Strongly agree.

I think Sudhir has it right in many ways – the batch expansion is well-intended, the plans to improve faculty quality make sense, and in all honesty, I personally enjoy the 'rigour' of NLS.

But when 'rigour' means nonsense handwritten assignments to combat AI, when batch expansion is not accompanied by concomitant infrastructural upgrades, and when faculty quality is diluted due to bloating in batch size, it is very very hard to support Sudhir.

How exactly does that counter AI? All it shows is that the student has taken the time to copy something from someplace else. Moreover, it can't be subjected to plagiarism or AI check. Is that what the much vaunted Oxford and Rhodes and NLS education producing for logic these days?

I agree. If you look at a not insignificant number of people who are (or were) actually great minds in the world of legal academia, you'll realise how misguided it is, especially in the context of undergraduate students. Dworkin himself, for example, was a law firm man before taking up the jurisprudence chair at Yale. Hart, Dworkin's predecessor for the jurisprudence chair at Oxford, worked with MI5 (Britain's internal security and counterintelligence service) during World War II. Jeff King, who, like Sudhir, was supervised by Paul Craig at Oxford during DPhil (what Oxford calls a PhD), and is now a public law bigwig at UCL, worked as a commercial lawyer in New York for a number of years before taking a DPhil and doing what he does now. Just because many people don't have career changer backgrounds like that and went into academia straight away (including many of the big minds, like Raz, Tarunabh Khaitan), doesn't mean, even if you want your law students to become academics, that you stealth shut other options off.

I think Sudhir K realised this at one time. He even pointed, in a podcast interview he gave, to the United States, which he called the world's best system of legal education. Indeed, I recall him expressly advising people with academic aspirations to get some real world experience prior to going for academia. I am not sure what has caused him to change his mind, frankly, as his own background didn't stop him from giving that genuine advice.

And by the way, all this is coming from someone who has prolifically written on this site in Sudhir's defence against what I considered unfair and baseless criticism of him. It seems like you guys who are the majority on this site, the critics, have finally found a criticism which is convincing and which sticks. Just to note, I still believe, considering India's legal academia environment, that Sudhir is probably the best VC NLS could have had under current circumstances. I am not sure what that says about the general situation. TLDR; sorry for the slightly long exposition. Take it as a sign of exactly how disappointed I am at what is happening in NLS.

Stop this nonsense propaganda!! You people are upset that a VC with world-class qualifications, who hires top notch alumni, is imposing high standards. Not handing out high grades like candy. Not rewarding essays written by ChatGPT.

Please shift and go to a tier 2 college run by mediocre people, if that is how you feel.

He is having such a post because best universities in the world have one, and it looks good for optics and checklist. He believes that if a student is given good and rigorous academic training, then they should be about to get a job without any further support. As mentioned by someone else, you may choose to disagree with him, but you can't fault him for inconsistency. He's made this very clear from day one. If people join the university during his tenure despite that and then have different expectations from the admin, then he isn't one to be blamed.

This is the official data shared by the admin – look at the disproportionate number of bunk beds for women's hostels, as opposed to men's hostels:

Room inventory list

The following table indicates the number of rooms of each category available for Men and Women residents

Inventory

2 Bed

3 bed (cubicle)

3 bed (Non bunk)

3 bed (Bunk)

Total Beds

Men’s Residences

75

66

39

18

519

Women’s Residences

40

21

5

93

437

Not really. In 4th year, you will realise how it is difficult to schedule callbacks in Feb and June since Feb is marked as mandatory internship by many firms for the incoming A0s and all colleges have a vacation in June. In contrast, other colleges that get exemptions can intern in any given month which helps scheduling callbacks easier. They can also afford to do 2 callbacks with a single firm. None of this is possible at NLS. These are some of the key reasons why NLS is lagging behind in terms of placements.

If one person from any of these batches becomes a Rhodes Scholar + Oxford DPhil like him, according to Sudhir, the rest of you guys can go eat grass. Just manage your lives on this basis. If you can and want to, chase that path. If you can't and/or don't want to, work hard to chase your alternative dreams in your own way.

OP here, and honestly, I'm not sure how much I agree with this. I don't think exemptions for internships etc are feasible or the best. I do however understand the larger concern, and think it is in large part due to the batch expansion and the inability of students to add to their CVs via conferences, moots, negotiations (cross registration), essay-writing competitions, etc. due to the stringent attendance requirements and the unnecessary 'rigour' of the courses (handwritten assignments in 2026? really? surely there are better alternatives :/).

Why will it? Sudhir has made it clear since day one of his tenure that placement is not one of his priorities, academics is. You may dislike it, or protest against his stance, but he has been quite transparent about it. He does not believe that the university exists for getting people jobs.

a poor placement record as well. Sudhir needs to understand that the competition for jobs are intense. He can't keep pushing through the rigorous attendance policies, academic policies when other top NLUs are blatantly giving exemptions for internships. We only get 3 months in a year for internships and among them, June is a month where every college has a vacation so the chances of getting an internship or scheduling a callback becomes extremely difficult. Another month is October which sees a lot of holidays so the opportunity to impress the team is limited. The batch of 2027 will have a horrible placement and I hope that it rings a bell.

- monkeys invading hostels 24/7 with the university doing nothing, saying nothing, etc.

- electricity fluctuating every few minutes, making it impossible to charge devices

- water supply keeps fluctuating.

- roofs collapsing, destroying metal railings, etc. with minimal engagement by admin (except a letter claiming they have an "impeccable record" in maintaining safety, ignoring multiple other collapses)

- no support or attendance condonation for mooting

- campus events shut up by 9 pm mandatorily, irrespective of event, date, or circumstance

- faculty quality, the hallmark of NLSIU, has degraded due to the batch expansion, meaning you have [unrelated courses – redacted because the faculty is nice, but just not suited to this] forced to teach [redacted, unrelated courses].

- 30+ rooms in the men's hostel alone facing faulty fans, with worse situations faced by the women's hostels

There is so much more. A university is primarily meant to fulfill educational purposes, but a lot of people join university in the hopes of aggrandising via networking, making connections with peers, all of which is unnecessarily difficult in the face of unprecedented batch expansions that dilute the quality of learning and living in a residential space, etc.

For the "best" law school in the country, this is rather sad. Hoping to see some engagement, at least, as someone who genuinely holds this place in high stead and cherishes it.