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Yeah teachers like that. The individual obviously used words one shouldnβt in an academic or professional setting- and maybe he was censured for that. But that doesnβt mean the students get to bully him or demand lower educational standards.
Education would mean nothing if teachers didnβt challenge students and make them work for their grades. And sometimes that means working at stuff you arenβt personally thrilled about- but that academics agree are required skills/knowledge for someone graduating from that programme. Nls isnβt a degree mill and wonβt be turned into one just because students who got in expect it.
Yβall are the ones insisting everything be to your personal taste. Iβm just saying- if you arenβt a student that hates sociology- you would have gotten something out of that class. If youβre an educator you can see the value of those course outlines. And if youβre a somewhat mature student who actually wants to learn, you would see the value of that course.
You havenβt given me a pedagogical reason for why these courses arenβt valid except β I donβt want to do thisβ and β the work is too muchβ and β I want to practice anyway so why should I study anythingβ.
And Iβve gone into some depth explaining why those reasons are invalid.
Iβm not Sudhir. Thank god I donβt have to take all of this anonymous abuse. The man must really like teaching. But the fact that you are so invested in figuring out who I am only tells me youβre not mature enough to have a proper discussion about what the llm programme is for and what the benefits and problems with this programme are.
Teachers are there to guide your thinking. Challenge your arguments, improve your analysis. Theyβre not always there to sooon feed materials and make things interesting for you. Especially at a masters level - you should be adult enough to keep yourself interested. I have also found that a class is only as interesting as you make it. If you refuse to be an active participant and want to sit above everyone else and judge- then thatβs the experience youβre gonna have. Teachers are people- they donβt have production values of big media houses.
This is a good thing for the university. You seem to not want to study anything at all and have demonstrated a remarkable lack of intiative , judgment, and curiosity. I would suggest you reflect on why you want to do this degree in the first place. Youre wasting their time with this attitude.
Nls has made the courses that students take in llm programme- including courses you donβt personally find interesting or relevant to your career goals , public. It was on you to figure out if the programme was a good fit. You canβt join and expect them to change pedagogy and how the programme is structured cause you donβt like. There definitely are students that do like this. That do find value in the programme as it is being taught.
I think design wise the programme is fine. I think it does things that a masters programme is supposed to do. If yβall donβt want to be on the bus- get off. Stop wasting time. Itβs not the universityβs fault that you just want the brand. Itβs yours that you didnβt enquire about the programme enough or hell look at the nls website to see what courses their masters in law students do.
There can be bad students who after a couple of weeks into the programme decide to take a stance where they shut their eyes and ears to learning. Itβs not the university failing them If they canβt make connections others can. The students there are failing themselves and their colleagues.
Ask yourself if bitching about the VC is a good use of your time given the opportunity youβve gotten:
Itβs a master of laws program. Weβre unable to see the relevance of sociology. In any event, we have already suffered sociology in our BA LLB. Why inflict it again on us?
I'm sorry my friend, but I'd have to agree with the other Sudhir-chela on this one, the LLM is an advanced degree and if you don't already know how to do legal research, you must seriously re-consider whether an LLM is for you.
"I know and have met very recently a number of llm students at NLS who like the changes."-> What do you mean they like the changes?" they don't have nay experience of anything before the changes, they just got here, there's no way they can compare.
"Is it your job to speak to every single one? Do you do this instead of studying?" -> You're being ridiculous mam, seriously. How in the world are you on campus if you don't know that the single biggest way you bond with others on campus is bitching about Sudhir.
Universities are not supposed to prepare you for " profession". No university will do that. It is near impossible to replicate the workplace at a university. Apart from clinical/ field programmes. What you learn in the field is what you learn in the field. What you learn during an internship you cannot be taught at a university. Maybe vocational degrees might help sometimes but a university education is supposed to give you skills and critical thinking and the ability to work consistently that will make you a good employee, make you a good practicioner, a good judge, a good citizen.
