Great. So what's stopping them from creating an alternative. Private sector people love holding forth on how universities should do their job. If they're so good at it, they should go ahead and set up their own thing.
Degrees and rankings basically act as a proxy for student ability. Since the students in top colleges have to excel in competitive exams to get into these colleges and also face stiff competition while in college, there is a greater chance that they will have the necessary aptitude and ability to perform well in their professional careers. It does not necessarily mean that the kind of education in these colleges helps students in their professional careers to any appreciable degree. In fact, the opposite appears to be true as most employers, across all fields, agree that university education does a poor job of preparing students for professional life.
How is it that a thread on Nalsar about an actually serious issue has devolved into some nonsense about which kind of teaching is better? This also happened in the other thread about a NALSAR alum professor leaving for NLS. The debate became about whether that guy can be called a rock star and how women don’t get the same respect. I mean, what is with these kinds of arguments on every NALSAR thread? Do people really care this little about their institution’s future?
As for the guy who’s arguing that practical experience is more important, you are the definition of “tell me you you’re not from a top NLU without telling me you’re not from a top NLU”. There’s a reason why GLC is not ever in the same league as the top 4-5 NLUs despite the so-called “practical exposure”.
Degrees wouldn't matter. Law firms would hire whoever from whatever noname college and train them. So why do you think everyone is obsessed with faculty and rankings. You may not understand that you learned things but presumably you did. And it helped you absorb this vocational training to a lesser or greater degree depending on your capacity for growth. That's what education does. It changes you. You can learn templates on your own.
I think good practitioners know the law. I was responding to others on here claiming a legal education needs to focus on vocational training rather than legal training because that’s what they do as A0s in firms.
You cannot understand or appreciate practical insights unless you have got the theoretical understanding or perspective beforehand. You keep trying to make it an either/or scenario. I would have liked to have both. Neither on their own could give me everything. As a professional of more than a decade's experience, I still value my university education highly. It takes less time to learn the basics of practical work, that is what internships, clerkships, learning as a junior associate are all for. It takes more time to absorb theoretical and holistic understanding and build a strong foundation. That's what college/university life is for. That does not mean one cannot get to have both together in varying degrees.
1. Universities have to cater to all students regardless of their career choice, so they have to focus on common basics that would apply to all.
2. Job specific training is what internships and on the job CLE are for. Indian law firms don't pay much attention to either so as to develop a better quality of law grads. Nor do many practising litigators. The onus is actually on them to at least tell the interns what to learn, because they are looking for their future associates among those.
I don't disagree that there is a considerable disconnect between university education and professional requirements. However, all the stakeholders involved have to come together to sort it out in the long term. Universities alone cannot solve it.
have done both and found that the aim of academic law teaching is to create a pattern recognising capability in the student, interpreting the law in action, let them explore how a particular law has evolved, and finally why is the law as it is? law practice is about applying the law and focusing on what is the law, negotiating with clients, paying staff etc.
Tutorials try to simulate the application a bit, but pales in comparison to real life. Moots do not in anyway reflect the true nature of on ground arguments. Only about 10-15% of materials taught at the uni is helpful in practice. There is a lively debate in the UK academia as to what is the purpose of law schools for creating practice ready solicitors and the responses are mixed.
I'll accept for the moment that a law university's job is not solely restricted to providing vocational training. However, most students are only ever going to deal with law in its vocational aspects. From that perspective, a good vocational training in the law is more beneficial for students than a good academic one. It makes little sense then to attach such outsized importance to the pedigree of the teachers recruited by a law school. It's going to make little difference in most students' professional careers and the resources utilized in attracting and retaining such teachers can be put to better use (for example by creating a diverse system of electives and seminars on various areas of the law taught by practitioners).
With respect to your point about the kind of work freshers in law firm/litigation, I have two responses: (1) Since most law schools do such a poor job of training their students in the vocational aspects of law, firms/litigation chambers cannot trust freshers to do the job properly straight out of law school and therefore only assign relatively less complex work to freshers till they gain the requisite training on the job. This is certainly not an argument for less vocational training in law schools; and (2) Even if you don't believe (1), the lack of a connection between the kind of work done by freshers in law firms/litigation and vocational training in the law isn't an argument against vocational training. It's an argument against legal education generally as what you are taught in law school (whether vocational/academic) has very little correlation or influence on what you actually end up doing in your professional career.
Perhaps. But which set of people are more beneficial to students? Or to put it another way: If you had to choose between someone who offered you practical insights about the law and someone who offered you a holistic view, who would you choose?
