I know a friend who got into the University of Oxford for Law and also placed in NLSIU through CLAT. Friend ultimately chose to go to Oxford. She wants to do litigation in Delhi, is from a well-off family but no apparent connections to litigators in Delhi as such. What would you reccomend someone like her do?

To each their own. We have become really immature as a community generalising choices and justifying them with our flawed viewpoints. This year a girl from NLS’28 got Duke University (fantabulous SAT score) and conveniently joined the college abroad. I came to know this from a trusted source. On the other hand , hardly a year and a half back a person got UCL to pursue law. The person also made into NLS. Even after getting adequate financial aid and coming from a well-off family , the person joined NLSIU. Let’s take another example from the batch of 2026 where a person made into several decent (plus excellent) colleges abroad , got a rank from 1-10 in clat , chose to stay at NLS. I , for instance , got colleges like KCL and Edinburgh, chose to stay at NALSAR (for a variety of reasons). I have also mentioned this in a thread regarding Lnat in this forum only. I have seen multiple people spending a year at a tier-1 nlu (nlu Jodhpur/nujs) and got LSE/KCL next year. They went without any hesitation. Now my question is , where does the metric for comparison lie?

It's really simple: do you want to maximise your chances of living abroad? Then study abroad! I know someone who made it to IIT Delhi computer science in the merit list, but chose to go to a US lib arts college called Colgate with full scholarship. Today he is working as a financial analyst in New York.

As someone who's spent time at both places, the answer would be "it depends". NLSIU offers a great name to have on your CV in India, a rigorous approach to studying laws in India (albeit informed by a global context), it trains you to write an extraordinarily large number of projects within short and challenging timelines, it exposes you both to theoretical and practical areas of (or related to) the law, you have very smart peers due to the rigour of the entrance exam process and you are able to more easily develop your networks in India being based there. Oxford has much more global name recognition (and sometimes looked down upon in modern day India, with exceptions in some traditional areas of the law), it is much more UK/Europe/US law based (and rarely informed by an Indian/ emerging markets context), its trains you to write with extraordinary rigour (fewer projects; more original work), it is unapologetically theoretical in its approach, your peers may not always have gone through as rigorous an entry process as in India (but would be more diverse) and your would find it easier to develop international networks than Indian networks. On balance, your friend could not go very wrong with either decision - as litigation in India would offer a steep learning curve irrespective - but would do well to give thought to what she looks to get out of her next few years.