hi, batch of 2028 here. how do bonuses work for associates? what is the policy for AZB (Mumbai)? how much do they vary across teams? which teams would you say are able to bill more and which would be on the lesser end of the spectrum? if anyone knows where the employment team would fall on this spectrum it would be really helpful too, thanks!

Hi everyone,

I'm a third-year student at a tier-3 NLU. So far my internships have been in Disputes, and I've enjoyed them, but lately I've been curious about Employment & Labour Law. I don't know much about it yet, and I'd love to understand it better before deciding whether it's something I could build a career in.

Seeking clarifications on following points:-

- Is this a good long-term field in India, especially with the new Labour Codes? How does it compare with disputes or corporate work? And How should I start learning this subject from scratch?

Thank you so much, any advice, big or small, means a lot.

Hi

I am a young lateral who is switching to a different T1 law firm in mumbai. I just wanted to ask if it is fine to negotiate for a small raise from the previous T1 law firm salary to beat the expenses and living costs in mumbai. Tbh the cost of living is a bitch.

Fyi I will be discussing and negotiating soon. Do lmk your perspective and how much raise is justified and can be asked. You can also tell me how to start since it is my first transition.

Thanks!

France: Burning historic buildings, waving Palestine flags, majority of protestors poor African Muslim immigrants unhappy with cost of living and lack of jobs.

Bangladesh: US Deep State backed coup, Yunus comes to power with support of pro-Pakistan Jihadis, Hindus murdered.

India: Completely peaceful, protestors from all castes, religions and classes, protest against Modi government specifically.

Very mischievous and malicious to try and equate them.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2026/oct/17/hundreds-arrested-protests-across-france-in-pictures

I'm interning at KCO fort office and there's this associate who is decent to work with but I find him to be arrogant and full of himself. He's great at his work and there's a lot to learn but the arrogance gets to me at times. How do I maximise the chances of getting a callback /placement?

The inability to enforce contracts is the biggest weakness in India’s legal system. If this can be fixed, it will help the Indian economy as a whole. It will also help lawyers, since more citizens will use their services and their income will increase. I support this initiative. I will send a letter to the PMO tomorrow.

Know the new associate dean since OSAI days. She doesn’t put anything in writing or respond to any emails (because it leaves a paper trail). Besides she has no intellectual integrity. Perhaps DJ wants some puppet because of that. But the question is even then she won’t put anything in writing. So how would she help DJ?

I’m at PQE1 and feeling completely stuck. I'd accepted this job believing I’d be doing broad work (part of taxation laws within GC [if it makes sense] when I was promised general GC), but right after starting, I got funneled into this tiny, obscure niche that almost nobody else wants to work in (or knows about). On top of that, the team is miserable to work with, and the pay ended up being way lower than what was promised when I accepted the offer. Because I have less than a year of experience and my work isn't really transferable, HR process keeps killing my chances before I can get anywhere, even when I reach out directly to alumni or partners about junior openings in other practice areas. Going back to school isn't financially doable right now, and the hours leave zero room to study for other credentials or exams. I’m early in my career and terrified of getting permanently pigeonholed into a dead-end niche. For anyone who managed to pivot practice areas this early, how did you actually pull it off? What’s the most realistic way forward here?

Context: https://www.barandbench.com/news/litigation/senior-counsel-gopal-sankaranarayanan-withdraws-from-delhi-protest-cases-before-supreme-court

1. Attention seeking much? Other lawyers stole limelight, so crying for recognition?

2. Unprofessional much? Who returns briefs coz court room banter?

Let’s discuss? Keep it about professionalism and Indian court room conduct. No personal on the senior required, sure a lot to say there also. But why bother!

To all the academics (experienced and young / relatively young), how are you using or let me rephrase it, how is the impact of AI upon Academic Legal Writing ?

