Nls is instituting a tutorial system, with 1 prof and 10 students, and multiple mandatory activities such as reflective papers, presentations, etc. within these office hours, on top of existing class requirements? This feels way too rigorous. Our syllabus and existing evaluation (projects, midterms + endterms, presentations, class participation) and other activities (negos, moots, publications) are anyway so hectic. This is a pilot project but still so rough.

Y'all are only on here whinging about how you dont get mentorship and face time with professors- and when something is done to help you get closer supervision and help you form those relationships you complain. What do you want? You want AKT or MS or whoever to hang out in your dorms?

I think their view is along the "we paid for this/got admitted to this [NLS education], so we should get this mentorship regardless". They don't realise that academics may not necessarily view just being admitted to read law at university as being evidence enough of somebody's intelligence and that they might actually expect extra work from people before time is given up. I don't know why this seems like a difficult concept to grasp, after all, law students the world over, from Singapore to England, France to Canada, the U.S. to Australia, Hong Kong to New Zealand, seem to have grasped it without all that much headache?

Once again, Sudhir shows how he is way ahead of other VCs and how NLSIU is war ahead of other NLUs. But note that it’s only possible to do this because he has recruited excellent faculty. At other NLUs, the students know more than the teachers and the students should be conducting tutorials for faculty!

NLS is merely addressing a symptom, which is its own creation.

First, tutorials are needed BECAUSE it has a humongous batch size. Tutorials are not required if batch sizes are smaller (say around 40ish).

Second, generally, tutorials are usually conducted by new Assistant Professors or Ph.D. students, not by senior faculty.

There is no need to eulogize anyone for trying to solve a problem that is an outcome of its own policies.

I am absolutely appalled. Tutorials not required?? Tutorials can be a very good way to assess students' learning and progress. Batch sizes have nothing whatsoever to do with whether there is a tutorial system or not. And if the tutor is good, what stage of the career they are at (as long as they have completed at least an LLM) is a matter of no consequence, only the cheapest of cheap mentalities would suppose so.

What is the purpose of this charade of oh we care about student learning when the marking is random anyway. Most people just mark their pet students well, while others are given average marks regardless of one putting in the requisite effort. Might as well save us from these optics of 'caring' about student learning and being fair when they clearly aren't.

Students often have this wrong. The pet students have a closer relationship with profs because they work hard and show up for every class. No teacher in nls going into a new class for the first time has any real bias based on sex, caste, class, sexuality, language, birthplace, whatever.

What makes them like certain students more than others is that those students turn up for every class ready to learn and think and talk through problems. They make use of office hours, they show a genuine interest in the subject the professor has dedicated their life to. Of course professors would favour those students than folks who come in late, unprepared, sit at the back, look at their computers or take a nap or their phones and are generally disengaged. Think of how the classroom looks from the profs POV! How can marking be biased when it’s anonymised ? Just make a bit more effort !

1. That's your assumption and far from reality. You're trying to pass off the ideal as the real. Many teachers have got bias and legislative prejudice of their own, be it NLSIU or anywhere else.

2. Not all the marking is anonymized, the internal components certainly aren't.

It is true that effort pays off, but I don't want to deny that bias exists. Bias exists in the world. Consider law school your training ground to overcome it. Hilary Clinton and Michele Obama both talked about how minorities have to work ten times harder to prove their worth. It is not fair, but that is how it is. The question is whether you want to throw up your hands and complain or whether you want to use the time to learn to find your allies and persuade even the people biased against you that your work is too good to ignore.

Thanks for referencing Mitchell Obama. On days where I am baffled by the unfairness of this institution specifically and the profession broadly, I revisit her book because it resonates so deeply with me; perhaps because we are from the similar economic backgrounds. I have considered law school as a training ground and I don't expect professors and instructors to be paragons of virtue, without any bias because after all they are humans too. Prejudice is a part of human nature and I recognise that. I don't hold it against them. There seems to be a pervasive tendency amongst not just people on this website but in the real world too, to paint the entire student community as lazy, incapable and incompetent when this is far from reality. Things have changed and most young adults atleast in the 20-25 age bracket understand how important it is to invest in education given how competitive everything is. Every concern need not be attributed with bad faith, especially when it comes from students. It's not quite right to be dismissive of people's lived experiences. While I will always be thankful to NLS for providing good legal education ( and trust me I enjoy the rigour that so many people dread), my experiences with some bad actors will always be etched in my memory and that bitterness will never leave. Take this as an emotional, reactive response of a disillusioned hard working, honest student if you will, but I am not sorry for expressing it here. Allyship requires alignment of values. In my stay at NLS, I haven't found many who aren't morally corrupt to the core.

