I have a somewhat different view from the others here.

IMO, PE / M&A law firm lawyers have the best exit oppurtunities since general corporate skills are the most useful in-house skills and fund raising and M&A legal (and transaction management) skills are valued by senior management since that's the time when they work the most closely with lawyers.

Admittedly, M&A specific in-house roles are fewer than general roles; but if you work in a growing start-up / company, then fund raising and M&A (big and small) are a fairly regular affair. In the start-up I worked in for a short period of time; I was responsible for 2/3 acquisitions, 2/3 debt and equity fund raising events, and 1/2 corporate re-organisation activities. I worked alone on the smaller acquisitions and did the entire work (other than the due diligence) since, with the budget, we would have got a terrible firm. This ensured that my PE / M&A skills didn't rust when I was in that start-up - although I wasn't as clued-in to FEMA, etc. during that time.

I agree with what someone else said that the golden exit oppurtunity is working with a PE / VC fund since that allows you to continue working on transactions (which is more enjoyable than usual in-house compliance work to many, including myself) and don't have to do the more unpalatable parts. However, positions in funds don't come up often and, when they do, the competiton is high. I have worked in a VC fund and I can tell you that it is the best middle ground - and you get that sweet carried interest.

On the other hand, fund formation law firm lawyers don't have skills which transition easily to in-house roles. Fund formation is not a skill set required for regular in-house positions and no PE / VC fund needs fund formation lawyers since that is a one-time event for each fund (and even with multiple active funds, it is still a skill required once every 2/3 years). So, fund formation is quite limiting from an exit standpoint.

I also disagree with your assumption that fintech, TMT, and related fields have the best exit opportunities. In my opinion, having worked in a tech start-up, for the most part, law firm lawyers aren't as clued in as the in-house lawyers on the specific issues dealing with their business area since while the firm lawyers only occasionally advise on that business.

If I was starting out in a law firm today, I would still choose PE / M&A as my practice area - it is the least repetitive amongst the non-litigation practice areas since you keep working on new industries and each transaction is a little different from the previous one. You just need to survive the first few years when all you do is due diligences - and if you join a smaller law firm, you will get to work on documentation far sooner (like the first year, rather than the third or fourth year in a big law firm).

NLSIU = Without mercy. This trend has been intensified since Sudhir took over. This may suit some, may not suit others. Both the types would have valid arguments in their favour. Some would say that it helps increase quality through rigour. Others would say that can be done with empathy and focusing on real problems.

That increase is also against the wishes of the faculty. Students pushed for that so as to get into easy electives and admin as usual caved in. If you wish to teach properly using exercises, assignments, mock tasks etc. and pay individual attention to each student in a specialised elective course, more than 30-40 in a class is not sustainable. People recognise that across the world. This is being done to divert attention from lack of enough number of decent faculty to offer good subjects properly.

This was a subject wise option, not a choice between standard and non-standard. So people could opt for it subject wise, after each semester. If someone let's say gets a 5/8 grade in exams, that will bring their GPA down by a lot. So many people opted for a P/F grade in one or couple of subjects they didn't perform well in during their entire 5 years. The PFA policy was in place from 2020 April-2022 May.

I opted for 2 P/F grades in 55 odd subjects, however, some people opted for 8-10, that means that 15-20% of their subjects are not being used to calculate GPA and the true GPA is being masked. These people essentially decided to opt for P/F in all subjects in which they get grades which bring their GPA down (even is it is minute or negligible).

1984 riots, Kashmiri Pandits, Kamlesh Tiwary. Does that mean upper caste Hindus should get reservation in Jamia and AMU, or Sikhs in BHU?

No one deserves a reserved seat as a matter of right. We need to be a meritocracy. You can’t get 2/100 and get admission while someone who gets 60/100 is denied.

Rupee at an all time low, which also makes our nominal GDP low.

Per capita GDP lower than Bangladesh and Congo.

Good quality jobs available in just a few cities.

Massive overpopulation. Uneducated, ignorant masses.

Inflation skyrocketing, from vegetables to housing to airfare.

Middle class and upper middle class being taxed up to their eyeballs, while farmers and corrupt businessmen pay no tax.

Cities are becoming unliveable because of traffic and pollution. Women not safe. Squatters in cities getting legalised and pampered by populist politicians.

Many important reforms pending. Zero reforms in governance, education, judiciary etc.

Rotten legal and justice system.

Populist politicians squandering taxpayers money on doles and handouts, pocketing the rest themselves.

