"Selection procedure: The best legal blogger category will be judged by a combination of popular vote and a jury (other previous eligibility criteria and terms will continue to apply, while the rules remain subject to change if deemed necessary). The jury will consist of three judges, with each picking his or her favourite blogger in order, and an online vote will be held to determine the four most popular bloggers. The first-placed by poll and by each juror respectively will get 4 points, down to 1 point for the fourth placed. The points will be tallied and the one with the most number of points will win. In the event of tied points, popular vote points will act as the decider. A similar system will be used for determining the best posts in each category, with contestants entering a number of what they deem their top blogs in each class."
This works out to popular voted being responsible for 25% plus being a tie-breaker.
It depends whether when the word 'corrupt' is used together with a well-argued comment and also whether it is vague enough not to be potentially defamatory of any individual.
Calling any individual or small group of individuals is corrupt is still not ok.
As amusing as this discussion is, please stop indulging in repeated troll postings trying to create a mud-slinging match. Please try and discuss the issues intelligently rather than outright abuse of each other.
Here is Naik's response to your query, just in: "All cinemas are cooperating and the film is running. There is police protection at most theatres in karnataka. The relief allowed cinema exhibitors to open this morning and do the screening."
Thanks for your insightful and nevertheless amusing comment. Please do let us know if enter into your tea shop tie-up and there is any prospect of bringing in some business or synergies.
Thanks for your comments and glad you liked the feedback LegalPoet.
@1 rushab, thanks for your comment but I am not sure I follow completely. Are you against making the LI blogging platform a more competitive place?
I agree, that the competition should not trump good writing and expression but I think that a number of bloggers blog first because they enjoy expressing themselves, and second only because they want to win the prize money.
The prize money is partly meant to act as an incentive to improve blogging quality, as well as the fun factor. And certain categories, such as social blogging are meant by the anonymous benefactor to encourage bloggers to apply their minds to important issues.
Notwithstanding the above, I hope that Legally India will continue to be a place where any "Teenie-Weenie" can express themselves. However, as the platform becomes more popular there needs to be some filter to prevent a noise of mediocre quality blogs drowning out the good ones.
One major prerequisite to expression should therefore be some standard of quality. We have rarely enforced this to date (except in the case of spam or advertising), although we have made suggestions for improvement or editing of blogs that did not meet the standard.
I hope that clarifies it somewhat.
@3, I do not quite understand either. Popularity by itself will not win any prizes but count only towards around 25% of the scores for each blog. A three-member jury will contribute the other 75%, where quality will play a far greater role than popularity. Please see the judging process linked to above towards the end of the post.
In terms of the listing order of the blogs, we had to find some way of presenting them in an objective order and the total number of hits was the easiest way of doing so.
We used mergermarket's list and data for this, which does include PE deals but only if there is a change in ownership. This is their criteria:
"The mergermarket database includes Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) where there is a transfer in ownership of an economic interest in an ongoing business concern."
"Based on announced deals, including lapsed and withdrawn bids. Based on geography of either target, bidder or seller company being India Includes all deals valued over $5m. Where deal value not disclosed, deal has been entered based on turnover of target exceeding $10m. Activities excluded from table include property transactions and restructurings where the ultimate shareholders' interests are not changed."
I now realise that we may have oversimplified the Pangea3 salaries somewhat, which is entirely our fault.
Our survey figures pointed to a figure for Pangea3 from top national law schools of around Rs 4.5 lakh
Below the statement from Pangea3, which we did not parse correctly and therefore erroneously included a bonus element rather than just the base package.
"Our salaries for Freshers in 2009-10 from top 10 on campus recruiting programs was 4 to 6 lacs with the range relating to variable based incentive compensation separate from other benefits that some companies include as "CTC". This means that our top performers earned just under 6 lacs in base salary and bonus. In 2010-11 this will increase to 5 to 7 lacs.
All of our campus and off-campus fresher and non-fresher recruiting and offers are based on skills assessment tests both spoken and written. We reserve our on campus offers to top test performers and interview stand-outs.
We hire Freshers who test below that level at a lower compensation but at the Associate level typically in the 3 to 5 lac range including merit based incentive compensation. For those who require more training and testing to determine if they will qualify for these Associate positions, we hire them as Interns/Apprentices at a lower salary level."
I regret the error - we should have made this clearer in the original write-up and will clarify the absolute figures and correct appropriately as soon as possible.
I will respond to the Pangea3 points in due course - you are right and it does appear more complex than first stated. There is more variance in starting salaries and some may earn less than Rs 4 lakh. The figures quoted were for the top 10 law schools and include some performance element. Will clarify soon, I think it was a mix-up on our side.
In response to #64 and 65, yes, we are aware that some firms do pay variable salaries depending on where recruits join from.
Currently our research unfortunately focused mostly on national law school recruitment, so yes, the data sets are limited.
Please do send us any information you have and we will definitely try to incorporate it, however!
ALMT did advise on Cobra Beer's buy of Iceberg Industries with AZB in late May. However, no value for the transaction was disclosed to we did not include it in this write-up.
