Dev manus, thank you for this. People like you are really special!

If it is not too much trouble, could you please elaborate (in future threads) the basics and details of an M&A transaction (it seems as if you have some sick powers of explanation)?

Thank you bhai/ behen once again.

-A0 literally thrown into the deep end of a transaction. doing a DD currently, with no idea as to what to "review" and leave out/ what comes next.

Whaat actually?

Both their Mumbai and Delhi office seem to have a continuous supply of debt finance work though (at least as per their regular posting of such transactions on LinkedIn). Not sure about general corporate/ M&A.

What is the scene/ work culture and partner review like regarding their gen corp/ M&A work at both Mumbai and Delhi?

As someone still struggling with this, I think I can empathise. Interviews especially, I used to panic and go silent. It was weird even for those taking the interviews. Fortunately, managed to get into a good firm and all of my weaknesses became strengths in that firm. Ours is not a sales job ( at least in the initial 7-8 years); as an associate, you will do well if you are willing to work hard, are diligent and treat your profession as a ‘calling’. Even when I struggled to verbally communicate with my senior partner, my emails were clear and carefully crafted, and I did my best in paying attention to the smallest details in the transaction documents. It has worked wonders for me in my career so far. You have already managed to get into a firm. So hold your chin high and do not worry about your perceived weaknesses. Along the way, you will find allies; you will find love.

Recently, two separate shrinks diagnosed me with Asperger’s syndrome or being in the spectrum (ASD). A labeling helps, I guess, in making sense of some life events and silencing that nagging question deep inside- what’s wrong with me. Other than that, nothing in life has changed. Even when struggling, one adapts to become functional in the circumstances one is in. My next phase of struggle has started with the expectations of socialising for business development. I think I will manage- you play the cards you are dealt with. And of course, in the interviews I take now, I ensure that anxiety during interviews is not counted against the candidates.

p.s.- tell us in two years how you are faring.

From a non known T2 college but have 3 T1 internships with good learnings. Which T2 firms will give me a one month assessment and direct application from their website as I don't have contacts.

Please tell me the HR which actually go through the merit applications because T1s reject mine only on college without looking at my CV. Have a callback too from SAM but the team would not hire anymore.

So, I am basically a 4th year law student from a Tier-3 NLU who intends to set his own shop in the upcoming decade. I wanted to know how am I going to get Corporate Clients for my Law Firm (Do I tap in the GCs?). I don't wanna' let those ▮▮▮ firms steal off my labour and ▮▮▮ around while I am slogging my @$$ and earning them profits with HUGE BILLABLES. Also, when is the earliest I can do this? I mean immediately after the graduation? 5 years? 10 Years? What is a reasonable time?

all the besan in GNLU mess food is clogging up these seniors' brains I guess? GNLU committee member is such a joke of a concept that it's hilarious to think that an "en masse resignation" will literally impact no one? I can understand fighting attendance reqs that impact moots and academic endeavours, but wtf is a committee member doing skipping classes to organise salsa classes in the middle of the day? you're paying through your nose to be there, just go attend classes. stupidity

As a female student at GNLU, I ask you to refrain from loose and casual statements like this. The first impact of this kind of unfounded crap is that we lose our rights. We already have parents asking us to stop outdoor activities and moots, and pretty soon we'll all have rights curtailed under the name of safety.

Are there sexual assault allegations? Yes. Is there merit to those allegations? It is hard to tell when all you have are text posts on Instagram. Like any other admin, GNLU admin is useless. But even an effective admin cannot fix "queerphobia" in a largely conservative state where students lean centre right for the most part. Conflating these issues with legitimate sexual assault is a terrible thing for women on campus and people blindly fanning the fames are taking away from the seriousness of it all.

Since you seem to have a few years of experience at T1s, I'd suggest approach a legal ed-tech, like LawSikho, and start teaching there. Its work from home, decent-ish pay [they'll probably pay you good, given your experience], and manageable working hours [they say 8, but its mostly 10 hours].

