I am seriously considering a career in academia and would really like to understand what it is like being a law professor in institutions like JGLS, NLU's, and other private/government colleges. Would be helpful if people could share real details about salaries as the stats available on the internet might not be accurate.
It would also be helpful if people could shed light on the issue of adhocism, as I keep hearing that teachers are not made permanent very easily. How do promotions work, is the work satisfying, and any other detail that people from Indian legal academia might share would be really appreciated. Thanks!
NLSIU: Low pay, but good colleagues post-Sudhir and nice city.
Other NLUs: Low pay, mostly terrible colleagues, mostly terrible work culture
Advice: If not JGLS, skip it and do something else. Prepare for UPSC, judicial service and other govt jobs. If you are a non-reserved category person and can only try for the merit list, then consider doing an MBA and switching careers.
Rubbish. JGLS: Good pay, some good colleagues, plenty of terrible ones, you will be required to sell the university everywhere you go, often in an unethical and distasteful manner. NLSIU and every other NLU: Pay is the same, comfortable but not great. Mix of colleagues, way better students to teach, much better job satisfaction despite lack of infra. If you are coming into teaching for the money, go to JGLS. If you love to teach and wishes to make a difference, then some of the NLUs will undoubtedly suit you better.
No jgls phobia please. No student or faculty needs to sell jgls any more. Every law aspirant today knows jgls and wants to study at JGLS. Fee affordability is only issue.
There is an admission outreach team which does its work. Almost 99% Jgls faculty only teach and research. For academic career, Jindal will remain the best place among all law schools.
It's hard to imagine now but when you retire is when you will need expensive medication, tests, surgery and time in hospitals. The bills can run really high. If NLSIU give post retirement healthcare, great but if not, now is the time to start thinking about it. Good to hear about the pension. Any idea if it also rises with the Payscale like the government pension?
It's a certain percentage of your salary along with equal employer's contribution to the NPS, like most government jobs now. Very few places still retain guaranteed pension schemes now, even in government jobs. Given the interest rates and the obvious nudge away from bank FDs to the market, that's inevitable.
Except the armed forces, nobody who has joined a government job after 2004 will get a pension. There is an NPS match available and the returns are tax exempt but your return (and thus "pension" equivalent) is linked to which NPS scheme you choose and how well that scheme does. NPS also has an annuity requirement which is the reason I don't invest in it.
So, this idea that you'll get a pension in government jobs is absolutely wrong. The Sixth Pay Commission has significantly increased the pay of government employees to front end the financial obligations.
The next 30-40 years are likely to produce decent market returns but things won't be all that rosy after the population decline starts in India (and globally).
Pensions are now limited to very few jobs - primarily Military, Higher Judiciary, Atomic Energy and Space. Everything else is contributory pension schemes, even for IAS - through NPS.
What would be the salary scales for Asst Professors, Associate Professors and Professors in NLSIU/NALSAR/NUJS/NLUD and other NLUs? is it comparable with that of JGLS and Symbi?
Entry level Assistant professor: slightly more than 9 lpa before tax. Associate professor: around 27 lpa before tax. Professor: around 32 lpa before tax.
JGLS pays way more. At least 14 lpa to Assistant, no fixed ceiling for Associate or Professor, depends on negotiation.
It’s never more clear than in these threads that most people on LI are just students impersonating / posing as people with more experience. No legitimate teacher with enough experience sees any real difference between students in private universities/ jgls/ nlus/ government law colleges. You’ll find the same few good students everywhere and the same proportion of grade grubbing scamsters. What is different is perhaps the kind of autonomy you have and what the admin expects from you and collegiality among the faculty. Money is a real enough concern - but most people who enter academia have resigned themselves to a life of being underpaid and under appreciated. What is perhaps slightly more important is choice of city and whether you think you or career will grow if you are at a certain institution.
Not really. There are plenty of teachers at JGLS who confide within their inner circle about lack of teaching satisfaction with the kind of students that they get. To be fair, they also say a lot of good things about the research and networking opportunities that are institutionally available there.
And there’s more than enough teachers at even the top nlus who are unhappy with the students they have to teach. This is a culture problem not isolated to jgls.
I worked a bit at a very good NLU in a surge of enthusiasm after clearing my NET. After five semesters my experience:
- Terrible colleagues (most were both incompetent and also slimeballs) - Pretty low pay (about Rs 75k) with no other perks, insurance or travel benefits - An uninspiring workload, pretty much hours and hours of dull classroom teaching with no time to do my own research - participating in a suck-up game with the vice-chancellor lest I get on his dark side - dealing with some very privileged brats
Overall not a good experience, and much worse than the 2 years I spent grinding away as an associate in a Tier 2 firm.