What I do find very interesting is that lawyers at the BCI and elsewhere assume that we are pro-liberalisation while those who are pro-liberalisation assume that we must be in bed from the anti-liberalisation lobby.
I guess if nothing else, the fact that we have managed to upset both sides of the debate is evidence of balanced journalism of some sort.
If I remember rightly, we did do a web poll right in the early days of Legally India, which showed that readers were in favour of foreign firms coming in.
We will run something along those lines again soon, though I do not think the findings will be news to anyone.
The immediate priority will be to confirm starting salaries across a majority of law firms and corporates.
Thanks to the ones who have emailed us already with tips. If your firm is not included in the above list or you know the figures of firms, please do email us anonymously.
We did have figures for many more firms and corporates but were unable to publish these as for some we only had one law school source.
In order to respect privacy and get an accurate number we will aim for at least two different sources from different colleges.
We do generally post up comments questioning the facts of the stories. However, in this case the comment had terrible grammar, was written in text message speak, made unbacked claims about how they were treated at Pangea3 and gave a very very very low salary figure.
We are all for debate but in this case the post had all the hallmarks of a disgruntled (ex?)employer or a rival.
Honestly, you did not miss very much with our redaction.
Now you can either receive updates over an RSS reader or use a service such as Feedmyinbox to send you an email everytime there is a new post. http://www.feedmyinbox.com/
Just paste the above RSS URL into the box on Feedmyinbox.
I believe that the earlier reported figures for Amarchand also included a certain bonus element and other benefits, which can take the 'package' as a whole to Rs 13 lakh (or perhaps more, according to some sources).
However, we did not include bonus figures for any organisation in the list but stuck with basic fixed salary portions only for now.
I completely agree that bonus figures are important.
However, in light of the difficulties with even confirming the basic package with law firms and in the interests of retaining some sort of parity between figures we had to start somewhere.
Once you put bonuses in it, analysis and accurately confirming figures becomes 10 times as difficult. However, as we get more data on this we hope to be able to provide a level of bonus transparency too.
For Bharucha & Partners we did not have enough data points to publish a reliable figure at this stage, but from what we do have the firm's salary figures do not appear to be in the top 10.
However, we aim to confirm more figures and update the table regularly.
We intend to publish more detailed figures on senior salaries too but what the associate satisfaction and salary research has shown that even at a very junior level there is very little parity between salaries.
Therefore analysis is tough, as salaries can fluctuate widely even at the same seniority level.
However, we will do what we can if possible, without compromising the privacy of individuals.
@4 - The published salaries reflect remuneration that was offered throughout the 2009-10 recruitment season and for Amarchand the figures were consistent at 9.6 lakh (excluding bonus).
We understand that Amarchand may be in the process of revising its salaries although the firm was unavailable for comment at the time of going to press.
Both were largely unedited and both were widely read and featured on the front-page. This seemed to have been the fairest possible way for us to do it.
Secondly, these were the only two major articles we have carried that argued exclusively for or against on the issue.
They were also the first and we thought it would be useful to get both anti and pro views on the record, so the arguments could get aired in the open.
I believe that has been done. Until someone says something new or gets elected to a position of power where their opinion is relevant, we will carry another interview, perhaps exclusively on the subject, or we would allow them to write an opinion piece on it.
As I said, I was merely responding to a query asking for some potential arguments against foreign firms, but I do not want to get bogged down in a long discussion.
@24, I think your responses are valid arguments for the most part. But changing the status quo is always harder than keeping it. Probably merely good arguments therefore may not do by themselves unless and until some of the real decision makers get convinced that there is a compelling reason for them to act.
Like a prior commenter @21 said - most ministers are probably not opposed to common firms but why should they bother to act? It won't win them many votes and the aam aadmi won't care. If anything, a large number of advocates is still convinced, probably erroneously, that foreign firms would affect them directly. Ergo, there are bigger fish to fry for politicians right now and not a single one would stick their neck out and risk alienating influential senior lawyers and advocates.
The last time in the 90s or so I believe when legal liberalisation came up in politics, in fact, advocates staged a massive strike and march on Lok Sabha (I am not 100% sure on the details of this).
@25 As mentioned above, I was responding to a specific request to only list one side of the arguments. I think the pro-liberalisation arguments have been made enough times in public and on these forums by readers and several other interview subjects to save me from repeating them.
And finally, in all honesty, why would an editor of a legal news publication have a bias against foreign law firms? You don't think that the interesting news stories we could write would increase tenfold if foreign firms did enter India? Surely, that would be in our personal editorial interest.
But until then, we will not take sides and will continue sitting on the fence so we can report the facts and developments impartially, which I believe is more important than pleasing readers with our editorial policies or playing a popularity contest.
Finally, the senior public proponents of liberalisation you can count on several hands and many of these have been written about plenty in the public domain already.
We will not be running an editorial campaign for either side but if there is a reason to interview someone other than just liberalisation, we will do so and include their views.
Thanks for your response. I do not want to start a massive debate on this issue again. But in any case, since you ask, there are several arguments that could be made against foreign law firms.
And ultimately your view on this will boil down whether you believe that globalisation should be fettered or not.
So here are some points of view against foreign firms, off the top of my head.
