https://www.amazon.com/dp/0735221995?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback
Go go. You'll find out what "meritocracy" really means.

Please read Amartya Sen. Your own claim is pretty wild and frankly unserious. Welfare and identitarianism are different things Because of our history, marginalized castes bear the brunt of policies that favor capital and inherited wealth for the simple reason that some groups were systematically exploited and deprived of the right to accumulate wealth. Capitalism and industrialism have always counted on racial exploitation. It is just erased from mainstream theory. That's the relationship between welfare and identity that you conflate so dismissively.

Can I present my research paper online at an international conference without attending in person? I am looking for reputable conferences that support virtual presentations and provide publication opportunities in conference proceedings. Could anyone share information about upcoming online conferences, paper submission guidelines, registration fees, and publication indexing?

I am a A2 at a boutique law firm who is on notice period. I do not have any offer as of now. I am planning to take a break of 2 months during which I will learn more and upskill myself. I am planning to apply to tiered firms also during that time. I am good at what I do but I lack confidence and basics. That is the reason why I thought I will do this. Even though I am getting interview calls from tiered firms, I am not able to crack these interview due to the same. Please help me with the preparation and please tell me what to do. I am set on getting a job at a tiered firm with good salary. I used to work hard in my boutique firm but I was getting paid peanuts. So I really want to get a good job with a good salary. I am willing to learn everything from the basics and study for hours. Also please tell me what are the skills that are expected from someone with my experience in a Tier 1 law firm. Any help would be appreciated.

We often hear people saying that NLSIU is the "best in Asia". Is it safer to say "South Asia", rather than "Asia" as a whole? Because here is the competition NLSIU is up against in Asia, taken as a whole:

1. Singapore: NUS and SMU

2. Hong Kong: HKU, City University and Chinese University

3. Japan: Tokyo, Kyoto, Waseda, Osaka, Nagoya etc

4. China: Peking, Tsinghua, Renmin, CUPL, Fudan etc.

5. South Korea: Seoul National University, Yonsei University, etc.

6. Taiwan: Taiwan National University

These universities are all in rich first world countries. Even China should be considered a rich first world country. Thus, these universities should certainly be ahead when it comes to physical infrastructure and funding. In terms of recruitment, all these countries are advanced economies, so there are probably enough good jobs for all graduates. Lots of international law firms too.

So the only areas where NLSIU can probably outdo them is student quality and faculty quality. Objectively, one area where NLSIU should be ahead is the study of human rights law and critical sociological approaches to law: Law and Poverty, Law and Caste, Gender and Law etc. I'm not sure if China, Singapore, Japan etc focus much in these areas.

The idea that a law student who on average barely possesses a working knowledge of the law should be trained in how to pass of his work to AI is ridiculous. Even conceding that AI is a useful tool - law students still need to in law school develop legal thinking and discipline. They need to know how to read a case, how to make an argument, how to negotiate terms in a contract, how to structure mergers, how to protect their clients. If all they are are paid prompters who cannot check or improve the AI output - they will be making themselves redundant. To the extent that NLS has tried to hold the line - they’re doing their students a service.

Why can't firms (especially T1s who have all the bargaining power in their hands) just collectively stop undervaluing their work. Just stop undercutting your competition's bill and understand that collectively increasing rates is better for ALL. Lawyers in India are really not getting paid enough for the work we do and it is entirely our fault.

How poorly are you managing your finances that a month's salary worth of expense feels like "L lag jayenge"? A month's salary is a small amount for bigger expenses for people in sound financial situations. For instance, as an Indian resident, if a month's salary of a mine can buy a new car, I saw an ad for and found interesting, I am pleasantly surprised!

I think this practice area is already bleeding talent – you really don't want to be here. People with years of experience are pivoting out of this; even full-fledged teams are pivoting out of this area. The practice area is likely to become increasingly irrelevant as the economic basis for its existence vanishes as trade relations change permanently.

The growth in teams is minimal, with the practice already top-heavy relative to the number of clients requiring assistance, plus top-heavy with some of the most notorious folks within Indian legal circles. Plus, most companies have realised ways and means to circumvent the CCI, and most corporate teams in law firms are now eating the merger control pie with the aid of AI.

