I'm talking about the next 20 years, when the world becomes more technocratic. AI will completely take over, crypto will become more prevalent, finance will also become more complex etc.

How will studying Marx, Romila Thapar, Ambedkar etc equip law students? Isn't it better to train them to be more technocratic?

That's a given. Only naive people on this platform still insist that a BA-LLB or BBA-LLB/BSc-LLB degree does not make any difference, because the law subjects are all the same. The law subjects are surely the same, but the real differentiation happens in what other subjects one studies along with law subjects.

Already, there are instances wherein the demand for BBA-LLB is higher than BA-LLB, reflected in higher cut-offs, and there are a few universities that don't offer BA-LLB at all. The transition is happening. That said, state NLUs are still geared towards humanities students and hence BA-LLB, barring a few half-hearted attempts. Think of it - in all its wisdom, the administration in NLS actually thought that offering a 3-year BA degree is future-oriented!!!!

I work in IP. It’s scary how technical the cases are becoming. Leave aside patent law, even copyright and trademark infringement cases are nowadays very tech-focused and intertwined with cyber law concepts. I would have greatly benefited if I had learnt basic coding in college, plus a course in cybersecurity. Also, learning about investing and markets is a basic life skill. That should be taught too.

Sorry to upset the liberals here, but the BA courses are absolutely useless (and much of it ideologically one-sided and woke).

Who stopped you from getting those courses exactly? There are hundreds of opportunities available on the Internet, including free ones. It isn't someone else's fault that you went for something looking for something else! Many of the expert IP lawyers in the country don't have a science background, it isn't stopping them from being good at their job.

I agree. It already has started becoming one. At the ground level, small organizations don't want to spend much on legal cost. Having an in-house legal counsel is a financial burden. Most of the work, the top directors/management try to it by themselves. A Software Contract will already have to go for review in the eyes by the individuals involved in operation/execution. As for the basic draft to have a contract, you already have AI and templates ready. Fine-tuning it as per the requirements and deliverables is best done by the team executing the work. Why will you have lawyers here? At least you don't need a permanent employee for it.

Similarly you see, the legal shops such as firms and chambers are able to mint money only because of the volume of work. Legal services otherwise have very low value. Slowly and steadily, the work shall decrease OR at least, the value of the services shall remain constant, which may decrease as we approach more advancements technologically. Meaning, organizations shall look for generalists who can handle more work across departments. It won't matter whether you have BA LLB, BBA LLB, or even B.Tech or B.Pharma. Your ability to fluidify as per the work shall matter, in the nearer future.

Personal Opinions...

Beneficiary of Capitalism here, with a lot of experience in "tech and finance".

The idea that you can swap a BA for a BBA or BSc and produce better lawyers is one of the worst takes I have seen here (and I have seen many, from 18-25 year old kids).

The purpose of a law school is not to prepare everyone for a corporate law career. The purpose of a law school is to do just that- teach you the law, and then you decide whether to go into litigation, policy, journalism, academia, or into a corporate law career. The humanities are an integral component of this, because they give you a solid base from which you can pursue multiple options. If you get a BBA or a BSc, you are already limiting your options.

"How will studying Marx, Romila Thapar and Ambedkar equip law students"?

Are you for real? Let's assume for a second that you don't think law school is meant to produce litigators, journalists and commentators, academicians or policy professionals. Let's assume you only want to focus on crypto and "complex, technocratic finance".

Tomorrow, the government will release a draft framework and ask for comments. Or maybe you will get invited to a conference for your thoughts on the new law.

But you don't know how to critically analyze laws, beyond a very superficial level. You haven't studied Marx, and his theories of how laws favour the powerful and entrenched. You haven't studied Romila Thapar, so you don't know how to push back against conventional wisdom. You haven't studied Ambedkar (lol), so you don't know how legal systems are built to accommodate conflicting interests. Eventually, no one wants to listen to you, because you sound like a 22 year old.

