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The basis of this discussion is that those Indian students with the talent will get recruited by foreign law firms, usually in their London offices. The argument that is being made here is that there are plenty of very talented students who are missing out on a spot, despite deserving one. If there were just not enough places to give room for all the talent, then sure, that's fine. The conversation stops right there. But we must interrogate if there are unfair traps built into the system that create biases against Indian talent.
Why are you afraid of such scrutiny? Are you afraid that you may (unknowingly) have been the beneficiary of some inequity that may have allowed you to be successful, but not others? Remember, getting a university place or a covetted job or whatever, in no country, is purely and exclusively the result of merit, though in most robust systems, merit and talent play a gigantic part. A healthy sprinkling of luck and a deal of privilege (of various kinds) also play a part in all this. How much have those things benefitted you?
And if you consider yourself to be part of that 'elite micro-minority', I challenge you: instead of engaging in personal attacks, refute that proposition in anyway you can. Tell us that the UK and the U.S. are open to the best legal talent from our country. And explain why that is, and how that openness manifests itself. Finally, explain why language like 'island of strangers' isn't a problem, if you object so strongly to Enoch Powell being named.
Take it from someone who’s studied and worked in the UK and US: barring an elite micro-minority educated in top schools and universities, the majority of Indian law grads are of terrible quality. Very poor writing skills and very bookish knowledge.
Even in the UK, the situation is so ferile now that if someone prominent (even in the current Labour admin) found it politically to their advantage to start being nasty about how many lawyers with non-UK qualifications the international law firms hire, the current government might just try to make it harder for foreign firms to do that in some way or the other (slipping in a few nasty remarks coded with assumptions about 'non-standard qualifications', without necessarily mentioning Indian law degrees by name). And this would be done to convince the hard right people who think that they (the current government) are pro-left, open borders types that they are not, so that those people vote for Labour rather than for Reform UK (an extremist anti-immigration party). It doesn't matter that they would alienate their traditional support base by doing this, because they are convinced beyond a point when reasoned argument can help, that that support base is comprised of a small portion of irrelevant London-based elites with one or more university degrees, and that the only way to gain back the so-called 'red wall' (working class constituencies that traditionally supported Labour, comprising of miners, farmworkers etc, who've not been to university) is to just stop short of outshining Reform (their main political challenger) on being rightist on immigration. You want evidence of this? Just read the speech by Starmer, the PM, on the launch of the recent immigration white paper, where he explained the reasons for toughening English language requirements across all visa categories. He said that if this were not done, Britain would become 'an Island of strangers'. You know who was the one who is famous (or infamous) for using words like that? The Tory politician Enoch Powell, who, in a 1967 speech decrying even lower levels of immigration than today as horrible, and calling for race relations laws that removed the flexibility of landlords and pubs to refuse service based on skin colour, said that immigration to the UK meant that there would be 'rivers of blood' on UK streets and people from the white majority would find themselves 'strangers' in their own homeland.
You want more evidence? Did any of you wonder why the UK government didn't fight harder on legal services access to the Indian market, why the Law Society blasted them on this? Didn't you think they were a little less enthusiastic on this than conventional wisdom stated that they should have been? Especially when the UK government is led by big shot lawyers - Shabana Mahmood (Lord Chancellor, Secretary of State for Justice), Lord Hermer (the prominent human rights lawyer turned Attorney General) and Sir Keir Starmer himself (also a prominent human rights lawyer and director of the Crown Prosecution Service)? Only one reason: they were scared of the impact it could have on immigration numbers. Concrete illustration: in a speech to a think-tank, Hurmer called the Conservatives and others advocating for leaving the ECHR 'Nazis'. If you see his profile and the type of work he has done, you will understand exactly why/how that might be in line with his political instincts, and you may even mentally encourage him to bring it on, in order to speak out against democratic backsliding. What you may find difficult to reconcile as being in character is his almost immediate apologies in 14 different positions, his bootlicking of these very people he called Nazis, his emphasis on the 'reasonableness' of such people. So consider the British side's fear of their own people and immigration numbers while doing your estimations of the power of SILF, the Lalajis and so on, and of whether SILF commands disproportionate political influence.
Understand this: Quality of you guys as lawyers doesn't matter anymore (not for the politicians or the drafters of immigration rules). The quality of your law schools is not relevant to this debate. The current political landscape doesn't care that many of you who want a training contract (and have what it takes to gain one) have attended a law school led by a Rhodes Scholar + Oxford DPhil graduate, a law school that is better (in some ways) than a few of their own (including some of the 'Russell Group' ones). They don't care that some of you may only want to stay as long as it takes for you to complete your TC. You are coming for 12 months, the worst is assumed: that you will do anything legal or illegal to stay as long as needed to gain a British passport. You are foreign, your qualifications are foreign. Foreign, in the political landscape of today, = bad. In other words, for a law firm, foreign qualification = unnecessarily risky. Therefore, we may have even to thank our stars that they are taking in as many NLU grads as they are.
Does this mean you should quietly turn over and give up on your dreams? If (working as a solicitor in the London office of a prominent international law firm) is what you really want, and you are willing to put in disproportionate sacrifice, then not. Fighting this is as important as anything else. But fight it pragmatically, choose your battles wisely. Calling for increased hiring right now is deeply unhelpful, unwise and irresponsible, considering the political landscape. If you are really willing to take on this fight, just do whatever you can to ensure that you are part of the steady trickle of foreign lawyers that are still allowed to get in.
Sorry for the long write-up, but I feel many of you are speaking with a very poor understanding of the situation in many countries, particularly UK. I hope this helps to refine your perspective.
Regards,
Someone with experience of the UK job landscape
But what about U.K. and Singapore? Even they hardly a single/or maximum 2-3 offers to our domestic students and that too, who have exceptionally performed in their academics, publications and foreign moots. Why don’t these jurisdictions hire in bulk?