Well... glad you enjoyed. Since you asked, talking about how great Bangalore is, is one of my favourite topics 😊 My personal opinion, though only based on more limited time of living there: Bangalore is a better place to live than both Delhi and Mumbai, primarily for the weather which is probably the best of nearly any city in the world, but also because of its slightly more relaxed nature than both.
The general consensus is that lawyers and clients are fairly professional and competent in Bangalore (helped by the vibrant tech industry), but that the pace of life and hours can be a bit more relaxed in the law firms (though not in every firm!).
And if you want to do litigation it won't be as exciting as Delhi and can be difficult for an outsider to penetrate, and if you want to do finance, there'll be more in Bombay (and Delhi) also. But lots of good corporate / PE / VC work (perhaps even better than in Mumbai and Delhi) can be had in Bangalore these days. In terms of law firms, the city also has quite a few boutique corporate / VC firms with good clients and culture, and many of the big firms have offices there but it is overall still a much smaller legal market with fewer available jobs.
Pay is usually a bit less on average but costs of living are a bit lower too, with good flats available for rent.
And the pub scene is still fantastic and better than any other city in India (if you're ok with the slightly early closing times). There's also decent culture, food and other entertainments on offer, and for the most part the locals and the many migrants are said to be very welcoming, perhaps even more so than Mumbai (?).
Of course, the thing pretty much everyone hates about Bangalore is the traffic (and rightly so if you ever have to travel during rush hour at all). The only solution is if you can afford living near to your workplace or are lucky enough for your commute to be doable via the limited metro network (which is rare).
Alternatively, if your workplace is amenable to WFH for longer, Bangalore might be one of the most pleasant places to live.
Not sure what the pandemic situation is but in more normal times, 4S in Def Col is fairly cheap, slightly Gokul-esque in its vibe (as much as possible in Delhi) and popular with lawyers and journos. There are also some other cheap hole in the wall dive bars, probably around touristy Paharganj and around CP you may find some too, but generally not the quantity and not the charm of what's available in Mumbai. Most Delhi lawyers' nights out therefore seem to revolve around going to more fancy bars, or if on the cheap, going to people's houses.
If it's just about value for money, some good happy hour deals can may be had in some Hauz Khaz Village bars or some other operations dotted around the city in many of the markets, though many will look more commercial and less charming than the dive bar institutions you might be missing from Mumbai.
If you got the contacts, Gymkhanas and other of the oldschool private members' clubs are obviously cheap as chips but those are obviously far cries from Gokul too.
Good luck, may we all be having outdoor drinks again soon!
Good point on Delhi weather, 3 - 4 months are tough, 3 - 4 months of winter are cold (which some people like) and 3 - 4 months, maybe more, are pretty good...
Both are wonderful cities in many ways and also horrible in a few different ways. 🧐
Which one you might end up liking more is going to be very much personality driven and a very subjective choice. Both cities can be hard to live in if you don't like cities, and not just Mumbai but also Delhi is a maximum city, albeit with very different styles: Mumbai is sprawling and dense, yet also a cosy village in parts with bonus sea views. Delhi is open, spread out, with more parks and monuments and ancient history but also more concrete with a residential colony type structure.
As for work, it's said Mumbai is generally by default a bit more 'gentlemanly' or professional, whereas Delhi can be a bit more cut and thrust in its approach to working, though you'll obviously find that depends greatly on where you work and whom you work with.
And if you like hanging around with litigation types, you'll meet many more in Delhi: you can't swing a cat in a Delhi bar without risking hitting an advocate.