Pathetic quality of politicians: Feku Modi, Pappu Rahul and Scamster Goonda Inc of Mamata, Lalu, Akhilesh, Jagan Reddy, KCR Rao etc.

….Yet we see lots of optimism about the Indian economy in the media, comments that we are already a superpower etc. Am I missing something?

Many seniors in the Supreme Court are far beyond the reach of an average litigant. A reputed senior charges anywhere between 5 to 15 lakhs an appearance. Despite such high fees, they obviously can’t assure a good hearing. Judges are ready with the matters and come to court after having read a brief. It’s observed that junior counsels get a far better hearing as compared to seniors. Is it advisable to brief a junior counsel in the Supreme Court if the litigant has monetary limitations? If yes, who are the good and upcoming junior counsels in the Supreme Court?

The upcoming young counsel in the Supreme Court is Gaurav Agrawal. An NLS grad, he’s been appointed as an amicus in a large number of matters by the judges. It is often jokingly said that he should be designated as Amicus General of the Supreme Court. He has applied for designation this time around and is sure to become a senior.

If you are scared of failing then yes, choose NALSAR. About 1/3rd of the batch sits for the repeat exams and a good number of them actually lose a year.

On the point of grade freeze, it's actually an advantage, in 4th and 5th year you just have to pass and not worry about a lower GPA unless you end up failing! work hard for 3 years and make a good GPA and use the 4th year for internships/publications etc and chill in the 5th year.

Freezing of the GPA is something which is done by the student body and not the university so if you wanna go for MBA/LLM, the CGPA until the 5th year will matter

Oh my god, I relate to you so much. 100% wasted the first two years of law school, 3rd year went by just figuring things out by myself(my hesitant and shy ass never tried to reach anyone for help)...and now that I am gonna start 4th year next month, it hits me that I have only 2 years left and too many things to do. The stress is real. If I don't work my ass off now, I'm doomed. :')

Another troll shouting NIRF when the argument wasn't even regarding that, and drawing some ridiculous analogy between SLS and NLUD. Where exactly did SLS-P fudge data for NIRF, can you point it out from their submissions? And you're from NLUJ, a college that closer in age to NALSAR/NUJS than NLUD, but yet NLUD is considered hands down better. Stop being so salty.

Dude don’t justify your own insecurity by giving people false details. Tier-2/Tier-3 NLUs hardly get any TCs. NLS/NALSAR has a very solid record , Nujs is improving in this field very well and nlu Delhi has also been stable lately. I must also say that NLU-Jodhpur also has a good tier-1 magic circle experience. That makes this a tier-1 arena. I am not discrimination just spitting facts.

At the forefront, I apologize for being late to the party (JSD Supporter).

I'll try to be as mild and unoffending in my criticism as possible but won't guarantee that that's what it will look like. I have absolutely nothing against you.

First it impresses me how intellectually shallow and intelligibly weak your argument is.

If the case is that you don't understand the concepts of epistemology and its effect on the development of culture, religion, beliefs and worldviews on a society then you need to educate yourself about it first. Probably some other resource and not JSD's book as it's evident that you've understood nothing from it.

However if the case is that you outrightly deny the concept of civilization, culture and its effect on religion and society and their mutual interactions therein then I'll have to pen down a larger piece which I deem unnecessary as I'm quite certain that it is my former opinion which is the case here and not this latter one(however, I could be wrong).

That being said, every society - it's beliefs, worldviews, culture, language, religion and the resulting societal structure is borne out of the civilizational experience of that geography which is then dependant on the onto-epistemological understanding of the initial inhabitants of the place and btw, even philosophy is borne out of this onto-epistemological understanding. Surely there's a reason why in philosophy classes you learn the metaphysical background of the philosopher before you learn what he's talked about.

And surely, being the field of law(so goes the assumption) you'd know that all your law theories were given by philosophers and sociologists who had their respective metaphysical understanding of the world they had come from which in turn, determined their opinions about right and wrong, good and bad, holy and evil, sacred and cursed which led them to give the theories that they did and if law is not an enterprise of right and wrong then, what is it? Similarly, governance and it's structure - ever cared to ask where, how and why did these ideas arrive in the first place? You should.

Lastly, even if JSD reads this piece, I don't think he should degrade himself to such intellectually unsound pieces of argument. No insult, just simple fact.