I know AI cannot replace in depth quantitative analysis and reasoning and places involving empirical research or research about ethnography, etc.,

But most academic writing in our Legal Field is primarily from secondary data and mostly doctrinal, and from what I've seen several tools (especially Claude) mimic a person's human writing style so well that it has even beat turnitin (first hand experience from seeing a colleague having done this), but ethics is holding me back from doing so.

There are tools now to humanise writing and tools to remove watermarks, thats not what this is about.

What I am asking is how have your interactions with publishers been, how are your interactions during paper submissions, etc. Is the field genuinely able to discern AI writing from human writing ?

I will explain in simple language. There are monetary figures given in two columns. In left it's the ACTUAL salary given by these firms in 2015. In right it's NOT THE CURRENT SALARY, it's just the inflation adjusted 2026 value of the 2015 salary .

So this means that TTA paid 13 lakhs in 2015, which was a huge amount back then equivalent to someone getting 20.8 LPA today

Nishant Shah’s team lost 2 equity partners with a few colleagues, 1 partner with team, and 1 AP with team in a span of 1.5 months. All moving to Dentons Link Legal to establish the Indirect tax practice.

One equity partner spent almost 2 decades, while the other one has spent more than 1.5 decade at ELP. The Partner also seems to have spent around half a decade at the firm, while the AP has spent over a decade.

It’s a clear indication of the discontent amongst Partners regarding the present move to form

“Dhruva ELP Partners” (emphasis supplied).

Some of these suggestions are excellent (e.g., banning SILF, creating a new regulator). Some are okay, and could do with more elaboration/modification/detail. One of them, on the other hand, is pure rubbish.

The ones that could do with more fleshing out:

1. Changing AIBE and mucking about with the regulator. Combining these two into one. Good theory, but more needed. Based on the theory that the NLSIU VC once articulated about the structure of the Indian profession vs. UK, United States and Singapore: very easy to get into India, managing after that is the problem. UK/USA/Singapore: Bar to get in (i.e., get qualified as a solicitor or barrister in the case of E&W) is in and of itself so high, that you get a degree of earning-your-stripes respect just by getting in, and there is a marginally greater degree of career security because of that. Make some efforts to make the AIBE a little bit tougher if you want, but be careful that doesn't go too far. Look carefully at the case of the English SQE where they've gone too far and the reputation of the exam has gone down because of strong complaints of accessibility of the exam to the disabled/neurodivergent. Much better to have:

(a) An England-and-Wales-style solicitor-barrister classification, for one thing. Makes things clearer for everyone.

(b) A pre-SQE-style LPC + training contract-style route into the law firm side of the profession (like solicitors) and a barrister-style pupillage period for courtroom advocates. In England, the barrister pupillage system comprises of two 'sixes': two periods of six months, in the first of which the barrister-to-be observes their pupil supervisor (a senior barrister teaching them) and starts to take cases in the next six. A good friend of mine who is disabled works at 39 Essex Chambers. As a reasonable adjustment for him, instead of two 'sixes' they increased the pupillage period to 18 months, making it two 'nines' (two periods of nine months). Maybe that would be a better idea for everybody. Have a voting period at the end of the training where the chambers or firm can decide whether or not to keep on their trainee lawyer after the training period. Also try, at least for the transactional lawyers, to give some exposure to multiple practice areas.

(c) Regarding the entire thing of cold emails from aspiring interns, professionalise it. Graduate recruitment, MC law firm-style (for the law firms): graduate recruitment officers, LinkedIn posts singing the firms' praises, specific application deadlines (Legally India can contribute here, by developing an application deadlines tracker like how Law Careers Net has in E&W), the works. Pupillage Gateway-style applications for the litigators.

(d) Make the law degrees worth more than toilet paper!

(i) Shut down a boat load of law schools, right the hell now. Many of the older, TLC-type (non-NLU) and some private law schools we can do without, thank you very much.