Could you indicate what do you mean by "very good Nlu" like which tier would it fall into? Caveat - I totally agree that the tiers are vague, and based on ridiculous parameters. Just want to get an idea since I have heard good things about NLS/NALSAR/NLUD academia (relative to other unis).
Nope. I had a clear idea of what being a "professor" meant. I'm happy to be surrounded by students who respect the effort I put into coursework, by colleagues who want to chat about intellectual and academic issues, by an admin that is at least not obstructive.
At my Tier 2 law firm my clients respected me (even if my partner did not), my colleagues generally ignored me (other than a few who were pleasant) and the admin was nothing to write home about but at least I got 2.5x my NLU pay (with bonus) for my troubles.
At the NLU I worked 90% of the students had no interest in coursework, practically nobody bothered to read my lovingly crafted reading lists, most were in my class because they had to due to attendance issues and less than a dozen ever consulted me. My TAs were lazy, irresponsible and messed up the small tasks I gave them. My colleagues were only ever interested in bitching and gossiping about others, there were ridiculous movements to oust a senior official and nobody had any interest in seminars or any meaningful discussions. The admin worked overtime to frustrate everyone so my low pay barely covered the stress I put up with.
Sorry to hear this. It's very important to join a place where you know you will have some friends and allies because it helps you fit in and know there are people who have your back. Even 3-4 are enough. But it's also not a job for someone who can't extend empathy to colleagues from different backgrounds and students who may be immature as young people will be. There is no 9-5 in this job. You are not going to enjoy it until you learn to appreciate the many kinds of people at the NLUs, work out what you can learn form them and how to work with them.
NUALS had a seen a few really incompetent freshers from local colleges with LLMs being appointed as guest lecturers a couple of years back . They knew absolutely nothing and atleast 10 people in every batch could teach better than them. The students practically ate them up. They were exposed to really good permanent faculty members till then and this came as a blow and boy were students outraged. Students bombarded them with questions and using a wide variety of techniques, within two semesters, they were successfully made to resign. It's very evident now that we need our own alumni + our group of permanent faculty members who trained everyone since the inception of the University as faculty. We have exceptional NUALS alumni as faculty members already. (alumni here refers to the 5 year UG program graduates)
Tbvh go into academia if you really want to teach and you're genuinely interested to impart knowledge. Don't look at things like salary, pension and all because that's not going up help you during your career much especially because you'll be facing the scrutiny of hundreds of students on a daily basis. It may look easy and it actually might be in private colleges or other places where people come for just a degree. In NLUs, for the most part, students sitting would have more generalised knowledge and they're sitting for specialised knowledge. No offense to anyone but NLU students would be more smarter than 50% of the faculty that teach them in the NLU. We absolutely revere the faculty members we look up to. It'll be difficult for you if you're not able to keep up to the standards they expect. But at the end of the day there's a lot of nobility attached to it because of the importance a teacher plays in the life of a student. There's a lot riding on you and you can make or break an entire batch of students into excellent legal practitioners or into someone who hates that particular field of law. If the latter happens know that you will face the wrath of students.
Having laid down the seriousness and pitfalls associated with it, we need a lot of well read people going into academia. Hope that people seriously as a career option and not just as a back up plan to fall back on. All the best!
Could someone please shed light on the exact salaries? It is said that teachers in JGLS earn well. Can someone put a precise number on it? How much would an entry level person (with an LL.M, and no prior experience) get? How much does it increase over the years? Also, if the money given is enough for one to sustain his/her family in a place like Delhi NCR? Furthermore, what is the life of professors teaching in law colleges in tier-two cities? Do universities provide accommodation etc.?
There is a thread where insiders have commented on this point clearly and in detail. Search for it. It varies based on your negotiation skills. Entry level salary for freshers without any industry work ex is usually around 12 LPA. If you have a foreign LLM from a top place and maybe one year's law firm work ex, it can go up to 15 LPA. Added to this, you will get an extra lakh for research every year, free quarters, health insurance, plus added monetary incentives for top publications. This is for their Junior/Senior RAs. An Assistant Professor with tenure can expect around 18 LPA to begin with. For Associate Professors, it is around 25 LPA. For Professors, it will again vary depending on your profile, but nothing less than 30 LPA.
Almost everyone in Jindal has got some sort of foreign degree. Exceptions do exist, but they usually have got some other distinguishing feature in their CVs or established rep.
