Hello there everyone! I am going to be graduating in 2024 from an avg IP University college. Placement cell here is a joke, so we're on our own. Please guide me and suggest any firms or any chambers that I can apply to as a fresher. Or how I should go about finding jobs for freshers since every vacancy I've come across has a minimum requirement of 1-2 yrs PQE. I have a decent CV with 3-4 tier 2 firms internships. My area of interest is disputes and internships in that area. Please help.

If that is the case then no tier 3 NLU and most of the tier 2 NLUs are worth attending. Also, MNLU Mumbai did not come after NLU Nagpur. Mumbai in 2015, Nagpur in 2016 & Aurangabad in 2017, however the act which governs them, came in 2014.

Also, I was not arguing (in my previous comment) whether any MNLU is worth it or not.

Panag & Babu had four rounds this year for the litigation & dispute resolution team. The first two rounds were HR. Third was a technical GD, and the last was an interview with a senior associate and an associate. The interview covered all bases (HR, technical, CV-based questions). The entire process was quite grueling. There was supposed to be a partner interview round, but they canned that at the last moment. All rounds were elimination rounds.

8-10AM - Wake up, have coffee, poop, read newspaper. I do kind of intermittent fast, so no breakfast except black coffee.

10-12AM - Log in, catch up on emails, work

I sneak in a 1-2 hr work-out when calls aren't scheduled. Usually somewhere 12 noon to 2PM. Then have lunch.

2PM-8PM - work. Log off usually between 7PM to 9PM depending on workload. Stretches till like 3AM on rare very busy days.

9PM-10PM - Head out for a jog if it's not raining. Come back and have dinner.

10PM-1AM - Catch a movie, practice an instrument, random errands like paying bills and replying to personal emails, etc

1AM - Sleep

Hi,

I am a second year student at GLC. I am absolutely astonished with the number of firms, chambers and companies that are taking interns from the college throughout the year! Its crazy. Everyday we are getting multiple notifications of internship opportunities from the placement cell. My point being that aspiring law students should absolutely consider GLC over T2 NLUs. If we take a pragmatic approach all of our ultimate goal is to get a good job and I believe GLC will at-least get you in the right places. You just need to be able to use the hundreds of various opportunities presented by the college. Plus the ROI is also much much better as compared to any other law school, since the college is heavily subsidised by the government. So even if you are unable to find a job with a few months of graduation, there is no looming threat of upcoming loan repayments.

OP here. LI censored my reference to an advocate and NLSIU alum working with Neville Roy Singham and also Newsclick. I provided official links where the link is acknowledged. I don't know why it was censored. Is it because I mentioned that the advocate is from NLSIU? Then you could have simply deleted the mention of the law school and retained the person's name. I do think it's in public interest that any advocate in India, or any person, working with Singham or Newsclick give a clarification.

In any event, the issue will snowball in the coming days and names will keep tumbling out.

Then the toppers of CLAT will stop writing AILET. If I write Clat in December and the result comes out in late December or early January and I get into a Top 3 then I'll not apply for AILET. I don't think anyone will waste 3k and take months of BT after securing a Top 3 through CLAT.

This is the only reason why AILET keeps following CLAT

No, it’s a big mistake. NRI kids will probably have higher ranks than domicile kids or around the same. But the important thing here is that NRI kids have better social capital, more money, more contacts, better opportunities, etc, which contribute to better scholarships and jobs for the university. Just look at NUJS NRI folks. Large reason why despite domicile, they’re considered one of the top 4. Domicile kids don’t offer the same benefits.

I don't understand why it's a myth. If I am ready to work 8-9 hours 5 days a week, and want the leftover time in a week for myself, will I be branded as a 'shirker'? People have so normalised overworking in this profession. Though, other sectors are also now catching up, seeing the working mechanism of law firms sucking life out of their employees.