(ii) Actually have somebody care about the quality of law degrees instead of micromanaging them like how BCI does. Not just about the content, but the quality of assessment. Make gaining good marks in your law degree actually a meaningful achievement for the job applications, meaning you must have very strict marking, like NLSIU. Cut down on the number of subjects taken during the course also. This will make the GPA/degree classification actually meaningful, unlike the current messed-up system. Standardise the grading: either adopt a degree classification system like the British have, or a U.S.-style GPA system, across the country. Not this total mess of systems being different from uni to uni.

(iii) Modify the options available in terms of law degrees! Why only the British, French etc are getting the opportunity of having properly regulated dual inter-jurisdictional degrees (e.g., King's with Georgetown four year LLB of two years at KCL + two at Georgetown)? Reduce unnecessary shit in the degrees to allow for such things to actually happen! Also, why do again people from other countries have options we don't, like solicitor apprenticeships in E&W or 'law in practice' type options? You want foreign law firms coming in? You need this stuff, not the outdated, unnecessarily content-heavy (instead of quality heavy) system we have now.

2. Suggestion (viii) is not that good. Why not create a Singapore-style system where you can get a foreign lawyer with certain expertise to work in court for certain things but you have to approach a court to argue why a foreign lawyer is needed and local counsel won't do?

3. Upon reflection, totally endorse suggestion (vii). One more thought on (vi): why is the regulator regulating LLM and PhD degrees in law? Stop that and get them to focus on proper stuff.

The rubbish suggestion

The Senior Advocate one: absolutely not. The KC distinction of England has more meaning and credibility than SA of India for a reason. Let's not even go any further with this. Either have a robust and transparent competitive process, or nothing at all in terms of distinctions.

Finally, something to think about which may make me unpopular: why have law schools that are part of multidisciplinary universities worked well in other countries, but not in India? What to do to make them work?

TL;DR: I graduated from a Tier-1 law school a few years ago and have spent the time since in business and technology. I'm now looking to move into law firm practice, ideally in technology, disputes or general corporate, and would value views on how realistic that is.

Hello,

I graduated from a Tier-1 law school as a subject gold medallist. At the time I wanted to see what other paths were open to me before committing to one, so I spent the next few years outside the law. I joined a business as its first employee, worked at technology startups including unicorns, and experimented with ventures of my own.

My key achievements in that period include:

- 1. Helping scale the business to a few million dollars in revenue.
- 2. Teaching myself software development, well before AI tools made coding widely accessible.

While I completed several internships in law school, I only came to fully understand the value lawyers bring once I worked with them from the client side. Seeing their rigour, judgement and commercial impact up close has drawn me to practice.

This has been on my mind for some time. I recently received a well-compensated offer from a legal-tech company, and weighing it has made me realise that I want to commit to a career in legal practice, even if that means starting at an entry-level salary. Over the next few years, I want to build deep expertise in one practice area and become an adviser clients trust for both legal and commercial advice.

I would be grateful for views on the following:

1. 1. Would firms realistically consider me for an A0 or junior associate role, given that I have no practice experience and graduated a few years ago?
2. 2. Which practice areas or types of firms (tier-1 firms, mid-size firms, boutiques, or an in-house role first) are likely to be most receptive to a background like mine?
3. 3. What would strengthen my candidacy?

> I believe I could bring two things to a firm that a fresh graduate may not. First, commercial awareness from helping build a business from the ground up, which helps me understand what clients actually need. Second, deep technical fluency: I have built software myself and work extensively with AI tools, which are increasingly relevant to legal practice today.

I would value perspectives on how firms are likely to view this. I am happy to share more details or connect directly with anyone who is open to discussing this.

Got this directly from their HR - All teams across the firm is generally very well paying but the WCC pays the highest followed by the corp team followed by the disputes team (who also pay very well and at T1 levels for some people), they have differentiated compensation and bonus structures even at the associate levels. Wcc A0 is about 15 to 20 LPA corporate is around 14-18 LPA and disputes is 13 to 16 LPA

Hey everyone, I am a fourth year law student and this is going to be my first corporate internship (yea only done litigation till now and now transitioning to corporate).