That's still OK. As and when it goes to court, and some annoying left wing intellectuals oppose great corporate expansion plans by citing Marx and Ambedkar, you can always hire a senior counsel to counter their positions on Marx and Ambedkar.

Oops. The senior counsels have studied BBA LLB, and have no clue what the other side is talking about. They don't understand why it's a bad thing to use eminent domain, displace people, pay them "fair compensation", and mine rare earths.

That's also OK. You've studied BBA and BSc. You're now an expert in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Human Capital, PR and Crisis Management, and Economics (back to Marx again). If you did BSc, you now know Physics, Maths and Chemistry. You can combine your knowledge of Thermodynamics and Advanced Algebra with Law, to become a better lawyer.

But you've studied Accounting! Maybe you can replace PWC, because why do you need auditors when you have a lawyer with a BBA? You've studied maths, so you know how to solve cryptographic puzzles and mine your own crypto. You excitedly go to all the top crypto lawyers, but all of them have a BA LLB, understand crypto very well, and are not interested in your technical details.

Thankfully, all the top law colleges in this country don't feel the need to fix what has worked very well so far. Go ahead and downvote this all you want, but come back to this comment in 10 years, and lets talk.

This site is becoming a far-left echochamber. Any comment pushing for market reforms, meritocracy and technocracy gets mass downvoted. Given that the average LI reader is in a college student or student graduate, my guess is that they have become brainwashed to think like this by their professors and also by social media.

So the majority of people on LI actually believe that studying Marxist ideologues like Romila Thapar will better prepare them for law firm careers? To advise on fintech and crypto, swaps and derivatives, AI algorithm regulation etc? Or even basic litigation stuff like drafting a plaint, strategising on jurisdiction, damages claims etc?

Wow. 😳😳😳

" To advise on fintech and crypto, swaps and derivatives, AI algorithm regulation etc? Or even basic litigation stuff like drafting a plaint, strategising on jurisdiction, damages claims etc?"

That's what the law courses are for. You seem to forget the LLB part of the degree.

The number of upvotes your post has received shows how much humanities-oriented this platform is.

Your comment would make a lot of sense in the year 2000. Today, things have changed. A generalist law degree (like a BA-LLB) followed by an LLM in a special area would make sense. Today, that differentiation is happening at the UG level itself. There is a reason why questions are being raised about having generalist civil service officers versus specialist ones. The need and demand for specialist roles are rising.

At the current moment, all top law colleges are managed and led by those who are products of the traditional BA-LLB-oriented thinking and approach; hence, they will resist change. For real transformation to happen, the current crop has to retire, and new law schools that are not bound by archaic thinking have to crop up. It is happening, and they are NOT going to be the state NLUs. Let's talk after 10 years. Sure. By then, it will be embarrassing to even say that one holds a BA-LLB degree.

You think that a technical degree will make you Mark Zuckerberg but that's for markets not education. Do you see Harvard inviting him to be president? Western technological thinkers learn philosophy and other key parts of humanity. They are not being trained mostly for BPO work or building what some Silicon Valley white boy wants. One or two of them make it to thinking spaces but those always learn the humanities. It's okay if you don't want to be a leader but law schools train leaders and thinkers and they need the humanities. Everything else they can learn on their own depending on what path they choose. Modern Indian civil services definitely do not want officers with their own ideas so of course they will look for BPO type people who will do what politicians and the peope funding them want.

Your comment has a lot of value, but I don't think BA is that relevant.

1. In practice, whatever you have learnt in law school plays a small role. It's how much you put in, how far are you able to grind it. In a normal bail application before Sessions Court, how far are theories of Marx or legal writings of Upendra Back relevant.

2. A lot of legal work is compliance work, be it law firms or be it companies. You have to ensure compliance with law. A friend tells me that a Tier 1 law firm charges a lakh for their PSU and give legal opinion based on US judgments that do t even cover Indian laws properly. Another friend's relative who is a bigshot also wasn't happy with NLS grads of a Tier 1 firm, because they were asked to do compliance and they were doing overcomplicating things.