The practice area relies way too much on copycat activities from abroad, and that has actually hurt the CCI. India's old economy needs attention just like the digital economy. Another external factor is the fact the EU is abandoning the administrative scaffolding that the CCI modelled itself around and is pushing for more "industrial policy", which is India's default setup anyway, and India is reverting to it.

Finally, take a good look at the regulator; it's practically dead as we speak without the coram required. Now, the selection committee process with the EC selection committee issues will be even more prolonged. This isn't without precedent either. It was like this a few years ago. This start-stop, staggered way of functioning will not augur well for a well-functioning fair trade regulator. So don't do it.

I am currently a third year bo29 at a T1 NLU. We have received RPC cfa for internship with trilegal in online and hybrid mode for Del, Bom, Blr and Gurgaon offices.

I have a few questions, would be grateful if somebody could answer:

1. Which city should be the second preference after Bombay for corp based internship?

2. What are some other good practice areas at tri in terms of callback and hopefully a ppo in the future? (Apart from bnf and cap markets)

3. Has anybody interned in hybrid mode? What is it like?

I switched from Corp to Lit after a year. LLM has a lot of benefits but evaluate it based on finances and the time you have. I would say it's not needed given your focus is figuring out the career path first. You can always do it later.

In terms of execution, I made the switch by taking my chances in terms of applying to chambers and firms.You use the same logic for corporate law. JUST START ASAP AND APPLY.

Use your alumni network and professional network well. Start off by asking them if anyone can take you on for a corp role. People trust you already in terms of work so they will oblige. I did the same and it has worked wonders. Don't looks at Tier 1 firms specifically. Firms like META law and other smaller firms are a better bet and you should apply there. Look for a reference if possible

Thoda history padh le beta. That's what all the Modi supporters thought they were doing, and now you can see where that takes you. Seeing is not understanding, but you can try. Read all the op-eds when Modi became PM. Read about the people who thought BJP is economic right and different from RSS. They all thought they were doing economic reforms, governance reforms, meritocracy, and radical capitalism. You can rebel in more clever ways. You know what they say about people who do the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome.

I'm a fourth year at a top NLU so I acknowledge there's a certain comfort and choosiness with which I write this. But there is not a lot of advice on this so I thought I'd ask here: Which T1 disputes team (Firm or City I'm pretty open to any) is worth pursuing a job for the initial years post law school at? I spent the first three years interning in litigation and aim fairly certain I do not want to do transactional work. Arbitration is equally exciting but I've also heard that a purely intl arb team boxes you and I do like the corporate law disputes side of things. Which team specifically should I try applying to if I want to perhaps pursue a LLM a few years down the lane and start my own practice/disputes team (chambers I will join eventually but I need some financial cushion and how an understanding of law firms operate)? Appreciate it

Before downvoting excellent comments like these, let us take into consideration an on-the-ground reality which I have observed and which shows the correctness of this.

I have recently purchased a house in London in an apartment complex (I have been living in that city for over five years now). Without giving too many identifying details, this is the sort of place that costs north of £650,000, and the complex is the kind of place that "feels posh" right from the entry steps. The sort of place whose equivalent in Mumbai would be lived in by the most affluent of the society only. Of course, some flats on the lower floors of this London apartment complex are what are known as "affordable housing units", and some are bought on mortgages. Some of the flats have, of course, been rented out, and those rents are not cheap either. I have been looking for a cleaner recently, and have been recommended to a resident of one of the other flats who is a cleaner. Not some type of UK version of a live-in domestic worker, but a resident of this kind of flat whose job is to be a cleaning lady. I don't know whether or not she owns or rents the flat she lives in. Regardless, can you ever think of a person in our country who does a job like that whose own home is among that of the richest of the society?

Sure, the UK has more than enough problems with cost of living, globally among the highest taxation rates and so on - not skating over those. But you cannot deny that workers in this kind of a society get things that workers in our kinds of societies just don't get. Attempting to make such an argument would be, simply, unpatriotic, as it would get us to believe that our country is okay, when it just isn't.