I have been working in litigation for the last two years and feel like it is not for me. I am NET qualified. Has anyone here made a switch from litigation to academia? What was it like? Please share your experiences.
There seems to be a lot of misinformation about the salaries in Government colleges/schools.
All law school follow 7th pay commission salaries which is like any other government job (whether UPSC or anything else).
Once you start as assistant professor your in hand will be around 75k (with incriment every year, possibly more than one). Apart from that you and dependents get lifetime health insurance, you'll get a house/HRA, you'll be contributing to NPS and EPF (which will be matched by your institution).
There is no monthly pension in government job anymore, but you'll get a big lumpsum amount at retirement.
It is obviously not equivalent to a tier 1 law firm job, but is a comfortable life if teaching is what you like and want to do. Lots of freedom and research opportunities, you can do your PhD (on study leave while still getting your salary), 2 months summer break every year, other holidays (without any work on Saturday/Sunday, unless you want to) among other things.
Sorry, as someone teaching at an NLU at present, I must disagree with a few things that you mentioned in your comment. The entry level salary part is accurate enough. However, many NLUs do not have a pension scheme including NPS. Nor is there more than one annual increment (the increment also follows 7th CPC, which is around 2k every year plus DA, coming to a total of 4k maximum). There are overall 5 promotions available throughout your career, 5+5+3+3+10, bringing your salary to around 27 LPA from 9 LPA over a period of 26 years after 7th CPC). PF is there, that part is true. Almost no NLU gives you paid leave to do your PhD, although unpaid study leave may be available after you have worked for a certain number of years. The summer break is also not for two months for the faculty, since there are plenty of administrative work that NLU faculty are expected to do (if you are lazy enough and manage to keep your admin appeased, you may get away with most of it though, but you would want to do it if you want the best for your students and the institution). The total number of holidays in a year is still a lot though, no argument about that.
Thank you for sharing. Since you teach at a national law school, could you please share your experience? What has it been like for you overall? And, what does a day in the life of a law school teacher look like?
Hi on the NPS part and the paid study leave party - if you are not getting it then the problem is the University. These are government and UGC regulations which all of them need to follow. The one I am associated with does.
Sorry, there is no legal requirement of a statutory body having to offer you NPS mandatorily. The problem is surely the university as you said. But central government norms do not automatically become applicable to NLUs unless adopted by their governing bodies. UGC doesn't really have any mandatory norms about pension or NPS either.
It's a holidays to the extent that you can go somewhere else (admin permitting). But there are papers to write, exams to grade, recommendation letters, student queries and courses to prepare. There will be entrance exams to administer. Most universities will also have conferences, workshops and training programs, and visitors and collaborations that you have to look after. Senior professors will expect you to participate in whatever they organise. Classroom time is not even one fifth of the work.
Ugh dude. Professors don’t take a vacation during the summer. They work on evaluations, prepare course materials for the coming term, and do research. What nonsense? Also most decent professors do end up working weekends also. My first academic job I didn’t have a weekend for a year straight. It’s a myth that profs only work 9-5. They often work just as long hours as any other kind of lawyer.
So, for someone thinking of pursuing academia, as opposed to litigation/law-firm, in order to lead an easy-going life, that might not be achieved? Please do elaborate on the working hours and commitments required from academics.
Can be. As the person mentioned if you're really motivated, want to research a lot and write you need to spend time.
However, as long as you clear the basic minimum requirements (which are quite easy) you'll be promoted after a pre determined number of years (which will also be same for the Prof who writes a lot) and get your yearly incriments.
It's the sad reality of Indian academic system but it is what it is. You can lead as chill or as hectic a life as you want.
Sure, if you don't mind everyone losing respect for you. This is a job in which people are constantly looking for what you did wrong. You can be careless with a memo or contract and at best your senior or partner might catch it. Come unprepared to class or fail to write for two years and people will be vicious to you for a long time. If you are really thick skinned and don't mind snide comments and disrespect, you may get promoted but slowly compare to people who are considered more productive.
In a law firm a junior associate or even SA (with 6-9 yrs PQE) gets maybe 3-5 strikes before their career is cut short. Major bloopers can easily get you fired (including bloopers where the partner was in charge).
In an NLU you can teach some rubbish in class, write nonsensical publications blatantly plagiarized, do no other duties and still get your daily monthly pay, promotions and seniority. In that respect its like the civil services where there is no incentive to perform well (accolades from students do not translate into promotions or bonuses). Theres the well known professor at (...) who has been named and shamed for a decade for plagiarizing entire chapters in his own publications yet not a thing has happened to him.
