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2. Betrayer of the Motherland (Grade II): Top-ish ranks with a lot of publications go to foreign university to do an LLM and then become a Grade I Betrayer;
3. Corporate Whore (Grade I): Medium ranks from top colleges and top ranks from medium colleges go to the large corporate law firms. Good pay (starting at approx a lakh a month), but hours are really painful till you become a senior associate. If you grunt it out and make SA, hours will reduce but work will almost always remain stressfull. You'll have to do your share of admin work, but routine stuff is handled by shared secretaries. There will be some flexibility in hours, you work late - you can come in a bit late the next day. You also get to interact with the so called corporate elite, if that is your fetish.
4. Corporate Whore (Grade II): Smaller law firms mean the hours are almost as crap as Grade I whores but you also have to do a lot more admin work and worse, a lot of PR work (as few ppl know your firm). Smaller firms also mean bigger egos rubbing against each other and a lot of office politics. Oh, and the pay is not that great.
5. Captive Corporate Whore: You get into the legal department of a company like infosys, mahindra or hp. You have one client only - your company. Pay varies according to company, but you will mostly earn less than Grade I whores. Work is boring, but the advantage is that the work hours are easy and is highly recommended for lazy people. Work environment varies according to the size of the legal team. Work hours not flexible in some companies.
6. Pauper: The real world. You go old school style into litigation. Remain a pauper for a decade, saying nothing but "Plaintiff seeks adjournment" in courts and then depending on your abilitiy, you either sink into oblivion or rise into a proper big shot lawyer who gets a lakh for making a 5 minute appearance. A lot of top ranks choose this if they have the flair for litigation.
7. Papa's Boy: Litigation, but your dad/mom/relative is already a big shot judge/lawyer - so you are not a pauper and your rise is smoother and faster.
8. Drone: Join an LPO - Legal Process Outsourcing unit - paralegal work: legal research and data entry. Pay will be terrible and there wont be much respect from within the legal community.
9. Sage: You dont give a shit about the money or glory. Do more LLMs, MPhils, write more papers. Go into teaching, writing, research.
[edit: credit Reddit: u/Chocolate_Horlicks ]
credit - u/Chocolate_Horlicks
@Kian: If you still read LI posts, I am flagging this as an official complaint against whichever moderator did this. That person should not be allowed to moderate posts without supervision.
https://www.legallyindia.com/convos/topic/170765-quantifying-the-greatness-of-nls
2-4 people get selected in foreign firms,
5-8 people get selected in top-tier foreign LLMs/BCLs,
20-25 people start with top tier law firms,
15-20 people start with boutique/lesser known firms,
20-25 people start as in-house counsels with corporates (and many live happy lives with WLB and I'm pretty jealous of that),
10-20 people start with litigators, out of which more than half are papa's boys,
Almost noone has to join LPOs,
And some 5-10 people go into academia, often after that foreign LLMs - and with JGU hiring almost everyone at competitive pay, they're hardly sages.
Of course, a lot of these overlap by virtue of starting as one and soon witching to another. I also want to add that off late, a lot of people go into non-law fields too, most commonly going for MBAs or consultancy firms. :)