"... the job market is really bad and even after clearing NET there are no vacancies"

This line clearly shows: what is wrong above all things is your mentality. You expect to get something pretty substantial - a job which involves knowledge transmission and knowledge creation about law - for what is basically nothing: undergraduate and master's degrees. You have completed some exam. What do those show? Nothing useful to the faculty board recruiting for a particular uni, except that you know your basics of law and have done some work toward a specialisation. Have you proved yourself in any meaningful way? Have you done a PhD project? A substantial piece of research that results in a book-length writing? Have you published substantial pieces of work in peer reviewed journals? Seemingly, not - would be very surprising if you had, considering your current stage of education.

Sure: the job market is bad, if you operate on the assumption that the market's expectations until now have been correct, i.e., that these expectations resulted, overall, in the recruitment of high quality people. What you don't want to do is to be operating under this assumption. Please revise your opinions and build your profile accordingly, because, to be clear, this way of recruitment has most certainly not resulted in recruitment overall of high quality people. Even among those who are high quality, their quality has been undermined by being among intellectual inferiors.

If you have a PhD in which you have done well and have made the most of other opportunities necessary for those preparing for a career in academia - you have a meaningful, highly original, substantial contribution to knowledge as your end result of your PhD, your PhD is from a good uni, if you were well-supervised (your supervisor was a person with meaningful contributions in the field, who supported you not only with thesis feedback but also in job search), if you have done temp teaching jobs at your uni during your PhD which has built your teaching experience CV, if you have done research assistant jobs which has built your exposure on that side, if you have maybe managed to get a paper into a journal - and you are still having problems, then we have a meaningful basis on which to talk about whether or not the job market is bad. Until then...

Hi,

I graduated from a tier 1 law college amongst top ranks. However, I'm not liking the firm I joined (it has now been 5 months). My team is toxic and I didn't want to do this work to begin with but because it was a day zero offer I did not get to choose my team. I am looking to shift as soon as possible. Please can someone guide me for vacancies/leads that might be open now? How does hiring process work if someone wants to leave before 1 year?

Trust me don't join, you will learn nothing, very state specific management, spineless people. Nothing to work. Brain dead. You will think let's wait for a year and then resign to have that tag, but since they have no goodwill that tag also doesn't matter.

Don't join. Save yourself.

Agree with the sentiment of your response, but as an MC lawyer working in London on a USD 200K salary - 10 din Switzerland mai meri salary ke bhi L lag jayenge :)

I do acknowledge the difference tho - yahaan ek mahine ki salary ke L lagenge, India mai puri saal ki saving ki band bajegi.

No. Academically the best means the place where the faculty and students produced highest scholarship (journal articles and books) in both quality and numbers. Someone can check Elsevier / Scopus database.

NLS, Jindal, DU, IIT KGP, even NLUD and Nalsar must be ahead of NUJS.

How much funding does your university provide for moot court competitions? Does it cover all expenses, including flight tickets, registration fees, accommodation (hotels or Airbnb), and food, or are students expected to bear some of these costs themselves?

The argument that moots receive the majority of the university's funding while other activities receive comparatively little is flawed.

Whats the leave policy for mooters? Funding plus leave is a must.

University can afford CCTVs, SJA has been fighting against such installation since ages. If the invigilators start frisking or other measures, the same SJA will be up in arms about violation of constitutional rights. So the students are the ones who are responsible for cheating and complicit in its facilitation.

Hi, interning at Khaitan sometime in the winter (Batch of 2028), and I wanted to know if the Dispute Resolution team is on a hiring freeze? I heard informally from someone, a couple of months ago and I wanted to ask if that is the case. If not, are they looking to hire for the Batch of 28?

30 year old advocate, 5 years PQE, looking for honest advice on switching to corporate

I'm 30, five years out, two in my hometown (lockdown years, so effectively stunted) and three in Delhi covering district courts, DHC, some criminal, civil and administrative matters. I went independent earlier than I should have because staying wasn't an option given how things were with seniors. Independence hasn't worked the way I hoped. Network hasn't responded the way I expected, income has been inconsistent, and if I'm being straight with myself, the lack of work has made me a bit rusty despite having done some genuinely good work when opportunities came.