Thats one of the important reasons why in an NLU everybody gravitates towards the bottom. There's no benefit in being at the top. It's a great job to get a reasonable salary for doing very little work and eventually getting a modest position as a professor or head of department. Not much recognition but no danger either.
This is so childish it's hilarious. I've seen partners get the law entirely wrong and seen very mediocre people climb the ladder by blaming their mistakes on others the few times they were caught out in the most elite firms. If you're good with people and generally trying, you'll drift up the ladder. Trying to understand what your professors do is like one of your many clients assuming that your meetings with them is all you do, assuming also that the client is fresh out of high school and has zero adult friends. The reason professors can't be fired is so that the the VCs don't kick them out for discussing LGBTQ or other things that they don't like. But their success (which is not the same as not being fired) depends on a lot of work. In India especially everything from the colour the balcony is painted to covering for colleagues with emergency is their problem. There's a good account of the tasks below but add to that the huge amount of intellectual and emotional counseling of students and being responsive to their emergency. It's a very punishing job, unless you love it or hate it enough to be entirely indifferent to getting anywhere.
You obviously have little idea on the ground realities of employment at NLUs in India. There's simply no metric on which a professor's job comes remotely close to a partner in a law firm.
NLU professors have no work hours and most take full advantage of this. They have no obligation to publish except the minimum 2-3 articles needed to get their time bound promotions which can be done in some shady journal. They face no consequences for being rude, physically violent, shirking work or any number of academic malfeasances. To top it all they cannot be sacked without a department process that is rife with problems and which takes years. The equivalent of job security in western countries is called getting tenure and that takes many years. In India a lecturer with zero credibility gets tenure from day 1.
On the soft aspects both have counseling, leadership and mentoring roles. The difference is that failure to do this affects a partner more than a professor. Most professors who were my colleagues didnt give a rat's ass about students emotional well being while partners will sometimes do so out of selfish reason since they need to get the work done.
What you say is true about teaching at an ivy league law school, but thats not the question.
Like I said before being a professor at an indian NLU is great to get steady modest income, be unfire-able, have zero job pressure and oodles of time. If that's your thing go for it.
You sound a little bitter to me which is understandable but sad. I do know plenty about the system but take a more charitable view of it than you. I didn't decide all law firms are useless based on a few unethical lazy people, who did pretty well for themselves by the way. And I don't judge NLUs by their worst professors either. It is easier to get a permanent position in India than it is to get tenure in the US yes, but it is not exactly easy. There is a limited number positions. There is also a long probation period but we won't get into that . Hiring takes place through a competitive process in which a committee of senior scholars, usually including more than one vice chancellor, chooses candidates. And to move higher in the ranks, you have to go through that process again and meet its criteria for evaluation (which include publications, admin work and other things in addition to teaching). I agree with you that the process does not always work well. You can tell from a university's hiring choices how the committee is choosing. It usually depends on their options, the UGC rules and the direction the vice chancellor prefers. Once a cluster of unsuitable people have been hired then yes, the faculty positions are occupied and the people hired can at best be delayed in their rise through the ranks until they choose to quit. But your idea that the problem is job security is wildly wrong. No scholar worth their salt who hopes to stay at the institution would take a job in which the next Vice Chancellor could fire them for being too activist or too critical of the judiciary etc. You'll see a higher concentration of rising star scholars where vice chancellors took the trouble to find them and offer them job security. Over time, a good faculty attracts others who are good and helps colleagues up their game. A partner who brings in the money doesn't have to give a rat's ass about the law or be a remotely decent boss. They'll just cycle through people and usually are very good at covering their mess up. It is not as simple as all NLUs are awful and all firms are great. They have different goals and different ways of working. Both have good and bad institutions depending on the leaders in charge. And both can be a good experience as long as you like the work in general, go in with your eyes open and work out constructive ways to work with the people around you. You can't really compare the them to each other - apples and oranges.
Err...I don't disagree with your overall sentiment, but you seem to be short of facts. The promotions in public universities in India do not depend on availability of posts anymore. You can join as an Assistant Professor and become a Professor in due course of time regardless of whether any actual Professor position is vacant. That's courtesy of the UGC Career Advancement Scheme. The minimum requirements for that are also quite easy to satisfy. Very few publications needed and quantity is usually preferred over quality.
I'm loving your dedication. You know they have a limited budget right? Promoting everyone means that they'll be paid from what money exactly? There's a selection committee for that scheme also. And trust me, if a selection committee is determined not to let someone move forward, it'll find reasons to manage it. No one gets to climb a university ladder if the upper admin is dead set against it.