Alternatively, I'd suggest get into law firm management/ business development. Pay won't be great at the beginning, but lot of scope for the future.

Extremely overpriced courses. Content is developed by a team of college students/ fresh grads. You can easily find the same stuff by a simple google search.

But, add-ons like freelancing and placement services can be a game changer. The respective teams really put in their heart and soul to see students succeed.

Wouldn't recommend from a CV perspective - write and publish a good research paper/ do a moot/ hell, organise a fest - that'll serve you better.

Criminal:

Gopal Shenoy

Niranjan Mundargi

(I don’t know too many in this area though)

Commercial/Arbitration:

Ankita Singhania

Gulnar Mistry

Rohaan Cama

Karl Tamboly

Naushad Engineer

Anoshak Davar

Ankit Lohia

Shyam Kapadia

Mayur Khandeparkar

Arti Raghavan

IPR:

Hiren Kamod

Rashmin Khandekar

Himanshu Kane

Tax:

Manish Kanth

Madhur Agarwal

Nishant Thakkar

Nitesh Joshi

Mihir Naniwadekar

Dharan Gandhi

Harsh Kapadia

India - a developing economy is going through "middle income trap" and I come from middle income family . India is only country where concept of burn out is glorified and drilled in our brains since childhood.

Hence, in teens we are misguided to set unworthy goals, only to regret later in adulthood but it is very late by then.

This is what Incredible India has become under BJP rule. Where a sitting MP is using hate speech against a fellow MP in front of all the members of the Parliament including the Speaker in live TV. Perfect moment for the New Parliament Building. Instead of condemning the guy and taking action against him, the ruling party is all set already to brush the matter under the carpet. They did not even look apologetic while the incident was going on. Shame on them!

The legal question is, can parliamentary privilege extend to cover hate speech and communal slurs?

https://thewire.in/communalism/ramesh-bidhuri-danish-ali-lok-sabha-hate-speech

In law firms, associates are usually tasked with undertaking due diligences. From a firm perspective, it makes sense to deploy their (relatively) cheapest resource to spend hours on documents, while for associates - it is a good opportunity to familiarse themselves with different kinds of documents/ concepts/ industries without having to worry about technical drafting.

Often I have seen partners take due diligence training and focus on what sort of documents need to be reviewed, or what laws need to be researched for some specific industry, or how to write the DD report, but I feel like the main essence of doing a diligence – the approach while handling a DD gets lost in the translation.

Okay. So, let’s address the elephant in the room. Due diligence is one of the most hated aspects of legal work in law firms, with most seniors trying to pawn it off to juniors, and juniors trying to pawn it off to interns. The hate towards this aspect of legal work is partially because this doesn’t involve drafting, so it doesn’t feel like legal work – and also, DDs usually involve huge volumes of data, so after a while going through so many documents feels mind numbing. However, every year, many associates join the legal workforce, and while they have big aspirations of working on cutting edge transactions and drafting agreements, this is the job they are mostly involved in.

Is there a way to salvage this? Is there a way to make DDs interesting? Here’s an idealistic view:

IDEALISTIC VIEW OF A DD:

Due diligence at its core – is investigative journalism. While reporters have to run around to get their hands on confidential internal company data, as lawyers we get all the data handed over to us in the virtual data rooms. DDs offer us an opportunity to take a deep dive into an industry, and see the functioning of the company in and out. Maybe the below example will help you visualise this better:

Imagine you’re an analyst sitting in the office of Lindenburg. One fine morning, your boss bursts into the office, and tells you he has received a big scoop - a tip off about some huge financial scam going on in a large conglomerate. All analysts need to drop everything and immediately get on this task to see if the allegations are true. Because if the allegations are true, this will not only cause a huge upheaval in the public and send shock waves in the stock market, this may also have the potential of destabilising an entire nation as there are also allegations the ruling party of the country may be linked to the conglomerate.