Since the positives will be very subjective and will depend on all sorts of factors of chance, like the friends you'll make and the places you live, I'll point out a few (also subjective) potential issues for many people that spring to mind that could be deal breakers and might help your choice: - physiology: what is less pleasant for you? Delhi dry heat (with a few months of pretty cold winter) or Mumbai wet heat (with a few months of balmy pleasant winter weather)? - your lungs: will your health be able to take the annual infamous Delhi pollution that also continues low grade through most of the year but peaks in winter forcing those with health issues to flee or suffer and others to hide indoors with blasting air purifiers and venture outdoors with (non-pandemic) face masks. - sweaty limited public transport lines (Mumbai) vs air conditioned pretty decent metro network (Delhi), though both have the cabapps obviously these days. - women's safety: realistically in Delhi the odds of 'stranger danger' sexual violence against a somewhat privileged lawyer working in a law firm or the courts are low in any individual case, though media attention and infamous historical events plus the perception some people have of the city can make it a scarier place than it has to be, and while Mumbai is not immune of course, it can subjective feel a little safer and more welcoming to some women, anecdotally. - road traffic in Mumbai, nearly always bad to horrible. In Delhi, sometimes bad but often bearable. - rental: Mumbai flats are smaller and more expensive, Delhi can comparatively be luxurious for the same price. - Delhi social life can be a tiny bit more cliquey with old Delhi networks being harder to get into, while Mumbai can be more welcoming to newcomers and migrants, but your mileage will obviously vary.
Of course these lists are far from exhaustive and not everyone will agree, but that's the point: in many ways you won't know until you try, it's going to be a very individual choice, though it's nearly certain that you'll get interesting, memorable and meaningful life and work experiences in either city. And worst case, unless you fall in love with the Supreme Court or Bombay Duck, you can always move, so enjoy the good times along the way 😄
Are there actually any practical alternatives to Citrix in this space to allow relatively secure remote access to a consistent and locked down desktop environment while working from home? From what I understand, Citrix used to be/is ridonkulously slow and cumbersome...
>The accountancy firm’s UK chair, Bill Michael, who has headed the company since 2017, told staff to “stop moaning” during a virtual meeting about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. He also called unconscious bias, which many businesses have attempted to confront through changes to their training and recruitment practices, “complete and utter crap”.
Thanks for sharing. Initially this was 'hidden' in the 'latest comments' section at the bottom of the page. But when something has news or 'interestingness' value, we intend to feature comments into the main homepage thread also.
It's a work-in-progress, so views, criticism, etc are more than welcome.
I believe it stands for Traditional Law College (TLC), a term generally used on these forums to refer to law schools that are not national law universities (NLUs). Most TLCs, like GLC Mumbai, Delhi University, etc, would be older than NLUs.
However, I'm not sure whether older private law schools, such as the Amity's, Symbi's, etc are also considered to be part of the TLC umbrella?
Thanks for sharing, have just double-checked the original data and that was actually an error on our part, which had been introduced during data entry / analysis.
Have now corrected the figures in the article and will check if any similar errors may have inadvertently crept in.
That they have managed to hold on to Zomato through all this time as its valuation and rounds keep increasing, bodes well for them in that none of the AZBs, CAMs or SAMs has managed to dislodge them (which is always a concern for the smaller firms that grow up on bread and butter VC rounds but often struggle to transition to the marquee mandates once their start-up clients have grown up).
Two days of RKL argument's, with another day scheduled, I believe?
We are intending to do a summary and analysis of the submissions at some point soon, though from a cursory reading of B&B's court reporting (much like MS' submissions) there hasn't been anything substantively new argued beyond what both sides have already aired in their internal back-and-forth emails that we have previously reported on in-depth.
In respect of your last point, for the record, LI is not anyone's lapdog :) But I did enjoy this tweet about it:
I dont think that's correct, based on my understanding. There was discussion for RKL to reduce his equity and in lieu take topline, but the current deed does not contain this.
Thanks, we had forgotten to add the usual disclaimer below the article, now added. If a post is paid, it always states very clearly at the top that the article is sponsored. Otherwise, whether we cover something or not (and how we cover it) is not dictated by whether someone is also an advertiser.
In any case, the article is surely of wider relevance than just for JGLS.
While I personally don't place much stock in rankings, many of our readers seem to care deeply about the law school rankings game. We therefore think it is quite valuable to document the steps that law schools are taking to improve their rankings, especially those that have international rankings performance as a stated strategic aim (and have a track record on that front).
Thanks for your feedback. At the end of the day, I don't really mind whether we are first on all stories or not, and I don't think most readers are too concerned as long as we keep up with the important things and do interesting and fair stories. That said, there are some misapprehensions in your comment, which I might as well address since I'm here.