1. Basically a derivative of the mom n pop shop argument. Why did India not allow foreign supermarkets and retailers in for so long? Sure, perhaps prices would go down, quality of products would increase but part of the original retail 'culture' would disappear. Plus there is a massive voter block and lobby group of shopkeepers of course. Also completely personally, for example, I would not welcome the UK or US supermarket culture from dominating Indian food retail - it creates many of its own problems but I won't go off tangent.
2. Should a legal market not have its own healthy ecosystem of domestic firms, rather than just copy-pasting foreign structures wholesale and becoming another carbon-copy practice of all other jurisdictions? Not everything about legal advice in the US or UK is perfect either. Sure, it is arguably more professional in structure, gives more opportunities and jobs but arguably the personal touch and relationship with clients is disappearing and legal services are increasingly just another service industry.
3. Maybe the practice of law is something special and unique to each country - after all, lots of European countries only recently liberalised their legal profession (and some have not at all - Switzerland might be one example, but I am not 100% sure.) Maybe the practice of law, which is fundamental to each nation, should be kept in domestic hands, at least partly, instead of being made subject to globalised entities where India is just another profit centre.
4. Many European countries have lost their local independent firms almost completely, and most are now dominated by the Anglo-Saxon corporate law firm ethos, which is largely profit driven and accounting for a global partnership.
5. Timing. When should foreign firms be allowed in, if at all? Would you have been fine with it 10 years ago, when Indian firms would no doubt have been steamrollered? If your answer is no, then what has changed now? Are there enough independent strong firms in India right now that would remain after the entry of foreign firms? It's a matter of degree, and many of the domestic players may feel that they are not yet at a size where they would survive, although they might feel they are ready in one year, 5 years or 10 years. Who knows. And maybe in the meantime the second tier of Indian law firms will grow as big as the second tier firms in the UK, US or elsewhere? Competition does not only have to come from outside, although it may be faster.
6. If I was a partner or sole proprietor making lots of money, why exactly should I invite competition in? Altruism towards young lawyers who want higher paying jobs and more options? Sympathy for clients who think they'd get better service and more competitive and lower prices? As any other industry would, the people controlling the legal industry too are reasonable to act in their own interest and try to prevent competition as long as possible. Microsoft did as much for years, as would any other dominant market player if they can get away with it. Sure, it may not seem fair to some but the system is often not fair.
Anyway, I really do not want to bog this down into a massive off-topic debate.
All I am saying is, either side may validly have a strongly held opinions or belief on this. Whether one is wrong or right depends on who you happen to be or what ideologies you espouse.
In any case, while playing devil's advocate somewhat above, I personally have no vested interests or bias for either side of this debate.
I am not sure about the claims you make about CPIM and can not comment on that.
But I do know that Legally India does not have a strong agenda one way or another on liberalisation. However, we also recognise the fact that there are two sides to this debate and both have some merits.
We therefore generally do not go out of our way to find people to interview who are for or against foreign firms because, to be honest, most of the arguments we have already reported in the past or have been made numerous times in comments or forums.
If someone says something new about it or is in an influential position to do something about it or there is a new development (pro or con), we generally mention it.
If you have a new take or argument on the issue, please let us know and we'll be happy to look into it and/or report if relevant.
I wouldn't necessarily say that the quality of the recruitment coordination committee (RCC) is the best, but NLSIU is still the law school that a majority of recruiters have told me they would think about first when hiring, even if there is no real qualitative difference anymore to other candidates.
Plus, NLSIU finished its recruitment run very early this year, although I accept that other recruitment committees may not be keen on allowing recruiters on campus early. Still, securing jobs early has to count as some indicator...
Ultimately, however, I would still say that NLSIU's RCC is the strongest because of its long-standing ties and contacts in the profession, and if you want a job at a big law firm the chances there are still better than at many others.
In addition, apart from NLU Delhi and GLC Mumbai (which arguably has the best local recruitment record of all), NLSIU is far more favourably placed than most others in terms of a local law firm recruitment market: Bangalore is India's third law firm city, without a doubt.
I hope that clarifies things somewhat, although this analysis does not purport to be scientific.
It was supposed to be less about a national law school than about the points raised by various professors, which happened to be said in the city where the tragedy happened.
We found academics' comments interesting in this case.
Great idea. We will try to get the first part of the salary associate survey out this week and could follow up with a poll/survey of sorts.
The only risk is that you might get lots of non-NLU students and others voting in such a poll, skewing the results. I will see whether we can feasibly do something more bespoke perhaps...
"A resolution was adopted by the Bar Council of India on 10 April 2010 to conduct an All India Bar Examination, the passing of which will entitle an advocate to practice law in India. Consequent to the resolution, the following rules were inserted into Part VI, Chapter III of the Bar Council of India Rules. It is yet to be published in the Gazette of India.
[To be inserted as Rules 9 to 11 in Part VI, Chapter III of the Bar Council of India Rules – Conditions for Right To Practice – under Section 49(1)(ah) of the Advocates Act, 1961]
RESOLVED that as the Bar Council of India is vested with the power of laying down conditions subject to which an advocate shall have the right to practice, these Rules, therefore, lay down such condition of an All India Bar Examination, the passing of which would entitle the advocate to a Certificate of Practice which would permit him/her to practice under Chapter IV of the Advocates Act, 1961.