As an analyst, when you are researching the leads, you may have to go through various complicated agreements, pull out obscure licenses, and keep a track of all the potential red flags you have come across. But even under such tight deadlines, you know that when you are preparing the Lindenburg report, you cannot afford to make a mistake. Every sentence you write in the report has to accurate, every footnote in the report has to be properly formatted and rock solid. Because when the Lindenburg Report is published in the news and it causes the stock price of the conglomerate to nosedive, this conglomerate is going to come at you with full force. It will unleash thousands of lawyers and accountants on you, make them go through every line of the report, trace back every footnote in the report – just to find that one mistake you have made – and use that to discredit your entire report. The stakes are that high.

You are probably spending long hours in the office trying to finish the report, trying to find the needle in the haystack, all the while racing against time. You’re probably even pulling regular all-nighters to complete the report faster. Imagine – during this time, you go up to your senior – and ask for “work life balance”. Your senior is going to be explode.

Alright, let’s come back to reality. Thankfully, your legal DD report in a law firm is not going to destabilise an entire nation, and the stakes aren’t that high. But it kind of explains why several seniors hate the idea of “Work life” balance. Some seniors are so involved in their work and take so much ownership in their work, they feel work life balance is not important as work is part of life. But I mean, to each their own.

REALISTIC VIEW OF DD:

Working on that Lindenburg report, deep diving into a company’s financials and finding the hidden skeletons – that sounded exciting, right? So why doesn’t my day to day job of doing a DD feel that exciting? A couple of reasons I can offer:

1. First impression: Your first brush with DD probably happened when you were an intern. Some associate may have asked you to prepare the list of documents, or review some obscure form without giving you any context, and you felt like a headless chicken, confused out of your wits, just doing some mind numbing work of data entry – day in and day out. From the associate’s perspective it makes sense, as preparing list of documents is the least risky element of the DD report, and even if the intern misses something here or there, it won’t have a huge impact. But unknowingly, the associate has killed your interest in law.

2. Negative reinforcement: You speak to some seniors in the team about their view of DD, and either they have probably gone through the above experience as an intern, or they are too senior to deal with DD, so they tell you that DDs aren’t that interesting, and you just have to power through the mind numbing work. The subtext being – you are getting paid a lot of money to do the grunt work – so shut up and do it. Here, even before your first brush with a DD, you have a negative idea about it in your head.

3. Volume of data: Objectively, the amount of data that companies upload on virtual data rooms is no joke, especially if it is a listed company. Dealing with the huge amounts of data can be extremely overwhelming, especially if you lack prior experience or your team is understaffed. Here’s another perspective – when you seniors were doing DDs, because the tech wasn’t that developed, they had to often travel to the company headquarters or get to stay in fancy 5 star hotel, order pizzas and work on the due diligence. They also had to work hard, but it was also an all expenses paid trip with their colleagues. But now that we have Onedrive and great internet, the documents are simply uploaded in 40-50 folders by the target company, documents often not arranged properly and now you have to sit in your office cubicle and get the work done.

4. Turnaround time: Sometimes you may end up in a team, or with some clients who are extremely demanding, and you have to turn around and prepare the DD in 2 weeks or so. Depending on the scope of the DD, this can be extremely stressful, ruin your sleep cycle and create havoc in your daily life. No one likes staying up till 4am-5am in the night to work on documents under such tight deadlines.

5. Uncertainty: This is probably the worst contributor and a silent killer. Uncertainty about when the documents will be uploaded to the data room after you have sent your Nth requisition list (7pm on a Friday night?), or not knowing at the beginning of the transaction how many more documents you will need to ask and review when you are under a tight deadline. I mean – it’s almost counterintuitive. To do a proper DD, you need to scrutinise documents, and ask for requisitions (i.e. more documents) if you find things missing or something fishy, and this can make you go down a rabbit hole, but then the client wants the report prepared by a certain date. This means you have to take enough care to ensure you have looked at the critical aspects, but not so much care that you can’t prepare the report on time. Also, at a junior level, if there is communication breakdown within the team, not having visibility by when you need to review and complete documents, or what you should be looking for in a new document you have never come across – that can cause unnecessary friction because you will end up taking more time than what your senior has anticipated/ estimated.