I seriously think how do these people who want to work 24x7(minus sleep hours and some errands) face their near ones and what behavioural pattern do they develop towards their close ones. But can guarantee you this, they must have stopped spending quality time and have their relationships reduced to a state where they can only be trying to fill the void by supplying luxuries to their dependants. A very materialistic life.

And I see a pattern. Those who justify the absence of WLB (at least in this profession) are extremely rich people with deep pockets. They should try to get sense of a normal Indian family ecosystem. Maybe then they can realise that their accumulated money, definitely gave them luxuries. But they ended up destroying their lives, along with the lives of those who were twisted and gutted down to accept this culture of no life, only work mattering.

Lot of guys in my nlu are broke thanks to girlfriends. Why is this so? Why do girls expect expensive stuff from guys. Guy's also doesn't have salaries, they only have pocket money which everyone has. Why are many of them so unwilling to put an equal share in all the activities (movies, dinner etc)

Most women in my nlu are not poor by any means. And they call themselves feminists- then why expect the guy to pay up every single time? Isn't it double standards.

Exhibit 1: NYT investigative report on Neville Roy Singham, published yesterday and trending heavily. The report states:

"In New Delhi, corporate filings show, Mr. Singham’s network financed a news site, NewsClick, that sprinkled its coverage with Chinese government talking points. “China’s history continues to inspire the working classes,” one video said."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/world/europe/neville-roy-singham-china-propaganda.html

Exhibit 2: An article on Neville Roy Singham by the Daily Beast, in May, says:

"A slick online media machine has recruited a slew of characters from Russian state-affiliated outlets—and joined a sprawling multinational network of pro-Moscow, pro-Beijing content creators backed by a U.S. businessman reportedly probed in India for ties to the Chinese Communist Party."

https://www.thedailybeast.com/neville-singham-funded-breakthrough-news-is-pushing-moscow-beijing-propaganda

Exhibit 3: India Today, in a follow-up to the NYT expose published today, says:
▮▮▮
"Over two years ago, an investigation by the Enforcement Directorate found that media portal NewsClick had received around Rs 38 crores funding from abroad. Investigators traced the flow of funds to an American millionaire, Neville Roy Singham, who was alleged to have close association with the propaganda arm of the Communist Party of China (CPC)."

https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/news-portal-in-india-boot-camp-in-africa-how-us-tech-moguls-network-pushes-chinese-propaganda-2417130-2023-08-06

Exhibit 4: An older article by The Print, quoting unnamed ED sources, says: "The money received from these companies, the sources added, was used...to give “salary” to activist Gautam Navlakha, who is currently in jail for his alleged involvement in the Bhima Koregaon case."https://theprint.in/india/ed-says-newsclick-used-rs-30-cr-mystery-remittances-to-pay-navlakha-cpm-it-cell-member/604763/

Exhibit 5: I&B Minister Anurag Thakur reacts to the NYT story today as follows:

"Even newspapers like ‘The New York Times’ are now admitting that Neville Roy Singham and his NewsClick are dangerous tools of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and promoting China’s political agenda across the world. Much before NYT, India has long been telling the world that NewsClick is a dangerous global web of Chinese propaganda. "

https://twitter.com/ianuragthakur/status/1688198949453119488

▮▮▮

I think a few things should be expected in the public interest, given the massive importance of the Bhima Koregan case and the importance of Newsclick as a member of the Fourth Estate:

1. A statement from Purakayastha and Newsclick on their relationship with Singham and Navlakha. Did Singham route Rs 30 crores to Navlakha through NewsClick? If yes, why?

2. A statement from ▮▮▮

I hope the moderator allows this post. I have stated only facts and cited links to respected news sites.

