There is a lot of difference between a toxic workplace , and a workplace you just don’t like much. If you can find better work go for it. If the money isn’t worth the time for you personally - if you think that you’d be better off with an MBA- you can still do that. But what you’ve described sounds like a lot of work to me - but not a toxic workplace. There’s no abuse, you get Sundays , your coworkers help with questions. There’s long hours - but you’re hardly on a production line in an apple sweatshop. This is what it is for most law firm people in the first year. No one tells you law firm life is so easy and great- everyone tells you that it’s a lot of work the first few years. Why didn’t you listen ?

First and foremost, don’t go running around li, there are very few people here that genuinely interact and help each other. Majority just pull down each others colleges by self proclaimed metrics.

Secondly work on your comprehension and reading speed a lot , and let me tell you there’s no trick . Read more and more.

Also don’t leave the quant section as this is the section that makes a difference between serious and casual candidates. Also at last try finishing your mocks 10 minutes earlier, u never know what kind of dumb invigilator you get.

They do this induction thing every year, since the past 8-9 years or so. They pay for everything, travel, accomodation, food etc. A lot of sessions just as an introduction to the firm, processes. A few talks by the senior partners, some fun sessions (something new every year I believe) and like a party or something in the evening. Its actually a great experience, you get to know lots of people and in the long run, those are the people you reach out to from other offices when you have work or questions.

He's trying to promote his own courses lol. Using all these posts he will try to spread a rumor that firms are slowly moving towards skill and college does not matter and in order to gain skills, buy our courses.

As the seat intake expands more than the market, law firms would try to minimize their hiring costs by relying solely on a few top institutions instead of going to multiple Universities.

My sense of self worth doesn't depend on validation from trolls like you. I think you'd find, if you went asking around, that that would be the case for the vast majority of NLU students, who, from my experience, are (mostly) sensible, reasonable people. You, obviously, are an exception.

Best deals go to Ashok and not Aditya. Its just that Amit directly works with Aditya so the quality of work will be great. However, doing debt financing work for 2-3 repeat clients will get monotonous after a point of time and there will be no net-net exposure to really meaty transactional mandates.

Go for it if you wish to ▮▮▮ niche like debt capital markets in the future with very few green pastures like Indus, JSA or KCO.

Avoid if you need a work life balance or steep learning curve.

Aditya is a great guy from what i have heard. Unfortunately can't say the same for the others in team.

A big pro is that they have great work and you will learn a lot. if you are good they will let you handle the majority of the transaction by yourself which is truly awesome.

The team is relatively small than other firms.

They have a lot of work and usually they work late hours.

The work culture is as bad as it can get.

The pay is bad and below industry standards.

Since my practice is mostly driven by acting as a midway between Governments and UHNI/Private Sponsors, the dirty money and "setting" role of my partner in getting approvals and orders in place is the tune of multiple crores in one deal. Sadly, it never trickles down to the bottom which is why the juniors (like me) continue doing the shitty and endless due diligence for the same until the PA stage.

As someone who did their 5 year from a tier 1 and LLM from DU, I agree. I've seen NLU kids flaunt their credentials more even when not required. The only place this evens out is in litigation. Post one year practice the NLU kids mellow down when they realise that at the end of the day it's not your institute but your own smarts. Also this NLU & non-nlus debate is usually used more by the former than the latter.

No comments on #1-4, but I agree fully with the calling out of people who post in Hindi. Can the moderators please delete all posts that are mostly in Hindi? The rest of the country has to compromise so that a few people can continue to speak in whatever language they are comfortable in.

If people think they can express themselves better in Hindi, please provide an English translation as well. Lekapote anusarinnkadam kashtam avutundi.

