When I was in my second year, I interned at a Tier 1 law firm and it was my first ever internship. I had no connections nothing, still got selected. There was no one to guide, or no one to explain that what needs to be done. I had hardly attended my college lectures. It was my second or third day at the law firm and one PA gave me a research work. I did some research and explained the PA about my research. After explaining her, she asked me one question - which legal database I had used for this research. And I told her INDIANKANOON. After hearing this she didn't reacted. And next time when I went to her asking for some more work, she was like I'll let you know. Now, at present date, i.e., after 3-4 years, whenever I remember this incident, I feel so embarassed and guilty. And in life you have to move on from things and start working on your mistakes. So, right now I am working at a Tier 2 law firm, with good pay and good work environment. And every I try to learn something and try to avoid my past mistakes, thats the only path to a successful career life. Cheer!

Growth prospects are limited. If you join at a junior level, you’ll be bullied and won’t get good work. If you’re joining as an SA or PA then give it a try. She’s a good bod but quite moody so the goodness varies. Is a friend who worked for 6 months and the quit because they couldn’t handle the team politics. Expect a lot of micromanagement if you’re a junior.

Fighting BJP? Check Root and Stem. Yes she has all those bells and whistles. Let her blow it. And having those does zilch beyond the safe, sycophantic confines of a mutual admiration society, which includes many from the campus that she is allegedly fighting. At a certain level she is one of the collective lion pack that is feasting on the kill that is us. How abt RG Kar?

Can someone provide some info about Keystone Delhi office assessment internships?

Do they have a specific criterion for selection? Do they prefer that you do a regular internship first and then subsequently an assessment, or can you apply for an assessment directly? Are there any preferred months for which I should apply for an assessment?

Is the duration for the assessment a month or more?

Is applying through the website enough, or do you have to send emails as well?

Overall, any info/tips for the application or anyone who can share some experience from the office... Thanks a lot to anyone who can help me out!!!

The role is likely to entail filings under Companies Act, LLP Act, labour laws, etc and maintenance of minutes/ registers/ books. May not be the best option if you are looking at intellectual drive. But you can consider this if work life balance is a priority (for growth prospects in this line of work, you should definitely have/ acquire a CS qualification)

Yes, I am from Bengal and I agree that the BJP wants the TMC to stay in power. They see them as the lesser evil, because they believe that the TMC will weaken the Congress and the Left, which are larger national rivals. To that extent, they are right. The TMC has completely decimated the Congress and Left in Bengal, and killed many of their supporters.

LI readers are spreading lies and showing their misogyny and jealousy against MG. She NEVER demanded that Mamata Banerjee be addressed as a three-time CM. She merely meant that the ASG should follow protocol and call her by her official title, which is “Hon’ble CM”. This is standard protocol in the government. The ASG is the law officer of the government, so he is duty-bound to follow it. She was simply telling the ASG how to do his job properly.

I have received an internship confirmation from Singhania & Co. through a competition, and I am currently deciding which office to intern with. I would be grateful if you could share some insight into which team at Singhania & Co. has good exposure to general corporate and M&A work.

For sure - I got lucky, and I only realised this much much later in my career. In retrospect, there were many issues with that firm but I think it was much better than I knew back then. Since then having seen other Tier 1 firms at play, it is very clear to me that a lot of law firm partners run their practice on sheer brutality. It's kind of sad. Hope this changes as Gen Z and Gen Alpha get better at setting their boundaries.

A nobody in your words, but some comments on your statements above - for section 377, please see who actually argued the matter and not the person who got the limelight. For being first LBGTQ lawyer, she came out much after designation. Saurabh Kirpal had been open about it. And for fighting fearlessly, she's just appearing in court as per her brief and if she gets a brief from BJP, she would do that too. Good lawyer but please don't make up stuff to canonise her.

Corporate Lawyers create legal documents . The legal documents help in reducing future litigation costs for the company just like how the cybersecurity experts help in reducing malware related damages and future related costs incurred. So if you want to make something tangible you can see, use and feel then these fields are not for you at all. Same for Data science and economics.

You might be better suited to become an artist, cook, inventor, potter, lab scientist or may choose an MBA and open a business (since working as an HR or Consultant won't yield a tangible work product either) :)

Two factors have significantly eroded the overall standard of our universities.

First, reservations across various categories.

Second, the indiscriminate establishment of an NLU in almost every state. Maharashtra alone has two National Law Universities. When a “national” university exists in every state, the inevitable consequence is a dilution of standards across institutions, as talent is spread too thinly.

Further, private institutions such as Jindal Global Law School offer highly competitive pay packages to qualified professionals who are inclined to teach. This has drawn serious academic talent away from public universities and has further contributed to the decline in their standards.