NLS gives you a practical exposure to case laws. This one was a practical exposure of Donoghue v Stevenson. Stay tuned bro. It's been a week only. Slowly but steadily you will get used to the extra protien that the mess people add to keep us sane!😌
The university's job is not to provide vocational training only. By that logic, you don't even need much legal training to start doing the job that freshers do in law firms or litigation. Everything can be learnt on the job.
Very few practitioners who teach actually offer a holistic view of law. That's not their job. These two sets of people are not substitutes but complements of each other.
Sure. But most peeps in law schools ultimately do go into practice (or law firms). So ideally the curriculum should be something that actually helps the majority of students (and not merely the minority who are inclined towards academia). I've never yet heard a convincing argument about why hiring scholars with little to no practical experience is good for the students. Its good for the university since it boosts the research output and academic reputation of the university. But what practical benefit does it give the students? Plus, let's not forget that legal academia in India is unusually divorced from the practice of law. You could probably count on one hand the number of Supreme Court judgements which make any reference to legal academia.
This is exactly what is wrong with you guys who are in college today. Its all about what other people should do for you and nothing at all about what you should do for other people.
Not one peep about holding up academic integrity, not plagiarising, and making a good faith effort to learn the law. Not one peep about starting new things on campus, on helping people in sharmirpet and in hyderabad. Nothing even about the struggles of workers on campus.
You want great faculty? Be great students who will challenge shitty profs and refuse easy grades. Call out a lack of academic integrity in the place. Make it worth it for a sid c or pranav or rahul or aakanksha or a sahana to stick around a while. stop feeding the egos and justifying the presence of scam profs who hand out easy grades and often either dont know their subject or cant be bothered to teach it. You approach people you want to learn from and ask them to send course outlines- you negotiate that with the university. Take an active part in improving your own institution. If you guys arent honest about this stuff- the admin has no reason to be.
You want internships- You organise your ICC to be more productive- if you dont see someone else doing it- stand for elections- get elected and do the work. this is not some mystery.
Why just moots? organise everything film festivals, conferences, talks, lectures, whatever! and participate in everything! Win moots, win debates, win quizzes. Dont be satisfied with a participation medal. The folks who are winning have all the same problems you do- they just persevere and you excuse yourself and try and find workarounds.
Food is horrible? Stand in the mess and watch as they cook, vote for mess representatives who will do that at least.
This learned helplessness where you constantly expect other people to fix stuff for you is exhausting. Just get off the internet and do some actual work.
sure. go to a courtroom without knowing the law at all. lets see how well you do. Court craft is undoubtedly important. As is knowing which judge to bribe. But if you think thats all law practice is about? yall are crazy. every great lawyer of our time, and most good judges- were excellent students and scholars.
You can put the furniture wherever you want with your court craft stuff. But if the building is made on faulty foundation- itll all come down.
It's great that you enjoy practicing but not all careers in law are about one kind of practice. Your professors are there to teach you to understand the spectrum of the law, how to learn it on your own and from other people and if you have the aptitude, how to move through it in an analytical self-aware way. It's really cute that so many lawyers thinks they can teach. And then they throw a fit when they find that a class of students is very different from the people they pay to tell them they are great. It's wonderful that you value what you do. When you grow up, you'll value what others do also. You spent a certain number of years learning to get what your clients need. Professors spent that time understanding and teaching the law and new ways of thinking about it.
You know, I'm a little surprised by how much importance people on LI attach to the quality of teachers. Unlike other professions/disciplines, there is a vast (and imo unsurmountable) gap between the practice of law and the teaching of law. The reality is that most teachers (no matter their pedigree or the length of their CV) have very little practical experience of the law. A successful advocate at even the district court level will have much more practical knowledge that even the best teachers. And at the end of the day, unless you're going into academia, practical knowledge trumps theoretical knowledge every day of the week. In fact, if you go into litigation, you basically have to unlearn what you learnt in law school and learn the real law all over again. This is partly the reason why most entry level jobs in law have experience requirements in contrast to most other professions. If you want your law school education to actually benefit you, you should be pushing for increased seminar/clinical courses taught by actual practitioners and not academics with fancy CVs.
While it is bound to strike some people, but this I come out as a moment of concern. NALSAR and its students are trying to do well but it is imperative that the administration and the authorities see the problems that are striking us individuals.
