Wow, what is really your problem, man? No need to get so hyper-sensitive and defensive. It’s your life, you want to go abroad and feel proud of it? Great. I could care less about your reasons for doing so. But making lame accusations that everyone else is just “hooking up and smoking up” all the time tells me you have some unresolved issues. And your advice doesn’t seem to be coming from a place of goodwill but rather some cheap condescension one usually notices with people who went to the West for a while. You lack an empathy to see things from the perspective of someone who’s recently joined a law school right after a shitty school education, probably because of your distaste for academics in India after your experience.

A lot of the other things you’re saying are mere assumptions and lame accusations. I don’t know which NLU you went to where the academic standards were so low that they left you depressed, but I never sunk that low at my NLU, and most people I know who worked hard and had a long-term plans didn’t either. And I didn’t spend my time partying and studying just two weeks before exams either. And as far as Harvard and US Ivies go, it’s a PG degree there, and people are more experienced and informed about how to go about their work. Do they do better work and multitask more? Probably, but there’s an environment conducive to that which doesn’t exist in most institutions in India. And I’ve met Cambridge and Oxford grads who aren’t Indian, and I know quite a few from my own NLU who went there, and I don’t confuse this with jealousy, but they were not some mind-blowingly brilliant individuals who worked 16 hours a day. Many of them hustled, developed or had good contacts and had a supportive ecosystem like family in the same city or atleast financial privilege. They succeeded because of that.

And now you’re claiming AI will replace everyone. I mean, where are you even taking this? Don’t perpetuate this myth that corporate lawyers in India are doing some sleazy grunt work all the time. You just sound bitter. And this kind of compulsiveness doesn’t work in the real world. You can’t force people to take things seriously unless they themselves want to.

Oh right. Cause actually having more exposure in legal education means im somehow in a bubble? More exposure means im more misinformed somehow? FWIW I didnt have an epiphany at my grad school. I had depression during my undergrad because of how pathetic things were. I almost fell out of love with the law and gave it all up until I could leave law school and fall back in love with the law . Do you think students at HYS/ Oxbridge whinge about writing research papers ? or without doing internships? They do easily- 10 times the work without whinging and without lying and cheating. Realistically- is anyone arguing that an nlu grad spends 8-10 hours a day working? likely not. You party all term- waste your life- then get serious during exam week and do your best. the toppers get serious two weeks before everyone else maybe. Thats shameful. saying this happens at IITs too is whataboutery. Have you met the average IIT grad? Youll never meet a less educated more confidently wrong person ever! That shouldn't be our goal. I suggest you leave your mediocre bubble and actually talk to people who have had a decent and challenging legal education. Do not tell me that our students are overburdened when most of them have bragged and bragged about how they have gamed the system and how they spend all their time in law school hooking up and smoking up. Of course, young people are stupid! thats precisely why its incumbent upon us older ones to remind then and uphold standards for academic integrity and rigor. otherwise youre letting the inmates run the asylum.

If youre preparing for the job market- you have to prepare for one where AI will do most of the dumb grunt work and youll actually need to have legal skills. Good luck doing that while taking things easy.

It is racist to think indians cant do any better than this so we might as well never try. Its that culture of poverty bullshit that doesnt take into account that human beings have constantly achieved things that were thought impossible.

Oh, right, you're another one of those guys who went abroad for an Ivy LLM and had an epiphany about how pathetic the state of affairs in Indian legal education really is. Look, I don't disagree with you that the academic standards at most of these top NLUs is quite mediocre, but that's the case with the entire academic ecosystem of India, especially when it comes to research. Barring some one or two places like IISc, top IITs, the overall standard is low.

But I do think you need investment in the right kind of people and systems to change that and that costs money. To attract talent that are well-versed with high academic standards requires funding and leadership in the institution. NLUD had done it to a degree under RS and we see how they have produced quite impactful research over the last 10 years or so. NLS seems to be doing something of that sort now under the new VC, but the results can only be known a few years down the line. I graduated from one of those top NLUs and some of our more highly-qualified/experienced professors did conduct strict checks on plagiarism and also allowed diverse examination styles. At the same time, the legal education ecosystem here is more focused on quantity than quality. we're expected to dish out a research project for every course without any option, how much time does it leave for actual genuine research in niche areas? And after the semester ends, it's internship time which holds the most value (after grades) for a job. So if the legal education system is largely job-oriented, what can the students do?

I do agree that some of the questions on this site are ridiculous, especially where some people are saying that one should choose NALSAR over NLS since the academic rigour at NALSAR is less and people will have more time to chill, that's very stupid, but these are just some ignorant kids, most of whom haven't even entered law school. Hardly worth generalising over as to the state of legal education in India. But on the context of being racist, that's a desperate accusation. I think a majority of Indians working/studying in India function inefficiently for various reasons. That's simply a fact. Not that this can't be changed, but the point is that the West focuses more on productivity in a holistic sense. And regardless of the choice of going abroad, there is a lack of solidarity to improve the state of affairs here. It's easier to opt for the escapist route.

Lol dude what trip are you on ? There is very basic stuff Indian universities including nls and nalsar and nujs and nlud don’t do. That they could quite easily do if they actually cared about improving legal education. Not everything is colonialism and colonial hangover. You don’t need millions of dollars to be honest about the work your faculty and students are doing. You don’t need to go exploit some countries to insist on a strict integrity code for all members of the university. You don’t need to have some colonial hangover to have a grounded understanding that some countries are doing things better than others when it comes to legal education. So many excuses and no taking responsibility.