I heard they only give online internships. Any way I can change it to an offline internship as this will be my first corp team experience.

I heard from a friend that noida office doesn't care about interns and nobody will interact with you including the buddy assigned. Wanted to know if it was true....

How's the overall experience and what kind of work can i expect to be assigned to me. There is no confirmation with regards to the team I'm being assigned in but I think it's probably gonna be corporate and commercial because that was my preferred practice and I gave the interview for corp team as well.

My internship is going to be in December.

Thanks

Some updates on the demerger.

Non-Tax has made a few quiet moves. SAN and Sword have tied up with a Tier 1 UK law firm. This “best friends” alliance will be announced when the demerger date is announced.

A year ago, ELP had hired a COO from 3L and the poor chap quit because he couldn’t get along with one of the three TnT partners who are moving to Dhruva. This chap has been re-hired by SAN to be the COO of ELP that will not join Dhruva.

TnT continues to bleed. The God of Water has joined Darbo and Swerve in walking off to Ding-a-Ling Land.

Another Partner from TnT had stuck a deal with a Tier 1 Indian law firm over 2 months ago. As soon as he collects his Diwali bonus, he will bid adieu.

Million dollar question: Why did Gopal S withdraw from the Delhi riot cases and who is the lawyer who he claims misbehaved?

https://www.barandbench.com/news/litigation/senior-counsel-gopal-sankaranarayanan-withdraws-from-delhi-protest-cases-before-supreme-court

Generally, the author of a posting stating with ""Am I the only one... " does not want a response to substantive points. He/ she/ they only want validation.

Anyway, I believe there are no "points" in the post, let alone "substantive points". It only has some half-baked baseless declarations.

And is not possible to take someone who uses the word "dehat", but uses Thatcher and Regan as examples, seriously.

agree with all your points, but have the following comments

i - no money

ii - what will it do? also even with this sort of questions it only ~75% pass, I shudder to think about the quality of legal education the rest 25% had. i would instead suggest that CLAT be mulitlingual and be the entrance exam for joining LLB or a qualifying law degree. also, any law teaching institution which does not get 50% of its incoming cohort pass AIBE within 10 years of admission over a three year period (moving average) should be delisted (you would not believe me but it would take away 40% of seats)

iii - what would replace it?

iv - would it be a completely quantitative assessment?

v - i would suggest scrap the senior advocate system itself, if someone wants to call them the king of the heap let them call themsleves, like the abolition of titles did nothing to stop people calling themselves rajadhiraj maharaj hukum babu

vi - tried and failed

vii - sensisble point but dependent on ix

viii - because we write the laws, writers' privilege, brahmins had it ~2000 years ago, now we have it

ix - who will ban?

Keep coping . RCC wala internship is also connection based. I have seen people whose CV is aah thu even in their fourth year and fifth year and they got their internship only through their RCC.

Only people who get their internships through applying via straight means and via winning moots and other competitions can claim moral superiority

I understand your concerns and feel for those students. But do not think that the sufferings of the students in other universities are all that different either. NLSIU students still get the benefit of having superb teachers guide them. The others get all the hardship without the benefits.

Check forums like conferencealerts, lawctopus, LinkedIn pages. There are international conferences which allow virtual participation. Nor many pure law conferences get their proceedings indexed though. Interdisciplinary conferences do that more, especially ones involving STEM and law. But conferences are also places for networking with reputed professionals in the domain. Virtual participation won't allow you to do that.

You may look at QS Law Subject Rankings 2026 for this. 8 Asian Law Schools in top 50 in the world:

World Rank/Asia Rank/ Law School

6/1 NUS Singapore

20/2 HKU

24/3 Univ of Tokyo

28/4 Peking

29/ 5 Tshinghua

35/ 6 Jindal

41/7 City Univ HK

44/8 Seoul National Univ

Jindal ranked 6 in Asia with 35 world rank.

