I can’t fathom if my current workplace is toxic. It is hard on me but that’s also because I have transitioned from college to working. Most or all Saturdays are working, but I am allowed enough time to complete a project. The partners and people at the top of the ladder are condescending at times. But are also open to answering and making you learn. There is a half day leave cut at a late-mark. Work from Homes are looked down upon and not granted approval usually. I basically only get a Sunday. Every other day involves the firm somehow. I leave work at 11PM at times. Some days, I leave earlier. I don’t like it here, but people say it is worse elsewhere and the situation is like a pressure cooker with deadlines at a 1-2 hour gap, and 4-5 deliverables due everyday. I get time to complete my work but the hours are bad.

NOW, What is toxicity exactly? Is the industry like this? Why is corporate law then a choice for so many of us? Why do seniors promote it then? Do people really live a life like this for years? For some lakhs of money? Which is not even comparable to what their counterparts with a BTech or MBA earn! I invested 5 years into the degree. With those many years and the hard work I put in, I could make it anywhere. In law, the top rank 1 is given a salary of 15L. A Rank 1 from an IIT/IIM would never even settle in India. And at 15L? NEVER.

My engineer friends make 2-3x of what I make and have developed skills that have application outside India. What do I do with the clerical work you ask me to do in Capital Markets? What do I do with data populating and MS WORD/EXCEL document skills? An engineer earns more money moonlighting than in their regular job. A corporate lawyer doesn’t get the hours to moonlight. More and more tech based companies are adopting WFH models and understanding the better viability of it, but law firms are going back in thinking that the associates become “laid back” being on their beds.

Top firms haven’t increased their salary in the last 10 years. There are no perks. There are no good retreats. Why is this profession hailed so much? I hate it here

Where is it hailed? Everyone keeps joking about how LLB degrees are worthless pieces of paper and how most lawyers sit below trees looking around for cases in India. It’s considered dumb to do LLB. My father used to say the same, I was the stupid one who didn’t believe him. Also you can’t really compare JEE to CLAT. It’s a simple police hawaldaar type exam not comparable to JEE at all. Random kids from Commerce get AIR 1 mostly via luck. All these famous lawyers you know like Kapil Sibal, Harish Salve, KK Venugopal, are children of powerful influential people. Money and power is in litigation. Us corporate lawyers are no different than low level babus. This was always for rich and powerful people. I’ve seen lawyers from top law schools talk about 30-40 LPA the same way engineers talk about 1.5-1.8 CRPA. You can earn 15 LPA even from Manipal type colleges. Also rags to riches stories are non existent in Indian law.

There is a lot of difference between a toxic workplace , and a workplace you just don’t like much. If you can find better work go for it. If the money isn’t worth the time for you personally - if you think that you’d be better off with an MBA- you can still do that. But what you’ve described sounds like a lot of work to me - but not a toxic workplace. There’s no abuse, you get Sundays , your coworkers help with questions. There’s long hours - but you’re hardly on a production line in an apple sweatshop. This is what it is for most law firm people in the first year. No one tells you law firm life is so easy and great- everyone tells you that it’s a lot of work the first few years. Why didn’t you listen ?

There is a difference in competition. For IIT, you compete with roughly 16L students, and around 200 students would be getting foreign or better placements than what is offered in top NLUs. For law, only about 60,000 students sit for CLAT, and out of them, roughly 10 people will get placed in Magic Circle firms at the end of the degree. If you look at the difference in competition, it all makes sense.

There is also the fact that most of the toppers in class 10th goes for science and then sits for JEE/NEET. The same is not the case for CLAT. So, yeah, cracking CLAT is not the same as getting into a CSE in a top IIT + The competition in top IITs is much more intense than that in top NLUs. Look at the suicide rates.