Generally, for the avoidance of doubt, whenever B&B or another publication does report something first (without a press release about the same thing having been sent out, etc) we give them credit in our stories as having reported it first, which I think is fair to both our rivals and our readers.
By contrast, I understand B&B have a policy never to attribute to other publications for breaking stories (and they seem to play a little fast and loose with what they term 'exclusive'), which to non-regular followers of the space can maybe make it look like they're scooping more than they are.
Specifically, background and process in the examples you mention:
- DSK deputy managing partner news went out as a press release yesterday but without much interesting information. We are intending to do a more in-depth look at what this means, if possible, since by itself the story is pretty bland without more information.
- Lawyers articles: as a policy, we currently don't accept articles by lawyers and firms, though we receive regular requests for this and have done so in the past. I'm not sure how much value it adds to readers but please do share your views on if you'd like such articles as part of the LI's editorial.
Either way, each to their own, live and let live, etc. I think LI coverage is doing fine for the most part. But I would be happy to receive readers' feedback any time, of course :)
Thanks for your comment. The link to Mint now fixed, and have added a short update to mention Minhaz's move. Also note though that deal reports (for the purposes for our database) are historical and intended to reflect the instructions won by a firm / partner at a specific point in time, so Algo would still get the primary deal credit for this one.
Don't take the abuse or criticism to heart, I think generally people can empathise with the uncertainty, and commenters aren't likely to have any information beyond what management has already communicated to joiners so far.
At the end of the day, albeit no one can know for sure in this uncertain global environment as well as the specific circumstances at L&L, but it seems more likely than not that L&L (in whatever shape/s it ends up continuing) will honour the contracts.
Hehe, 3-4 days without details of the Luthra mediation, what is this world coming to! :)
To be honest, I'm not sure it's possible to really report properly on a mediation until and unless there's some agreement at the end of it. For one, mediations are confidential processes and if the mediator suspects there are leaks to the press, it could derail the entire process, so details will be hard to come by (unlike emails or townhalls with the entire firm). Second, a lot of things are usually said in mediation and we can assume that the arguments are fairly similar to the ones that have been outlined to date. Three, mediations are fairly fluid processes. So even if we were to report that they are talking about positions X or Y now, there is no guarantee that those positions would be relevant to any final agreement or won't be abandoned or irrelevant before the end of talks.
If you have any ideas or specifics you'd like to know though, please do share :)
Yes, that's correct, thanks for explaining. If the facts asserted in a comment appear uncorroborated or have been contested by other commenters or in reports, a comment may get moderated as 'contested'.
Interesting, thanks for sharing and point taken - we weren't aware that they had a new domain... We will update the article in any case... Do you know when the website was started on the new domain?
Notwithstanding the above:
1. The firm's emails still all appear to be from luthra.com, making it appear as the more authoritative domain of the two. 2. At the very least, the old luthra.com website should indicate that the site has moved to a new domain, surely?
Many thanks, that might be helpful. Is there any chance you could upload the full rank list of all the 55,000 candidates' scores from 2019 somewhere and point us to the link?
No disagreement with the sentiment in the comment, though be aware that this is the India Today law school ranking, which has historically also been criticised, so treat with a pinch of salt, like all law school rankings (including NIRF or any that may be left in comments by anonymous commenters):
Thanks for pointing out, we have added a clarification to the article. We understand that in court the judges had said that admissions should be subject to the outcome of the case, and that it should be adjudicated within weeks.
And while the division bench never outright ordered a stay in court or in the written order, in practice it seems to allow only one interpretation: if the single judge were to eventually stay or strike down the quota and NUJS has already completed admission of 33% domicile candidates, it would be impossible for "the subject admission [to] abide by the result of the writ application", as the division bench had ordered (at least without rescinding offers and throwing the entire process into chaos).
That said, starting admissions without the quota would probably not be possible either, since the single judge might uphold the reservation, which would also cause problems with the seat list.
In short, it does appear to be a de facto stay and one that could delay the entire CLAT admissions process if it's not disposed of promptly. Happy to hear thoughts on this...
However, as far as I know, the core consortium committee does not create or have access to the questions, which are handled by a different committee in confidence...
Hi, regarding the long comment that has not yet been published - please do share more information with us directly at {contactus}, in confidence, as the post contains several potentially sensitive issues.