1. The Faculty crisis - while the VC is trying to make amends to the situation and many new professors have been recruited (whose quality is still yet to be seen), it is imperative that NALSAR should not only take advantage of the brand that they have but also gain more qualitative teachers. The loss of the likes of Pranav Verma and Sudhanshu Kumar is not just lamented by students who did know them, but also the students who do not know them. I sincerely hope that NALSAR engages its own alumni and reaches out to them and their contacts, something to the likes of what Sudhir Krishnaswamy has done with NLS and bring important and thought provoking teachers who fill these students with quality.
2. Administration Crisis - The administration is turning to not look into the demands of students. NALSAR is a place known for its freedom but lately, the administration is taking onto things that is frankly more than it can chew. For example - NALSAR had this customary ritual of students 4th and 5th years living in single hostels but due to a new LLM course started by the administration (which strains the overly strained faculty more), also leaves the new students and increasing batch sizes with no space to live, forget thrive. Administration should be more careful about making decisions that it currently does not have the ability to support.
3. ICC pushback - the formation of ICC usually used to be in 3rd year and while as one may recognise that the NALSAR tag is plenty to get you through some internships, it is still difficult for many students to get these internships who lack connections. Forget Tier I, you have to effectively stand all alone till 4th year strikes and the students are then piped through the ICC process. It is very important for the 3rd years to be directed through ICC. And it is in the hands of students to fix things that went very wrong in the pandemic. They should really be learning from GNLU's RCC and ICC which everything apart have a great LinkedIn presence and manage their affairs really well that students even got Trilegal to offer online internships to students (just recently, not just the pandemic).
4. Moot Hosting - While NALSAR has a great system of selecting the parties that would form the OC of the moots, it is very important to note that pandemic has left current batches with little to no inspiration as to what the moots earlier used to look like. but this should not hold a limit onto NALSAR as to how well they can host moots. NALSAR CCI moot did not end up being the finest mooting experience for a lot of the participants (which we hope to make up for). And therefore, NALSAR should focus on investing moots funds wisely to ensure that the mooting experience of parties is seamless.
5. The Legal aid conundrum - While the legal aid society has been newly formed with full strength. It is important to see that the Legal Aid society in NALSAR has till now not done well. They have no projects and no mass drives that have been introduced. NALSAR should really follow in NLIU's footsteps to see what a successful legal aid centre looks like at the small scale or NLUD 39A (you knew I was coming to that) at the large scale.
6. The Food Factor - the mess food at NALSAR is horrible to say in the very least. While many of you would write atleast it is not like CNLU's very own Donoghue v Stevenson (snail was found) (if memory serves), it is still horrible. Students spend so much money eating outside food that is just normal food which is somewhat edible. Every year during the time parents come, the food quality is at its peak. So clearly the workers can do their jobs well. (we can fight for their wages, but we have to fight for our food too) But, seem to forget as soon as parents leave the premises. The students really need to gear up and resolve this to ensure that they do end up consuming sufficient nutrients.
Hence, NALSAR needs to work on all of these to be better. Add anything in the comments and hope that students consider this as a call to unify towards taking the future of our university in our own hands.
As for the guy who’s arguing that practical experience is more important, you are the definition of “tell me you you’re not from a top NLU without telling me you’re not from a top NLU”. There’s a reason why GLC is not ever in the same league as the top 4-5 NLUs despite the so-called “practical exposure”.
2. Job specific training is what internships and on the job CLE are for. Indian law firms don't pay much attention to either so as to develop a better quality of law grads. Nor do many practising litigators. The onus is actually on them to at least tell the interns what to learn, because they are looking for their future associates among those.
I don't disagree that there is a considerable disconnect between university education and professional requirements. However, all the stakeholders involved have to come together to sort it out in the long term. Universities alone cannot solve it.
Tutorials try to simulate the application a bit, but pales in comparison to real life. Moots do not in anyway reflect the true nature of on ground arguments. Only about 10-15% of materials taught at the uni is helpful in practice. There is a lively debate in the UK academia as to what is the purpose of law schools for creating practice ready solicitors and the responses are mixed.
With respect to your point about the kind of work freshers in law firm/litigation, I have two responses: (1) Since most law schools do such a poor job of training their students in the vocational aspects of law, firms/litigation chambers cannot trust freshers to do the job properly straight out of law school and therefore only assign relatively less complex work to freshers till they gain the requisite training on the job. This is certainly not an argument for less vocational training in law schools; and (2) Even if you don't believe (1), the lack of a connection between the kind of work done by freshers in law firms/litigation and vocational training in the law isn't an argument against vocational training. It's an argument against legal education generally as what you are taught in law school (whether vocational/academic) has very little correlation or influence on what you actually end up doing in your professional career.