Did you really say that there are no metrics to measure faculty or curriculum? That's crude and laughable. But look, I agree that NALSAR is one of the very top NLUs, no doubt, and my intention wasn't to put it down but you look at the recent history since NLUD was established and I think NLUD is doing better on many fronts. I would have no qualms in saying NALSAR is superior if they indeed were, but having followed achievements of the top NLUs pretty closely, I feel that NALSAR is considered better mostly because of its historical brand in the law firm industry and to a degree, in academic circles. Nothing a newer college like NLUD can do about that since that's based on time, but wherever it is possible to compete and outperform (like moots, LLM scholarships, graduate exams etc.), I don't think NALSAR is in any way ahead of NLUD.

And if you want to talk of top student intake, I know many people at NALSAR who didn't crack NLUD and vice-versa at NLUD. And NALSAR does also have a domicile quota reservation where people with much lower ranks enter. Not saying that they lack merit or are any worse based on a single exam, but I don't see think the quality at NALSAR being that much superior. Maybe with NLS, there's an argument to be made there. And while NALSAR might have a scenic campus, I think the actual location of it has proven a hindrance in attracting great faculty and engaging in research, etc.

While I agree with almost everything you said, but the reason client is paying close to 1 cr figure is because of your partner, who can charge so much for the work done by you. No one would logically pay 1cr to A0/1/2/3 without that law firm tag/partner. The partner has spent years building up clients, relationships, to reach the position he is in so that he can charge that much amount, and I feel he deserves that profit which he makes out of you. In the end, they should just increase pay by some percentage for junior levels.

p.s I am an A0.

In this matters I think Modiji won't ban foreign law firm entry.PM wants the FTA between India UK finalized,UK is bent in getting foreign law firms into India and without this FTA won't be finalized.So Adaniji can speak for his brother in law but I doubt PM will act as per that advice.

There are exits through the year at Trilegal in numerous teams.No matter how many vacancies,its never a good time to join Trilegal but now is a particularly bad time to join.They have bought in so many new partners and everything is chaotically,too many partners and not enough Associates for partners to vent their frustrations on.

To put it in summary, it's not amazing.

Here's what I mean, unlike some of the more functional pieces of law (TMT, labour laws etc.), there isn't that much demand for PE lawyers in-house. The reason is because, most of the execution for transaction is done by law firms (hence the many many teams of PE / M&A lawyers in law firms) - and the in-house folks job is to really coordinate / manage the work and interface internally (even if that).

What this leads to is that the in-house teams in funds / investment houses are generally small compared to a corporate house. The biggest in-house PE team in India is unlikely to be more than 10-20% of the size of a decent in-house team in a large corporate.

That leads to a situation where two things happen: (a) lots of supply in the market for PE lawyers looking to quit law firms and move in-house, and (b) very very limited opportunities for in-house lawyers in PE employers.

This problem becomes more exacerbated as you grow more senior btw. So if you want to make the shift do it ASAP - if you can get it. For example, at the GC level, there are maybe a grand total 10-20 roles in the whole industry - and almost nobody who gets the job quits it (because duh).

this might be the case with NLU students, we are not from NLU and have come from humble establishments looking to work through our difficulties, of course, no one will leave a job opportunity for some else, one can only feed someone when he is feed, and no one expects them to do.
like for example, I am open to only Mumbai opportunities, but I know of opportunities in Bangalore, someone who is okay with that location might get helped by me, intent to help is more important here and whether actual help will eventually crystalize or not is not our end game and neither a promised thing.
however, I welcome you to the group as well, I believe you raised a good issue and I assume you must be a helping person!

There are several people who change colleges quite a few times. Recently a person from Nujs ballb is retaking for clat again and the thread even appeared here days back. So it won’t be a biggie.

https://www.legallyindia.com/convos/topic/267853-NUJS-or-GNLU-or-2024-reattempt

I am honestly stunned the kind of expectations people have these days. I will be gentle as possible but OP first strike any one of them. Tbh getting into these two nlus is getting difficult and your college preferences should be the least of your concern rn. Maybe you end up getting Nujs- what then? Aspirants nowadays think that filling up the forms can get them to the doors of these colleges. Ultimately even not a single tier-1 pans out. Dreams are infectious. And in a very bad manner. First try to get into any one of these colleges and then ask us. You will get a good one week time in early December when your results will be out. For now engaging people in LI and sparking a debate is not going to help you secure the cut-off for nlsiu and nalsar Hyderabad.

I am tired of hearing these wannabe partners who are justifying the pay given to associates without even acknowledging or being grateful about how much revenue an associate brings in. Plus a lot of comments posted by them are simply based on assumptions or vague claims regarding fixed/variable costs (I am surprised that they keep on forgetting that they are lawyers and hence maybe they should have put in more factual information to prove their claims). Instead they just use words like 'sweetie', 'top line revenue', 'over head costs' etc, so I thought I will post some insights based on my experience from working in a T1 firm.