Isn't that fundamentally whataboutery though? I've been struggling with this insistence often made that just because X spoke out against Y, they are at fault for not speaking out against Z.
There are presumably 100s of different reasons to stay silent and a private individual is under no obligation to speak out just because we live in an age of social media where everyone has an opinion and they may have shared opinions before?
But there are several obvious differences between LSAT and NLAT that warrant deeper coverage of the latter.
- NLS is publicly funded. - NLAT has three writ petitions challenging it. - NLAT was announced and organised in 8 days. - NLU VCs and others have widely gone on record to criticise the NLAT and Claxit. - It has 30k+ candidates (and potentially more than 70k who are affecting due to CLAT). - There's still only one NLS. Anything NLS is big news at some level and people care more.
Had played around on Scopus before to get more information: it does seem like you need a subscription to get access to proper data, getting useful data from the free version is possible but seems a bit of a kludge. Anyone reading does have full Scopus access and is interested in this topic and may be willing to help, please do get in touch: {contactus}.
The "boys' club" doesn't only manifest in points 1 or 2, it can also include a whole range of things, which men often do not think about or consider enough, ranging from: - availability of creches, solid maternity leave policies, or how career breaks or sabbaticals are integrated in a firm, - very soft cultural issues, such as partners preferring if fee-earners don't work from home, - the way sexual harassment claims are dealt with (or not), - the lack of female role models or mentors at senior levels, - the lack of women at senior levels who can push for some of the above, etc...
I think some commenters willfully misunderstand the issues surrounding a lack of gender diversity in promotions.
1. Do you accept that women graduating from law school are, on average, are as good at being lawyers as men?
2. Are women who have spent 10 or 20 years in the profession, on average, as good as men at being lawyers?
3. If so, why are there apparently a lot more men than women who have stayed at firms like Khaitan for 10 or 20 years, to be eligible for partnerships? If there is a gender ratio at that seniority of 1 woman for every 5 men, then it may be hard to find enough women to even promote.
4. One reason could be cultural: i.e., a boys' club or policies that systematically excludes / discriminates against women (even if only subconsciously), which results in women dropping out before they get to the seniority to be eligible for partnership.
5. That creates a vicious cycle: by having fewer women in leadership roles, you end up with more of a boys' club, and correspondingly more women dropping out before getting to leadership roles, and therefore fewer women who get promoted to partner.
6. There are several things a firm can do to address that issue: try to gradually change things from the bottom down and hope that in 10 or 20 years things will be different. Or, change things from the top down, by making a conscious effort to identify and groom more women for leadership roles.
7. Even if this might give women some minute advantage vis-a-vis an equivalently qualified male candidate, most male candidates would have had the benefit throughout their career of the boys' club and gender imbalance at senior levels across the firm.
If you disagree with any of these points, please do share your counterarguments.
(but also not sorry ;)
The general consensus is that lawyers and clients are fairly professional and competent in Bangalore (helped by the vibrant tech industry), but that the pace of life and hours can be a bit more relaxed in the law firms (though not in every firm!).
And if you want to do litigation it won't be as exciting as Delhi and can be difficult for an outsider to penetrate, and if you want to do finance, there'll be more in Bombay (and Delhi) also. But lots of good corporate / PE / VC work (perhaps even better than in Mumbai and Delhi) can be had in Bangalore these days. In terms of law firms, the city also has quite a few boutique corporate / VC firms with good clients and culture, and many of the big firms have offices there but it is overall still a much smaller legal market with fewer available jobs.
Pay is usually a bit less on average but costs of living are a bit lower too, with good flats available for rent.
And the pub scene is still fantastic and better than any other city in India (if you're ok with the slightly early closing times). There's also decent culture, food and other entertainments on offer, and for the most part the locals and the many migrants are said to be very welcoming, perhaps even more so than Mumbai (?).
Of course, the thing pretty much everyone hates about Bangalore is the traffic (and rightly so if you ever have to travel during rush hour at all). The only solution is if you can afford living near to your workplace or are lucky enough for your commute to be doable via the limited metro network (which is rare).
Alternatively, if your workplace is amenable to WFH for longer, Bangalore might be one of the most pleasant places to live.
