Don’t wish to take any names, but I have come across at least 20 such cases, involving children of NLSIU grads from early generations. I’ve asked a few and the answers I get are given below. It’s such an irony because they are the ones who have elevated the NLU tag and are immensely proud to be alumni of NLSIU. Also, some of the responses are openly classist and elitist! You have NLSIU alumni hailing from cities like Patna and Kanpur who now act like SoBo socialites!

- “Universities abroad are better and give more exposure.”

- “My son/daughter goes to an IB school and none of his/her friends are appearing for CLAT.”

- “We want our son/daughter to enjoy college life. College life in NLUs is too focused on grades and placements.”

- “Our son/daughter will not be able to mix with students from small towns and lower socio-economic backgrounds, and will not be able to stay in such accommodation. He/she has not been brought up that way”

- “Our son/daughter doesn’t want to study law. We have also encouraged him/her to study STEM or finance abroad, as there are more opportunities globally.”

- “We want our son/daughter to do the Jindal-Cornell LLB-JD.”

- “Our son/daughter can go to Ashoka and do a law degree abroad after that.”

Thoughts on this? I’m sure you guys must have also come across such cases?

Not commenting on most of this, but what's the problem with this response?

- “Our son/daughter doesn’t want to study law. We have also encouraged him/her to study STEM or finance abroad, as there are more opportunities globally.”

Kids are opinionated enough to figure out what they like. Maybe they don't care about CLAT, but care about something else. Don't see why this response is judge-worthy.

I am unable to understand people like you. Have you ever heard of the concept of social mobility? Any person with financial resources and social connections will prefer to send his/her children abroad (irrespective of the choice of career). In any case, it's a personal matter. Why can't you people mind your own business and stop spreading negativity?

1. Classic situation: Never seen anything like it in any country, other than India. We are the only country in the world, literally, where people hate the thought of parents trying to make life better for their kids. What bothers or hurts you so much about most of these responses? What is it? You live in a gated community with other NLS alumni, and are experiencing secret heart-burn because maybe one of your classmates' kids is going to ANU for law (Australian National University) instead of an NLU? Alright, some may lack nuance. Not all universities abroad are good, for example, but let's be clear that most of the world's best universities for law are outside India. If someone has what it takes to get a good education there, what's the problem? Why do you feel so hurt? Why are you wasting other peoples' time? Please reflect on whether this is coming from a place of envy.

2. Again, classic sign of people who suffer from the afliction of envy: Of course some of the responses are classist - take the IB school one or the lower socioeconomic background ones, for example. If they (and/or their kids) believe that, they are in for a big surprise. Western kids from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds are often as hungry for success (in a good way) as their Indian counterparts. Even the accommodation at foreign unis is not necessarily great. As for grades/placement? Don't get me started! Your typical London universities' law schools kids (KCL/UCL/LSE/QM/SOAS types) are so obssessed with magic circle/biglaw jobs that a few months there and you would want to throw yourself off a building just to get a chance to avoid hearing the names Links and Kirkland. Plus, those unis can be stingy as fuck when it comes to grading students' academic performance. So total misunderstanding and idiocy in the case of such people. Why do you allow such people to live rent free in your head? Are you really equating all NLS alumni who think this way to such people? And why so restrictive? If NLSIU or other NLU alumni want their kids doing something other than law, what's your problem? And frankly, why is it any of your damn business?

3. Regarding that Ashoka + law abroad after that. Alright, a law degree from many universities abroad is a great thing to be doing. And yes, there are genuinely good arguments to be made about why a non-law degree might be a good thing to do first, before going in for law. Arguments which have been made quite forcefully by Lord Sumption, the former judge on the UK Supreme Court (as an example). However, I don't think Ashoka is the best thing to be doing in such cases. Do a St. Stephens or something like that. People who give this response or the socioeconomic background one have, it is true, been led astray by the trappings of elitism and lost to some extent an ability to detect bullshit.

4. Have you ever thought that they might have pride in their NLU tag for the thing that it gave them - what they needed to fulfil the ambition of making better lives for their kids than what their parents gave them? Pride in an institution or tag doesn't necessarily mean slavish loyalty to it. It is a social construct, like anything else. Alright: does pride in an Eton or Harrow tag mean that an Eton or Harrow alumni is almost bound to send his son there? (Don't jump on me for the gendered language, they are exclusively boys schools in England.) Yes, it probably does. Does that mean the NLU tag has to be like that? That's a question on which you can have your opinions. But my question would be: why necessarily does this uniquely Indian tag have to be like an Eton/Harrow or Oxbridge tag? Why can't it be a tag celebrating higher social mobility - people taking a degree at university which helps them move up the income bracket? Why can't we celebrate that tag in its own right? If we are to be different and unique from the rest of the world, why can't we embrace our tag for what it is, instead of letting our envy guide us into the trap of thinking that what we have should be constructed/designed in the way other countries have their stuff?

Essentially, most of my questions can be summarised in three: why are you putting people down? Why do you care so much? And why are you letting the idiots among such people live rent-free in your head?

“They hate us because they ain’t us”. This is why JGLS and those heading for foreign LLMs get so much hate from LI readers. Middle class people jealous of the rich, who would secretly love to be in place of the rich. And once they become rich (like these NLSIU alumni) they happily embrace IB schools, JGLS and foreign LLMs for their children!

Na, that’s not it. No one is going to say no to being rich, but go to a place like NLS, NLUD, NALSAR, etc, you’ll find most people there especially from the General category, are quite well off and could afford JGLS. In comparison to those folks, JGLS people have no merit, that’s a fact.