I foresee a market-driven consolidation and correction in the years to come. These universities have produced a glut of attorneys, the vast majority of whom are underutilised due to a lack of good-quality, well-paying work. Most such work remains concentrated in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad, and is largely cornered by established law firms or senior practitioners breaking away from them.

A significant number of graduates are unable to secure law-firm or in-house roles. Instead, they are pushed into:

(a) lower-court litigation with fewer matters—an area particularly vulnerable to being disrupted or replaced by AI; or

(b) outsourced paralegal or secretarial work from the UK and the USA, often after spending considerable sums to qualify in those jurisdictions.

Only a very small fraction eventually secure quality law-firm or in-house roles overseas.

All told, we have produced—and continue to produce—far more lawyers than even tomorrow’s India will realistically need. There is no clear North Star, except the illusion of a high-paying starting salary of ₹1 lakh per month and the distant dream of becoming a partner earning ₹1 crore per annum.

Following one’s passion and succeeding monetarily is realistically possible only for a small elite—graduates from schools like Doon or Mayo—those with generational wealth to cushion risk and failure.

The overall situation is a mess.

Listen - this is not meaningful work. Most of this work can be done by the deal team itself. The deal teams themselves grumble about this. Most of these green channel filings do not require more than an SA sitting on it. Gatekeeping CCI interactions are how most practices explain their existence. In merger control, some Form Is , and most Form IIs, are the only places where competition lawyers earn their money.

I wonder seeing such questions. Even undergrad kids talking about leaving NLS for Nalsar or NLUD.

Is there any remote comparison?

NLS is a hundred miles ahead. Compare Faculty. Nalsar and NLUD combined can’t match NLS alone. Compare VC - Rao of Nalsar and Bajpai of NLUD stand nowhere close to Sudhir. Compare alumni, both Nalsar and NLUD together can’t match or come anywhere close to NLS. Only a foolish person will leave NLS to join Nalsar. Whether it’s LLM , PhD or BALLB

When firms don't find roles to promote GenX partners given their lack of leadership chops, this happens. Many will never go higher as they have made their own glass ceilings. Some of it is down to the limiting practice area, a lot of it is down to how some have conducted themselves as potential leaders in public. The constant drama from this practice area is a symptom. From the client side we cannot help, we have eyes and ears plus experience being there ourselves, sometimes we nudge but in the end we have relationships to preserve. Good luck to those who push off on their own.

This was one of the worst internship experiences I have ever had. There was no proper guidance, no training, and no structured work. Interns are treated like free labor and are expected to figure everything out on their own without any support. Seniors rarely respond to queries and communication is very poor.

The work assigned was either irrelevant to learning or completely unorganized. There was no mentorship, no feedback, and no professional development. Basic professionalism was missing, and the office environment felt stressful and demotivating.

I would strongly not recommend this firm to students who actually want to learn and grow. It is a waste of time and energy if you are looking for real internship exposure.

Concern for middle class, or trying to push conservative Hindutva values? This will be quite discriminatory against single people. As it is, there is a lot of pressure on women to get married. Now single women will be stigmatised further.

https://www.wionews.com/india-news/does-marriage-mean-lower-taxes-modi-government-may-offer-major-tax-relief-to-married-couples-in-upcoming-budget-1768831374142/amp

Literally all white collar professionals are sending kids to IB schools nowadays. IAS and IPS officers too. Parents are taking loans for this if necessary.

After IB, aspirations continue. People either want to study abroad, or at universities like Ashoka or Jindal. This is a sea change from before, when people from elite families aspired to get into IIT, IIM, NLSIU etc. Nowadays, they are just not interested. Even if a kid is very bright, he or she would rather aim for a good engineering degree in a top 50 US University over even a top 3 IIT.

Won’t this eventually harm NLUs?

Your impression that law firms or most lawyers in firms at least do “clerical” work is unfortunate and respectfully, absolute ignorance on how law firms function today.

law firms draft, file, defend and argue and most importantly strategise and some also argue. Very often, the biggest of the senior counsel fail in strategy. Most law firms today handle statutory tribunals and arbitrations matters in house which is also great legal work and “shaping the law”.

On the corporate side - If law firms did clerical stuff, then why are the biggest PEs and MNCs going to the top firms instead of letting a senior counsel’s clerks or office handle it.

It is only unfortunate that law firm lawyers don’t get the recognition and “senior counsel” gown that they equally deserve.

As usual ATU has vacancies but avoid this group by all means. If you must consider JSA bnf, then please try AM/PK or KM or SM. You can also consider the vertical which is supposedly only under AS but then no one can guarantee that you will be able to avoid working with T & U since all clients of T & U have been originated by AS. T has something of his own book and is comparatively a better team within ATU.