1) Law and justice sounds like a good rigorous course. In law schools we rarely learn from textbooks. We dont use secondary materials. We arent given notes, its not school- its a university. Even in my first year legal methods class we read legal philosophers in the original. We read dense texts and worked hard. This isn't a legitimate complaint when people in the 5 year degree programme are doing it. Reading is a skill it improves the more you do it. Teaching does not just mean lecturing. Sudhir was teaching you even when he was not lecturing. His chosen pedagogy is appropriate for masters students no matter what they want to do in life. No one is gonna lecture when you start practicing. You are gonna have to read on your own, and you wont even have a professor who will guide your thinking about it, ask you questions,or colleagues who will discuss the text with you. Any text. This is how most students at law school are taught. Hardly anyone lectures.
This may not be what you're used to- but you came to law school knowing it would be difficult and it would be hard work . No one tells you its an easy time. Work harder.
2) Youve told us what happened in three weeks of a research methods course. Any course in an academic setting is gonna start with theoretical stuff. My research methods course at my elite institution also started with theoretical stuff. Them teaching you these basics and going over the different kinds of reading is them trying to get you caught up on what masters students in other universities intuitively know. When a PhD scholar talks about her sociological work- thats real world research- you should be listening instead of closing your ears.
3) Comparative Public Law is an academic course. It is something scholars and law makers engage in. It is completely normal for them to expect you to read 3500 pages over the course of a term. broken down over 90 days that comes up to 38 pages a day. You cant read 38 pages a day? In my masters program it was just expected that you read 8-10 books a week. That is how higher education works.
4) This is not a vocational programme. I dont know where they told you it was. The course information is available online. If you chose to ignore what an LLM is for because you wanted the tag- thats on you.
You're complaining that you haven't read black letter law in courses called law and justice and research methods. For real? That's just you not understanding what the course is. It's hard for me to imagine a comparative law course which doesn't teach law- thats baked right in. So what you're saying is that you're not learning the law you want to learn. Which is sad for you. But universities are not buffets. You dont get to pick and choose what you want. In coming terms you'll have opportunities to take courses on private law and courses on specific areas of law. But every masters programme has some mandatory courses that might not hit the mark for you 10/10 every single time. You do get to do electives that are about your specific interests. But the university has to maintain quality and part of that is having a few mandatory courses. Otherwise we would have people graduating by taking all their course work in corporate law and not knowing how interpretation of statutes works. which for the record would make them fools.
You know all the good judges and lawyers you aspire to be know all this theory stuff too right? Ram Jethmalani, DYC- they all know this stuff like the back of their hand. Thats what makes them so good. Thats what helps them make convincing arguments and tear down arguments of others. this idea that good practitioners of law dont read only do jugaad is so uninformed.
To stretch that and claim that there's been false advertising or that the programme has been basterdised is factually untrue. And I'm really sorry but did they not tell you the LLM was a full time programme? who told you you'd have time to prepare for civil services and still get good grades? You can prep civil services and get bad grades and adults make those trade offs all the time. if you wanted less rigor you should have done distance education. It seems anyway that you have closed your ears and eyes and decided within weeks that the program is of no use to you. In which case I think even NLS is justified in calling this a wasteful exercise. People would give an arm and a leg to study at NLS- and this is what you're making of it. Complaining that the work is too hard and that you're not taught black letter law in law and justice- its like complaining that your english class doesn't have much math in it.
1. Law and Justice (Sudhir Krishnaswamy) : We have read Aristotle, John Rawls, Hume, Bentham, and some introductory philosophy books. We have been forced to read the original writings of these philosophers. Recourse to secondary material has been strongly discouraged even when we literally cannot comprehend the way some (Hume and Aristotle in particular) of these people write. In class, we were initially taught nothing as Sudhir expected us to start the discussion. He only started teaching (and even then only a small portion of the syllabus) when it became apparent that most people could not understand anything. We have NEVER discussed a concrete, real life issue in class not have we ever applied any of the theories we are been taught to any real life issue. In between (not) teaching in class, Sudhir tells us to forget any other aspirations we may have and ominously warns us that we will fail if we do anything other than study for this course (taking part in NLS co-curriculars not included).