I went to an ivy schools. They had ZERO tolerance for academic fraud or plagiarism. If you plagiarised a two page memo they would report you to all the bar councils in the country and make you unhirable. That’s how serious it was. Senior professors at Harvard and the president of Stanford have recently lost their jobs because of problems with their research work- when was the last time an Indian professor at an Indian NLU was even investigated or scrutinised over allegations of research fraud ? Never ? Is never the right answer ? So are we saying that Indians don’t publish in shady journals ? That they don’t put their names on the work done by phd students ? That they don’t commit fraud ?

None of that is colonialism. All of that is choices people are making today. Primary education in America sucks. The kids there are barely literate. But in college- they hold everyone accountable to standards.

No university needs crores to do this stuff. You can have the intellectual community of a HYP/ Oxbridge even if they don’t have resources / infrastructure. And in its initial years NLS was on the mission to make that happen. But over the years these institutions have been captured by the mediocre dishonest uninterested careerists who have no understanding even of what the standard should be !

It’s not even just faculty. My ivy school had no invigilation for class tests. Students held each other to an honor code and no one cheated cause it was shameful to cheat on something so easy as a class test. Do Indian students today have that kind of commitment to ethics ? Isn’t it true that they openly plagiarise the work done by their seniors for research projects ? That they’ll use everything from Chatgpt to paying for research papers to avoid doing work ? Are they all suffering because of disability/ poor primary education? Or is it possible they’re just lazy and dishonest and live in a society where dishonesty is rewarded ?

Isn’t every other post here about how “chill” a university is , how one doesn’t want to go to a university where there is “too much” focus on study. How students want a party year in their fifth year ? Didn’t nls’s public magazine talk about “scam” courses and “legit” courses ? Are we really pretending there’s no dishonesty ?

Or are we saying that brown people are inherently dishonest and holding them to the same standards is therefore racist / colonialism ?

Cause if we are - you’re the racist.

Possibly, depends on how much pressure the Delhi govt. exerts and how much the admin can resist it. SKD withdrew the quota altogether before he left for NALSAR. Alums anyway fought off the domicile quota once in the HC and I think they will do so again if it got reintroduced. But only time will tell. For now, there is no quota and that's a good thing.

I agree with your sentiment and I get where you're coming from, but let's be realistic, an Indian institution is simply not going to reach the so-called high levels of some of the Western ones for a few basic reasons - poor investment and funding, politics over merit, administrative inefficiency and lack of autonomy, poor quality of education at the school-level etc, the list goes on. And it's not just NLUs, I know folks at the top IITs and IIMs who crib about how mediocre their colleges really are but in the outside world, the colleges are highly reputed, regardless.

And what your comment implicitly shades over is the kind of atrocities that the West committed to aggrandise and enrich their institutions - nearly 20 trillion dollars worth of resources were drained from India alone by the British over 2 centuries, and yet Indian talent still rush to these economies given an opportunity since they regard the status and quality of life that comes from Western association to be better for them. There's some truth in that, but let's face it we still have a massive colonial hangover. You look at how the Japanese have a built a self-sufficient economy that improves the quality of life for their citizens without a massive brain-drain, and it shows that it can be done. In modern times, places like South Korea and now even China are doing that. And it's not the ranking or comparisons with Harvard or Oxford that matter but whether these law schools and their graduates are able to affect people on the ground in their own country. Unfortunately, the ingrained inferiority complex of most Indians combined with the lack of opportunities here, means we will always look to the West for validation.

I mean. This is what’s weird about this website. You get these loyal cheerleaders from all these colleges who will shout and scream about how they’re number 1. In real life when you go to these universities and spend some time with the students - they’ll admit that their university is quite sub par, that they feel cheated, that it isn’t quite what they imagined. That they thought the faculty would be better, that their peer group would be more driven, that the opportunities they got would be more exciting and that their education would be more rigorous.

But no one online talks about what they should do to make their college better. They just assert that it is and insult people who disagree.

I don’t want nlud or nalsar to just be better than the other. I don’t want them to be satisfied with nirf rankings. I want them to compare themselves to HYP/ Oxbridge and see where they fall short and go and fix their problems. But alas. We’re so happy with our mediocrity.

Is NLUD better in certain areas? Yes (location, faculty, no domicile, research, funding is better). Is it better in those 3 parameters which you've mentioned? No, not yet, not in placement numbers definitely. LLMs maybe on par. But I reckon it will catch up in the future, sooner or later. NALSAR is no NLS. RS himself used to say that he made NALSAR great and he'll make NLUD even better.

Disingenuous question by a person who can't even take the effort to ensure basic grammar and punctuation.

Has NLUD overtaken NALSAR in terms of placements and PPOs? No. Both are largely based on alumni reputation and history at the top law firms and NLUD doesn't have the same depth of alumni as NALSAR does for obvious reasons. Plus, NLUD has had smaller batches than NALSAR till 2020. But the way NALSAR folks make it sound is as if you can only get a job at NALSAR and NLUD has zero placements. That's just desperately false and anyone who's been at NLUD knows there are near equal opportunities.

In terms of LLMs, the disparity is not much. NLUD is not really ahead but they're not behind by much either considering the smaller batch sizes at NLUD till 2020.