Please show me data from any NLU that shows that a person has been deprived of a CAS promotion. You have got zero knowledge about the working of these places it seems. Once again, short of disciplinary/corruption charges, CAS promotions are always inevitable. They may take time to be effected, but they are then given retrospectively. The money spent on faculty salary is a fraction of any institutional expense. In addition, the rate of new recruitment is also really slow.
Lol you don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s easy to look at someone else doing a job and think “ oh they’re not doing anything” and “they’re just lazy”. You only realise how much work is put in when you do the job yourself.
Lol academia is not the easy life kid. Especially not if you want to teach at respectable universities. You don’t get promoted automatically- you need to put in hours to do research and publish . Students don’t realise how much work profs do- largely because they don’t see it. For every one exam the student writes - the prof evaluates anywhere between 60-120 papers. Then there’s making time to set up project consultations with each student in your classes, then there’s time to do vivas. Professors cannot go to a class without preparing- you’re up in front of a crowd of people it’s humiliating to not have anything of value to say. So reading and preparing lectures and notes takes hours for every class.and before the course even starts you put together reading lists - that’s a lot of research and reading and it’s time consuming. Especially in the law because at the very least you want to update the case law you’re teaching, and sometimes the acts when the law changes. Most nlus make you do at least two courses a term- so double all of that.
And this is all just course work. You need to publish especially if you want to remain competitive and get promoted on schedule. You need to do some service - which often takes the form of organising conferences or doing peer review, but also judging moots or things like that. You need to write recommendation letters for students every year. And you need to administrative work. I started off in a private university ( now in an NLU) and the administrative staff we had was incompetent. So I had to work to make sure new students got admitted, that they’re queries were handled, that arrangements had been made for them, that we’d taken decisions about what funding to offer them. And the older you are - the more work you actually have to do - cause at some point you’re gonna want your own research centre- that means more research, applying for grants, meeting with funders, hiring people, managing people, writing reports, maintaining a website, doing conferences and lectures, presenting your work. And then there’s graduate students- mentoring llm/ PhD students- going through their work and giving feedback, holding them accountable to deadlines. The course work for graduate students. If you become a Dean or you’re put in charge of a programme- you then have to design it, collaborate with other faculty, make sure things run smoothly, set out the policy, it’s an insane amount of work. It really just goes on and on. Most teachers also try to do guest lectures every now and then and do some extra work that might earn them some extra money. And for anyone saying “ oh you don’t need research grants and the like” - yes you absolutely do. If not because you want to be a high achiever- at least because you will need the extra money. Because even with the 7th pay commission- the money is not enough to provide for your family- kids if you have them.
Yes technically you can be an assistant professor for life - never get promoted, never put in more than the bare minimum- and you might not get fired ( although this is increasingly doubtful). But really who wants to live like that? You won’t make any money at all, and you’ll have zero respect with your students or colleagues.
Professors don’t whine about workload to students cause they’re not our friends. And we don’t whine on random websites cause what is the point of that? We whine about workload to each other, and even that is rare because by the time you have your PhD/ masters/ you’re just used to the workload and you are a lot more mature than undergrads fresh out of law school who usually whine on these forums. and then we put our head down and keep working.
And honestly the field is becoming competitive with so many young people coming back after graduate study abroad, and nls and jgls and other nlus stepping up and hiring them. Things are only gonna get worse.
As a fellow academic, I agree with almost everything that you said but one. The picture that you painted is how a competent academic's life should be. Unfortunately, at least in public universities including NLUs, it rarely is. I have seen many people not do anything that you mentioned, but still get promoted to the top. The minimum requirements of the UGC are laughable to say the least. Yet for people who are actually competent and want to help, there's no end to work hours, truly.
You cannot possibly be working the hours which a successful or semi-successful litigation lawyer or a successful (or not!) law firm lawyer will be required to work.
And, if you've not have a weekend off for an entire year (regardless of the job), then you've got a problem with workaholism. It's not the job, it's you.
And how would you know? You’ve worked in academia? Why do you law firm folks have this constant victim complex man? You’d think no one else in the country even has a job compared to you guys. I’m not a workaholic. I was junior faculty- I was asked to come in by my boss who had hiring and firing power to do various administrative and research tasks. I didn’t resent him cause he would come in too. We couldn’t do this work during the week because we were usually running from one class to another. You don’t know how hard or otherwise someone else in a career you don’t know anything about is working. Stop being a jackass.
I no longer work in a law firm and enjoy a good work-life balance, thank you for your concern. I have actively taken decisions to put myself in this position.