The practise head makes money by:

1. Giving incorrect advice to spook the client

2. Share confidential business information of other side provided on an external counsel basis to the cient

3. Bribe the legal team of the client to get obnoxious invoices passed

4. Leak extremely sensitive information to the press

5. Make irrelevant to the regulator and raise frivolous issues just to protract the matter and increase billing

Are you one of those people who set off fire works in Sudhir's NUJS office, because he, after spending years at NLSIU and Oxford, couldn't stomach the very (post Menon) NUJS-specific phenomenon of, as Wodehouse might describe it, "handing out a good grade on a plate with watercress around it"? If you are and you have any ability to engage in self-reflection, you'd surely realize the guy might have a certain (justifiable) prejudice against fireworks? As the character James Akrington beautifully says in Ngaio Marsh's 12th Roderick Alleyn novel, "Colour Scheme" (which I most urnestly recommend to your attention, by the way, both for the purposes of personal development and to hopefully help you enjoy a good book, which you don't seem to have done for a very long time), "Smith certainly does seem to find attempted murder distinctly irritating". In the same spirit, could we not conclude that Sudhir might find students' use of the same kind of thing that was repurposed as a weapon to attempt assault on him (but which didn't work thanks to a lucky chance) "distinctly irritating"?

Its not just about greed. The firm's foundation is based on a practice that doest pay well, i.e. tax practice.

Understand how budgeting works in a company. In every company, budgets gets allocated to each department. The marketing, sales and finance department gets the lion's share and the corporate law teams deal with them. Thats why they are able to give big quotes and those departments are able to meet them.

But the tax work in any company is usually accounts or compliance team. They get pennies in the name of budget. So they engage lawyers for tax team paying pennies.

The foundation of LKS is based on tax work. Hence they have always been used to ask for pennies. If a partner wants to get big and ask for money showing their value, they are made to cower down to the client.

So these are called "buckets". That means these are colleges/universities that the industry considers valuable enough, that they believe the students and alumni of these universities will definitely have enough income and value that they would need a credit card.

So ICICI will pursue these universities to easily hand out credit cards.

This list includes everyone, law, management, engineering etc. therefore there is IIMs, IITs, NIITs etc. This is the only industry based perception in different fields of study.

Surprisingly there are also NLUs. However only 8 of them. NALSAR, NLS, NLIU, NLUD, GNLU, NLUJ, NLUO & NUJS. So, there you go. If you want to go to corporate. These names matter.

ICUL ain't as good as it used to be. Heard that a lot of people are leaving the firm because of the weak leadership. I'd say better go with KCo. If you're at KCo., no other real options. JSA is there but not much work there. Jay Gandhi at SAM is also hiring but their work isn't as good either. Trilegal is toxic. Resolute isn't any better. No other firm have this practice.

nirf isnt a hoax, if one particular university submits incorrect data then should you blame that uni or the ranking itself, although you might argue that the ranking authorities should check the info, however, with a large number of submissions we have to go with basic trust. unfortunately, if a uni itself blatantly violates that trust then nothing can be done

Where is it hailed? Everyone keeps joking about how LLB degrees are worthless pieces of paper and how most lawyers sit below trees looking around for cases in India. It’s considered dumb to do LLB. My father used to say the same, I was the stupid one who didn’t believe him. Also you can’t really compare JEE to CLAT. It’s a simple police hawaldaar type exam not comparable to JEE at all. Random kids from Commerce get AIR 1 mostly via luck. All these famous lawyers you know like Kapil Sibal, Harish Salve, KK Venugopal, are children of powerful influential people. Money and power is in litigation. Us corporate lawyers are no different than low level babus. This was always for rich and powerful people. I’ve seen lawyers from top law schools talk about 30-40 LPA the same way engineers talk about 1.5-1.8 CRPA. You can earn 15 LPA even from Manipal type colleges. Also rags to riches stories are non existent in Indian law.

Hello seniors, so basically I’m 2029 nlu batch gonna join uni never month, i wanted to know that is it possible to do something else like trading, freelancing, video editing as a side hustle to earn some money with the ongoing pressure? Would be really great if you could give some insight I’m in need for some extra pocket money

If we're talking logic then I'd say you used two situations: (a) don't want placements and (b) can't get placements. You wrote that both these premises lead to your conclusion (c) placement scene isn't good.