The NLS faculty has several kind, brilliant human beings on it. You may want to assess your idea of moral corruption. You should read MO's book again and watch her interviews. The worst thing we can do to ourselves is get trapped in our bitterness and resentment. I also didn't have the same privileges as everyone else and I resented unfairness, held grudges and assumed things that prevented me from asking for help. Human beings are complicated. But if you don't give them a chance, you will feel helpless and never get anywhere. Learn to move on after feeling bad. Remember no one is perfect and no one has a life without their own problems. Often giving your professors a chance is giving yourself a bigger chance.

It really isn't- you realise this once you spend any amount of time teaching anything to a group of people. Most teachers don't know anything about their students' lives or identities and dont care to. They would turn their ears off to any gossip about students. and once a batch of students graduate- about 90% of that batch becomes a hazy memory where names and faces will start to go away from their mind. They are doing a job. That's all they're doing. The scale of it is so different that it's hard for students to imagine.

Students don't understand this because they have one tort law teacher and one legal methods teacher etc- so obviously they spend a lot of time thinking about that person and how they perceive each other. Teachers usually have tens if not hundreds of students per term. You just don't think about students until they're right in front of you. The only other time you think about them is if they're actively making your job difficult by being unprofessional in the classroom demeanour or making unprofessional/ unfair requests. The only students you will remember when you teach regularly will be students you enjoyed - and you only know enough about them to know- they seemed to enjoy your class, they were engaged and hard-working, they made your life easier and they made teaching easier and you'll remember particularly good arguments they made in class or in their written work. That's it.

I have had hundreds of students- from when I taught clat prep to when I was a TA in grad school to after when I taught in law school. I honestly can maybe name ten of them off the top of my head. How can I be biased against someone that didn't even register? I don't know the caste, sexuality, ethnicity, or background of any of my students- why would I? How can I be biased on those grounds when I don't even know the biasing information? The only thing I know is if they were consistent and hard working and if they made me excited to go to class and think deeply about my own work.

I understand that students are sensitive about how teachers might perceive or judge them- and they might feel hurt when they don't understand why they're not chosen and mentored and it can all seem so arbitrary. After all, the student knows how brilliant and funny and creative they are, and the student knows they read occasionally and pay attention in class, and the student knows/ feels that they are a better person than that brown-nosing topper. I know how this feels because I was a bad student before I was a good student. But honestly- once you have been on the other side of the podium- the teacher doesn't know about any of this. The teacher knows only that which is demonstrated to him in or outside class. If students are vocal and engaged in class the teacher knows that. If students have read or are bullshitting the teacher knows that. If students are excited about his class and turn up prepared meet deadlines and dont dowork last minute- the teacher knows that. The teacher doesn't know your brilliant smarts and wit that you haven't demonstrated. And really- its hard and pointless to differentiate between one seemingly disengaged student and another. And teachers usually know nothing about the characters of the students in their class. It takes years of sustained contact to know someone's character. Maybe your grad school advisor knows your character- maybe that one prof from undergraduate school who took you under his wing. But saving that- it is all about the work.

I went through 2 years of law school resenting the fact that I wasn't the teacher's pet- and then I decided to become a better student. I read before class, I put my hand up and answered questions and asked them, I went to office hours, I convinced myself to like subjects I wasn't naturally inclined to, I worked hard on my projects and it showed. I tried to keep my interactions with professors positive and professional. That's all it took. My grades jumped and I had several people write me LORs and guide my career since. Nothing else about me or my character personally changed except what I was presenting in class and interactions with professors. Thats all they care about. Make their lives easier.