Let me repeat: if you've been working all weekends for a year. You are the problem. Whether it's because you cannot set and / or enforce boundaries or because you like to tell the world that your life is miserable (I know those types from my law firm days, they liked to portray that they were bearing the weight of the world).
Litigation lawyers "waste" a lot of time in the courts waiting for matters and arguing and then time is spent getting briefed or briefing, and only then do they get time to draft / research. Law firms (and especially transactional work) have their own cycle of work which requires really long hours.
The world over people join the academia for (among other reasons, and perhaps those reasons are more central to their decision) a decent work-life with a decent pay. The most accomplished professors that I had during my university days also had ample time, I know because they played badminton and walked etc in the evening. I never knew evenings until I left my law firm job. I was not an exception in my firm.
I'm not being a "jackass" for pointing the reality of your situation.
People should realise the fact that while going up on the ladder in a law firm, a SA or PA is expected to bring in clients. Imagine the difficulty of PA in getting clients/bringing work apart from working 7-8 hours (considered minimum in a firm). In firms bringing business will get you a faster promotion, brining business will cover up for the mediocre work. I have seen people with exceptional skills lagging behind the ones who do shoddy work but bring clients due to their parent's network/business.
If you go into academics you have the option of working in a tier-2 city and save more, I think it goes at par with someone working in a tier-1 city and paying high rents and other things.
It would also be helpful if people could shed light on the issue of adhocism, as I keep hearing that teachers are not made permanent very easily. How do promotions work, is the work satisfying, and any other detail that people from Indian legal academia might share would be really appreciated. Thanks!
NLSIU: Low pay, but good colleagues post-Sudhir and nice city.
Other NLUs: Low pay, mostly terrible colleagues, mostly terrible work culture
Advice: If not JGLS, skip it and do something else. Prepare for UPSC, judicial service and other govt jobs. If you are a non-reserved category person and can only try for the merit list, then consider doing an MBA and switching careers.
NLSIU and every other NLU: Pay is the same, comfortable but not great. Mix of colleagues, way better students to teach, much better job satisfaction despite lack of infra. If you are coming into teaching for the money, go to JGLS. If you love to teach and wishes to make a difference, then some of the NLUs will undoubtedly suit you better.
There is an admission outreach team which does its work. Almost 99% Jgls faculty only teach and research. For academic career, Jindal will remain the best place among all law schools.
So, this idea that you'll get a pension in government jobs is absolutely wrong. The Sixth Pay Commission has significantly increased the pay of government employees to front end the financial obligations.
The next 30-40 years are likely to produce decent market returns but things won't be all that rosy after the population decline starts in India (and globally).
JGLS pays way more. At least 14 lpa to Assistant, no fixed ceiling for Associate or Professor, depends on negotiation.
Symbi pays same as NLUs.
- Terrible colleagues (most were both incompetent and also slimeballs)
- Pretty low pay (about Rs 75k) with no other perks, insurance or travel benefits
- An uninspiring workload, pretty much hours and hours of dull classroom teaching with no time to do my own research
- participating in a suck-up game with the vice-chancellor lest I get on his dark side
- dealing with some very privileged brats
Overall not a good experience, and much worse than the 2 years I spent grinding away as an associate in a Tier 2 firm.
Apart from the monetary benefit of the MPO has your life really changed?
And given that it’s only the money which changed, I really don’t think you were ever meant to teach.
At my Tier 2 law firm my clients respected me (even if my partner did not), my colleagues generally ignored me (other than a few who were pleasant) and the admin was nothing to write home about but at least I got 2.5x my NLU pay (with bonus) for my troubles.
At the NLU I worked 90% of the students had no interest in coursework, practically nobody bothered to read my lovingly crafted reading lists, most were in my class because they had to due to attendance issues and less than a dozen ever consulted me. My TAs were lazy, irresponsible and messed up the small tasks I gave them. My colleagues were only ever interested in bitching and gossiping about others, there were ridiculous movements to oust a senior official and nobody had any interest in seminars or any meaningful discussions. The admin worked overtime to frustrate everyone so my low pay barely covered the stress I put up with.
that sucks so much bro. im sorry for that </3
Tbvh go into academia if you really want to teach and you're genuinely interested to impart knowledge. Don't look at things like salary, pension and all because that's not going up help you during your career much especially because you'll be facing the scrutiny of hundreds of students on a daily basis. It may look easy and it actually might be in private colleges or other places where people come for just a degree. In NLUs, for the most part, students sitting would have more generalised knowledge and they're sitting for specialised knowledge. No offense to anyone but NLU students would be more smarter than 50% of the faculty that teach them in the NLU. We absolutely revere the faculty members we look up to. It'll be difficult for you if you're not able to keep up to the standards they expect.