I am a 2023 graduate of the BBA-LLB 2018 batch. We were the second batch of law school

, and while the academic part was generally good(though most of the faculty changed during COVID), the placement situation is worse than you can imagine. Less than 20% of the batch of 150 students from BBA-LLB, BA-LLB and LLB have bee places. The placement coordinator acts helpful, but doesn’t really get you anywhere. There was no zero day, no orientation with the placement process, interviews if ever, were scheduled with a notice of 2-3 hours, and the maximum package is less than 9 LPA. They went to the extent of saying that they secured assessment internships for students when in reality, they were normal internships with no scope for conversion. Its so sad, that they went on and decided to simply lie, by posting opportunities from good law firms and companies when they never existed. So, most of us would apply and think we did not get selected, when in fact none of our profiles had actually been sent. Their standard excuse is the students simply couldn’t cut it, and while I understand that for some students, saying that 80% of the batch which includes who have done internships with leading firms, won moot courts and scored 8-10 cgpa

We have a basic understanding of how bad the placements scenario is going for this year and next year. Same for PPOs.

What are some boutique law firms and/or lower-tiered law firms you would suggest that may be hiring freshers and giving out PPOs? Please suggest, really anxious and stressed right now.

Not from NLU-J but this is really not a big deal. The NRI reservation is gone so this can be very easily accommodated. Any rational person would take domicile over NRI reservation because the latter is highly classist and has no rational nexus to the objective to the NLU system.

JSA Delhi is where the disputes team sits. The corporate transaction team sits in Gurgaon.

Whether or not Saturdays are off depends on the Partner you're working with. Regardless, most people end up coming on Saturdays anyway since lots of Senior Counsels prefer being briefed on Saturdays/Sundays for a matter listed on Monday.

Work hours are absolutely fucked. Most people go back after 11pm most days if the week.

NLUD has over the years managed to establish its brand and credentials quite well as an NLU. A large number of law aspirants who sit for CLAT sit for AILET too every year. However, I was wondering why it has chosen to shift the AILET date along with CLAT date for the last few years since the pandemic. The pandemic time was different, since different equations were in place, but now that it is over, why not maintain the normal schedule instead of holding it right along with CLAT several months back? It cannot be because it wants people to get admitted to NLUD before the CLAT results are out. It does not need to do that anymore after having established its own brand by now. Then what could be the reason? CLAT has got a complex power dynamic between the many NLU VCs with their individual agendas, but Bajpai does not need to appease anyone else. Anybody would like to guess why this change then?

Aah, I wish I could say what I am about to write -- to my own younger self, and thank you for giving me that vicarious opportunity.

You see, after having lost my love -- to which I was strongly attached, I grew disillusioned. I also saw other friends who lost their love getting disillusioned themselves. One of them became self-destructive and indulged in self-harming behaviour. Another one I know just lost it and again indulged in self-harming behaviour. I myself became lethargic and lazy and lack all motivation. I tried to psychologically harm those around me, primarily my parents and my sister. They bore with me patiently. I deliberately delayed my marriage to keep them stressed -- since I blame them partly for me losing my love.

I kept delaying my marriage until one day when I realized that love is just about getting used to someone. Before joining an office, I researched on the female staff there. I found one in particular to be quite unattractive to my liking. However, 6 months down the line, I got attracted to her -- and why so? Because she was my desk neighbour. Just seeing her face everyday made her grow on me.

I realized something then. Love is just familiarity. What you are suffering is not the loss of love, but the loss of time you spent on building that familiarity. So my suggestion to you is this - you have a lot of time in your hand to spend again on building familiarity with someone. If you fail to give yourself a chance to build familiarity again with another person - you will just spend some mad amount of time indulging in self-destructive or self-harming behaviour, which will degrade your quality of life and not do anything better for those around you.

You should tell yourself that you have a lot of time in your hands to again build familiarity with a new person. The moment you reach that level of familiarity with someone else -- you will have found love again. Time is in your favour. Time is your only friend. Handle it carefully.

Who will win?

https://www.news18.com/tech/mark-zuckerberg-vs-elon-musk-fight-will-be-live-streamed-on-x-all-details-8516839.html

Although no publications, the guy had completed courses like one in advanced contract drafting along with moots. His rcc rank dropped because of missing exam last sem which wasn’t a true indicator of his percentage. And had he used contacts, he would have been among the 8 who got the job offer, which he didn’t get. And here you are thinking he is personally responsible for you not getting shortlisted. Turns out, all your claims are false and out of jealousy.