9. No advocate enrolled under section 24 of the Advocates Act, 1961 shall be entitled to practice under Chapter IV of the Advocates Act, 1961, unless such advocate successfully passes the All India Bar Examination conducted by the Bar Council of India. It is clarified that the Bar Examination shall be mandatory for all law students graduating from academic year 2009-2010 onwards and enrolled as advocates under Section 24 of the Advocates Act, 1961." [... etc ...]
Maybe the original wording is not entirely unequivocal although it does not read that only substandard schools would dissent either.
What was meant is that the potentially strongest lobby-group against the bar exam might be law schools and students that are sub-standard - after all, what good is a law degree if the graduates might not pass a required exam afterwards.
Those two groups (as well as perhaps several others) might have everything to lose after a bar exam full stop, no matter when it is held.
I do not think any students at any of the top 20 or 50 or 100 law schools would have serious cause to be worried about not passing the exam, judging by the "basic" level of difficulty it will apparently be pegged at.
I would therefore argue that the only thing that could potentially delay a bar exam indefinitely would be such lobby groups who tried doing everything they could to stop the exam from ever happening.
A mere hypothetical, at this point, of course.
Apologies for any ambiguity or offence caused. I realise now that it should have been explained better - please read the first few paragraphs of the one-year legal education round-up which explains it far better:
Please do share more details about what you disagree with - it is quite hard to figure that part out from your comment apart from general disagreement.
I don't remember that we wrote much about processes or skill levels - all we reported was from which colleges students were recruited from and about their expansion plans in terms of capital investment and headcount. If that is not news, I do not know what is, although I apologise if it was not an interesting article for you.
We have been in touch with some of these colleges so far but some of these such as Symbi had not yet finished their recruitment season as of last week.
Some colleges we have not been able to contact yet - if you are from one of these colleges or have contacts there, please do email us and we will get in touch.
We published the numbers we requested from Pangea3, I will check about IFCAI and include.
@2 - we do care about the details. Generally we try to publish news that will be interesting to readers or those in the industry. Some news may be more interesting or relevant to some than to others by necessity. In this case, we found that these recruitment figures were an interesting illustration of where LPOs recruit from.
@28 - That seems a bit too complicated a conspiracy that you give us credit for but thanks...
We did announce several months ago that we could not be including any further moots in this MPL season as it would prejudice things unfairly to add scoring opportunities at a late stage - one college or another would always have complained that they are not participating. The only way to have kept it fair was to retain some consistency after one point, even if it meant excluding a moot which was borderline.
The listed moots and scoring criteria were subject to change and suggestions for a long time and only in exceptional circumstances did we add competitions in the later stages of the competition. The whole process was carried out as transparently as possible if you have been following the MPL throughout the season.
Secondly, I really doubt that any moot would seriously bribe us to be included in the MPL, but thanks for the vote in the MPL's influence, though less in our ethics.
Third, we have said numerous times in the past that the next MPL season would include more moots and we will recompile a list and add moots based on the suggestions received in this forum and others.
Options 1 and 3 don't sound bad though I guess I'd have to write off to all free time in the next 6 months to moderate comments and abuse full-time... :-)
FYI have had a conversation with someone close to the exam planning and apparently an FAQ will be posted on the BCI website on Monday which I was told would clarify a lot of points.
Drew P - you'll get your shout out in the round-up Part 2, do not you worry! Anyway, congratulations on managing to persevere with LI for a year despite your repeated avowals to the contrary.
It is proving to be pretty much impossible getting in touch with the team, with moot captains (due to campus holidays) and convenors (due to the Dominican Republic time difference and travel).
We will update ASAP but need to get authoritative confirmation of results, plus the details on other point scoring awards.
@6 - We have had to take a different approach with the survey since some of the figures do not quite check out as remuneration systems are really complex within firms and difficult to publish while maintaining respondents' anonymity.
Next week we are planning to publish properly confirmed starting salary figures combining the survey and other sources.
Then we'll move onto further remuneration from the survey shortly thereafter where possible.
Please bear with us on this - again, apologies for the delay.
Sorry, should have mentioned - the competition closes on 30 July.
Very lucky we had such a generous donor on this category, yes! Thanks again dear anonymous benefactor. I believe they want to encourage good legal writing and thought on issues that are important with the category...
http://bit.ly/aoDshy
Thanks,
Kian
"Selection procedure:
The best legal blogger category will be judged by a combination of popular vote and a jury (other previous eligibility criteria and terms will continue to apply, while the rules remain subject to change if deemed necessary).
The jury will consist of three judges, with each picking his or her favourite blogger in order, and an online vote will be held to determine the four most popular bloggers.
The first-placed by poll and by each juror respectively will get 4 points, down to 1 point for the fourth placed. The points will be tallied and the one with the most number of points will win. In the event of tied points, popular vote points will act as the decider.
A similar system will be used for determining the best posts in each category, with contestants entering a number of what they deem their top blogs in each class."
