Sorry to say this & I don't intend to generalise, but my experience with the people from West Bengal reflect that they are immensely service oriented. A type of cultural set-up there, I guess. In contrast, people from other states especially Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi are focussed on making something of their own. They want to set up their own empire kind of sort.

Again, you would also notice that some legal start ups are actually founded by people who are alumni of NUJS. So, it's not that a full-proof notion that I am putting forward. Just one of the factors, in my opinion. To make it clear, I am not pin-pointing any community. Only cultural difference in terms of place.

When I was in college, my peers and I were very similar. We had same plans, similar grades, and lifestyles, came from similar family backgrounds etc. We were all anxious about what would happen post college, what would we do, where we would go etc. Some did try pretty hard but placements were very scarce and basically getting a job off-campus was basically impossible. After college was over, most of the people I know, from my group or the college in general are still pretty relaxed about their lives. Some are doing litigation at their hometowns gleefully, some are doing masters at basically continuing their college vacation, while most are practically doing nothing apart from hanging out in expensive restaurants, cafes, traveling, chilling with friends and family or lavishing generational wealth. Whereas I am slogging a good part of my day in my cubicle at my firm, doing DD or Agreements mindlessly only to live for the weekend , all the while constantly looking for career growth and job switch allthe time.

At times, I feel that even if some day these fun lovers ever wish to wake up from their luxury and get toi work, they can have it fairly easily, since almost all have family connections or strong backgrounds, while all I can do is burn the midnight oil to hope that someday I make something for myself. Is life too unfair?

Agreed. And if you take the hours they put in under consideration, then lawyers do not make a decent living.

What I really don't understand or a fan of is the expectation of gratitude amongst employers and their loyal associates. On multiple occasions I have heard "we get paid to be available on Saturdays or cancel our plans". No dickhead. A few lakhs for a work which makes employer crores does not warrant slavery.

Indeed. They make enough to be flashy, but nowhere near enough to have the security that comes with intergenerational wealth. I see this among PAs and salaried Partners. They have convinced themselves that they are high rollers, but seem to be living a high-expenditure lifestyle (frequent foreign holidays, a mid-range german car, iPhone/Mac exclusive users, and most obnoxiously, this watch fetish that seems to have caught on).

PAs making 60L and Partners making 90L (these are great salaries no doubt), but so many people in tech, consulting, and corporate gigs make around these figures (often at a slightly lower relative age). They don't behave like this.

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

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― Steve Jobs

Hi, I would love any insight on the prospects for a Corporate/M&A Lawyer in the UAE/Middle East. Any experiences from people who have done it, how to and things to look out for would be appreciated. I am en route to doing a couple of remote internships with law firms situated there and would like to know if it is a viable form of obtaining employment over there.

Thenkss

No doubt a warning for law firm-ites. Yes, working 16 hours a day will be able to buy you an expensive car and watch, but what about your health?

https://www.indiatoday.in/health/story/why-is-there-a-rise-in-heart-attacks-among-young-people-2417377-2023-08-07

https://bwhealthcareworld.businessworld.in/article/World-Heart-Day-The-Silent-Crisis-Of-Young-Adults-Battling-Heart-Disease/29-09-2023-493168/

Apart from the flawed operating mechanism of law firms that other comments have already pointed out, another major issue with these law firms is lack of consideration to pay interns. A majority of such law partners benefit hugely on the efforts carried by not just junior associates but also interns. Not just associates are paid less, but also interns return empty-handed after slogging so many days in the office of these firms (weekends are also working, for most of them).

While some might get paid, the pay of Rs. 5k to 10k is surprisingly low considering the mental trauma witnessed, the accomodation expenses one puts in, and not to mention travelling expenses. I have seen people from other fields getting paid 20k as stipend while they are still in their graduation phase, and graduates of law get paid pathetically 5k even after graduation.

It is also surprising to see that some state that stipend would be paid 'on the basis of performance'. However, other profession majorly operate on the methodology of telling interns beforehand about the amount of stipend.

