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- An SOP saying that he/she/ze wishes to specialise in human rights and return to India after finishing his/her/zer course
- Some sort of focus on gender intersectionality: e.g. Judicial reforms and gender; Naxalism in Chhattisgarh and gender; Right to food and gender etc.
- Membership of the college Human Rights Society, or Public Law Society (if no such society exists, then the Legal Aid Society)
- An internship with at least one of these organisations:
a) One of these news outlets (in 1st year): The Hindu, The Hindustan Times, The Wire, Newslaundry, Scroll, Alt News
b) One of these think-tanks/NGOs (in 2nd or 3rd year): CPR, Vidhi, Centre for Internet & Society, Alternative Law Forum, Lawyers Collective
c) One of these advocates (in 3rd of 4th year): Menaka Guruswamy, Karuna Nundy, Vrinda Grover, Arundhati Katju, Gopal Subramaniam, Aditya Sondhi, Sanjoy Ghose, Rebecca John, Meenakshi Arora.
PS: A quick hint. Sometimes people use words for persuasive effect, rather than because they reflect the exact feelings within a person's inner self at that precise moment. You should know this by now. If I were your parent or guardian, I'd be very concerned indeed about the potential ROI for your education, even if you were at Harvard or Yale Law for the JD.
If a candidate's biggest achievement is the exam they cracked in 12th standard, they do not stand a chance.
- Quality of candidates
- Mentorship by Sudhir
- Help from alumni
- Simple principle of probability and balancing the deviation of the past few years. In other words, it's mathematically impossible that GNLU and NLUD will keep being rewarded and NLSIU will be ignored. The law of averages HAS to catch up.
The comment gets one thing right: it is a world-class institution and a selection from there (all things considered) is surprising, as this is intended for applicants from India who studied law in India (I am an Indian national and a law student at another of the London law schools also interested in LLM/graduate study opportunities, but I would never apply for something like the Rhodes, primarily because that isn't intended for people with access to opportunities like mine).
The thing that this gets wrong is the assumption about the selected candidate’s undergraduate institution. It has become so commercial law-focussed in the last few years, from my observations, that there is almost no chance the individual in question would have been able to study modules on the topics in question. I myself looked at their "Transnational Law" LLM pathway, which is intended for human rights people, and frankly the offerings (or at least the ones I saw last year) were a joke! Certain academics I know--criminologists there—left on mass in 2014 because of how little importance was being given to their research, demonstration enough, I think, of what direction that particular law school is taking.
If further reassurance is needed, please remember the case of Ronald Dworkin (very different circumstances and times, of course, but still contributes to the point I am making), who worked at Sullivan & Cromwell for many years before becoming the giant of legal theory we know today.
One particular selection I found upsetting was ▮▮▮