This works out to popular voted being responsible for 25% plus being a tie-breaker.
Calling any individual or small group of individuals is corrupt is still not ok.
Best regards,
Kian
As amusing as this discussion is, please stop indulging in repeated troll postings trying to create a mud-slinging match. Please try and discuss the issues intelligently rather than outright abuse of each other.
Cheers,
Kian
Here is Naik's response to your query, just in: "All cinemas are cooperating and the film is running. There is police protection at most theatres in karnataka. The relief allowed cinema exhibitors to open this morning and do the screening."
Best regards,
Kian
@1 rushab, thanks for your comment but I am not sure I follow completely. Are you against making the LI blogging platform a more competitive place?
I agree, that the competition should not trump good writing and expression but I think that a number of bloggers blog first because they enjoy expressing themselves, and second only because they want to win the prize money.
The prize money is partly meant to act as an incentive to improve blogging quality, as well as the fun factor. And certain categories, such as social blogging are meant by the anonymous benefactor to encourage bloggers to apply their minds to important issues.
Notwithstanding the above, I hope that Legally India will continue to be a place where any "Teenie-Weenie" can express themselves. However, as the platform becomes more popular there needs to be some filter to prevent a noise of mediocre quality blogs drowning out the good ones.
One major prerequisite to expression should therefore be some standard of quality. We have rarely enforced this to date (except in the case of spam or advertising), although we have made suggestions for improvement or editing of blogs that did not meet the standard.
I hope that clarifies it somewhat.
@3, I do not quite understand either. Popularity by itself will not win any prizes but count only towards around 25% of the scores for each blog. A three-member jury will contribute the other 75%, where quality will play a far greater role than popularity. Please see the judging process linked to above towards the end of the post.
In terms of the listing order of the blogs, we had to find some way of presenting them in an objective order and the total number of hits was the easiest way of doing so.
Do keep letting us know your feedback!
Thanks,
Kian
I look forward to hearing updates Deepak.
Best wishes,
Kian
"The mergermarket database includes Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) where there is a transfer in ownership of an economic interest in an ongoing business concern."
"Based on announced deals, including lapsed and withdrawn bids.
Based on geography of either target, bidder or seller company being India
Includes all deals valued over $5m. Where deal value not disclosed, deal has been entered based on turnover of target exceeding $10m.
Activities excluded from table include property transactions and restructurings where the ultimate shareholders' interests are not changed."
I now realise that we may have oversimplified the Pangea3 salaries somewhat, which is entirely our fault.
Our survey figures pointed to a figure for Pangea3 from top national law schools of around Rs 4.5 lakh
Below the statement from Pangea3, which we did not parse correctly and therefore erroneously included a bonus element rather than just the base package.
"Our salaries for Freshers in 2009-10 from top 10 on campus recruiting programs was 4 to 6 lacs with the range relating to variable based incentive compensation separate from other benefits that some companies include as "CTC". This means that our top performers earned just under 6 lacs in base salary and bonus. In 2010-11 this will increase to 5 to 7 lacs.
All of our campus and off-campus fresher and non-fresher recruiting and offers are based on skills assessment tests both spoken and written. We reserve our on campus offers to top test performers and interview stand-outs.
We hire Freshers who test below that level at a lower compensation but at the Associate level typically in the 3 to 5 lac range including merit based incentive compensation. For those who require more training and testing to determine if they will qualify for these Associate positions, we hire them as Interns/Apprentices at a lower salary level."
I regret the error - we should have made this clearer in the original write-up and will clarify the absolute figures and correct appropriately as soon as possible.
Best regards,
Kian
:-)
@6 - T-shirts eh... Hmm...
In response to #64 and 65, yes, we are aware that some firms do pay variable salaries depending on where recruits join from.
Currently our research unfortunately focused mostly on national law school recruitment, so yes, the data sets are limited.
Please do send us any information you have and we will definitely try to incorporate it, however!
Best,
Kian
What I do find very interesting is that lawyers at the BCI and elsewhere assume that we are pro-liberalisation while those who are pro-liberalisation assume that we must be in bed from the anti-liberalisation lobby.
I guess if nothing else, the fact that we have managed to upset both sides of the debate is evidence of balanced journalism of some sort.
If I remember rightly, we did do a web poll right in the early days of Legally India, which showed that readers were in favour of foreign firms coming in.
We will run something along those lines again soon, though I do not think the findings will be news to anyone.
Best regards,
Kian
The immediate priority will be to confirm starting salaries across a majority of law firms and corporates.
Thanks to the ones who have emailed us already with tips. If your firm is not included in the above list or you know the figures of firms, please do email us anonymously.
We did have figures for many more firms and corporates but were unable to publish these as for some we only had one law school source.
In order to respect privacy and get an accurate number we will aim for at least two different sources from different colleges.
@57 - Re: Pangea3 insider
We do generally post up comments questioning the facts of the stories. However, in this case the comment had terrible grammar, was written in text message speak, made unbacked claims about how they were treated at Pangea3 and gave a very very very low salary figure.
We are all for debate but in this case the post had all the hallmarks of a disgruntled (ex?)employer or a rival.
Honestly, you did not miss very much with our redaction.
