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GNLU-Harvard alum Rohin Bhatt:

My LinkedIn is flooded with first and second-year law students writing articles for 'journals' with weird names. Why is there this mad rush to publish in law schools when these students usually know little about the law? Shouldn't the first two years be spent reading? Most of them are unoriginal and are poorly researched law school projects submitted to the 'journals' with no new thoughts. What do we do to ensure that the quality of scholarship that law students produce is not compromised without taking away from opportunities to publish?


NLSIU alum Vikram Raghvan:

It’s NLSIU fault. We committed the original sin.


NLSIU alum Murali N:

Students should worry about these pieces of writing jeopardising their futures. The internet never forgets :(


NLSIU alum Aparna Mittal:

Of so many writing samples I get (as part of hiring / internship process) most are heavily "copied and pasted". Paragraphs after Paragraphs just pasted from multiple sources with no attribution or footnotes. It's shocking


NLSIU alum Sumeet Malik:

I shudder when I see 1st and 2nd years analysing the Future Group-Amazon dispute or similar issues. Not that it’s not possible, but as a general rule at least complete studying the course in law school before writing analytical articles.


NALSAR alum Ashwin Murthy:

This form of criticism attacks the wrong player, and imo is just lazy to state - the real issue is the reason why they publish in such journals, which as others above mentioned, is because of hyper-intense competition and misaligned values/goals. As with many of the other issues that are increasingly prevalent in law schools (this craze over 'CV Value', excessive publications/competitions), there's a need to stand out in order to get jobs with "Tier 1 firms", which remains the general goal of NLUs

https://twitter.com/BhattRohin/status/1482990410305875974
interesting anecdote about the guy on twitter who started this thread.

This guy, at the time of our first compulsory intra moot had ranked in the 130/140s out of 180 in the batch, but when the junior batch came in he bragged about being a highly regarded mooter in his batch without any credentials.

dude was a bit of a joke in his batch and the one senior. interesting to see that he's in Harvard now for some bioethics stuff. good for him, ig lol.
He's such a show off, duh. He got into the bioethics program due to some good recommendations I guess. Waha se kaha jayenge sir nobody knows.
I cringed every time you wrote the commenter's alma mater. Don't you have better things to do? You could have provided a link to the thread and provided your thoughts on the matter. Juvenile.
Incidentally, Sumeet Malik's organisation publishes several such articles in its online journal and blog. When it comes to hypocrisy, NLSIU alum usually have got the market cornered. As for completing the necessary course in law school, don't the recruiters require interns and fresher associates to regularly work on matters that very few law schools actually have got courses for? Can all of these 'erudite commentators' claim to have helped one or more of these students by leaving constructive comments for them about these articles, instead of merely indulging in snarky tweets? They have clearly read those pieces for the purpose of disparaging them, so why not actually provide feedback and try to make an actual difference? Students writing pieces with shoddy research are not the main problem that the legal domain faces now, these people with the ability to change things but no desire to do so apart from mocking others years apart in knowledge and experience from themselves, are the real problem.
Firstly, we need to stop comparing ourselves with western counter-parts. We don't have enough talent to fill the market, forget armchair theorizing.

The market does not need intellectual theorizing. It needs diligence and labour. These students publish papers to demonstrate a track record of diligence and labour so that they are considered a market fit for the practices they are targeting.

Let the markets fill up first, then we can think about the overspill producing intellectualist papers.

Calm all of your tits.
That's because every private law school student is out there starting their own journals titled 'lex-lahsun'. And every one of them has an ISSN number, is indexed and all. These are paid publications and everyone who can afford it has a publication. It's a business.
Quality and everything else goes down the drain when things like these are commercialized.
Its just these top nlu peeps who have never faced the amount of pressure that we face today, the pressure to make it.
I was thinking of starting a blog, not because of the pressure of building a good C.V, it was due to my passion for this field and its intricacies, but reading their comments really demotivated me.
The tweet is regarding pay to publish Journals. There are very few law journals like that in India. Practice is popular in other streams.

In India, we have so many pointless and useless journals. Most of them would accept pretty much anything.
The last I checked, Rohin Bhatt had no stellar academic publications. So, I still don't understand why he is an authority on how juniors should approach publications.

Having written for many journals (all SCOPUS indexed) and blogs (OBLB, Blue Sky Blog, Kluwer Arb), I can tell that no one starts their academic writing career from the likes of Harvard Law Review or NLSIR. Its fine that these "not so cool" platforms exist so that juniors are able to get some insight into academic writing. The standard of academic writing in Indian schools is terrible for most parts but that can be improved if people with experience start taking weekend sessions or the likes instead of simply bashing juniors on twitter.
Congratulations on what I expect must have taken tremendous hard work. Do you have any suggestions as to how to pitch to OBLB? They have a strict no-student policy, any way that is strictly enforced? Thanks again.
Since the thread has been started by the one and only Rohin Bhatt, it should not be taken seriously.
Rohin is one of the smartest people to have graduated from GNLU. Top guy
Amen brother. He had allegedly come out as queer to make use of Harvard's diversity quota. Also he conveniently just says that he studies at Harvard which leads people to believe that he is studying at Harvard Law School, whereas the truth is that he merely studies a substandard course on bioethics from Harvard Medical School.
Um… don’t know the guy being burnt here or have much of an opinion on the thread, but Harvard bioethics programs is among the best in the world and opens up doors for one in the development sector. So, do gate the person but don’t shite on a genuine good career perspective just because we don’t wish to go down that path.
He (Rohin Bhatt) is a 2021 grad, and he is passing judgement on experience! Bwahahahaha.... Oxymoron of the day!
So much clout; a whole LI thread for b-rohin? why bro, don't waste your time here.
I am trying to figure out which of Sumeet Malik's courses during his LLB or LLM imparted him with the knowledge about how to run a publishing company. I shudder to think of him trying to do so, since by his own general rule, he does not seem to be really qualified for that, no?
So basically these tweeters are merely seeking validation. They want people to get jobs only after publishing cutting edge research papers that can compete with theirs. That way they will be able to validate their 'high horses'.

Since the market has no need for that, their validation pathway is getting short-circuited, and hence the reaction.
I think Aparna reframed the issue correctly. Everyone has a right to publish, but they can't plagiarise and be generally incompetent.
5 objections? So there are losers who think it should be ok to plagiarise and be incompetent?