Not sure what the pandemic situation is but in more normal times, 4S in Def Col is fairly cheap, slightly Gokul-esque in its vibe (as much as possible in Delhi) and popular with lawyers and journos. There are also some other cheap hole in the wall dive bars, probably around touristy Paharganj and around CP you may find some too, but generally not the quantity and not the charm of what's available in Mumbai. Most Delhi lawyers' nights out therefore seem to revolve around going to more fancy bars, or if on the cheap, going to people's houses.
If it's just about value for money, some good happy hour deals can may be had in some Hauz Khaz Village bars or some other operations dotted around the city in many of the markets, though many will look more commercial and less charming than the dive bar institutions you might be missing from Mumbai.
If you got the contacts, Gymkhanas and other of the oldschool private members' clubs are obviously cheap as chips but those are obviously far cries from Gokul too.
Good luck, may we all be having outdoor drinks again soon!
Which one you might end up liking more is going to be very much personality driven and a very subjective choice. Both cities can be hard to live in if you don't like cities, and not just Mumbai but also Delhi is a maximum city, albeit with very different styles: Mumbai is sprawling and dense, yet also a cosy village in parts with bonus sea views. Delhi is open, spread out, with more parks and monuments and ancient history but also more concrete with a residential colony type structure.
As for work, it's said Mumbai is generally by default a bit more 'gentlemanly' or professional, whereas Delhi can be a bit more cut and thrust in its approach to working, though you'll obviously find that depends greatly on where you work and whom you work with.
And if you like hanging around with litigation types, you'll meet many more in Delhi: you can't swing a cat in a Delhi bar without risking hitting an advocate.
Since the positives will be very subjective and will depend on all sorts of factors of chance, like the friends you'll make and the places you live, I'll point out a few (also subjective) potential issues for many people that spring to mind that could be deal breakers and might help your choice:
- physiology: what is less pleasant for you? Delhi dry heat (with a few months of pretty cold winter) or Mumbai wet heat (with a few months of balmy pleasant winter weather)?
- your lungs: will your health be able to take the annual infamous Delhi pollution that also continues low grade through most of the year but peaks in winter forcing those with health issues to flee or suffer and others to hide indoors with blasting air purifiers and venture outdoors with (non-pandemic) face masks.
- sweaty limited public transport lines (Mumbai) vs air conditioned pretty decent metro network (Delhi), though both have the cabapps obviously these days.
- women's safety: realistically in Delhi the odds of 'stranger danger' sexual violence against a somewhat privileged lawyer working in a law firm or the courts are low in any individual case, though media attention and infamous historical events plus the perception some people have of the city can make it a scarier place than it has to be, and while Mumbai is not immune of course, it can subjective feel a little safer and more welcoming to some women, anecdotally.
- road traffic in Mumbai, nearly always bad to horrible. In Delhi, sometimes bad but often bearable.
- rental: Mumbai flats are smaller and more expensive, Delhi can comparatively be luxurious for the same price.
- Delhi social life can be a tiny bit more cliquey with old Delhi networks being harder to get into, while Mumbai can be more welcoming to newcomers and migrants, but your mileage will obviously vary.
Of course these lists are far from exhaustive and not everyone will agree, but that's the point: in many ways you won't know until you try, it's going to be a very individual choice, though it's nearly certain that you'll get interesting, memorable and meaningful life and work experiences in either city. And worst case, unless you fall in love with the Supreme Court or Bombay Duck, you can always move, so enjoy the good times along the way 😄
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/feb/13/as-kpmgs-boss-has-learned-caring-about-employees-is-now-cool
>The accountancy firm’s UK chair, Bill Michael, who has headed the company since 2017, told staff to “stop moaning” during a virtual meeting about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. He also called unconscious bias, which many businesses have attempted to confront through changes to their training and recruitment practices, “complete and utter crap”.
It's a work-in-progress, so views, criticism, etc are more than welcome.
We are currently rolling out the beta of our new conversations feature, do please let us know feedback and any thoughts...
However, I'm not sure whether older private law schools, such as the Amity's, Symbi's, etc are also considered to be part of the TLC umbrella?
Have now corrected the figures in the article and will check if any similar errors may have inadvertently crept in.
