Most GCs seem to be alumni of DU, Punjab, etc. Is it because NLU alumni prefer to join law firms? A serious vacuum has been created because of this.

It is because in house is a back office support team.Lawyers are not respected in house.

#2 is correct.

Lawyers are not respected in law firms either. Nobody is.

Palkivala was Tata's in house counsel. Think we was there for back office support?

Ummm. No. He moved as Chairman of ACC - not really in a legal role in Tatas.

In another 15 years you will see that 95% of the top GCs will be NLU grads.

inhouse needs worldy skills

Let me ask you a counter question instead, pick India's best lawyers of all time, and how come they are all from TLC?

Cuz NLUs did not exist back then.

DU grads have been there for a longer time. It is for the same reason that if you make a tally of all Senior Advocates in the country DU PU grads will outnumber NLU grads. Just because traditional universities outnumber NLU in a given field doesn't mean the field is bad. Like advocates... like in-house counsels. Same reason. Big 6 Law firms is a different game altogether where it is true that NLU elitism has entered big time and it is partially understandable also because in-house work means working for just one client and that can be accomplished easily by most of the law students but working for multiple clients with multiple matters and multiple fields means law firms have to be really careful who they are picking (hence selective NLU hires). Btw it is exactly the same with FAANG and other new age tech companies. They are elitist again and while DU grads may be GCs of these companies, with NLU grads coming of age at lower levels they have started giving preference to NLUs. Even DU GCs themselves prefer NLU grads at times. See any job listing of a major tech company they will almost always list "must have done LLB from a Tier 1 law school" in eligibility. I think in the next 10 years top GCs will again have pre-dominancy of NLU grads. Also there are a handful of top tier firms in India. But there are zillions of decent sized companies. Not every company is a Tata. They are happy to recruit traditional non NLU grads as they come at a lesser salary. So that is one additional factor. But like I said in top companies and in the next 10 years I think NLU grads will be dominant. These days in-house has become a decent career option as FAANG and other American companies are willing to pay good money for great in-house lawyers.

The FAANG thing is useless for lawyers.