I mean if you had prepared well enough for Clat and AILET, you'd know basic logical reasoning and see that (c) follows only from (b) and not from (a).

As for the data allegation - something which all NLUs do - if you're so aware about the "lies", why don't you lodge an official complaint or sue it? Surely, if it's such a clear cut case we would've gotten to hear some action against NLUD. I'd have really liked to see you being right for once but unfortunately, no such action was taken because nothing of that sort happened

I can’t fathom if my current workplace is toxic. It is hard on me but that’s also because I have transitioned from college to working. Most or all Saturdays are working, but I am allowed enough time to complete a project. The partners and people at the top of the ladder are condescending at times. But are also open to answering and making you learn. There is a half day leave cut at a late-mark. Work from Homes are looked down upon and not granted approval usually. I basically only get a Sunday. Every other day involves the firm somehow. I leave work at 11PM at times. Some days, I leave earlier. I don’t like it here, but people say it is worse elsewhere and the situation is like a pressure cooker with deadlines at a 1-2 hour gap, and 4-5 deliverables due everyday. I get time to complete my work but the hours are bad.

NOW, What is toxicity exactly? Is the industry like this? Why is corporate law then a choice for so many of us? Why do seniors promote it then? Do people really live a life like this for years? For some lakhs of money? Which is not even comparable to what their counterparts with a BTech or MBA earn! I invested 5 years into the degree. With those many years and the hard work I put in, I could make it anywhere. In law, the top rank 1 is given a salary of 15L. A Rank 1 from an IIT/IIM would never even settle in India. And at 15L? NEVER.

My engineer friends make 2-3x of what I make and have developed skills that have application outside India. What do I do with the clerical work you ask me to do in Capital Markets? What do I do with data populating and MS WORD/EXCEL document skills? An engineer earns more money moonlighting than in their regular job. A corporate lawyer doesn’t get the hours to moonlight. More and more tech based companies are adopting WFH models and understanding the better viability of it, but law firms are going back in thinking that the associates become “laid back” being on their beds.

Top firms haven’t increased their salary in the last 10 years. There are no perks. There are no good retreats. Why is this profession hailed so much? I hate it here

The epiphany struck you too late my guy. Having zero corporate internships that too after graduating is a death knell. Good firms don't consider graduates for internships. Get attached with some chamber to revive your career. Or try another vocation if you are not interested at all in litigation.

Nah that was not my case. I physically went everywhere I interned every day. Coming to the knowledge part, for me it was clearly skill issue. Initially I was assigned a lot of work including research propositions drafting and stuff. Once associates had a look at the quality of my work they truly realized who they were dealing with and stopped assigning any work henceforth. This invariably happened everywhere I interned. On the surface my CV looks fantastic but only I know how big of a knowledge gap there is.

How is the income of a law firm associate taxed? Do the lawyers (Associate) in the firm get the benefit of section 44ADA of the Income tax Act? In the new regime, upto 7LPA, effectively no one is supposed to pay any tax, so as a law firm associate, can we say that if I earn 14LPA, then there's no tax liability? Can someone with experience please clarify how the income of a law firm associate taxed?

As a Goa based lawyer having around 5-6 years of practice, I must say that litigation/conveyancing here is rapidly rising in response to the growing numbers of Delhites/Bombaywallas who have begun moving here post COVID thanks to wfh/desire to leave the hustle bustle etc. With the government's efforts to resume mining, there will be gradual rise in mining related work, which had virtually ceased for years. There may be some increase in tech law due to the fact that the government is trying to position Goa as a startup hub

But there's absolutely no chance coming anywhere close to a Delhi/Bombay for law practice since there's no chance of Goa replacing either, as the administrative capital or the financial capital of the country. If the proposed film City at Loliem is a success, Goa may become an entertainment/creative hub, somewhat like a poor man's Vegas/Miami and there may be some increased scope for law in these fields in the future.

So if your students don't want placement or can't get placement, then why do you feel so triggered whenever people rightly say that the placement scene isn't good? Clearly you missed that bit of logic. As for data, don't try to dilute the lies that your university produced for official government data. Flat out lies about numbers and median salary, repeatedly caught in public. Impactful presentation indeed.