With respect to Indus specifically, we had marked them out as a firm to watch as potentially joining the Marquee Firms soon: https://www.legallyindia.com/india-unleashed-editorial/inlegal-50-the-busiest-corporate-law-firms-20191012-10938
That they have managed to hold on to Zomato through all this time as its valuation and rounds keep increasing, bodes well for them in that none of the AZBs, CAMs or SAMs has managed to dislodge them (which is always a concern for the smaller firms that grow up on bread and butter VC rounds but often struggle to transition to the marquee mandates once their start-up clients have grown up).
We are intending to do a summary and analysis of the submissions at some point soon, though from a cursory reading of B&B's court reporting (much like MS' submissions) there hasn't been anything substantively new argued beyond what both sides have already aired in their internal back-and-forth emails that we have previously reported on in-depth.
In respect of your last point, for the record, LI is not anyone's lapdog :) But I did enjoy this tweet about it:
https://twitter.com/TurbulentTamizh/status/1329739350108639232
In any case, the article is surely of wider relevance than just for JGLS.
While I personally don't place much stock in rankings, many of our readers seem to care deeply about the law school rankings game. We therefore think it is quite valuable to document the steps that law schools are taking to improve their rankings, especially those that have international rankings performance as a stated strategic aim (and have a track record on that front).
Generally, for the avoidance of doubt, whenever B&B or another publication does report something first (without a press release about the same thing having been sent out, etc) we give them credit in our stories as having reported it first, which I think is fair to both our rivals and our readers.
By contrast, I understand B&B have a policy never to attribute to other publications for breaking stories (and they seem to play a little fast and loose with what they term 'exclusive'), which to non-regular followers of the space can maybe make it look like they're scooping more than they are.
Specifically, background and process in the examples you mention:
- CAM WFH was actually press released by the firm before B&B wrote about it 'exclusively'. We waited before publishing since we usually prefer including also answers to some of the important questions and including more details. This could mean our stories sometimes come a bit later but I hope they are also more informative rather than just being puff pieces: https://www.legallyindia.com/lawfirms/cam-to-launch-flexi-work-policies-post-march-2021-office-re-openings-chennai-hyd-to-move-to-biz-centres-20201024-11716
- Shonali joining Luthra - yes, they got their story out before ours on that one and that's fine. We did hear about it around the same time and might have published before them, though we were also reaching out for comment from the parties and confirming whether the hire pre-dated the dispute or not, and only then covered it: https://www.legallyindia.com/lawfirms/rajiv-luthra-sans-saraf-hires-alum-shonali-choudhry-in-mumbai-as-partner-20201023-11715
- DSK deputy managing partner news went out as a press release yesterday but without much interesting information. We are intending to do a more in-depth look at what this means, if possible, since by itself the story is pretty bland without more information.
- Lawyers articles: as a policy, we currently don't accept articles by lawyers and firms, though we receive regular requests for this and have done so in the past. I'm not sure how much value it adds to readers but please do share your views on if you'd like such articles as part of the LI's editorial.
Either way, each to their own, live and let live, etc. I think LI coverage is doing fine for the most part. But I would be happy to receive readers' feedback any time, of course :)
Also note though that deal reports (for the purposes for our database) are historical and intended to reflect the instructions won by a firm / partner at a specific point in time, so Algo would still get the primary deal credit for this one.
At the end of the day, albeit no one can know for sure in this uncertain global environment as well as the specific circumstances at L&L, but it seems more likely than not that L&L (in whatever shape/s it ends up continuing) will honour the contracts.
To be honest, I'm not sure it's possible to really report properly on a mediation until and unless there's some agreement at the end of it. For one, mediations are confidential processes and if the mediator suspects there are leaks to the press, it could derail the entire process, so details will be hard to come by (unlike emails or townhalls with the entire firm). Second, a lot of things are usually said in mediation and we can assume that the arguments are fairly similar to the ones that have been outlined to date. Three, mediations are fairly fluid processes. So even if we were to report that they are talking about positions X or Y now, there is no guarantee that those positions would be relevant to any final agreement or won't be abandoned or irrelevant before the end of talks.
