If you don't have any financial constraints family-wise, please go for it. Few months into corp law you'll come to realize that 60% of corp work is copy paste, formatting etc with occasional application of mind. Remaining 40% is intense research on niche questions which isn't transferable half the time. If you have a mind which leans towards the sciences, this may not be the ideal profession for you. Corp law is rarely intellectually challenging for someone who seeks intellectual rigour in a STEM sense

Hahaha yea, I agree. I genuinely feel litigation lawyers are “real” lawyers. The thrill of courtroom arguments, chalking abstract arguments, figuring our litigation tactics all seem in aggregation like a genuine “skill”.

Unfortunately, litigation is perhaps the most exclusive gated profession in the country. Not everyone can start out with 10k salary - I come from a small town and relocating to delhi would literally starve me with that income. Hence, corporate law is my only alternative.

I don’t think the point was about tangible vs intangibles outcomes. What “hard-skills” do you think you have developed after studying for 5 years in law school, and upon working as a corporate lawyer. Technologists can handle complex softwares like C++, Java, etc and can do math, coding and understand data structures and algorithms - somethings which an ordinary person can’t do. Similarly, architects have specific geometrical skills of creating building plans etc, data scientists and economists can work with tools such as R etc. Finance professionals understand quant and can create excel models. As a corproate lawyer - what hard skill do you think you have or that you practise that can’t be done by any ordinary person woth average intelligence. You only know how to read basic non-technical documents (you want understand data sheets or quant heavy documents), you do not know any tools (SCC and manupatra are search engines not tools), you only read regulations and laws and google what you don’t understand. How is that even a skill? Anyone can do that. We use language and jargon to fool ourselves to have some exclusive skill - we say things like stare decisis, in loco parentis etc which are in reality very simple basic logical terms shrouded in some random jargon. That cannot be called a skill. Look at the general day to day tasks of a corproate lawyer - Due Diligence, proof reading DRHPs, drafting contracts which are 95% boilerplate etc. these tasks are brainless.

This is going to be an old uncle lecture, but here goes.

If you're from the 2026 batch, then you haven't experienced being a lawyer. I get your sense of disillusionment - I've been down that road. But here's the thing; law school doesn't (and can't) teach you how to become a lawyer, and it makes little difference how many "professors of practice" have taught you. Realistically, law school can never teach you the realities of the profession, because each practice area in each city in each country will turn out differently. Law school will help you understand basic concepts, and that's pretty much it. Becoming a lawyer is something you start learning the first day on the job and then keep learning till you quit or die - it makes little difference if you're a corporate/transactional lawyer or a litigator. You will have boring days and you'll have riveting, intellectually stimulating ones. You need to learn to plough through both.

The "profession is built around talking jargon and moving documents"? How does that make it any different from other white-collar professions? You're just using different jargon and moving around different pieces of data. That data you're "mechanically" moving around may be stultifying to you, friend, but it means a LOT to your client's commercial or personal prospects. And, for the record, NOBODY talks more jargon and moves around more pointless documents than litigators, since you harbour the impression that litigation involves more skill than a corporate law.

You feel that your friends are more "skilled" because they're finance bros or tech bros? They're not. They just have a different set of skills than you and they're as untrained and inexperienced as you are. Besides, who will they turn to down the line when they want to restructure their businesses, or want advice on navigating new SEBI regulations, or when they're being sued for a breach of non-compete? They're going to turn to you. Your skill is helping these people get out of trouble, or get to where they want with their lives and their businesses. If you help them, they'll come back to you again and again, because they trust you. It's the same reason why most of us prefer to go to the same accountants or doctors or hairdressers - because we trust them with stuff that is personal, sensitive and really important to our well-being. A lawyer's true skill is the trust that they build - with clients, with colleagues, with courts and tribunals.

Is practicing as a corporate lawyer mechanical compared to a litigator? Up to a point, yes. But I know plenty of litigators who got pigeonholed into specific types of disputes who have the same complaint. You want an example of mechanical? Try doing merger/demerger scheme matters year after year and you'll see what 'mechanical' truly means.

I've dealt with all sorts of clients in my two plus decades of practice - startup CEOs not old enough to buy a drink, flash hedge fund managers, algotraders, genius programmers, civil servants, cops - you name it. Many of them would be bankrupt, screwed over by unethical investors or in prison for being frauds or just stupid and overconfident. They're not - because of us, unskilled, banal lawyers.

I started life as a gen corp/M&A lawyer, then did some cap markets, and then became a litigator (which I currently am). One of the reasons I moved to litigation was because I too felt that a corporate/transactional practice was process driven and boring. To my surprise and delight I discovered that my new litigator colleagues, while more familiar with court craft, didn't know how to read financial statements, thought ROFR was a dog's name and were clueless about FEMA other than it existed and the ED could come after you if you violated it. This was a huge disadvantage to them while dealing with a particularly tricky shareholders dispute. So, yes, I got bored with corporate law, but I had learned skills that were (a) not taught in my premier NLU and (b) none of my coworkers had. You see where I'm going with this?

This is somewhat out of context, but I feel this applies to our profession. One of my favourite movie monologues from Margin Call:

"If you want to do this with your life, and do it well, you need to believe that you are necessary. And you are. If people want to live like this...with their big cars and these houses that they haven't even paid for. Then you are necessary. The only reason they can continue to live like kings is because we've got our fingers on the scale in their favor. And if I were to take my finger off...then the whole world gets really fing fair, really fing quickly."

If you still want to get a degree in another discipline, sure, you be you. But remember that you're doing it after spending 5 years studying for a profession you want to ditch before even spending a day practising it. Good luck.

Corporate Lawyers create legal documents . The legal documents help in reducing future litigation costs for the company just like how the cybersecurity experts help in reducing malware related damages and future related costs incurred. So if you want to make something tangible you can see, use and feel then these fields are not for you at all. Same for Data science and economics.

You might be better suited to become an artist, cook, inventor, potter, lab scientist or may choose an MBA and open a business (since working as an HR or Consultant won't yield a tangible work product either) :)

I’m from the 2026 batch and have a PPO from a Tier-1 firm, but the more I experience corporate law, the more alienated I feel from it. It increasingly seems like a strangely hollow profession where, after five years of legal education, the only things I’ve really learned are how to read and write, which don’t even feel like “skills” in the way my friends in finance, econ or tech talk about Excel, C++, or R. Most days in corporate practice feel mechanical: reading bland, non-technical documents, and Googling basic things that everyone pretends are expertise.

The more I do it, the more it feels banal and oddly dishonest, as if the profession is built around talking jargon and moving documents rather than thinking or creating anything real. Litigation atleast required courtroom skills but it is so closed off to first gen lawyers its not even funny.

I am strongly considering taking up a new degree in data science and economics, or even cyber security. MBA doesn’t sound that bad either. I’m wondering if anyone else feels the same. Feel free to disagree, i’m open to contrary perspectives :)