It is easy to have the 'crusader-looking-for-a-cause' mentality when you're battling demons with your own self esteem. Social media and the internet has made it very easy for people to exhibit expertise and success without necessarily achieving it. The internet is a place where everyone likes to put up a highlights reel of their life (professional or personal). People put up exactly what they think will make them look successful or knowledgeable.

Judging yourself versus the highlights reel of someone else's life is unfair to yourself.

This made me curious so I checked and even though I felt it was indeed paraphrased at first, I soon realised that the parts which looked identical were actually the cases referred in the actual judgment. Also, the articles ended on different notes. Maybe I am wrong, but still I feel its mud slinging eventually.

1. Not kids!!! Surely as a lawyer, you need to have an idea of the term adult and its legal meaning.

2. If the writings of these adults - who advertise them on LinkedIn, a professional space - are genuine writings, then I applaud them. However, if you Kian blocks any attempts to fact-check them then I can only imagine that he (who might have seen a write-up or two given he had access to the link shared before blocking it) felt that the truth will be uncovered and fraud at the student level caught. And we all know that if Kian loses his following among law students, then it will be catastrophic for him.

3. I looked up the LinkedIn of a name shared in the comments above. Name, not link. That person has made his profile inaccessible now. I can only see the institution name now, no publication details. Tell me that I was onto something here.

4. Read 2.1.2, someone else was able to access the publication on what I assume is one of these stellar students.

Merit everywhere needs to be applauded, and fraud everywhere deserves to be laid bare.

Just to clarify:

[Their] publications are nothing but a paraphrased version of articles published on Gautam Bhatia's blog, Kluwer arbitration, IndiCorp and many others. One recent eg is [their] case analysis of Pravin electricals which as copied, para by para, line by line from the one published on Kluwer.

He just said that he pens down his general class discussion + things happening around him. Plus, he told me to watch expert discussions where they discuss these topics and then pen down those as pointers. Also some other talks. He seemed to me like a genuine guy. The other guy from 3rd year was a bit arrogant though.

Also, guys, don't think it's a good sign purely because they had A LOT OF FREE TIME and flexibility as compared to campus kids in their 1&2 year.
1&2 year kids who were really fond of publication could only have almost like 2-3 publications to their name in a year but with lockdown and some stupid start and career coaches "who themselves are in their 3rd, 4th, and final year" have just giving such advice.
people who are just collecting information/data from other sources and keeping information on their websites and LinkedIn, when they got an engagement as you ought to. they became an overnight CV builder and career coach.
please [...] don't be hard upon yourselves.
[...]

It does seem like a bad idea to encourage anonymously tracking down law students who have good CVs and then seeing if it's possible to poke holes in or criticise their CV?

Please keep it civil, at the end of the day, everyone will have a different approach, capacities and priorities in how they approach their legal careers, and some might succeed and achieve what they're looking for or find careers that fulfil them.

Suffice it to say, to aid the general discussion, the shared LinkedIn link was of a law student with voluminous CV of work experience, internships, positions, honours and publications. And without digging too deeply, the list of 50+ publications does seem to look like it's with real publications and potentially legit.

In short, purely by the quantity it is impressive and one does wonder how there are enough hours in the day. Then again, some people barely sleep and have boundless energy, drive and purpose, and it certainly does not seem impossible.

But more importantly, don't try to measure your own worth against others - do what you like to do, explore the career options you find interesting, push yourself out of your comfort zone to write articles and do internships and volunteer and other positions that you think are valuable, and a career and job will find you sooner or later. Even without 50+ publications, guaranteed!

2-3 quality papers per year is nearly impossible. Even for professors in the QS top 50 who are legendary (non-US)* and churn out great publications, the requirement to meet expectations is 3 publications every 4 years. When you are at the top of the food chain like that, trust me: 'expectations' are pretty damn high.

*The US is exceptional in the sense that you can churn out publications faster since their journals are student-edited and (mostly) non-peer-reviewed. The US papers are therefore unnaturally long (conciseness is quality) and kind of 'sensational'. While writing for a US journal one has to keep in mind how it will seem interesting to a second-year JD student.

I came across one 2nd year guy form a 3rd tier NLU with 70 publications (with some at really prestigious international platforms like Oxford, Harvard, so forth), research fellowships, tier firm internships and what now. I guess he was also the batch topper. I mean how do they even do this much? I am from a tier 1 NLU and my life is already paced up with assignments - lol. Is it true that 3rd tier NLUs don't have much tasks to allow these people to do so much? I am clueless. His name was some Rajas or something.

I mean to anyone who had actually held down a day job in the field- this screams scam. You’re supposed to have 50 good publications when you’re nearing the end of your career. If you have them so soon- I’d bet money they’re mostly trash. And internships aren’t about collecting certificates either - they’re about improving skills and becoming valuable to a potential employer.

If someone has got 50 publications while still in their 3rd year, most of those are unlikely to be the product of any quality research, and are unlikely to have added any value in terms of scholarship. That's just a statement of fact. You need to time and effort to produce good research and scholarship. Very few people produce more than 2-3 quality papers in a year in the legal domain.