Law firms are similar to those short sighted grumpy advocates who don't want the profession to be equalised.

The lit team is superb to work with - Saijrishna Rajagopal is an excellent lawyer and an excellent human

Ameet's team is on the transaction side but good too

Antitrust team, unfortunately doesn't have much work, despite Subodh Deo being brilliant. This could largely be on account of not so strong M&A practise which feeds work to competition team.

Biradar why are you being so insecure about something not in your control? Just don’t be overweight, rest is all on how you look and how you are as a person. I’m 5’4 and never even thought about my height like that, despite knowing there have been instances when I was cast aside from the dating pool cause of my height by certain women. But as there are taller men, so are women who don’t care as much about how tall their partner is. And yes, I’ve dated taller women than me too. Confident raho it won’t matter

▮▮▮, ▮▮▮ ▮▮▮, ▮▮▮ ▮▮▮, and other names which I cannot give aren't worth it. It's a very toxic work environment. No hidden agenda here. Try CAM Bombay for better partners, and better quality of work-there is more client facing work. CAM Bangalore has a lot of top down approach politics, and while the senior brass of Akshay, Reeba are excellent-you won't get your due.

An average NLSIU-NALSAR grad will kick the ass of an average Oxbridge or Russell Group grad. The same way an average IIT grad will outperform an average MIT or Ivy League grad. Look at Sundar Pichai. But although we Indians are brainier than whites we are shackled by our citizenship and cannot be recruited because of work visa restrictions.

Asking someone to leave if they are genuinely not performing is one thing, but calling someone mentally insane and making them leave is cruelty on a different level altogether. Sure, not everyone can fit in everywhere. But law firms issuing mental health certificates ? How does mental health even matter (from a retention view point), as long as the Associate is performing and delivering ? Pathetic on KCO's part.

Enough with the victim complex. Indians love going abroad for status and economic reasons but when things don't work out, they shout racism. These are UK firms who will prioritize hiring their own people first. And regardless of how well you dress and how eloquent your English is, Indians are not white, they are not European, either. You don't see white folks begging to come work in Indian law firms. And no, there is no competition on how hard it is to get in to NLSIU v/s Oxbridge. In India, the competition arises mainly due to the high number of people, not their quality. In the UK, it's the other way around. And having interacted with grads that went to the UK for their BA in law/jurisprudence, the exposure they get is much superior to even the top-tier NLUs. Not to mention, the work ethic in the West is also far more efficient and productive than at any Indian university. This is a trollish pointless thread by some NLS first-year, it looks like.

I was wondering whether working for 1 year and then opting for llm is advisable. My main purpose is not to do any trajectory enhancement or explore new areas, it's just that I wish to take some time off from the corporate routine for a while and get a breather. I was planning to do it this year only but due to some issues at home and also desire to gain some experience first drove me away. Would it be a good option to go away for one year, considering that i might end up doing similar thing post master's as well?

I've worked for firms for close to 7 years and became the head of legal at a company. The partnership route isn't the goal for everyone, especially if they can negotiate a comparable salary elsewhere and not lose their mental peace.

You must've not spent very many years in the profession to say what you said, son.

Ladies of legally India,

Please tell us if you have any height filters in mind when you are looking to date men. If yes, what is the threshold height for you? Do you have a 6 feet or bust mentality or are you okay with a 5 feet 9/10/11 inches guy? Do you like short kings, somewhere in the range of 5.2 to 5.5 feet tall? If you don't have a hard filter, do you prefer taller men?

Please be candid and honest about your answers. We can digest some harsh truths.

Also, what do you think a man can do to compensate for his height deficit- Putting on muscle helps?