Not sure which is the better private law school that you are attending in Kolkata. I do hope its better because lawfirms do look at the name of your college. Its just how it is. Since you come from a private law college and assuming it has some sort of a placement cell, this would be a good time to network with people who have secured a job with the law firms or went in-house.

1. Cognizant- Nothing there is that you can do about it. The pay is 40k/month and the role is a contracts associate (CLM). They have walk-in interview drives around August. This year it happened on the 1st of August.

2. Tata hires laterally, as much as I am aware of. Even if they do hire freshers, I guess they would vie for the graduates at NUJS. Same for Emami.

3. Accenture does hire Mumbai and Delhi. The Kolkata hiring is slower in that regard. Hopefully your year might have one.

4. Fox Corp will be looking for doling out PPOs around April 2024 (general estimate). Try securing a long term internship during that period. Preferably around February and for three months. Should greatly help your chances.

5. The pay scale in general ranges between 10k-40k. Here is how you have that figure in general. Barring KCO SAM and Argus, you have in-house paying you 40k-issh while firms like Sinha and Co. pay you 10k as a fresher. By Kolkata estimates, 25-30 would be a decent start (this figure varies wildly based on your chosen area of practice).

From what I read a while back, Hammurabi and Solomon was keen on opening offices in Kolkata. Hopefully that works out for you mate!

Also, please look out for firms that are offering remote positions.

1. It's their loss, not yours.

2. Write down 101 reasons why "chu tha wo banda". Saara love nikal jaana hai end of it.

3. You're replaceable everywhere except to your family.

Treat everyone as replaceable except your family.

Family is biological mom dad and siblings. No one else. Not one.

4. A body under construction is a mind on a mission. Start working out today. Your mental health will improve.

5. Assume responsibility and your life will start becoming meaningful. Just about any responsibility. Take it up and work for it. That's the only way out.

Swallow this and move ahead. You need no more motivation. Don't even discuss this problem with anyone else. If you are, know that you're not interested in the solution. You just want to complain, be whiny and live in your drama.

In ▮▮▮ there is this one professor who published a hard-contracts paper in a medical psychology journal, only to have a SCOPUS index. Further, some other faculty prey on students to 'co-author' papers, wherein, they make the student write the entire paper. I personally faced this with one prominent professor, who made me write an entire paper and barely made 3-4 grammatical changes and became a 'co-author.' His name was before mine as well lol.

We have a basic understanding of how bad the placements scenario is going for this year and next year. Same for PPOs.

What are some boutique law firms and/or lower-tiered law firms you would suggest that may be hiring freshers and giving out PPOs? Please suggest, really anxious and stressed right now.

The chances of a Congress-I.N.D.I.A. win are shooting up, as Modi looks weak in the face of inflation, unemployment, communal violence, etc. But what will such a win mean for NLUs and law students? Could it mean:

1. UGC funds to GNLU get slashed?

2. More funding for NLUs in non-BJP states?

3. More reservation and populism?

It’s their fault you didn’t get a job ? Does believing that make things easier?

Armchair Foucault is nonsense. They aren’t behaving like your parents - they’re behaving like adults in workplace. You are behaving like a child though. If they were behaving like your parents they would be incentivised to give you a job.

I don’t understand why everyone on this website has an intolerance toward work. Capitalists and communists both understand that work helps contribute to society and should be rewarded. If we cannot expect able bodied young 20 something’s to work hard and meet expectations- think about what that will mean for the country. Sad days.

The book definitely has had female endorsers. Not that it matters, but it does. Why would the idea of Bharat being a copy of veer savarkar be a problem?

A constitution is a book that metes out details on how to run the state, including the restrictions of the state. This cannot be done in vaccum of connections with society and hence people and hence the civilisation. These are certainly not reasonable criticisms of the book or the notions it propagates.