Best regards,
Kian
In LegalPoet's case that is:
http://www.legallyindia.com/1371-LegalPoet/Subscribe-to-blog-rss-feed
Now you can either receive updates over an RSS reader or use a service such as Feedmyinbox to send you an email everytime there is a new post.
http://www.feedmyinbox.com/
Just paste the above RSS URL into the box on Feedmyinbox.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks,
Kian
Particularly loved your use of "oozing"...
However, we did not include bonus figures for any organisation in the list but stuck with basic fixed salary portions only for now.
Best regards,
Kian
However, in light of the difficulties with even confirming the basic package with law firms and in the interests of retaining some sort of parity between figures we had to start somewhere.
Once you put bonuses in it, analysis and accurately confirming figures becomes 10 times as difficult. However, as we get more data on this we hope to be able to provide a level of bonus transparency too.
For Bharucha & Partners we did not have enough data points to publish a reliable figure at this stage, but from what we do have the firm's salary figures do not appear to be in the top 10.
However, we aim to confirm more figures and update the table regularly.
Best regards,
Kian
Therefore analysis is tough, as salaries can fluctuate widely even at the same seniority level.
However, we will do what we can if possible, without compromising the privacy of individuals.
@4 - The published salaries reflect remuneration that was offered throughout the 2009-10 recruitment season and for Amarchand the figures were consistent at 9.6 lakh (excluding bonus).
We understand that Amarchand may be in the process of revising its salaries although the firm was unavailable for comment at the time of going to press.
Best regards,
Kian
On year-on-year raise it would be hard for us to give accurate figures as this is the first such published survey that we can rely on.
However, we will keep updating the table and now that we have baseline figures in future years we can analyse trends in more detail.
Best regards,
Kian
@4 I do not usually wear sarees, no, neither am I as pretty as Ekta Kapoor, but thank you very much anyway! (I think) :-)
Anyway, well done on a funny post with some good grains of truth!
Cheers,
Kian
However, for the next MPL season we have some big plans to make it even better hopefully. We'll keep you posted.
Best,
Kian
We clearly marked Lalit Bhasin's anti-liberalisation views as an opinion piece, even in the title.
http://www.legallyindia.com/20100203457/Legal-opinions/opinion-collectives-wisdom-should-foreign-firms-be-allowed-at-all
All opinion pieces are largely unedited and this one in particular was a response to the previous piece by Hemant Bhatra arguing that foreign firms should be allowed in. Lalit Bhasin's article also linked directly to Hemant Bhatra's.
http://www.legallyindia.com/20100128427/Legal-opinions/opinion-why-the-lawyers-collective-judgment-is-wrong
Both were largely unedited and both were widely read and featured on the front-page. This seemed to have been the fairest possible way for us to do it.
Secondly, these were the only two major articles we have carried that argued exclusively for or against on the issue.
They were also the first and we thought it would be useful to get both anti and pro views on the record, so the arguments could get aired in the open.
I believe that has been done. Until someone says something new or gets elected to a position of power where their opinion is relevant, we will carry another interview, perhaps exclusively on the subject, or we would allow them to write an opinion piece on it.
As I said, I was merely responding to a query asking for some potential arguments against foreign firms, but I do not want to get bogged down in a long discussion.
@24, I think your responses are valid arguments for the most part. But changing the status quo is always harder than keeping it. Probably merely good arguments therefore may not do by themselves unless and until some of the real decision makers get convinced that there is a compelling reason for them to act.
Like a prior commenter @21 said - most ministers are probably not opposed to common firms but why should they bother to act? It won't win them many votes and the aam aadmi won't care. If anything, a large number of advocates is still convinced, probably erroneously, that foreign firms would affect them directly. Ergo, there are bigger fish to fry for politicians right now and not a single one would stick their neck out and risk alienating influential senior lawyers and advocates.
The last time in the 90s or so I believe when legal liberalisation came up in politics, in fact, advocates staged a massive strike and march on Lok Sabha (I am not 100% sure on the details of this).
@25 As mentioned above, I was responding to a specific request to only list one side of the arguments. I think the pro-liberalisation arguments have been made enough times in public and on these forums by readers and several other interview subjects to save me from repeating them.
And finally, in all honesty, why would an editor of a legal news publication have a bias against foreign law firms? You don't think that the interesting news stories we could write would increase tenfold if foreign firms did enter India? Surely, that would be in our personal editorial interest.
But until then, we will not take sides and will continue sitting on the fence so we can report the facts and developments impartially, which I believe is more important than pleasing readers with our editorial policies or playing a popularity contest.
Finally, the senior public proponents of liberalisation you can count on several hands and many of these have been written about plenty in the public domain already.
We will not be running an editorial campaign for either side but if there is a reason to interview someone other than just liberalisation, we will do so and include their views.
Best regards,
Kian
And ultimately your view on this will boil down whether you believe that globalisation should be fettered or not.
So here are some points of view against foreign firms, off the top of my head.