But at the end of the day there's a lot of nobility attached to it because of the importance a teacher plays in the life of a student. There's a lot riding on you and you can make or break an entire batch of students into excellent legal practitioners or into someone who hates that particular field of law. If the latter happens know that you will face the wrath of students.
Having laid down the seriousness and pitfalls associated with it, we need a lot of well read people going into academia. Hope that people seriously as a career option and not just as a back up plan to fall back on. All the best!
You know that's the pompous attitude I talk about. A frying pan on fire will hit you when you hit the road.
they will be happy to hire you in an adhoc position, pay will be between 50-70k pm
or you may gain some experience through credit courses and then wait for an advert for probationary/permanent posts
All law school follow 7th pay commission salaries which is like any other government job (whether UPSC or anything else).
Once you start as assistant professor your in hand will be around 75k (with incriment every year, possibly more than one). Apart from that you and dependents get lifetime health insurance, you'll get a house/HRA, you'll be contributing to NPS and EPF (which will be matched by your institution).
There is no monthly pension in government job anymore, but you'll get a big lumpsum amount at retirement.
It is obviously not equivalent to a tier 1 law firm job, but is a comfortable life if teaching is what you like and want to do. Lots of freedom and research opportunities, you can do your PhD (on study leave while still getting your salary), 2 months summer break every year, other holidays (without any work on Saturday/Sunday, unless you want to) among other things.
However, as long as you clear the basic minimum requirements (which are quite easy) you'll be promoted after a pre determined number of years (which will also be same for the Prof who writes a lot) and get your yearly incriments.
It's the sad reality of Indian academic system but it is what it is. You can lead as chill or as hectic a life as you want.
In a law firm a junior associate or even SA (with 6-9 yrs PQE) gets maybe 3-5 strikes before their career is cut short. Major bloopers can easily get you fired (including bloopers where the partner was in charge).
In an NLU you can teach some rubbish in class, write nonsensical publications blatantly plagiarized, do no other duties and still get your daily monthly pay, promotions and seniority. In that respect its like the civil services where there is no incentive to perform well (accolades from students do not translate into promotions or bonuses). Theres the well known professor at (...) who has been named and shamed for a decade for plagiarizing entire chapters in his own publications yet not a thing has happened to him.
Thats one of the important reasons why in an NLU everybody gravitates towards the bottom. There's no benefit in being at the top. It's a great job to get a reasonable salary for doing very little work and eventually getting a modest position as a professor or head of department. Not much recognition but no danger either.
Trying to understand what your professors do is like one of your many clients assuming that your meetings with them is all you do, assuming also that the client is fresh out of high school and has zero adult friends.
The reason professors can't be fired is so that the the VCs don't kick them out for discussing LGBTQ or other things that they don't like. But their success (which is not the same as not being fired) depends on a lot of work. In India especially everything from the colour the balcony is painted to covering for colleagues with emergency is their problem. There's a good account of the tasks below but add to that the huge amount of intellectual and emotional counseling of students and being responsive to their emergency. It's a very punishing job, unless you love it or hate it enough to be entirely indifferent to getting anywhere.
NLU professors have no work hours and most take full advantage of this. They have no obligation to publish except the minimum 2-3 articles needed to get their time bound promotions which can be done in some shady journal. They face no consequences for being rude, physically violent, shirking work or any number of academic malfeasances. To top it all they cannot be sacked without a department process that is rife with problems and which takes years. The equivalent of job security in western countries is called getting tenure and that takes many years. In India a lecturer with zero credibility gets tenure from day 1.
On the soft aspects both have counseling, leadership and mentoring roles. The difference is that failure to do this affects a partner more than a professor. Most professors who were my colleagues didnt give a rat's ass about students emotional well being while partners will sometimes do so out of selfish reason since they need to get the work done.
What you say is true about teaching at an ivy league law school, but thats not the question.
Like I said before being a professor at an indian NLU is great to get steady modest income, be unfire-able, have zero job pressure and oodles of time. If that's your thing go for it.
It is easier to get a permanent position in India than it is to get tenure in the US yes, but it is not exactly easy. There is a limited number positions. There is also a long probation period but we won't get into that . Hiring takes place through a competitive process in which a committee of senior scholars, usually including more than one vice chancellor, chooses candidates. And to move higher in the ranks, you have to go through that process again and meet its criteria for evaluation (which include publications, admin work and other things in addition to teaching). I agree with you that the process does not always work well. You can tell from a university's hiring choices how the committee is choosing. It usually depends on their options, the UGC rules and the direction the vice chancellor prefers. Once a cluster of unsuitable people have been hired then yes, the faculty positions are occupied and the
people hired can at best be delayed in their rise through the ranks until they choose to quit.