In my opinion the average A0/A1/A2 is the most profitable to a law firm. The revenue they bring in will ALWAYS be at least equal to or higher than what they would cost to the firm. I mean you will have to be HIGHLY incompetent before the firm to looses money on you (i.e., you get paid more than the amount the firm charges for the work you have done). Let me show you how:

I was a newly promoted A1 when, after discounting my hours, a client was billed ~16 lakhs just for my time. The entire bill, including the bill raised for my time, was paid in full (and no please don't start making any assumptions that the partner would've reduced their hours or some other reason which would have justified my time spent on the matter). So, close to 85% of my salary for the year was recovered from just one client! The time period during which I worked on this matter was from April to May (I obviously had other matters which I worked on during these months, so you can take a guess as to how much revenue an associate can bring in two months).

At the end of the year, I easily ended up billing > 90 lakhs for the firm (SIDE NOTE: At the end of the relevant FY, there was still 10-12 lakhs that was pending to be billed and the firm WOULD bill that eventually, but these delayed billings and the revenue earned from them are fucking lost in void and are not attributed to me only because it was billed after the end of the relevant FY!). Some pretentious asshole would still comment that 90 lakhs is less, but over and above billing that much amount I also did a lot of non-billable knowledge building work (essentially unpaid work for the firm).

Anyways my point being that, at the associate level, you can easily bring in around 1 CR (1.2 CR in case you are an A2/A3) in revenue for the firm and for which you get paid a maximum of 25-26 lakhs (at least that's what I know about A3 pay scales).

Okay so I think the maximum cost, that an associate would be to a firm, would be around 30 lakhs i.e., 25L salary + 5L (being whatever "overhead costs" the wannabe partners are crying about). Okay you know what since idk much about law firms operations costs, why not make the "overhead cost" to be 10L. So the maximum that an associate would cost to a firm is 35 lakhs compared to 1 CR of revenue that they can bring in easily!

Now tell me why are the wannabe partners crying about making 65 lakhs of profit on an associate? That's an insanely high profit margin (and you know what, why not make that 70 lakhs of profit, because lets add in the 3-4 lakhs of value that you help the firm save by doing all the unbillable work, which if the firm would have outsourced, it would have easily cost them that much).

So to any other associate who reads this, you are justified in whining about being underpaid, because as you can see from the numbers, its a literal sweat shop, and the numbers don't lie!

ok thx!

Which monster downvoted this comment even? This is a pretty valid question and honestly I have seen people moving into these colleges after their valid requests. Ofc you need to have the rank for the spot admission. One can also enquire about the NRI sponsored admissions seats by contacting the respective university when he/she has failed to fill the application form. This is pretty viable depending on the university ofc.

Retaking will always be worth considering the options you have. Don’t ponder over your drop years much (they really don’t matter). Do think about the current course you are joining as clat is unpredictable and anything can happen. So for now BSC’LLB seems like a safe option because of the Nujs tag. Go for it. Work hard for clat there.

I think this is pretty self-explanatory but both of the options aren’t really great. However , I will still tell you to join the BSC’LLB course solely for the brand value of Nujs. You can retake clat from there. It will be worth changing colleges if you do end up securing a good rank in the exam.

Hi so I will be honest with you here. First of all Nujs BALLB is a fantastic choice. Undoubtedly the college is known for mind-blowing placements and their merit is continuously increasing in terms of foreign placements as well.But BSC’LLB is not something I will recommend. Your logic of placements being better after five years is really uncertain and unsettling. Remember for the next five years you will be competing with the BALLB batch as well. Plus the perception of corporate law firms towards this particular course is not yet gauged. My suggestion will be that you enroll for this particular course and retake clat again since it’s in 4-5 months anyway. I have seen numerous cases of second drops (and even third drops) , the graduates turned out pretty well (infact some of them are excellent). Anyway it’s pretty common. You will see that by yourself when you will join Nujs.

I wont recommend you to OPT for RMNLU NRI sponsored because that’s just a huge waste of money. Be at peace with the course you have currently and go forward with clat this year. Strike a balance and you will be just fine. And who knows? Maybe this course will actually be excellent in the next 5 years because of the brand value as you just now said.

surprisingly no comment from NLS, had it been done at some other Uni or some government office or some political issue, all these so-called intellectuals would have come moaned and casted so many activism and how bad it is, but since it related to their institution and their institution names getting bad light how silently these people avoided it. wowowowowo

Can't believe someone pays 50 lakhs to study at RML?