Not one peep about holding up academic integrity, not plagiarising, and making a good faith effort to learn the law. Not one peep about starting new things on campus, on helping people in sharmirpet and in hyderabad. Nothing even about the struggles of workers on campus.
You want great faculty? Be great students who will challenge shitty profs and refuse easy grades. Call out a lack of academic integrity in the place. Make it worth it for a sid c or pranav or rahul or aakanksha or a sahana to stick around a while. stop feeding the egos and justifying the presence of scam profs who hand out easy grades and often either dont know their subject or cant be bothered to teach it. You approach people you want to learn from and ask them to send course outlines- you negotiate that with the university. Take an active part in improving your own institution. If you guys arent honest about this stuff- the admin has no reason to be.
You want internships- You organise your ICC to be more productive- if you dont see someone else doing it- stand for elections- get elected and do the work. this is not some mystery.
Why just moots? organise everything film festivals, conferences, talks, lectures, whatever! and participate in everything! Win moots, win debates, win quizzes. Dont be satisfied with a participation medal. The folks who are winning have all the same problems you do- they just persevere and you excuse yourself and try and find workarounds.
Food is horrible? Stand in the mess and watch as they cook, vote for mess representatives who will do that at least.
This learned helplessness where you constantly expect other people to fix stuff for you is exhausting. Just get off the internet and do some actual work.
You can put the furniture wherever you want with your court craft stuff. But if the building is made on faulty foundation- itll all come down.
1. The Faculty crisis - while the VC is trying to make amends to the situation and many new professors have been recruited (whose quality is still yet to be seen), it is imperative that NALSAR should not only take advantage of the brand that they have but also gain more qualitative teachers. The loss of the likes of Pranav Verma and Sudhanshu Kumar is not just lamented by students who did know them, but also the students who do not know them. I sincerely hope that NALSAR engages its own alumni and reaches out to them and their contacts, something to the likes of what Sudhir Krishnaswamy has done with NLS and bring important and thought provoking teachers who fill these students with quality.
2. Administration Crisis - The administration is turning to not look into the demands of students. NALSAR is a place known for its freedom but lately, the administration is taking onto things that is frankly more than it can chew. For example - NALSAR had this customary ritual of students 4th and 5th years living in single hostels but due to a new LLM course started by the administration (which strains the overly strained faculty more), also leaves the new students and increasing batch sizes with no space to live, forget thrive. Administration should be more careful about making decisions that it currently does not have the ability to support.
3. ICC pushback - the formation of ICC usually used to be in 3rd year and while as one may recognise that the NALSAR tag is plenty to get you through some internships, it is still difficult for many students to get these internships who lack connections. Forget Tier I, you have to effectively stand all alone till 4th year strikes and the students are then piped through the ICC process. It is very important for the 3rd years to be directed through ICC. And it is in the hands of students to fix things that went very wrong in the pandemic. They should really be learning from GNLU's RCC and ICC which everything apart have a great LinkedIn presence and manage their affairs really well that students even got Trilegal to offer online internships to students (just recently, not just the pandemic).
4. Moot Hosting - While NALSAR has a great system of selecting the parties that would form the OC of the moots, it is very important to note that pandemic has left current batches with little to no inspiration as to what the moots earlier used to look like. but this should not hold a limit onto NALSAR as to how well they can host moots. NALSAR CCI moot did not end up being the finest mooting experience for a lot of the participants (which we hope to make up for). And therefore, NALSAR should focus on investing moots funds wisely to ensure that the mooting experience of parties is seamless.
5. The Legal aid conundrum - While the legal aid society has been newly formed with full strength. It is important to see that the Legal Aid society in NALSAR has till now not done well. They have no projects and no mass drives that have been introduced. NALSAR should really follow in NLIU's footsteps to see what a successful legal aid centre looks like at the small scale or NLUD 39A (you knew I was coming to that) at the large scale.
6. The Food Factor - the mess food at NALSAR is horrible to say in the very least. While many of you would write atleast it is not like CNLU's very own Donoghue v Stevenson (snail was found) (if memory serves), it is still horrible. Students spend so much money eating outside food that is just normal food which is somewhat edible. Every year during the time parents come, the food quality is at its peak. So clearly the workers can do their jobs well. (we can fight for their wages, but we have to fight for our food too) But, seem to forget as soon as parents leave the premises. The students really need to gear up and resolve this to ensure that they do end up consuming sufficient nutrients.
Hence, NALSAR needs to work on all of these to be better. Add anything in the comments and hope that students consider this as a call to unify towards taking the future of our university in our own hands.