I've decided to switch to corporate, TMT and data privacy specifically. The plan is clear, the resources are identified, I know exactly what I need to do. The problem is I can't seem to trust any one plan fully and actually follow through consistently. Lots of thinking, not enough doing. Confidence has taken a hit and rebuilding it while also preparing for a switch is harder than I anticipated.

Two things I'd genuinely like advice on from people who've actually been through this, does an LLM abroad meaningfully improve your chances at 30 with my profile, or is it expensive signalling that doesn't justify the cost and time? And if you've been through a phase where you knew what needed to be done but couldn't consistently execute, what actually helped you bridge that gap? Not looking for motivation, looking for what practically worked.

As a student at NSLIU, I too can confirm this for us. For the Drafting, Pleading and Conveyancing course conducted for Bo'28 between Mar-May 2026, 70% of the score was from a set of seven in-class group handwritten drafting exercises, of which attending any five was mandatory (and if you attended more, the best five were considered, and then the score out of 50 was scaled up to 70). For starters, the same question paper was used for three sections despite one section doing it earlier than the other two (effectively leaking the question for 2/3 of the batch with more than an hour to prepare accordingly, of which much use was in fact made, every single time).

If that wasn't bad enough, professors turned a blind eye when invigilating the exercises, and very often most professors would even leave the classroom for extended periods of time (10 or more minutes). As a result, there was almost no group which did not have at least one member hiding their phone beneath their desk and using generative AI to dictate the text to another member of the group who did the writing. People also used their phones to simply refer to the digital copy of the format for the draft shared earlier by the professors, to replicate the same in the answers. Everyone saw it happen, I myself am eyewitness to many people doing it.

The irony of ironies is that the futility of the evaluation method was repeatedly demonstrated to the relevant authorities (professors in-charge of academic affairs), and it was pointed out to faculty that using the same question/prompt when one section does it first is a bad idea. None of them gave a damn, nothing was changed. It might be delusional of me, but I hope publishing this here brings some attention to this so that such rampant fraud and poor course design is better prevented going forward.

No please.This is not limited to Indian law schools.This is also a common trend in American And British law schools.What the Indian liberals should do which they aren't imo is being more accommodating to differing view points.LKY(Worked in a country 1/50th size of India without any external actors,Malays literally kicked them out)

Thatcher(Well just ask the average Britisher about her and compare the economic policies she bought and their effects) and Don't even get me started on Reagan and reaganomics.The Legislative intent of the founding fathers of India designed in praxis,A naturally progressive endeavour.To use means of say thatcherism or other forms of heavy power concentration is antithetical to the founding principles of Indian Democracy.

Hi, I’ve been working at a real estate law firm for almost 6 years, but the workload never seems to get better. I still work 16–18 hours a day, barely get Sundays off, and even planned holidays are interrupted by urgent work. It’s mentally and physically exhausting, and my health is starting to suffer.

I thought things would improve with experience, but now that I’m more efficient, I’m expected to multitask and handle 50 things a day. Does it ever get better, or should I move in-house for a better work-life balance? I barely have time to go home and have dinner with my family and it makes me guilty to be so absent.

As a student from NUJS, I can confirm this. There is rampant use of cheating in exams, and that too with generative AI. We all know who they are, and if only the university could afford a functional CCTV system, maybe a few of them could be caught as well, as the invigilators are more or less useless. The rank list is no longer a true reflection of merit, and quite a few times we have had a problem with the "dwindling competence" of the students leaving the ADR and MCS societies apart from now because the rampant corruption that has creeped on there is also quite visible.

Internet trends spread every slowly and unevenly among various parts of India. On one hand it's good that it decelerates the speed at which American brainviruses are spreading in the country, but on the downside many Indians still have not woke up and realized how much North American Whitoids (both Americans and Canadian) h@te us.

All time Anti Indian sentiments are high, Wannabe Orange has put a $100K fee, LLM fees are over 1Cr INR, the list of problems are never ending

You know How much JP IB associates make? Buddy pay for them is 40L fixed + 100% bonus. 25-30L marketing/Consulting vale hote hain.