NRI quota is nothing but a backdoor entry and corrupt practice on the part of NLUs.

You could have joined Jindal which is much better than RML in lesser fee (9 lakh per year I think). You could get scholarship to reduce it further.

There are hundreds of examples of boys securing ppos. Wake up guys!

But you need to possess that much capability.

The girl you are taking dig at must be having potentiality to secure the ppo.

It's not easy to maintain a good resume, a good cgpa, and having publications in top nlu blogs and journals.

A dedicated and intellectual student can only do it if coming from a tier 3 college!! Otherwise students coming from such college, don't even know what the hell they are doing with their lives!!

Samvad pays well as it's a tier 2 law firm.

Saraf , NDA are paying 15-16 lpa to the freshers.

(Samvad being tier 2 will obviously pay this much).

Another thing that I would like to mention is , being an ex intern of Samvad, I know this that an Associate can get work from all the offices, be it Mumbai, Delhi Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

All the offices are equally good and the starting package that they offer is also great around 10-11 lpa.

So whatever she told you is correct.

Also, since Samvad is itself a brand , it would be easier for her to switch to a tier 1 law firm like Sam, Trilegal etc.

P.S - Fools like you people can only assume things and jump to wrong conclusions because you don't have anything to do apart from taking dig at someone who is already successful in life.

Padh lo baccho... tmhara bhi kuch bhala ho jayega.

Best Wishes.

Trilegal has rolled out a few offers for the 2024 batch already. I've had my first interview which was a more personal interview about a month ago. Scheduled for my second interview tomorrow with another partner in the same team (neutral) who I did not work with. Will update.

The personal interview was generally what's already been discussed here. Why trilegal, why not litigation, why disputes. Have you explored other areas? It was a fairly relaxed interview because I had worked for this partner before so we knew each other.

I think an important aspect people miss during internships is that they need to try to talk to as many people as possible while working so that atleast they know your face/name. Unfortunately this neutral partner I'm scheduled for tomorrow was not present while I was in office so I'm going in blind. Preparing for a technical interview but hoping they just go HR questions so it's chill.

Hi OP, this is very possible. I have worked at a tier 1, and in-house at an MNC, small start-up, and a growth stage company. The hours in-house are definitely better, but what stands out as huge relief is the lack of artificial deadlines 24*7. What you need to be careful of, is to not join an in-house role where you’re reporting to an ex-tier 1 firm partner. In most cases they bring the law firm culture with them (but again, not nearly as bad because the rest of the company is unlikely to propagate that kind of culture). To get interviews, you need to start reaching out to people on LinkedIn in addition to the traditional route through recruiters. They will gauge your commercial accumen - meaning are you the type of lawyer who will just state the risks, or will you work with the business team to evaluate the degree or risk and help them assess which issues are ok to let go of and the ones worth pushing back for. Remember that the role is to facilitate business and that as an in-house lawyer you are a cost center. You bring value by enabling business while balancing legal risks. Read up on commercial terms, licensing, reselling, the difference between a software license and SaaS model (these are inevitable at any company these days), basic labour laws, privacy policy, etc. This is very doable, you just need to be patient in finding the right place and role.

LaliBhas should chill and enjoy retirement as would be prudent for his state of physical and mental fitness. SILF is Self Interest Law Firm cartel and most (if not all) corporate law firms in India will have a revelation when foreign firms enter. Lalas and Lalis (this one for Z...wink wink) will not enjoy the top tier status. Good bye LaliBhas.

You can consider doing your LLM in Canada's top universities (preferably Toronto) and network your way to an internship and then sign Articles with one of the big law firms if you can, as your chances of being hired after that are high, unless you mess up real bad. Getting into a big law firm in Canada won't be very difficult if you're in the top 2-3 universities.

If you can bear the cold for 7-8 months of the year, Canada is a great option. You'll actually belong there and be treated just like anybody else.

And who decides who has overtaken whom? According to the only national ranking nluo is 30th ranked and nuals isnt even in the ranking. If a govt ranking doesnt rate these govt clgs highly then who will?

Symbiosis has been consistently ranked in the top 10 not just in nirf but most rankings.

Around 25k pm. They also have a policy of holding back 5-10% of your salary until you leave. Most do not get that money. Also there's a 3 years lock in. If you leave within 3 years you need to pay the firm multiple lakhs and also let go of your 5-10% held back. Very odd place.