NLSIU & DU are 30-35 Ranked in Asia with their world rank of 151-200.

Please read the source: https://www.topuniversities.com/university-subject-rankings/law-legal-studies

do you genuinely never think beyond caste? do you not think that constantly blaming every single thing on caste takes away your agency and despite having the best of resources, you will never feel that you are good enough because deep down you know, that were given an easy way.

Clearly, you are not an NLSIU student. As a matter of fact, if you were, you would not have been saying this.

Trust me when I say this, I have seen the best of best students struggling with the academics. Despite putting their best efforts, many people find it difficult to cope. There have been cases where the best student from school struggled with the nlsiu academics.

But do you want to know the funny thing? Even the worst of student at nlsiu, will be miles better than the best student at the lower rated law colleges.

You know why? because the sheer effort and determination, it is required to sail through the system coupled with the apathetic administration and hostile behaviour from some of the students, with no hope or light at the end of the tunnel. It makes you one resilient person, who can take on any challenge than life throws at you.

nlsiu people are cut from a different cloth. The system breaks you down emotionally and mentally that you have no other option but to keep persisting through it thinking that nothing is changing, yet when you get outside the campus, you realise everything has changed and you are hardened from all the abuses that you suffered that nothing really scares you anymore.

Do not listen to the charlatans here who are larping on their daddy's money while sipping Starbucks coffee and typing on their Macbook cursing Socialism on Social Media to get the virtue signalling status but relishing the fruits of the Capitalistic world.

If you genuinely believe what you say, start with an anonymous blog highlighting and writing about your views.
Why? This serves two purpose, firstly, since there will be no name attached to it, you will be much more likely to be honest in your thought process and offering since you will not have the hanging damocles sword of the public morality outlook and can be candid.

Secondly, writing about your thoughts will give make your thinking better as well as hone your writing talents, which will help in your law school journey as well.

Start by writing a critique or an argument of some of the oft-repeated lines that are used by the so called leftists, who only know how to catch on the latest trend on the social media and follow what is trendy instead of critically applying their reasoning.

All the best!

You need a competition regulator only if there is any competition in the market. Our industrial policy has been to enable consolidation in all sectors of the economy in the hopes of building national champions. All of us can see how that is working out.

So, yes. Unless our industrial policy changes, no hope for competition law. It is anyways a lame duck.

There’s quite a difference. Mumbai generally get paid better than Hyderabad. Also, LKS tends to pay people who have been with the firm since the beginning of their careers more than those hired laterally.

But partner at Mumbai has better work - but not again much work. Hyderabad has no work at all. They are so laid back to even get clients.

Hi! I am interested in interning with the above-mentioned female Snr Adv(s). It would be great if someone could share their honest internship experience, work culture at their chambers, matters handled, timings of the office, court experiences, pay for interns (if any), conversion chances as juniors etc.

It depends on your domain , IB/PE are the highest paying domains on campus where fresher associate pay ranges from 40L to 1.4cr (most firms are in 70-90L range) , there are hardly 25-30 roles on campus as such.

These roles only hire* CAs/old IIT grads/Top 5 Du grads who had relevant experience before joining campus. CAs and old IITians dominate IB/PE hiring.

Consulting, This is where majority of batch focuses on getting into MBBK, Big 4s, A&M etc... in their consulting arms, fresher pay ranges from 25L to 40L depending on firms.

If a lawyer from Tier 1 clg is going for MBA then he has good shots at consulting, just make sure you have decent academic ratings like 9/9/8 or more otherwise MBBK would not even touch your CVs.

Growth in consulting is higher than corporate law, I did my MBA in 2023 , joined BCG at 30lpa then switched to kearney at 50lpa as of now (manager level).

Work life balance is shit or equal to law firms, only USP are exit options in Strategy roles of large conglomerates where I am looking at.

Hope this would help you. There is a lot to explain but this is enough ig.