But your idea that the problem is job security is wildly wrong. No scholar worth their salt who hopes to stay at the institution would take a job in which the next Vice Chancellor could fire them for being too activist or too critical of the judiciary etc. You'll see a higher concentration of rising star scholars where vice chancellors took the trouble to find them and offer them job security. Over time, a good faculty attracts others who are good and helps colleagues up their game.
A partner who brings in the money doesn't have to give a rat's ass about the law or be a remotely decent boss. They'll just cycle through people and usually are very good at covering their mess up.
It is not as simple as all NLUs are awful and all firms are great. They have different goals and different ways of working. Both have good and bad institutions depending on the leaders in charge. And both can be a good experience as long as you like the work in general, go in with your eyes open and work out constructive ways to work with the people around you. You can't really compare the them to each other - apples and oranges.
And this is all just course work. You need to publish especially if you want to remain competitive and get promoted on schedule. You need to do some service - which often takes the form of organising conferences or doing peer review, but also judging moots or things like that. You need to write recommendation letters for students every year. And you need to administrative work. I started off in a private university ( now in an NLU) and the administrative staff we had was incompetent. So I had to work to make sure new students got admitted, that they’re queries were handled, that arrangements had been made for them, that we’d taken decisions about what funding to offer them.
And the older you are - the more work you actually have to do - cause at some point you’re gonna want your own research centre- that means more research, applying for grants, meeting with funders, hiring people, managing people, writing reports, maintaining a website, doing conferences and lectures, presenting your work.
And then there’s graduate students- mentoring llm/ PhD students- going through their work and giving feedback, holding them accountable to deadlines. The course work for graduate students. If you become a Dean or you’re put in charge of a programme- you then have to design it, collaborate with other faculty, make sure things run smoothly, set out the policy, it’s an insane amount of work.
It really just goes on and on. Most teachers also try to do guest lectures every now and then and do some extra work that might earn them some extra money.
And for anyone saying “ oh you don’t need research grants and the like” - yes you absolutely do. If not because you want to be a high achiever- at least because you will need the extra money. Because even with the 7th pay commission- the money is not enough to provide for your family- kids if you have them.
Yes technically you can be an assistant professor for life - never get promoted, never put in more than the bare minimum- and you might not get fired ( although this is increasingly doubtful). But really who wants to live like that? You won’t make any money at all, and you’ll have zero respect with your students or colleagues.
Professors don’t whine about workload to students cause they’re not our friends. And we don’t whine on random websites cause what is the point of that? We whine about workload to each other, and even that is rare because by the time you have your PhD/ masters/ you’re just used to the workload and you are a lot more mature than undergrads fresh out of law school who usually whine on these forums. and then we put our head down and keep working.
And honestly the field is becoming competitive with so many young people coming back after graduate study abroad, and nls and jgls and other nlus stepping up and hiring them. Things are only gonna get worse.
And, if you've not have a weekend off for an entire year (regardless of the job), then you've got a problem with workaholism. It's not the job, it's you.
I’m not a workaholic. I was junior faculty- I was asked to come in by my boss who had hiring and firing power to do various administrative and research tasks. I didn’t resent him cause he would come in too. We couldn’t do this work during the week because we were usually running from one class to another. You don’t know how hard or otherwise someone else in a career you don’t know anything about is working. Stop being a jackass.
Let me repeat: if you've been working all weekends for a year. You are the problem. Whether it's because you cannot set and / or enforce boundaries or because you like to tell the world that your life is miserable (I know those types from my law firm days, they liked to portray that they were bearing the weight of the world).
Litigation lawyers "waste" a lot of time in the courts waiting for matters and arguing and then time is spent getting briefed or briefing, and only then do they get time to draft / research. Law firms (and especially transactional work) have their own cycle of work which requires really long hours.
The world over people join the academia for (among other reasons, and perhaps those reasons are more central to their decision) a decent work-life with a decent pay. The most accomplished professors that I had during my university days also had ample time, I know because they played badminton and walked etc in the evening. I never knew evenings until I left my law firm job. I was not an exception in my firm.
I'm not being a "jackass" for pointing the reality of your situation.
If you go into academics you have the option of working in a tier-2 city and save more, I think it goes at par with someone working in a tier-1 city and paying high rents and other things.