1. Basically a derivative of the mom n pop shop argument. Why did India not allow foreign supermarkets and retailers in for so long? Sure, perhaps prices would go down, quality of products would increase but part of the original retail 'culture' would disappear. Plus there is a massive voter block and lobby group of shopkeepers of course. Also completely personally, for example, I would not welcome the UK or US supermarket culture from dominating Indian food retail - it creates many of its own problems but I won't go off tangent.
2. Should a legal market not have its own healthy ecosystem of domestic firms, rather than just copy-pasting foreign structures wholesale and becoming another carbon-copy practice of all other jurisdictions? Not everything about legal advice in the US or UK is perfect either. Sure, it is arguably more professional in structure, gives more opportunities and jobs but arguably the personal touch and relationship with clients is disappearing and legal services are increasingly just another service industry.
3. Maybe the practice of law is something special and unique to each country - after all, lots of European countries only recently liberalised their legal profession (and some have not at all - Switzerland might be one example, but I am not 100% sure.) Maybe the practice of law, which is fundamental to each nation, should be kept in domestic hands, at least partly, instead of being made subject to globalised entities where India is just another profit centre.
4. Many European countries have lost their local independent firms almost completely, and most are now dominated by the Anglo-Saxon corporate law firm ethos, which is largely profit driven and accounting for a global partnership.
5. Timing. When should foreign firms be allowed in, if at all? Would you have been fine with it 10 years ago, when Indian firms would no doubt have been steamrollered? If your answer is no, then what has changed now? Are there enough independent strong firms in India right now that would remain after the entry of foreign firms? It's a matter of degree, and many of the domestic players may feel that they are not yet at a size where they would survive, although they might feel they are ready in one year, 5 years or 10 years. Who knows. And maybe in the meantime the second tier of Indian law firms will grow as big as the second tier firms in the UK, US or elsewhere? Competition does not only have to come from outside, although it may be faster.
6. If I was a partner or sole proprietor making lots of money, why exactly should I invite competition in? Altruism towards young lawyers who want higher paying jobs and more options? Sympathy for clients who think they'd get better service and more competitive and lower prices? As any other industry would, the people controlling the legal industry too are reasonable to act in their own interest and try to prevent competition as long as possible. Microsoft did as much for years, as would any other dominant market player if they can get away with it. Sure, it may not seem fair to some but the system is often not fair.
Anyway, I really do not want to bog this down into a massive off-topic debate.
All I am saying is, either side may validly have a strongly held opinions or belief on this. Whether one is wrong or right depends on who you happen to be or what ideologies you espouse.
In any case, while playing devil's advocate somewhat above, I personally have no vested interests or bias for either side of this debate.
Best regards,
Kian
But I do know that Legally India does not have a strong agenda one way or another on liberalisation. However, we also recognise the fact that there are two sides to this debate and both have some merits.
We therefore generally do not go out of our way to find people to interview who are for or against foreign firms because, to be honest, most of the arguments we have already reported in the past or have been made numerous times in comments or forums.
If someone says something new about it or is in an influential position to do something about it or there is a new development (pro or con), we generally mention it.
If you have a new take or argument on the issue, please let us know and we'll be happy to look into it and/or report if relevant.
Best regards,
Kian
However, for those interested in reading more about plagiarism, have a look:
http://www.legallyindia.com/902-how-comrade-whistle-blower-lost-his-ethical-virginity
I wouldn't necessarily say that the quality of the recruitment coordination committee (RCC) is the best, but NLSIU is still the law school that a majority of recruiters have told me they would think about first when hiring, even if there is no real qualitative difference anymore to other candidates.
Plus, NLSIU finished its recruitment run very early this year, although I accept that other recruitment committees may not be keen on allowing recruiters on campus early. Still, securing jobs early has to count as some indicator...
Ultimately, however, I would still say that NLSIU's RCC is the strongest because of its long-standing ties and contacts in the profession, and if you want a job at a big law firm the chances there are still better than at many others.
In addition, apart from NLU Delhi and GLC Mumbai (which arguably has the best local recruitment record of all), NLSIU is far more favourably placed than most others in terms of a local law firm recruitment market: Bangalore is India's third law firm city, without a doubt.
I hope that clarifies things somewhat, although this analysis does not purport to be scientific.
Best regards,
Kian
It was supposed to be less about a national law school than about the points raised by various professors, which happened to be said in the city where the tragedy happened.
We found academics' comments interesting in this case.
Best regards,
Kian
The only risk is that you might get lots of non-NLU students and others voting in such a poll, skewing the results. I will see whether we can feasibly do something more bespoke perhaps...
Best regards,
Kian
Is this the one? (courtesy of helpful commenter in last story)
http://www.barcouncilofindia.org/notification-amending-conditions-for-right-to-practice-and-bringing-the-all-india-bar-examination-into-force/
"A resolution was adopted by the Bar Council of India on 10 April 2010 to conduct an All India Bar Examination, the passing of which will entitle an advocate to practice law in India. Consequent to the resolution, the following rules were inserted into Part VI, Chapter III of the Bar Council of India Rules. It is yet to be published in the Gazette of India.