Without proper mentorship and without enough time to absorb the work you are doing, doing DDs become a nightmare. But at the core, doing a DD is still a lot like investigative journalism and it can be exhilarating and exciting if the DD workload is managed well. Which is why, even if you may not have enjoyed working during the entire span of doing a DD, I’m sure if you have been involved in a DD for some time, and the workload management hasn’t been terrible, you may found yourself in a state of flow, where you suddenly start taking interest in the documents you are reading and actively start following an industry which was extremely alien to you 2 weeks back.

Love to hear other views on this.

What you should do is to work on cover mail with HR saying I am interested in so and so and I know Mr/Ms. ___ works extensively in the area blah blah. You have a better chance that HR may forward to the partner asking whether they are interested.

Honest ans : will open a cold mail if and only if I have nothing else on my plate and it came at that exact time.

We all know how such colleges work....

https://www.news18.com/politics/ramesh-bidhuri-the-bjp-mp-who-abused-bsps-danish-ali-in-lok-sabha-is-a-lawyer-farmer-habitual-rabble-rouser-8587822.html

Unlike you? You don't seem to have received any education, let alone tier. In fact, you and everyone who keep talking about these tiers and superiority are nothing but drain on the resources of the country spent on keeping you alive and trolling. Only those who don't have lives or prospects keep discussing such idiotic non-issues. Of course, the wonderful LI policy facilitates and enables that, a sin that Kian et al would have to pay for one day or another.

Such a great sacrifice to be a privileged man, waited on hand and foot and using an Oxford degree to talk over people in India. Many privileged Indian men just can't cut it abroad. That degree buys red carpet treatment in colonial India. His own classmates will tell you that his work is superficial and has always been. He rides on contacts and the colonial thinking that makes people assume that he must be right.

India is a very populated country. There is not just enough resources for everyone. Country is at breaking point. There is no improvement on any sector.

Status of colleges , quality of education , quality of healthcare , cleanliness are all going downhill.

There is huge competition for anything and everything in this country.

Now, add to it problems like rich v poor divide, income inequality , diversity , populous politics, uneducation , rural majority , nepotism , regressive conservatism , religious radicalisation and criminalization of politics. These factors make this countrydeeply troubled. The complexities of the country has no possible workable solution. Needleas to say, HUGE number of citizenry is giving up their citizenship and leaving the country.

Now answer to your question:-

It is not just law. India IS a depressed country. Youth is depressed as frac-k !

No, she actually just gave a different exam, will post the link cause I don't remember off the top of my head. https://www.jlegal.org/blog/did-kim-kardashian-pass-the-bar-exam/

There isn't - there are so many factors that go into a hiring decision. As someone who's been on the hunt, with both acceptances and rejections, you gotta realise that there are too many elements involved in such a decision. I recently went through something like this, so I understand. They gave me a pretty bs reason but what even was I supposed to do lol.

Dekh boss you have such high expectations from a firm when you are a fresher and literally don't know anything. Money will always be tight at any boutique firm especially for freshrs. Honestly expectations should not be more than living wages. But if you show enough progress for 6 months things always change.

For your information Majority hindu will also be affected due to Uniform civil code as various at various different place have different customs for marriage even for their festival so due to ucc they would be asked to do same customs. But so called leftist wont understand that Uniform civil in long run is good for all country so as to unify everyone

No idea about the pay but they usually give the Paralegal spot to promising people in the Capmarks team and don't end up recruiting them. Its basically a glorified A0 role - discounting experience & pay; making them do the same mind fucked diligence which capital markets is infamously known for. Simply avoid bro/sis.

That's a foolhardy expectation. Do you think firms take more students from NLSIU than other NLUs these days? Quite the contrary. Moreover, it's highly unlikely that all 300 CLAT rank holders would automatically choose NLSIU anymore now that it is losing its exclusivity and sheen.

I actually use those principles in reality to make a living, unlikely you apparently. Therefore, take it from me that this allegation of malignancy does not withstand any legal test whatsoever. I think you're a student who should actually go back to your classes and learn better.