And you know what it actually is fun- teachers are usually big awkward nerds. There's something fun about seeing how grateful the teacher is because in a room of sleepy students, someone answered his question for once and that person had read the book and he knows he's not teaching to a wall. There's something fun about how reliant teachers get on seeing your head nod in the classroom. There's fun in seeing how excited a teacher type gets when you make connections between what was said in class to something they said in a prior class, or you read their work, or you point out a footnote that no one else has. And in how excited they get to discuss their favourite thing that they spend their lives trying to get other people excited about. There's something fun even about using all that classroom time to learn the law. My life got easier the day I stopped being resentful and started trying. I liked law school more that day.

Most teachers who I thought were biased and mean and judgy immediately became very nice to me once I started making an effort.

I will also say this- any teacher who is not like this, any teacher who is too invested in your life or who cares to ask you about your background or sexuality or caste or your health or your relationships or whatever, any teacher who seems invested in whether you like them or whether they are perceived as cool. Any teacher who does you unearned favour in exchange for your loyalty. Any teacher who does things to be popular- that teacher is weird and creepy and best avoided. I haven't met many like that at all. And even when I had those kinds teach me I usually did just fine in their class without getting into their fan club too much.

I do all of that; I prepare for classes, engage when I feel I have to put across a point (not random yapping) and turn in my assignments on time. I'll tell you what I don't do- I don't crack jokes with my teachers, I don't give fake compliments on how they have published groundbreaking research, I keep my conversations professional and businesslike. I didn't read the entire wall of text you pasted here and couldn't care less on what 'YOU' think happens. You might have been a bad student, I am certainly not. Flattery works more than hardwork. That is the cold truth. Plain and simple. I don't hold anything against them though, it is human nature and to resent these people for being human too silly to me.

The mere fact that you show contempt for somebody else's views and don't wish to engage in good faith with a piece of long text which seems to have entirely been written in good faith shows, to me, that you are a very bad lawyer-in-training.

Let us be clear: you guys are behaving like thugs, not like students who go to a world-class law school. Oscar Wilde once said that the thing you should gain most of all out of a good university education like Oxford is 'the ability to gracefully play with ideas'. I think Wilde's words equally apply to that institution. I know this from personal experience, having met enough NLSIU alumni who are fantastic at that. You do not represent anything good about your institution, but they do. Perhaps you and your specific group of friends are just bad students.

Stephen Fry, a Cambridge graduate, once said when speaking to students at the Cambridge Union, that the greatest privilege in life is 'the visa to the land of Bohemia', i.e., admission to a good university. 'Extend it for as long as you can, make the most of it when you have it', Fry advised his audience. If the great actor were to visit NLS, there is no reason why he wouldn't say the same thing, in my view. I sincerely beg that you consider these views and mend your ways. There are thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of people who would cut off their arms and legs to be where you are now, to have access to those opportunities you have access to, even to face the problems you are facing. You clearly have forgotten that, which is very entitled and disappointing.

Every university in the world has admitted people who have objectively turned out to be horrible human beings (Ted Bundy, the cerial killer, received admission offers in the 70's from two reasonable quality U.S. law schools). The job of a university is to try and make better people out of those it admits than what they were before they came in. But if people actively resist that, there is nothing the university can do.

For example, I don't think any faculty member at Oxford would have taught Boris Johnson that the rules didn't apply to him/he could play merry hell with the Queen and democratic system by carrying out prorogation of parliament illegally for his own malicious ends, but he did it anyway; in the same way, nobody at Oxford would have given a green light to Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (David Cameron, the UK prime minister whose career as PM ended shortly after the BREXIT vote) during his student days that burning 50 Pound notes in front of homeless people is the right way to behave, but he did it anyway.

In this way, if some NLS kids (like you perhaps?) refuse to take into account the values of hard work and serious, sincere engagement that your institution is trying to teach you, there is nothing NLS can do about it.

