very low margin practice area which requires you to be staffed on 6-7 deals at a time. KCO (Manisha Shroff's team) is the market leader followed by TT&A, Trilegal, JSA, Crawford Bayley and SNG.

Please note that public debt issuance is often more complex than private placement of NCDs and comes with undercutting to stay ahead of the competition.

Now that I am 11 years into financing at a tier 1 firm, my advice is to stick with a B&F team and not such a sub-specialized vertical within B&F; to avoid the monotony of templated work which DCM entails.

There’s really no practical instances of such things in India where stuff is kept under wraps or brushed under the carpet. But I would imagine this sort of thing wouldn’t be a great look for the firm in front of clients etc. If this creates conflict of interest issues, even perceived, between clients, that would particularly be a huge red flag.

Most t-1 b&f teams like cam, jsa, sam do dcm work along with the general range of b&f transactions. However some firms like Khaitan and TTA have dedicated dcm teams.

According to me, it's not advisable to specialise in something this niche if you are early on in your career.

DCM is not the same as ECM even though there might be some overlap. Billing wise it's the same as B&F and better than ECM i would say

DCM = listed debentures.

Billing available on stock exchange website - search for debt offer documents. In key information document - law firm fees are disclosed. Ranges from 10 to 15 L.

Contractual provisions similar to B&F - debenture trust deeds also available on stock exchange websites.

Hi, I’m looking for then names of small-ish or boutique firms (or partners) that are doing great transactions for a potential role between 5-7 PQE. Anagram and S&R have stood out to me based on my initial research. I’m happy to put in hours, but I’m looking for autonomy and lot of growth. I am not just looking for marquee transactional work, but a constant flow of high quality work whether buy-side or sell side from repeat clientele. Any suggestions welcome!

JSA has a small cap marks practice so I don't know why the person who commented suggested this to you. You can try applying under Anand Lakra and Nosh Modi tho.

CB is Crawford Bayley. They pay around 12 lpa with an infamous 3 year bond. Try mailing Sanjay Asher, although they're not looking to hire much from what I have heard.

You can also try applying to Rajani and Rajaram Legal (now River Law), they're good but picky. Keep an eye for others like Desai Diwanji and Bharucha as well other than T-1s.

This dude extremely young and has converted his shop to a boutique powerhouse in a few years in India. I have interned with him and he single handedly changed my outlook to my career. Certainly a name to reckon with. But you are an intern who probably might have been told off for coming in late to office.

NLS expanding mindlessly. Quality will suffer when 300 student graduate in BALLB and most won’t get good jobs. Another 100-200 in LLB degree. Placing 80 students v. 400 is not easy at all.

Both nalsar and nlud will become more preferred in few years.

NLS will become number 2 or 3 soon.

What is wrong with you? Katju and Kabir were a disgrace. Krishna Iyer: Awful writing and propagating his rotten communist ideology everywhere. Also made this atrocious and regressive observation:

“It may be marginally extenuatory to mention that modern Indian conditions are drifting into societal permissiveness on the carnal front promoting proneness to pornos in life, what wit libidinous 'brahmacharis', womanising public men, lascivious dating and mating by unwed students, sex explosion in celluloid and book stalls and corrupt morals reaching a new 'high' in high places.”

https://indiankanoon.org/doc/419325/

A generation of Malayali and left-wing NLU law professors glorified this guy, letting parochialism and ideology get the better of them. There were far superior judges from other states who did not receive the same attention.

Best judge: Vivian Bose. Absolute class act. Rest aren’t even 1% of him.

https://www.barandbench.com/amp/story/columns/why-cant-a-judge-also-be-a-rockstar-a-study-of-the-interesting-life-of-justice-vivian-bose

I am a female non-equity Partner in a T1 law firm’s ▮▮▮ office - ▮▮▮ ▮▮▮ team. I am in a serious, now 2-year strong, relationship with a male PA, working in another team that primarily does ▮▮▮. We have not disclosed our relationship to anyone in the firm other than a few very close friends. We don’t plan on getting married any time soon and don’t want this to affect our work in any manner. My question is, while there is no express policy in our firm on this, is it advisable to disclose our relationship? Will it affect our career now or in the future as we become equity partners?

I know many many senior partners across various firms are rumored to be seeing each other (consensually), either extra-marital or after divorces. They coordinate BD trips, foreign travel, find excuses to send their spouses and children away from them - maybe even overseas, but these are easily seen through. Is this sort of thing normal? If foreign law firms or clients catch wind of this, will it be frowned upon? I know many high profile CEOs in the US have had to resign for undisclosed relationships but do such instances cover consensual relationships among peers/ partners also?

Grateful for your thoughts!