1. During my time as an A0, I had to prepare and send my senior some 125 signature pages to be signed next morning. It was my first month in the job and I didn't knew that emails through Outlook are actually sent around 5-10 seconds after hitting the send button. I was working on this till very late; was super sleepy so just pressed the sent button and immediately put down the laptop lid (before the mail was actually sent) and went to sleep. Unfortunately, the email was not sent and remained in my outbox. Senior kept waiting for the signature pages to be sent to the client. He even called me but it did not wake me up. Eventually, the signing was delayed. My Partner was super angry and I was scolded a lot. Nevertheless, the signature pages were sent in the afternoon and were signed the same day.

2. A few months later, I issued a CP Completion certificate to investors even though one of the CP was not completed. Informed my senior about this and he panicked a lot after learning about this blunder. We soon contacted the Company Rep to issue us the completely executed document which was the missing CP. Resent the CP Completion email. No one said anything and we never discussed about this mess I created.

Hi

I'm someone who has done both. I won't say where I am now, but I can speak with some experience.

Shifting after 1 year PQE is effectively just resigning yourself to being an in-house lawyer. On average pay is subtantially lower than Tier 1 pay, and increments will be limited (not to mention no bonus).

To summarize:

Law firm pay is largely about survival. The longer your survive (and survive decently), the more you get paid. But ultimately, life and health takes a back seat.

In-house is largely about lifestyle management. If you are already reasonably well off, or otherwise don't want to "migrate up" in class or are content with your station in life, then a good in-house job gives your certainity, work life balance and an overall stablity. It is also the case that you are setting yourself up largely for a life of in-house jobs since law firms will rarely (if ever) hire someone who has been in-for most of their professional life. It will also be the case that the skillset needed to be a Tier 1 lawyer will be lost after a few years of being in-house.

So it's entirely up to you. If you get a good opportunity go for it. But expect compromises on lifestyle in terms of wealth (but benefits in lifestyle in terms of health).

They call final-year students for assessment internships, which happen almost every month. Even if the firm is not hiring, doing this internship counts as an assessment.
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Be aware that the work culture is ▮▮▮, but the pay is good, so choose accordingly. It's above 50k.

Hi, I'm from a T1 NLU with a PPO at a T1 firm in my preferred vertical. I was happy when I received the offer, but the thought of living the way I did during my internships for the long term is dreadful.

Has anyone left a PPO/offer at a T1 firm for greener pastures right out of law school? I know many have pursued TCs/masters abroad, but what are other trajectories people have successfully explored right out of law school in India?

Hi all, I'm an A3 currently working at a T2 in a GC team. Planning on switching to an in-house role. Role is as a part of the Legal Ethics and Compliance team of a company. Interviewers mentioned that work would be quite monotonous, and includes filing and maintenance of varied forms and compliance work.

I have not worked in a compliance team before. Wanted to ask the good people of LI what this role entails. If anybody could offer any practical insights on the nature of work, growth, pay, and job security (given the advent of AI), it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

That's like asking what are the advantages of doing Oxford BCL over Sussex LLM. Just brand value, actual academic rigour, a proper and professional way of doing things, not being allowed to do things in a half-arsed way, having Oxbridge and Ivy League-educated faculty over mediocre TLC products, understanding law on a deep theoretical level (as someone going in an academia direction should).

The best and prime example is Mr. Vikram Nankani, Snr Adv-he was head of ELP prior to designation.

Viyapak Desai from NDA left the firm and became counsel recently.

AZB Delhi has long history-Almost, all past litigation chair at azb delhi turned designated senior counsels. Including many other attorneys also got independent and doing fairly well. Mr. Sanjeev Puri, Mr. Nanju Ganapathy and Mr. P. Bellimoria to name few.

JSA partners also got gown recently. Biswajit Dubey from CAM also left the firm for independent practice. Mr. J. Sai Deepak is also prime example, he left Sai Krishna and now conferred gown also.

For litigation partners, once you enjoy fair face value before the benches they prefer to go independent. Generally, their mother firms brief them as go to counsel.

Largely because, legally even a flimsy distinguishing factor makes it permissible.

The paper is also favourable for engineers due to math, if the paper did not account for math (something which is largely irrelevant for working as an MBA grad) then the difference would be unfair but the end goal is to end up creating jobs and no company would want 80 engineers male as their only management pool, hence why IIMs favour non-engineers and female candidates cause companies themselves want such diversity and if they dont get it from the IIMs, they will just hire from another university.