Bro majority service judges are beyond pathetic, because guys like you are failed advocates. And failed advocates never make good judges, we still have reasonable no of service judges in high court and most of them are pathetic. Judges need to be appointed from among good lawyers only, this concept of having an exam is just stupid, no civilised country follows it.

Dude that's nothing I practice here at lucknow, yesterday I went to assist my senior in a really influential pocso matter and in the middle of cross examination of IO, there was power cut three times. And judge was using his phone's torch to see the docs,lol. This is the sad state of affairs in this country. Becoming a judge is pathetic actually, you will live a stressed subpar life in some pathetic tier2-3 town with legit no infra. Becoming a lawyer is much better.

Bhai! What life and what respect! If you get stuck without promotion for 12 to 14 years and do the same work (after 17 to 18 years of work) which a fresher is also doing…. Then respect from whom?

There are people whose batchmates have got equity in BigLaw but they are stuck in a growth less loop only because of lack of reasonable career progression….

Slowly you just get marinated in your mediocrity because of the rust that you acquire…..

I've worked at law firms for long enough to remember my first gray hair in office, so maybe let me shed some light.

Only two law firms in India don't follow a founder-keeps-all approach: JSA and Trilegal. Which is why their revenue distribution models are very unique even while being different from each other. JSA does a billing share system, where you are guaranteed 8% of your billing. It's excellent. Current issues there are because of some corrupt EPs taking up high positions of decision making in the exec com. and hoarding money without revising pay bands. They have signed their own death warrant by voting the current committee into power.

Trilegal has terrible work culture issues, but the managing committee at present knows the only way to counter attrition is to hoard less wealth for distribution. The lockstep equity model incentivises sharing money to some extent as well. Even when the dollar wasn't so strong, A3s were billing upwards of a crore each merely doing routine law firm work. Maybe you don't realise just how much money these firms mint. These salaries are not only easily sustainable, but also reflect the value of the work put in. Firms that pay less than this are simply sitting on all the money.

60 is definitely higher than expected, even if it's not a stellar number by itself. 2024 placement has truly been awful for all universities. Sad that it's being made into some nonsense college ranking competition when careers of students are at stake. Making it into a top tier NLU and still not getting placed defeats the entire purpose of such institutions.

JSA is now just a diligence factory, they have 1 or 2 EPs who do some big ticket matters but everyone else is just doing the same old fund infusion or india leg of US transaction stuff on behalf of foreign law firms who charge 5x. Trilegal will pay you better, treat you with more dignity and respect and has a much better name in the market than JSA which operates out of a post office style building in a forgotten part of the city.

i know people from my batch (higher ranked T1 NLU) that had like 3-4 backs at the time of placement season and still got a T1 job offer. Cut to literally a year later where top rankers cant even get a shortlist. It's so awful to see this, I cant even imagine what happens at lower T2 or T3 NLUs

Hi. I am a fresh graduate of 2023. Can people here share how they value internships after graduation. I am still exploring my options and can only secure for myself internships now. But they are really reputed internships. Do they really count? Especially when most of the new openings say that a candidate must have 1 year or more PQE. How will these internships be considered by future employers?

Hello, I'm a fourth year who shall be graduating in 2025. I'm keen to work in disputes and want to start out with a firm.

As far as I know, there are the options: Trilegal, Saraf, CAM, Khaitan, SAM

Should I also be considering Keystone, Karanjawala for starting out?

This is really big news. I think he will aim for a big SCOTUS test case with a RW petitioner who was sacked or cancelled for posting on Hunter Biden or the Wuhan lab leak theory. The conservative-majority SCOTUS will rule in the petitioner’s favour. That must be his real agenda.

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/x-to-fund-legal-fee-of-those-unfairly-treated-for-posting-on-platform-elon-musk-4273310#pfrom=home-ndtv_topscroll