Exactly, other NLUs have such cases in Peanuts in comparison to GNLU. The only other law school which seems to have a culture of sexual harrasment seems to be NLS considering there have been many many posts on sevenangrywomen as well detailing the nature of assaults. All others do have these cases but few and far between

Some people have shared links to the Chambers and Partners study on which universities UK firms recruit from. I think the most important takeaway is this graph:

https://ststudentsmediaprod.blob.core.windows.net/cache/d/6/3/7/f/0/d637f09883c5d10c30b525af2d9f42985ff1fd4b.png

It shows that Russell Group universities minus Oxbridge make up about 45% of all Magic Circle firm hires and about 65% of all non-Magic Circle London firm hires. These refer to tier 2 universities like LSE, KCL, UCL, Warwick, Manchester etc. After that, Oxbridge makes up about 27% of all Magic Circle firm hires and around 18% of all non-Magic Circle London firm hires. Thus, even though it's placed second Oxbridge does better on a per-capita basis (maybe 3 times as much). After that, in third place (for both Magic Circle and non-Magic Circle London firms) you have a chunk of non-Russell Group universities. These refer to tier 3 universities like SOAS, Sussex, Essex etc. Finally, in fourth place, BELOW the tier 3 British Universities, you have Overseas universities. This category presumably lumps together universities from Australia, Singapore, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand and India. My guess is that India is probably #1 here, because Australians probably prefer to work in Sydney than London, Singaporeans in Singapore than London etc. But even then, I'm baffled by this statistic. It's 10 times harder to get into NLSIU than Oxbridge, so why are NLUs so low down in the pecking order? Is it racial discrimination? Is it because of work visa issues? Surely the quality of an average NLU grad is far superior?

What's going on????

In fairness to LI, I think the new moderator is quite fair and balanced (in comparison with the left-wing bias of R). Regarding Arghya, it's unfair to call him a BJP stooge. He may be right-leaning and have taken Vidhi in a rightward direction, but it's his right to do so. Not everyone needs to copy Indira Jaising and Lawyers Collective, or Colin Gonsalves and HRLN, or Lawrence Liang and ALF. Also, no one calls them Congress stooges, right? Why should only Arghya be subject to name-calling?

Also, as was pointed before, the UCC is a fundamentally secular concept endorsed by the Constitution, Ambedkar and various SC judges, including AS Ahmadi. The notion that a man of a certain religion can keep up to 4 wives is abhorrent.

Boring and repetitive is not a valid basis to curtail opinions. I couldn’t care less about ASG or the threads on him but I had thought moderation had changed for the better. Either publish it without your preconceived bias or just shut down this site and end this whole facade of a discussion forum.

Nah, it's just boring and repetitive, the topic equivalent of flogging a horse that has been killed in many threads before, and it also seems to lack basis in fact if comments make it out that the guy is basically a Yogi Adityanath equivalent, which none of his public statemtns seem to support.

Kuch bhi?

CCL is working fine they are conducting sessions and newsletter is still regular and quality is maintained.

CLS is dead for quite some time now.

TMS is still the most active with change in structure of IUMCC, they conducted IUMCC pretty well without any major issues.

ARS again dead from 2019.

IC is still getting good internships.

The NLSIR Editorial Board is not professional. What they publish is largely articles by those in NLS Alum/NLU circles. The Board takes almost 2-3 years to conduct peer reviews and sends out rejections very late so the article loses its relevancy. I don't even think they have put out a call for submissions this year.

Can we create groups for different cities to try meeting up? It's nice to see people think the same. Yeah true it's hard to not have a gang of friends with who you can have fun in the weekends or any other holidays. Plus when you have some folks from your law school in the same firm but didn't work as hard as you did due to privilege or just luck so they have the job you dreamed of + friends. Sucks

Hahaha. Totally agree. Heard that they fired someone calling the associate mentally insane. And should quit not being mentally sane! Even having policy on mental wellness. The associate was fine before joining kco but apparently became insane after joining them and was randomly fired along with others who "quit" for "better opportunities". All this is dhong. Kco is a dhong who fire and force out people on atrocious reasons. They have the highest attrition currently. Almost all moving to trilegal.