Sure. I would. Send me your mail and I will share allegedly wonderful research work which were marked low by teachers but was eventually published in a highly ranked journal, with the teacher in question acknowledging that it was good, albeit a bit begrudgingly. Unfortunately for me the damage was done and nothing they would say now repose my faith in them or the institution. I don't have the bandwidth to engage with trolls on this site and as someone pointed out we anyway don't have time at NLS. Peace out.

Can you provide the citation to that publication please?

Also, when you say "highly ranked", I am sorry, but if it is a student law journal, unless you published in the Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal or the McGill Law Journal, that is quite a loaded claim to make. People would be much more willing to take your claim at face value and operate on a "trust but verify" principle if you'd published in a proper journal like Public Law, Current Legal Problems, Law Quarterly Review, Indian Law Review, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Cambridge Law Journal, Industrial Law journal or some similar academic journal with a high quality peer review process.

Your argument makes literally no sense! You are being asked to give us a reference to this publication. Just admit that you (i) either likely don't have such a thing and are bullshitting; or (ii) maybe you have it, but you don't have the balls to put a name to your criticisms of anyone.

Are you seriously comparing yourself to the VC? What next? The VC should also sit in class because all of you do? Why don't you leave him to the executive council and the faculty and focus on growing up a bit. Or if you're basically saying you don't like to work then go to a more chill institution.

I have. It makes you a better lawyer and professional. Compared to almost every other law school in the country. If you think that you can't handle that, then leave and join somewhere else. Law schools in India don't require a fraction of the effort that they should, which accounts for the generally pathetic quality of legal professionals in the country.

Sigh. It's you who seems to be thick. You are assuming that the Tutorials are integral to the university experience. They may not even be necessary for someone to become a good lawyer and professional if the classes are taking place well, the teachers have the necessary time to spend on the students and the syllabus is updated and relevant.

So I’m asking you a simple question - why not consider this an opportunity for more and better learning?

None of it is integral to being a good lawyer. Classes aren’t integral to being a good lawyer- many good lawyers in this country have degrees from universities they barely attended. Legal education at one point was just interning with a lawyer long enough until you learnt the ropes. You are free to pursue that path if you like- it’s just not what the nls promise is.

So , I’ll ask again - why are tutorials not an opportunity to get more out of law school ?

I just don't know what to say. Good law schools all over the common law world, including the best ones in the entire world - Oxford and Cambridge - have always had a tutorial system (in Cambridge they call them "supervisions"). Those people are a thousand times the lawyers that you grifters and scroungers will ever be. But don't worry, at least NLS now has good academic standards, which means outsiders (and alumni) have a way to distinguish the grifters from the workers. I must say, Legally India has done a remarkable job of helping you ensure you don't mistakenly out yourselves.

I think there's good and bad to it. Bad in the sense that yes it's rigorous, good in the sense that you do take away a lot from it.

I think what tips the balance is institutional support in other avenues–NLS has notoriously bad funding, support in terms of condonation and project-exemption, faculty guidance, infrastructure and online database access, etc. for preparation for events outside. Minimal support for hosting external events and consequently minimal campus activity. Given that, this may just add to the problems students face. At the same time, I don't think the tutorial system is in and of itself bad. It's an innovative pedagogy that will strongly reward the interested.

So being rigorous is bad? The mentality of lawyers in India summed up in a way that nothing else can be. Lalajis, shut down the borders. Stop those foreign firms from coming in, they'll make sure our lot are less than the dust beneath their chariot wheels (and NLSIU graduates will be the first to experience this because of their attitude). Well, it actually might be good, at least puts us out of our misery a little more quickly.

No. Those kinds of specific, strong affirmative action measures are usually not allowed in English equality law (this includes having a specific scheme to accept people based on lower marks because of their protected characteristics). The only extent to which they do have any kind of affirmative action (and this is also very weak affirmative action measure) is the kinds of school that they choose to do outreach to and admit from nowadays. Earlier, most of their students came from elite private schools (confusingly called "public schools" because they didn't just accept students from the local area in which they were based) like Eton, Harrow and Westminster. In recent years, Oxford has had a major focus on admitting (British) candidates from "state school" backgrounds (i.e., from the types of schools we more commonly think of as and call public schools).