[To be inserted as Rules 9 to 11 in Part VI, Chapter III of the Bar Council of India Rules – Conditions for Right To Practice – under Section 49(1)(ah) of the Advocates Act, 1961]
RESOLVED that as the Bar Council of India is vested with the power of laying down conditions subject to which an advocate shall have the right to practice, these Rules, therefore, lay down such condition of an All India Bar Examination, the passing of which would entitle the advocate to a Certificate of Practice which would permit him/her to practice under Chapter IV of the Advocates Act, 1961.
9. No advocate enrolled under section 24 of the Advocates Act, 1961 shall be entitled to practice under Chapter IV of the Advocates Act, 1961, unless such advocate successfully passes the All India Bar Examination conducted by the Bar Council of India. It is clarified that the Bar Examination shall be mandatory for all law students graduating from academic year 2009-2010 onwards and enrolled as advocates under Section 24 of the Advocates Act, 1961." [... etc ...]
Please do not post highly abusive messages about bloggers.
If you do not like a post and wish to criticise, please feel free to do so but be somewhat constructive.
Best regards,
Kian
We will take more care in future.
Best regards,
Kian
Maybe the original wording is not entirely unequivocal although it does not read that only substandard schools would dissent either.
What was meant is that the potentially strongest lobby-group against the bar exam might be law schools and students that are sub-standard - after all, what good is a law degree if the graduates might not pass a required exam afterwards.
Those two groups (as well as perhaps several others) might have everything to lose after a bar exam full stop, no matter when it is held.
I do not think any students at any of the top 20 or 50 or 100 law schools would have serious cause to be worried about not passing the exam, judging by the "basic" level of difficulty it will apparently be pegged at.
I would therefore argue that the only thing that could potentially delay a bar exam indefinitely would be such lobby groups who tried doing everything they could to stop the exam from ever happening.
A mere hypothetical, at this point, of course.
Apologies for any ambiguity or offence caused. I realise now that it should have been explained better - please read the first few paragraphs of the one-year legal education round-up which explains it far better:
http://www.legallyindia.com/20100604926/Law-schools/happy-birthday-li-part-2-the-best-of-law-students-mooters-and-schools
Best regards,
Kian
I don't remember that we wrote much about processes or skill levels - all we reported was from which colleges students were recruited from and about their expansion plans in terms of capital investment and headcount. If that is not news, I do not know what is, although I apologise if it was not an interesting article for you.
Best regards,
Kian
Some colleges we have not been able to contact yet - if you are from one of these colleges or have contacts there, please do email us and we will get in touch.
Best regards,
Kian
We published the numbers we requested from Pangea3, I will check about IFCAI and include.
@2 - we do care about the details. Generally we try to publish news that will be interesting to readers or those in the industry. Some news may be more interesting or relevant to some than to others by necessity. In this case, we found that these recruitment figures were an interesting illustration of where LPOs recruit from.
We will double check on ICFAI in any case.
Best regards
Kian
We did announce several months ago that we could not be including any further moots in this MPL season as it would prejudice things unfairly to add scoring opportunities at a late stage - one college or another would always have complained that they are not participating. The only way to have kept it fair was to retain some consistency after one point, even if it meant excluding a moot which was borderline.
The listed moots and scoring criteria were subject to change and suggestions for a long time and only in exceptional circumstances did we add competitions in the later stages of the competition. The whole process was carried out as transparently as possible if you have been following the MPL throughout the season.
Secondly, I really doubt that any moot would seriously bribe us to be included in the MPL, but thanks for the vote in the MPL's influence, though less in our ethics.
Third, we have said numerous times in the past that the next MPL season would include more moots and we will recompile a list and add moots based on the suggestions received in this forum and others.
Best regards,
Kian
Options 1 and 3 don't sound bad though I guess I'd have to write off to all free time in the next 6 months to moderate comments and abuse full-time... :-)
Kian
FYI have had a conversation with someone close to the exam planning and apparently an FAQ will be posted on the BCI website on Monday which I was told would clarify a lot of points.
Best regards,
Kian
It probably would not win in the best writing for social change category, but if done well the format can be very good satire.
Happy blogging,
Kian
Drew P - you'll get your shout out in the round-up Part 2, do not you worry! Anyway, congratulations on managing to persevere with LI for a year despite your repeated avowals to the contrary.
Best regards,
Kian
We will update ASAP but need to get authoritative confirmation of results, plus the details on other point scoring awards.
Log-in in IE6 and IE8 seem to work ok for me (although the site is currently not working perfectly with IE6).
Have you tried clearing your cookies perhaps?
I have put up a forum thread on this, please post replies there:
http://www.legallyindia.com/Suggestion-box/947-LI-new-site-design-beta-feedback-please#947
Thanks, Kian
@6 - We have had to take a different approach with the survey since some of the figures do not quite check out as remuneration systems are really complex within firms and difficult to publish while maintaining respondents' anonymity.
Next week we are planning to publish properly confirmed starting salary figures combining the survey and other sources.
Then we'll move onto further remuneration from the survey shortly thereafter where possible.
Please bear with us on this - again, apologies for the delay.
Best regards,
Kian
Very lucky we had such a generous donor on this category, yes! Thanks again dear anonymous benefactor. I believe they want to encourage good legal writing and thought on issues that are important with the category...
Best
Kian