My boss is an NLSIU alum. His child is at Jindal and will do the dual degree with a foreign law school. His child did not sit for CLAT. When I asked why, he said that the “atmosphere” in a “government college” will not “suit” the child. That’s code for saying that they are rich and superior to others! 😂 He also gave the excuse that the child can come home to Delhi on weekends, but I feel that’s just a secondary reason. Then why didn’t the child try for AILET and NLUD??

LI commenter at age 20: Jindal and foreign LLMs are rubbish, only for rich and spoilt kids. NLUs are the best. Jindal does paid PR on LI. 😡

Same LI commenter at age 50: My son’s going to Jindal and then abroad for an LLM. Much preferable to an NLU. Please don’t tell me how to spend my money. Be kind, do better. 🙂

▮▮▮

To be fair, a lot of these alums got into NLS when the exam wasn’t nearly that competitive and hardly anyone knew about law. NLS becoming so good was probably as much a surprise for them as it was for the public in general. And their kids may not be that driven or in a position to compete in an all-India entrance exam like CLAT or AILET and achieve a good rank for a top NLU. No point of getting some 1000-something rank and going to TNNLU or RGNUL when your parents are from NLS. Easier to just go abroad if you have money and once you enter the Indian marriage and even job market a few years later, the whole studying abroad story adds to social prestige. Can’t blame the NLS parents for doing this. India doesn’t have enough good colleges.

This is more what it is. NLU Alumni get rich if they work in firms, spoil their children, they dont learn work ethic, arent hungry to learn and want to live life on easy mode. Those kids end up instead of even trying for CLAT going down the JGLS/ LLM/ Undergrad abroad/ Papa will pay route. Parents cope with it by claiming what theyre doing is more high status. Most generational wealth is lost within a generation. But ofc when things are going well people dont realise the peril theyve put themselves in by coddling their children. Its fine- they can afford to do this for now.

Does it say anything at all about - objectively is NLS a better or worse uni than these other options? or the value of foreign llms? not at all. what might be a trend for the children of celebrities/ rich people does not necessarily apply to you- nor is it necessarily a good choice inherently.

This is the honest truth. Even for NLS alumni parents, the first option seems to be an Ivy League (followed by Oxbridge) undergrad degree for their kids. Those kids who want to be lawyers, the risk of not making it to NLS is so high these days, that they're all convinced about the value proposition (from their perspective) that JGLS offers.

Keep living in your blissful world where people who go to university abroad are necessarily less driven than their Indian counterparts. I am also glad that your imaginative world includes a state of affairs whereby, if the alumni were aware of how good NLS (or any Indian law school) would be, they would necessarily want to send their kids there. Your world-view is far too binary, your understanding of foreign universities is zero, your experience of kids who go abroad is probably limited to none at all and your understanding of the place of a university like NLS in the minds of many people is far too overblown. I think you just have to face the facts: that for some people (maybe for many), they see NLS as a stepping stone to lift them up, so that their kids can access better things. As an illustration using another country's context: somebody going to a state school, studying law at King's and then working at an MC firm, so that their kid could go to Harrow or Haileybury and study law at Oxford based on how well they do at either of those two exclusive independent schools. Obviously, people don't necessarily get the answer to what those 'better things' are right all the time (see decision-making about sending to Jindal/Ashoka), but that does not mean that all of them become totally blinkered. However, as I said, please do not allow this to nest rent-free in your head and take out of your eternal sense of so-called disadvantaged socioeconomic background victimhood mentality (in reality: envy, because you know that that's what you really want, and would die for your kids to have, unless of course you are one of those idealist types (who are of no use to anybody in any case)).

lol, that was deep, buddy. Not to brag or anything, but I’m already more rich than most NLS alums will ever be, so nothing I said comes from envy or “victimhood”. It’s all fully verifiable facts and it’s a shame really considering that private unis generally have next to no merit in India. That includes your Jindal and Ashoka.

This is so unnecessarily confrontational and smug. Sorry I touched a nerve. Fwiw I went to Oxford for the BCL. There’s people who get there on scholarships and are driven, and there’s people who get there because their dad bought a seat and they’re not driven. Not everyone at Oxford is some genius. Chill. I don’t think most NLU alumni have children that are earning scholarships. Not everything foreign is necessarily pure and perfect. Yes the education itself can be rigorous and high quality- but there’s many ways around that if you’re simply rich enough. Even at world class institutions.

For most people an NLU education is a means to social mobility, and you should strive to give your kids a better life than you had. But parents who are not educationists do not always know what that is. Just because a school boasts a fancy campus and has high fees doesn’t mean your kid will be surrounded by the right type of people or have a good education. He might be surrounded by folks who want to drink or smoke their lives away and the education might be a scam.

Just because there’s places like Oxford and Yale doesn’t mean it’s necessarily good for your kid to be cut off from all he knows and transplanted into a foreign land when he isn’t mature enough and needs more parenting and guidance.

The idea that rich people somehow cannot make these mistakes or that their choices of what to buy are always right because they’re rich- that’s ridiculous. Most inherited wealth is blown away in a generation. It’s a human impulse to hope that you can throw money at any parenting problem you face. But it’s a wrong one. If your kid can’t hack nls- maybe law isn’t for them, maybe they go to some other school - whatever. But it’s just a massive cope to assert that while NLS got you everything you have and while NLS was good enough for you, and while NLS has been improving- that some how it’s something that’s not desirable for your kid. That’s either bullshit or shortsighted.

Not only have I been to these fancy universities - I’ve also taught some children of nls alumni. It’s very hit or miss when it comes to talent or intelligence but there is a clear lack of hunger there. They have grown up with everything being handed to them and expect the same thing at university. God help them the day they have to actually earn something.