None of those things are connections in the traditional sense. You can get a wealthy/famous relative to write a letter for you- but it will count for very little compared to a professor who has worked with you and can speak to your work. Those aren’t “connections” that’s just pro sociality and being good at your job. The path to get those recs is actually widely open. Just publish and do your job well and people will write you recs.

NLU degrees being preferred and foreign llms/ phds being preferred has little to do with connections. It has a lot to do with - is your degree worth something. Is the program rigorous/scam. Are your grades a reliable metric for what you know and can do. That’s also not connections. NLUs don’t admit based on who your daddy is. They admit based on CLAT. Study hard and crack it. It’s a stupid exam anyway.

Perhaps you want to say it’s all about who you know and connections because you want to explain away your own lack of achievement. But nearly everyone I have met in academia, here and abroad, has been first generation in law / in academia. There’s only a handful of exceptions. They aren’t succeeding because of who they know- they’re succeeding because of what they know and what they can do.

The latest kid to get into Yale is a first generation disabled learner. No connections except those he made by being good at his job.

If you cannot conduct yourself like an adult and insist on calling others “dumb AF”. I’m afraid you’re just exposing the level of intellect and professionalism that would close some professional doors for you.

Connections doesn't only mean parents, caste etc. Are you dumb AF ? Connections in academia means which universities did you graduate from, post graduate, doctoral, post doc from ? Who taught you ? Who mentored you ? Who can give you a recommendation? Which two professors will recommend you for a phd ? Which professor will recommend you for a post doc ? Which institute can recommend you for the funds ? There's a reason NLU folks are not preferred in central universities. There's a reason why NLUs are preferred abroad. There's a reason why abroad degrees are preferred here. Everything in academia is about connections. Seema like you haven't spent a day in academia.

imbecile? thats a little harsh. Do you really go around real life talking like that? I have taught law at the best universities in the country and studied it at the best universities in the world. Literally read the second sentence of what I wrote. Study well impress professors. You dont need connections in the sense that you dont need a relative the way you might in say litigation. You obviously still need to be pro social and be friendly with people you work with and meet expectations with your boss and find a way to work collaboratively. Maybe you should learn some of that pro-sociality while youre here.

But ten years of being in academia not one person has asked me who my parents were or what my caste is or anything like that. This aspect of the profession is more open to first generation folks than any other.

That's total nonsense. Your LLM does have to be niche. Teaching these days is mostly research-led teaching, so you need a specialism. Increasingly even in India, you need to be able to show proof to your uni of ongoing research and writing if you become an academic. Plus, LLM isn't really optional anymore. If you are thinking about abroad, no LLM and no PhD is like a disabled person with no legs trying to run a 100m race without a wheelchair. Academia everywhere is so credentialised these days that you need all the degrees you can get. Don't take someone like Nicolas McBride of Cambridge as a paradigmatic example of anything. Your usage of language seemed to indicate that you might think a non-postgraduate degrees pathway viable - like what McBride did. McBride is one of a kind: an academic without an LLM or PhD, teaching at Cambridge. That's got more to do with (1) when McBride entered the profession (at a time when further degrees in law were not viewed as essential requirements); and (2) because McBride himself is an exceptional guy with fantastic books on, among other things, philosophy of tort law and private law theories. Unless you have the guts to say you are the next McBride, you'll need to prove your academic worth via further degrees and publications to even get a foot in the door.

It's kind of bleak. Foreign funding for PhD is getting very uncertain, Indian universities are not good enough or don't have support for PhD scholars (NLS being a prime example), hirings have almost stopped in public sector- most hirings now are backlog posts. Private sector universities are opening but they also prefer people with foreign degrees, and most of them are not that good as well. Papers get 1 year to get reviewed in good journals, while frauds get published very easily in random Scopus journals.

And most importantly, we have lost a connection with the students. It feels very transactional- one semester or trimester getting over feels like a merger getting over in a law firm. Not much personal connections with students, like we used to have during our student days. It's hard to remain motivated to teach.

Hi all, like the title says- is there any scope in academia/teaching any field of law because of the stangnancy in so many established unis? Both in india as well as abroad (barring US)- is it viable (I'm not going to say "easy") for a law graduate with zero connections make it in the teaching world?