Where was he and his channel when NLIU had a horrible, sexist and corrupt VC? Although his long tenure was eventually ended by student protests, where was this bleeding heart journo when the same fellow was sent in as UGC nominee on the Academic Council of NUJS? Where was this journo when an inquiry conducted under the directions of NLIU EC by a retired HC judge was quietly binned by the "star VC" who was imported in from NLSIU?

If the excuse is "didn't know" all these then, what about now?

This is the same guy who would stop people from bursting crackers or playing sports in hostel corridors. These self-proclaimed intellectuals often believe the world should adhere to an orderly fashion, where everything is as per a strict set of norms. However, can there not be room for those who simply want to have fun? Must everything always be so rigid and structured? These comments, though perhaps disruptive to some, are made in the spirit of enjoyment and spontaneity. It's important to recognise that fun and order can coexist. There should be space for both perspectives on a platform like LI, which is the only successful social media platform specifically for law students and lawyers in current times. This diversity of thought and behaviour enriches the community and allows for a more vibrant and dynamic interaction among its members.

Were you not working at your internships that is I have seen many internships which are internships just in name where the students are not doing anything or what you learned wasnt enough or were you just getting certificates and not even going to those internships because I have seen some like that. I just want to know this to know the extent of knowledge which is expected to be gained at these internships

1. "Has always been a lot worse than they claim" So basically something that allegedly all NLUs do - to present the statistics in the most impactful form possible? NLUO has counted even LLM selections so please let's not pretend as if anybody is innocent.

2. You're right. Someone who doesn't sit for placements cannot make a valid claim that they 'can' get a job. The context it which those words were said was this: I informed you that a record number of students have chosen to appear for UPSC, judiciary, go for litigation, higher studies etc (something for which people in fact choose NLUD over other T1 NLUs) and as a result haven't sat for campus placements. You responded with "Because they didn't get a job". I informed you the dynamics, to which you said "That's what everyone says who knows that they won't get a job". --- I hope the inconsistencies in your faulty line of reasoning are clear to you now. You can cry for all you want but people not sitting for placements and joining alternate career options is a legitimate exercise of their choice. You may speculate if they would've landed jobs had they sat for placements or not, but that's no justification to assume they made such choices because "they didn't get a job".

3. Thank you for sharing how you think one can best achieve one's upsc dreams. Frankly, nobody asked.

Long story short, I wasted my life in law school and did nothing of note beyond taking exams or doing a few namesake internships here and there (all under advocates). I'm 5 years too late to ask this.. but could someone guide me as to how to plan my next few months and secure a job at a Law firm within a year? Is it even a possibility to intern after graduating? If yes then who should I reach out to get internships at good firms since i don't have any referrals? I am particularly interested in white collar crimes if that matters. But am open to developing an interest in whatever area that helps me get employed first. I'll be really grateful for your guidance. Thank you.

Bhai tere jaise 5 saal drop karne ka plan nahi hota aise comment likhne waalon ka. Dimaag hai unke paas, tujh se zyada paisa kama lenge. Tu ja maa baap ke paison pe 5 saal drop kar. Waise bhi 10 lakh log tayaari kar rahe hain is exam ki jiska success rate 0.1% hai. Tera waise bhi nahi hoga.

Simply because someone is willing to apply doesn't mean they're competent enough to do the job well.

Every law firm paying 15 LPA or more has a rigours selection process and wants to attract top talent either through campus placements or internship performance. The high package helps them get the best of the lot that is willing to work 70-90 hour weeks. A firm could lower the salary by 5L and still have thousands of applications, but those applicants would be far from the best of the lot.

The scenario with oversupply of candidates is present in most of the sectors, yet they're are being paid more than what lawyers are.

Oversupply would mean that there would be a portion of the whole market who would be earning way better then the rest who could not make it into the profession, but here even the T1 law firms haven't crossed paying 20lpa to freshers.