Did my MBA from IIM C, Now working in Kearney. IB guys make hell lot of money.

even Avendus Associate pay is 25L fixed + 25L bonus , JP/Goldman are leagues apart

PPP is a flawed metric, It just accounts for consumer goods and basic services. Do you really think 200K USD(Post tax) in US = 40 lakhs in India??

Hell No, the purchasing power of a guy in US is exponentially more than a guy in India in terms of Electronics, Furnitures, Cars and House. In fact US is Equal or cheaper than Indian Items on absolute terms.

Don't forget Dollar arbitrage, A Lawyer making 40L in India Cant afford to have a comfortable 10 day trip to switzerland while a US Lawyer making 200K USD can easily do that in any part of the world without breaking sweat.

Don't ever get fooled by PPP shit and don't forget "quality of life"

I am ex-JSA Finance and someone told me over a VC interview that I look underconfident and does not sound / look like a JSA lawyer. I am taking her feedback in a constructive way and want to know that are there some traits / attitude changes that should come while / after being part of a leading law firm? I never thought to take pride from my workplace but apparently it is a market requirement. While one should not boast of the same, should I re-consider being too humble as well regarding my affiliations?

T1 A0s, how much do they make? Let's be generous and assume 18 LPA pre-tax, which is 1,50,000 INR per month. All subsequent salaries in this post are going to be pre-tax figures. Income tax in India is a rip-off too, because abroad it pays for a whole host of services, such as your child's schooling to a good standard, roads, clean air and water on tap, and even excellent healthcare and public transport outside the USA. But we will ignore the tax rip-off for our present purposes.

How much do these A0s work? Let's be even more generous and assume 9 hours a day, which is unachievable btw. It comes to 45 hours if we assume a 5-day work week, which is also a fugazi.

But because we have made these low-ball assumptions, we can forget worrying about non-weekend holidays. 4 weeks in a month, so that gives us 180 hours a month. 1,50,000 INR for 180 hours comes to 833.33 INR/hour.

If you, as a normal person, were to buy dollars from a bank, a good deal would be around 100 INR for a dollar. So you're making well under $9/hour.

The federal US minimum wage is $7.25/hour, and about 30 of the 50 total states have set a wage higher than that. This is minimum wage - all except immigrant agricultural workers make that. Think janitors, cleaning staff - anyone with two hands, two eyes, and two legs.

American A0s who work at the same level as Indian Big5 T1 law firms are paid $225,000 a year. They work just as hard as you do, all the crazy hours. Even the small firms shell out north of $150,000 a year. You can multiply by 100 pretty easily - these are 1.5 to 2.25 crore INR a year, as the first salary. Most newly minted salaried partners at 10-11 years PQE in India are not making that much.

With this context and perspective, there should be no doubt whatsoever in your mind that an American clerk or taxi driver no doubt make more than a CAM associate or even SA, at nearly any PQE range. Median pay for these professions can be reasonably determined to be north of $45,000 a year, and usually it's better than that. This is, you guessed it, 45+ LPA INR.

Yes, there is PPP. Yes, there is very heavy student debt in the US. Yes, there are high taxes and stagnating opportunities in the EU. That's some part of the reason the prices are so different.

For PPP in particular, note that it is a relevant cope only for domestic goods. Markets for services and commodities are becoming global at a rapid pace. Food, housing, and other such things are domestic markets. Food in particular is extremely cheap in India compared to the West. But fuel, luxury automobiles, flights (especially abroad), concert or stadium tickets, watches, computers, phones, videogames, streaming services, TVs, washing machines, speakers - all your big-ticket expenses linked to living "the good life" are entirely global markets with global prices. Surely, you are not slogging sleepless hours to buy rice and lentils? One could buy rice and lentils with much less!

Thus, there is no doubt whatsoever that in nominal and in PPP adjusted terms, the in-hand pay of the poorest 10% in the USA and western Europe exceeds your in-hand pay as someone working in an Indian law firm. And it will stay so until the legal services industry becomes a global market. Just like the deeply indebted farmer must sell at razor-thin margins to the wholesaler as he has no option to export, so too you slave for the Indian firm for peanuts as you have no reasonable choice of a more prosperous source of demand.