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Imo: trilegal > khaitan > CAM> AZB > JSA
JSA > Trilegal > KCo/SAM > Saraf/AZB > CAM
While this is highly subjective and noone has enough data to evaluate this as a whole, certain trends have largely been recognised across law schools, and I'm basing this on these.
First, that lately CAM has distributed a huge number of PPOs across the Tier 1 NLUs, on the basis of a single internship. More importantly, their PPO interviews are extremely short and have negligible technical aspects.
Second, that AZB has also largely shifted to a one internship policy and has offered more PPOs than callbacks, at least across T1 NLUs.
Third, that Saraf prefers offering callback opportunities, but exceptions have been made. Their PPO interviews themselves tend to be simple, and while they don't take too many interns, they assess their interns promptly.
Fourth, that while KCo has had a one internship policy, they've offered PPO interviews to far lesser people recently, even after giving out great feedback to interns. Both KCo and AZB interviews can vary in content and duration depending upon the partners.
Fifth, that SAM generally has a callback policy, but some offices/teams have been known to make exceptions. Their interviews are also largely straightforward, but they're in general quite selective (in terms of grades, law school, feedback etc.) in hiring either from PPOs or otherwise.
Sixth, that Trilegal largely prefers more Day Z placements from T1 than offering more PPOs. They also have a strict callback policy, and the PPO interviews further tend to include the trickiest technical questions.
And seventh, that JSA is undoubtedly the most reluctant of them all. The underlying issue is that there are too many stakeholders whose consent is required for making an offer. At the outset, they often don't assign specific teams for your first internship, but rather assign you to a whole floor. Even if you get a 'callback', it's not automatically treated as an assessment internship, and you may be required to do more/extended callbacks. Assuming that you impress enough senior members in these to land an assessment and eventually a PPO interview, there are two interviews with a salaried partner & the equity partner respectively. Even if the salaried partner likes you, eventually, it would be the equity partner out of whose effective pockets your 8% billables sharing would eventually emanate from. As such, there are some equity partners who simply keep rejecting people just to keep their teams smaller, making JSA the most reluctant firm to offer PPOs.
Do keep in mind that this is based on recent trends in the past 2 years in my personal experience, and therefore, not perfectly accurate.
S&R is highly selective. Often, they have a set maximum of picking up only one student each from the top NLU. But if they like you and you do the term sheet assignment well enough, they're open to directly giving you a PPO, and at a uniquely great starting salary.
TT&A is pedantic about grades, and they often take very few interns. However, I've seen them directly offer PPO interviews quite often. I'd almost say that they're possibly switching to a one-internship policy as a norm, going by their trends this year. Of course, the 'interview' itself is one of a kind and includes an actual evaluation of how well you can structure deals and how well you can research — much like A&O/Links evaluations. Because of this, the usual 'mugging up' of basic 'private company vs public company' type questions doesn't help — but by all means, I'd argue that it's actually easier to get a TT&A PPO because it trims down the arbitrariness of the interview.
As for Indus, they've lately offered people interviews after a single online internship — which is notable, because most T1/T2 firms won't even offer an online internship anymore, much less actually asses people in the same. They do have a troubling practice of offering 'paralegalship' to non-T1 NLU interns who do well, but if you're from a top college, Indus doesn't usually appear too stringent — unless you're in a team that doesn't hire. Unlike Saraf etc which have a 'common pool' PPO interview even if the team that you interned with doesn't hire, Indus does not appear to have the same. So, if you end up in a saturated team, then yes, there's not much you can do. But otherwise, even though the firm slowed its hiring when it saw a heavy exodus of partners, its current hiring trends seem to be on a comfortable rise.
This doesn't make sense. Hiring at JSA is similar to hiring at any other firm - it's solely on the Equity Partner. There are no other "stakeholders".
Source: I'm at JSA. No one except my EP has any say in my (or any other team member's) hiring.
By contrast, any firm from S/CAM to Khaitan to Saraf would only require you to impress the people you were assigned to work with — often, the interns never even get to work with the salaried partner at any of these firms, and yet, they get the PPO interview. Once you get an interview at any of these other places, if you do well at the interview, you get the job.
At JSA, I've even heard of instances where people have not just received a call for interview with the salaried partner, but also done exceedingly well at that interview — and yet been denied the final interview/job by the EP.
Kudos that you got the job, friend, but I'm sure you've heard of those EPs at JSA who just don't like to hire. I can remember at least one who doesn't have even a single associate under her. I doubt such a situation could exist at other firms where the EP does not stand to lose potentially their money when they hire.
Its Manvinder currently, I believe - public knowledge. I will say he is one of the knowledgeable ones, but his standards are just too (unrealistically) high. So all the best for making through at JSA.
As for Indus, like I said earlier, it's not particularly difficult, but just as difficult as you'd expect a higher T2 firm to be.
All three of them have a great reputation though, with TT&A supposedly having a notable open work culture and S&R simply paying the most of any Indian law firms I know of (at the entry level).