2.Research Methods: We spent two weeks discussing scholarly articles on how to define research. Not learning how to do research, mind you, but reading abstract scholarly articles on research. Then we spent one whole class learning about the history and working of libraries. Another class was spent trying to define reading. The teacher spend one hour asking each and every one of us to define reading. We have also had a Sociology professor come to class and discuss her PHD work. In one month of teaching, I have learnt absolutely nothing about how to do legal research.
3. Comparative Public Law: We have been prescribed 62 scholarly articles totalling about 3500 pages. That is our syllabus. The teacher has refused to provide any kind of list of topics or secondary material; she insists that we read and understand all 3500 pages of scholarly work. The articles themselves mostly talk about methods and theories of comparative law. We have done almost no actual comparison between laws of different jurisdictions. In fact, we have discussed very little actual law of any kind. Instead, we spend all our time reading about methods and theories and classifications and what not. Very ironically, one of the prescribed articles threw shade at comparative law as a practical field of study and insisted it should be a purely academic discipline.
The only actual law I am studying is in my elective (and i suspect that is only because we share it with the LLB batch). The purpose of the LLM program in NLS now seems to be geared only and only toward research scholars to the exclusion of all other career paths. I only wish NLS had been clear about this before I sunk 3.3 lakhs into this program.
None of the people I know who teach theory at NLS do so without grounding the theory in real-world issues and problems. Least of all the private law faculty. No one is discussing things without practical relevance. just because the conversation takes into account different perspectives and scholarly work doesn't mean it's not practically relevant. if you want just to learn how to draft and how to write- there are books you can refer to, and your teachers will lead you to them. But a legal education has to be more than that. If all you're in there for is "practical relevance" just go do an internship again. Lets actually do away with law school and have people intern all year around. Yall can become very competent clerks. It is ridiculous also to expect people who have spent so much of their careers being scholars and academics to teach you " practical" stuff. a different kind of instructor is needed for that- the kind you get during internships. Both have their own value and I am done with people pretending that only the "practical" teacher provides any value.
it is bizarre to me also that you want internship-style teaching when you're at law school. yet the cache of law school over the GLC model is a well-grounded training in legal thinking, theory, and the black letter law. You want the brand but dont want what the brand actually means is all I think, just the trappings and improved job chances. which is not something universities should build their curricula around.
If the law school has indeed signalled that the LLM Coursework should not be treated as a chore that can be successfully done in between preparation for other exams and interviews, the institution should be lauded for that.
A thing is not only about the law if you are name dropping sections and cases. If youβre discussing housing, schooling, sanitation, access to water, access to public transport, - yknow in essence things that make civil rights possible- youβre discussing a legal problem. Itβs hard for me to imagine that discussion not being about the law.
You also seem to have a limited idea of what β applicable in real lifeβ means. thing is - not everyone is going to be a practitioner , people will want to work in research and policy and academia, and second thing is- the idea that you can effectively practice corporate law without understanding the theory behind juristic persons or the corporate veil is just soooo ridiculous.
I know these faculty also- I have sat in their class- I know they donβt run away with philosophy without it tying to a better understanding of the law.
Reading scholarly literature isnβt a bad thing. I know plenty of people who work with advocacy organisations who find solutions or notice problems because they have that rich background in scholarly work.
And another thing is - if you want to just practice- you can do that with an LLB. Youβre wasting your own time. An LLM is an advanced degree.
The Indian llm has for years gotten the stepchild treatment where administrators and academics donβt spend enough time developing curricula or enforcing rigour. If Sudhir is doing that- itβs better than most of the other universities out there.
I know and have met very recently a number of llm students at NLS who like the changes. So idk your claim that youβve spoken to every single one is suspicious. Is it your job to speak to every single one? Do you do this instead of studying? Youβre kind of being ridiculous. If you think itβs representative- do an actual survey. Give Sudhir a report card. But I really doubt an actual survey would show people didnβt like him. Most of the people I know at nls seem to like him at least somewhat.