Just the other day, I heard my partner say over a call that "wfh me kaam nhi hota, so I don't allow that at my office".It's funny coz she herself stays away from office most days and coordinate over call/gmeet.Why can't the legal industry have a wfh model just like all others, when all the major work is automated only?

Actually, there have been several alarming pieces of development about aadhar data leak, being sold to private parties and being used to deny people basic rights who lack the necessary access to update/change/correct it. So it is not as if the issues that had been raised lack relevance. However, I do agree with the crux of your argument otherwise.

Cold quit, like I did. Delete your accounts entirely. If you want to stay in touch with people you've met, give them your number and establish touch over WhatsApp before deleting your accounts. Those who want to stay in touch, will.

I cold quit Instagram and Facebook in May, never been saner. Also joined and quit Twitter during the pandemic. Never made a Reddit or Snapchat account to begin with. Additionally quit my law school WhatsApp class group and I don't join any newly created or circulated groups until there's something useful for me there.

The first step to all this is to get rid of FOMO and curiosity about what others are doing with their lives. Before cold quitting, I had followed a model for nearly three years where I would normally not have the Insta app on my phone but only install it once every 3-4 months to post something. On those days I found myself scrolling Insta for even 7-8 hours.

Now the only digital addiction I have is YouTube and I've been trying very hard to get rid of it, including time blocking apps.

Quitting social media:

Pros: sanity, saving time, reducing novelty bias and increasing attention span, increased self-esteem and self-sufficiency, reduced political debates with idiots in comment sections leading to peace of mind (except LI?)

Cons: missing out on trends, good memes and knowing what your friends, classmates and schoolmates are up to

Hope this helps. All the best!

Aww, did a tier 1 firm reject you, so sad, atleast the novelty act is getting paid and making connections with clients! And what about you?

If you have any foresight in business, u wud realise all any client cares about is novelty, that usually determines who becomes partner. Nobody cares about merit sir.

Don't worry, u can join some advocate for peanuts, but sadly even there you're too ugly to be novelty to judges, and while the woman argues, you can prepare her drafts. Then go tell your family that you didn't make partner because of your huge belly and ugly face.

Hi, what is the monthly income of any decent practitioner in tier 2/3 cities like Lucknow/Jaipur/Ahmedabad etc.? Say after 5 years of practice? And what are the working hours like on an average? Are they better off in terms of work-life balance compared to their T1 counterparts?

Comparing NIRF ranks (most bogus ranking system) and LLMs?? Let me guess you are in 2nd year. If not, still very juvenile. How is this even a featured answer! If I have done tax law LLM I can not argue with a constitution law LLM guy? I have done no LLM and yet have all rights to argue. Degree is no protection against insanity and dumbness. Not saying that this guy is, but just saying why so superficial? So if the Arghya would have been from a NIRF rank 20 college would his opinion matter less? Why is this comment featured!

Dude at this point arghya couldnt do anything to make yall happy. If he sat on his hands and did nothing for the next year- yall would chew him out for being so privileged he didnt need to do anything. a review of the constitution is a pretty mild thing to support and something all political factions have supported at different times.

How do you keep in control of your phone usage!?

How do you manage social media!?

I think i might be a phone addict. My daily screentime is

Instagram-2-2.5 hours

Reddit-2 hours

How do you manage it!? I dont want to cut it all off because i would like to be in touch with some people via instagram and occasionally see some good memes on reddit. How does one control it !? Is there a way to cut them down around 20-40 mins a day or even less.

There's one thing i noticed when i open an instagram or reddit, i think of using it just for 5 mins but i get so glued that i dont know how 1 hr has passed. I also indulge in rage searching or looking through post when i am emotionally triggered or sometimes i am triggered via something on internet . I loose myself and awareness using these apps.

Should i start from cutting all social media off and then introducing them after 3-4 months in moderation ??

Has anyone able to get through with this problem!? I will really appreciate some inputs.

Honestly, i am not a very disciplined person, how does one cultivate discipline? The time i give to social media could be better utilised in my career or hobies.