Jindal/Ashoka, I do not understand at all. But abroad, I sort of do. They see NLSIU as a stepping stone to make their lives better. So if they got educated at NLSIU, their kids must get educated in a good British or American university. At the end of the day, for such people, the abroad brand is more established (on a global scale), like it or not. This mentality is perfectly put by a quite driven and obssessed-with-success kind of kid I once met at a Mumbai international school. This chap wanted to move to UK to work in investment banking and was a bit starry-eyed about their elite schools, because the books he was reading in English literature class that were set by his exam board tended to romanticize that kind of education. This kid once said quite confidently, 'If I am being educated at [that Mumbai international school], my own child should be educated at Eton or Harrow'. Same thing.

Until we can get most alumni of NLU-type universities to see NLSIU kind of places the way the Eton/Harrow families or the American elite rich view Oxford or Cambridge, or Harvard or Yale or Georgetown, respectively, little progress can be made in this age of government funding for universities being so tight.

This depends on the company, but if you're doing a routine contracting role, it's often easier to transfer someone from, say, the India office, than to hire someone afresh.

I know at least 30 in house lawyers who have been transferred to foreign offices of their employer. But PQE~1 is unlikely, you'd need 2-3 more years, at the absolute minimum.

Here's a tip: everyone and their uncle wants these roles. One of the most reliable ways to get them is to just ask. If everyone is equally good at their work, the one who has actively expressed their interest is likely to be remembered when it comes to choosing someone.

Genuine question. I've seen talk here about moving laterally to a foreign law firm / moving abroad for an in-house role, but how common is that route? Wouldn't you have to qualify in the foreign country as well and is that route generally even considered in foreign law firms / in-house?

That is not the most consistent factor. QS keeps varying internationally also between Oxford or Cambridge. In the U.S. market, it remains a constant debate between Harvard and Yale. Let us, to be charitable, take OP's argument at face value to the extent of allowing that NLSIU is no. 1, and QS has gotten it wrong (because they have, frankly).

Open-book exams are not supposed to be easy if set by qualified and competent faculty. Some of the most difficult exams that I have undertaken in law school (both in India and abroad) have been open-book. However, I have never seen any paper from JGLS, so I do not know about the quality of those exams.

I'm a Christite, and the placements are decent but only limited to top 10 to 20 of the batch rest of the people are securing a job through ppos through their own hard work and merit. A lot of my seniors have told me to never depend of college for placements and do your work diligently through connections or through merit

NALSAR and NUJS get students placed almost at the same places. Not sure why the latter is called only law firm centric. Most of the policy bodies in the country have got plenty of NUJS alumni (like others) and NUJS alumni certainly number the most in Indian legal academia today (considering those who are teaching or researching law in India).

Obviously it's China.

Their economy is way bigger than ours so there's a lot more demand correspondingly.

Just Google biggest law firms in Asia and see how many Chinese law firms are on that list and how many Indian firms are there.

Some Chinese firms have 1000+ partners.

The biggest indian law firms barely have a total headcount of 1000 lol

Unlikely. In-house is a varied game of chance, and unless you have killer credentials (top tier ranked law school + demonstrable experience of managing outside counsel teams), this move is difficult. I was an SA at a tier 1 practice before applying in-house to a foreign client that I worked for for multiple years -- and still lost out to a law firm partner who wished to take a role lower in designation but one that allowed a foreign shift. Just using this example to show that these positions are hotly contested, so be prepared to spend close to a decade here or rise up and work in a tier 1 practice to enable yourself to be fairly considered for such opportunities. Best of luck

Thoughts on this? So only jobs available will be in government? And will lawyers be immune from it?

https://www.livemint.com/companies/people/death-of-salaried-employment-saurabh-mukherjea-predicts-grim-outlook-for-indias-middle-class-in-this-decade/amp-11745139726130.html

Hard to say "the best", but some of my top faves whose judgments are enjoyable to read even today (not in any particular order):

1. Vivian Bose

2. Patanjali Sastri

3. Fazl Ali

4. Gajendragadkar

5. KK Mathew

6. Krishna Iyer

7. Ruma Pal

8. Radhakrishnan

9. RV Raveendran

10. Madan Lokur (somewhat diminished by his post retirement ranting)

11. RF Nariman

12. UU Lalit

I am excluding sitting judges from this list.

Some of the worst (there are many more):

1. Subba Rao

2. AN Ray

3. Bhagwati

4. Tulzapurkar

5. Chinnappa Reddy

6. JS Varma

7. Lahoti

8. M Katju

9. Cyriac Joseph (IYKYK)

10. Arijit Pasayat

11. Dipak Misra

12. Arun Mishra