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1. Misusing placecom contacts for personal purposes.
2. Misusing placecom funds to eat and drink at nice restaurants.
3. A member emailing interview questions sent by a firm to his girlfriend (who is one of the applicants) 2 hours before emailing other applicants.
4. A member not seriously pursuing a recruiter with which his enemy in college wants to work, so that his enemy does not get the job.
RPC is the placecom.
RPC opened applications for a delhi based firm (relatively smaller firm, not the one we hear about on a daily basis). Firm selected its intern (wanted only 1). One RPC member who had applied did not get selected. The RPC member mailed the firm saying that they were much suited for tthe internship as against the student who had been selected. This was sent from the official RPC id. Firm then selected the RPC member. RPC member then almost a month later withdrew from the internship because they secured an internship with a tier 1 through their personal contacts. Ultimately nobody got to intern at the Delhi based firm.
disclaimer- This may just be a rumour and I sincerely hope it is, because if its not we are in serious trouble
But anyways, giving some students control over a process that affects all students is not very rational. I understand that NUJS faculty may not be the most smart, quick or eager, but we should get the better ones to have some oversight over the process.
So you are saying that because you signed up for a job voluntarily knowing fully well what it requires, the rest of the batch must forego opportunities for you.
Makes a stronger case for University oversight over the process.
1) A student run RCC has better connections with alumni and which kind of helps them with the entire placement process. This is certainly applicable to good in-house firms. For example, have a look at ITC which regularly recruits from NUJS but rarely from other universities. ITC is not a law firm and HRs barely know which law school is good and which is not so they kind of confer the job upon people in their legal department. RCC’s relations with their own alumni helps a lot in these cases.
2) Transparency issues are also there. It’s tough to know who’s coming, who’s getting placed and who’s not, the larger batch size only aggravates the problem. For example, last time around the law firms suddenly had this new criteria of publications to filter out candidates. Now this is something the OCS knew but we were not made aware of. I am pretty sure since your RCCs are students, everyone gets to know of tips and tricks via word of mouth.
3) It’s a complicated statement to define and justify but OCS seems to be working more for law firms rather than students. Obviously, the end product is beneficial for students but not for the unlucky ones.
For example, you can probably go and ask a student from your RCC what a law firm is expecting because they probably know. Now Khaitan and Trilegal are not expecting the same traits in a CV but those kinds of informal conversations are tough to have.
And then it’s not like the bias completely eradicates when you remove students from RCC/OCS. Students who have been constantly getting good internships or winning moots or securing excellence in academics are known by the RCC. This is not a complaint and is probably understandable because you can’t send each and every student to represent the law school for a new university like jindal which has to earn repute in the industry. Meritorious students are often deliberately pushed by OCS. It’s not like all CVs are sent to a firm for them to exercise discretion. A certain CVs are definitely pushed with more conviction. This is why I said, the OCS works for the recruiting firm and university, which might not necessarily contain the student bracket.
I understand the issues with your placecom, this is just to let you know that the other viable alternative also comes with its concerns.
2) No argument there.
3) Too ambitious to presume that CRC members are aware of what law firms want in student CVs, at least exclusively. However, pushing can and do work. Yet in my experience across 3 NLUs, the CRC members actually push borderline cases to help them, not people who already have got a good enough CV. Your point still holds about possible favouritism shown to some borderline cases over others, but human bias is going to creep in regardless of whether students do it or teachers or administrative personnel. Everyone has got their own favorites.
See if the OCS knows something and doesn't tell the students then everybody gets fucked. But if the student RCC knows some inside info like this, chances are only the very close friends of the members are gonna know, thus giving an unfair advantage to these students. While having students in the RCC does make the process a lot smoother but definitely raises some questions. You just can't have the entire show being run by interested parties without any oversight.
As for your point about ITC recruiting from NUJS, ITC happens to be headquartered in Kolkata, as it is descended from an old British company. Similarly, new-age IT companies have favoured NLSIU and NALSAR.
Irony just died.