I will be graduating this year, I have a job offer at an inhouse providing financial services, the pay is average, should i just join this to look for stability, or should i pursue more and try in law firms, I know the scope of growth in an inhouse is not much as compared to a law firm, I know the struggle will be there but that does not scare me, i feel like its easier to choose comfort, the hard choices ask more of you, if I join this inhouse and in future want to switch to law firms i know then i will be treated as A0 because the law firms dont relaly consider inhouse experience. Please, someone in this setup, have any guidance for me, it would be much appreciated.

Our Vice Chancellors "grand masterplan" which involves re-developing significant portions of the college campus is taking its toll on students. The present ongoing works are for the two main academic blocks, portions of which have already been demolished and are now being reconstructed. I am not really sure what was going through the VC's mind when he wanted to introduce such groundbreaking reforms, but he definitely did not conduct a feasability study on student life and their mental piece. Classes (which go on from 9 to 7 PM) have been severely disrupted this entire trimester because of the continuous, deafening, crass, unbearable noises that are created by the hardworking construction team located directly adjacent, above, or below classes. Concentrating in class for a few subjects is already hard enough, and it gets so bad in some cases where we cannot hear the teacher/speaker or content being presented even after using microphones. Ironically, this has happened in classes taught by the VC himself, but this was all in vain - he just continued to wax eloquence on the intricacies of Jurisprudence II and feign indifference What makes things worse is non-action on part of stakeholders, who have been reduced to "passive observers" and just seem to normalise noise pollution. I hope someone who has g**d mein gooda files a PIL in the Karnataka HC challenging this bloody nonsense. Enough is enough.

How is/are SAM litigation office/teams ? Which partner is the best to work with ? How is the work culture? Work hours and all ? Is SAM mumbai like a typical lala law firm or better ? How good is it for lateral hires ?Pay structure for 4-5PQE?

Please if somebody can answer these questions.

Corporate Lawyer A1 here:

I was working on a PE/VC transaction representing the Company. The investor counsels finally gave the greenlight and I was supposed to circulate the document for signing. It was Diwali Time and I was in celebration mood. So I didn't check the pre-execution versions thoroughly and just updated the placeholders, formatting etc. and circulated the transaction documents for signing on DocuSign. The investor counsel calls me few days later saying that clause referencing on the circulated doc is incorrect and to edit it in the final doc. I started checking the document to correct the clause referencing and meanwhile realised that there was a major fuck up - i.e. while I was formatting the document before circulating on DocuSign, I had also deleted several important clauses like liquidation preference, pre-emptive right etc. by mistake. Now the document I had circulated on DocuSign to all parties didn't have these clauses and only I knew it. I couldn't cancel the DocuSign document since majority of signatories have already signed it and also since Promoter had wanted the document executed on Dhanteras, which day had already passed by then. I was afraid that the investor/their counsels/client/ Partner will find out and was super stressed. Once the document was fully executed on DocuSign, I downloaded it and tried editing it. But since few clauses were missing in entirety, editting was difficult since DocuSign had the envelope ID on top - which meant I couldnt add a new page in between with the missing clauses. In the end I finally added pages in between and copy pasted the DocuSign envelope ID to the new pages so that it didn't look like it has been added. But still because of these clauses insertions in between the formatting ended up very fucked up - by which I dreaded my opposing counsels would figure out the manipulation I did to the document. I sent the updated executed doc to investor counsels and dreaded their call regarding the docs. Finally days passed and investor counsel didn't notice and nobody noticed and finally I felt relieved 😅..

Hey Boomer, I actually work at a Wall Street firm and assure you people are not verbally thrashed and humiliated daily. The capitalist work culture actually remunerates you way better for the intense work hours. Which are intense periodically because of actual work not bad management by partners.

While this is certainly the intern's POV, what nobody will tell you is that the intern didn't bother checking the work even once: when he wanted to impress someone to get a job, no less!

Also, forthrightly (we've all done it) blaming IT is the easiest thing to do when you've screwed up; the thing about making a change but it not showing up is probably because the change needed to be made in multiple places not just one.

You are just 20, and have your life ahead of you. Work-hard, prepare for CLAT, if you are able to be in the top 100, then scholarships wont be an issue (not sure, how tough is it to fundraise these days). If money is an issue, then complete your engineering, work for a couple of years and then complete your 3 year degree in law. In any case, talk to your family, plan and execute. Too early in life to feel helpless. If you need inspiration, there are enough and more examples around. Best of luck !

Moreover, I'm confounded by why Juris just doesn't own up to being a router instead of falsely advertising their own proprietary LLM. There is no chance they're using a proprietary foundation model, and disclosing the model actually being called behind the wrapper is a missed opportunity to let AI-savvy users choose a specific model for specific tasks.

Seems like Jurisphere for all its marketing belongs squarely in the camp of a highly exaggerated wrapper. Wish we had better players in the space.