3. The other side is also wrong that you need a BTech for complex IP cases. You are arguing your case before a judge who isn't an engineer. The questions are about law, no matter how complex the subject matter is. These judgments involve a lot of economics, true, but even that economics is of a very advanced level. Most of the IP cases are simple trademark disputes, something for which not much of science is required.

4. Ultimately, I feel both line of comments are missing the woods for the tree. As Cardozo had said, most cases are trivial cases where a bad man wants to know how he can remain within the law. For very niche things, where there is a demand for barely 25 lawyers in the country, you can't train all 2000 students in NLUs. Similarly, the BA subjects are hardly relevant in actual practice, unless you are among those 50 people who argue exclusively before Supreme Court. Students are mature enough, they can start directly with law, and the degree can be shortened to 4 years.

A law school, as you rightly pointed out, is required to teach law. But that is the only thing you analysed correctly in your defensive and frankly, misguided written diarrhoea. In a bid to justify why a BA degree makes sense today in a world where a BA degree (absent an LLB degree along with it) is not going to get you any job, let alone a good job, you conflated an LLB degree with a BA-LLB degree. Your entire tirade against people with actual bachelor's degrees (and NO - BA is not a degree, and you cannot convince me otherwise despite 90% of this forum comprising of people with these degrees), Like B.Com, BBA, B.Sc. is very ill-founded too. As you would understand, a bachelor's degree equips you with skills, and not just knowledge. A lawyer with a bachelor's degree in say, B.Sc. will inherently possess a better grasp of fundamental logic which is so crucial for any lawyer to be able crystallise legal points and make arguments or draft crisp agreements or memos. While with a BA degree you can indulge in mental masturbation and feel better about having read Marx or some other old fart, it is not going to help you make an argument in court nor draft an agreement. But the fact of the matter is, that law school and the profession of law is agnostic to your bachelor's degree (even though some bachelor's courses may actually give you an edge in real life lawyering - but any hardworking lawyer can and will reach the same level with a bit of brains and hustle regardless of his/ her bachelor's degree). Where regulators have felt the need for a specific bachelor's degree for a specific area of law, they have mandated so - viz patent law. But you seriously cannot make an argument that BA degree is better than B.Sc. or BBA or B.Com or any other 'actual' degree, unless of course, if yourself are a BA graduate and lack the proper analytical skills which typically only 'actual' degrees develop in students.

Also, the argument that what has worked for 10 years doesn't need to be changed is also a faulty argument from the perspective of pure logic - something wrong can keep working for years but still be inefficient - doesn't mean that we shouldn't make our systems more efficient. You may have overlooked this while you were romancing Marx in your reveries while typing out whatever the hell that flowery BS you wrote.

I'm just looking at the half formed foggy ideas in your premise. "I'm talking about the next 20 years, when the world becomes more technocratic. AI will completely take over, crypto will become more prevalent, finance will also become more complex etc."

How will finance become more complex pray tell? AI will take over what exactly? Will humans stop creating things or doing things or having disputes? How will the world become more technocratic? will we no longer need generalists in any space? do you see the downside of siloing experts into specific fields and not having generalists?

Honestly this is borderline incoherent and vague enough to indicate to the viewer that you have no idea what you want to say but really want to appear smart by throwing jargon around. No hate, just feedback.

And until law students do not grow out of the habit of writing in this manner and thinking with such little clarity- there will always be a need for a liberal arts degree. You cannot run before you walk. And you cannot think about how technology will change the global economy before you think about how to form a clear sentence.

I was giving my PhD presentation on IP enforcement and I was asked to incorporate AI into my PhD. People felt that most of the infringements in future would be AI based, so my thesis has to be the same.

So, the world is changing. A lot of jobs are going to be obsolete in future. Courses should include AI developments into traditional laws as well.

literally think about your example. Because of AI you were asked to do more work. Not less.. People thought that the advent of internet and computers would put people out of jobs. And they did, there were plenty of people who were human calculators hired to do things computers do. But it also created jobs for people who learnt the new tech and adapted. Humans are an adaptive species.