He basically said something to the effect of, the future of legal education is private because that's where the money is, and they have the resources to move things forward faster. (Don't quote me on this).
He has clarity about what he wants to achieve.
Listening to him in alumni conversations I was particularly impressed at how he wanted to improve the living infrastructure of students. If he succeeds at making the hostels clean and the food edible, I think he would have done far more than most VCs before him.
I am sure the detractors will have plenty to say, but most of them aren't from law school, so their opinions matter very little to me ;)
City planning does involve law no doubt. However, the way the course is structured, there is very little focus on the legal aspects. Instead, the focus is on abstract scholarly work which apart from being dull as dishwater is gloriously impractical and useless in real life.
I also want to highlight another thing which I missed in my last post. Sudhir has added two extra core courses (not mandated by UGC) to the LLM course. Both these courses are again philosophy heavy and they take away two slots from the electives. As a result, we only do 4 electives in the entirety of the course. Coupled with the first come first served system, this ensures we study a hotch-potch of subjects with no connecting link. This new system ensures that we do very little actual law in the entirety of the course and we also do not get any specialization (functionally or formally).
I have talked to everyone in my batch and everyone in my hostel. Nobody has a kind word to say about Sudhir. I think this is sufficiently representative of the general NLS population.
The legal philosophy stuff isnβt limited to public law , I know for a fact that Nigam teaches private law and does plenty of legal philosophy.
In any full time programme you shouldnβt have time to do ten other things unless you try really hard. If you donβt work hard- you shouldnβt get good grades. I donβt know what about this seems unfair to you.
City planning is about the law actually, itβs about housing and sanitation and access to water and education and civil rights and a hundred other things that are intimately about the law. Thereβs plenty of written work backing this up and scholars in india who have done good work on this.
Iβm glad folks who think law school is supposed to be an easy time that will allow them to do internships throughout the year and prepare for civil services and judicial services without losing out on getting good grades are getting discouraged. Good thing.
You only talk to people on campus who hate Sudhir. Iβm on campus and know plenty of people who like him immensely.
Now, Sudhir wants to copy Rajkumar and beef up the faculty with NLSIU alumin. He wanted to do that all along, which is why there was so much resistance to him from the TLC-educated faculty at NLSIU and they tried to block his appointment. Sudhir doesn't have Naveen Jindal's money, but his college's brand value is excellent and his students (who make the brand value what it is) are a lot smarter. Also, some professors prefer to teach at NLSIU instead of JGLS because of ideological reasons. On any case, Sudhir has invited many JGLS professors to teach guest courses at NLSIU. Meanwhile, the NLUs previously threatening to dislodge NLSIU has declined. NLUD has lost Ranbir Singh and there has been a faculty exodus. NALSAR is looking shaky. NUJS sunk ever since Ishwar Bhat became VC and the TMC took over Bengal.
Other NLU students are bitching about Sudhir online, but they are secretly jealous. What now needs to happen is that they need to stop hating and instead pressurise their VCs and admins to follow the same strategy.
Sudhir: π
NLUD/NUJS students: π’
NLSIU students: π
NLUD/NUJS VCs: π΄
Wondering who will write your recommendation letters now.
NUJS has suffered too, with their best teacher leaving.
NALSAR has remained untouched. For some reason Sid Chauhan has not left.
And Jindal has also remained untouched.
Public reaction on LI forums:
"Being an NLU alum does not mean a teacher is good"
"Foreign degrees does not mean a teacher is good"
"Publishing in international journals does not mean a teacher is good"
"Mysore University, Kurukshetra University and North Bengal University are just as good at universities in the US and UK"
"NLUD is better than NLSIU because of the location"
"NUJS is better than NLSIU because Khaitan & Co recruits more students from here"
"Sudhir is arrogant and evil"