I am a first year law student at NALSAR. I met Mr Upendra Baxi in November last year and asked him a lot of questions. We had a candid conversation about life and career and he agreed to give me his contact details. But I haven't reached out to me at all. How can i make use of this opportunity? What should i ask him? What messages should i send?

1. Read his works and try to break down his arguments into their component parts. See if there are gaps in the arguments. Then politely ask him about those gaps. Or even just ask good questions about the piece based on other things you have read - how he responds to someone who made an argument different from his own (if he hasn't written something about that already). While I don't want to spread false hope, you never know. If you spot something clever, he might be more willing to invest time/energy in helping you to secure something good. If you read the obituary of Joseph Raz published in the London Times, for example, you will note that Raz (still an undergraduate student completing his law degree at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, back in the 1960's) approached Hart when the latter was at a conference in Israel and told him that there were gaps in an argument that he (Hart) had made in one of his writings, gaps which Hart agreed were serious and corrected; not long after this, Raz went to pursue a DPhil in Oxford, and was supervised by... no surprises, HLA Hart. While there are differences in circumstances (Baxi's age, in particular), as this story shows, if you have the smarts, the courage etc., especially in combination with this golden connection, who knows what may or may not happen? (NB: this should not be taken as a substitute for you performing well in your own studies, extracurriculars, internships etc. and putting in hard work through the usual channels as well).

2. Just be nice. Don't view things as transactionally as your comment seems to indicate you are doing. Maybe send a message on his birthday or some other special occasion. Even if not transactional, don't worry about being so overly formal. I think you can impress much more by balancing formality with kindness than being some stuffed-shirt pain-in-the-neck.