 100 students per batch.
Looking for a reality check from people here.
I graduated from a national law university and ended up working in the policy space straight out of college. Have been there for ~2.5 years now. Recently decided to move back into core law practice specifically law firms (more specifically general corporate / M&A teams). I’ll skip the “why policy to law” part and "why M&A" part, but this is a conscious and thought-through decision.
Over the last few months, I’ve been preparing from scratch again [Companies Act, FEMA, Contracts, etc.] and also trying to understand the practical side of things [DDs, SPAs, SHAs, BTAs etc.] with active guidance from folks currently working in Tier-1 corporate teams.
I’m realistic about the switch and don’t have expectations of shortcuts. I’m willing to start wherever possible and put in the hours to catch up. My question is mainly this: How do people here see the chances of someone with a policy background transitioning into general corporate/M&A at law firms after ~2-3 years out of “traditional” practice?
Would really appreciate honest views, especially from those who’ve seen similar transitions or work in firms. Happy to hear both encouraging and critical perspectives.
Aren't the clients themselves broke??