If you have any ideas or specifics you'd like to know though, please do share :)
Notwithstanding the above:
1. The firm's emails still all appear to be from luthra.com, making it appear as the more authoritative domain of the two.
2. At the very least, the old luthra.com website should indicate that the site has moved to a new domain, surely?
https://www.legallyindia.com/lawschools/india-today-law-school-rankings-2016-are-out-blablabla-lol-why-no-one-should-care-etc-20160523-7630
And while the division bench never outright ordered a stay in court or in the written order, in practice it seems to allow only one interpretation: if the single judge were to eventually stay or strike down the quota and NUJS has already completed admission of 33% domicile candidates, it would be impossible for "the subject admission [to] abide by the result of the writ application", as the division bench had ordered (at least without rescinding offers and throwing the entire process into chaos).
That said, starting admissions without the quota would probably not be possible either, since the single judge might uphold the reservation, which would also cause problems with the seat list.
In short, it does appear to be a de facto stay and one that could delay the entire CLAT admissions process if it's not disposed of promptly. Happy to hear thoughts on this...
From the answer key:
However, as far as I know, the core consortium committee does not create or have access to the questions, which are handled by a different committee in confidence...
There are presumably 100s of different reasons to stay silent and a private individual is under no obligation to speak out just because we live in an age of social media where everyone has an opinion and they may have shared opinions before?
https://www.legallyindia.com/pre-law-student/what-clat-ailet-can-learn-from-proctored-lsat-where-at-first-14-couldn-t-sit-exam-also-cheaters-technology-comms-and-other-lessons-20200724-11579
And also how SLAT faced some issues https://www.legallyindia.com/pre-law-student/cheating-at-home-proctor-youtube-whistleblower-amateur-security-researcher-recants-claims-symbi-s-slat-is-100-foolproof-but-the-jury-s-still-out-20200729-11588
But there are several obvious differences between LSAT and NLAT that warrant deeper coverage of the latter.
- NLS is publicly funded.
- NLAT has three writ petitions challenging it.
- NLAT was announced and organised in 8 days.
- NLU VCs and others have widely gone on record to criticise the NLAT and Claxit.
- It has 30k+ candidates (and potentially more than 70k who are affecting due to CLAT).
- There's still only one NLS. Anything NLS is big news at some level and people care more.
Hope that clears it up some.
- availability of creches, solid maternity leave policies, or how career breaks or sabbaticals are integrated in a firm,
- very soft cultural issues, such as partners preferring if fee-earners don't work from home,
- the way sexual harassment claims are dealt with (or not),
- the lack of female role models or mentors at senior levels,
- the lack of women at senior levels who can push for some of the above, etc...
I don't have hard stats to hand about graduate recruitments, but anecdotally from conversations, graduate recruitment at the most junior levels has tended to be much more even between genders - perhaps someone has has recent information can confirm more accurately (and law schools have also in recent years begun to show a gender bias towards men: https://www.legallyindia.com/lawschools/digging-the-nirf-2020-law-school-rankings-most-llbs-have-big-gender-deficit-except-ail-kiit-sls-nliu-makes-good-case-for-more-reservations-llms-dominated-by-women-except-nls-20200616-11485 )
Also, interestingly, last year Khaitan & Co managed to promote a few more women than men: https://www.legallyindia.com/lawfirms/khaitan-promotes-11-to-partnership-and-more-than-50-are-women-20190405-9981
But the real clincher is that many other successful and high performing firms, such as AZB or SAM have much more 'normal' gender ratios than Khaitan or Trilegal, for instance, so it's clearly possible: https://www.legallyindia.com/india-unleashed-editorial/women-in-indian-law-firms-in-a-growing-minority-20190601-11000
1. Do you accept that women graduating from law school are, on average, are as good at being lawyers as men?
2. Are women who have spent 10 or 20 years in the profession, on average, as good as men at being lawyers?
3. If so, why are there apparently a lot more men than women who have stayed at firms like Khaitan for 10 or 20 years, to be eligible for partnerships? If there is a gender ratio at that seniority of 1 woman for every 5 men, then it may be hard to find enough women to even promote.
4. One reason could be cultural: i.e., a boys' club or policies that systematically excludes / discriminates against women (even if only subconsciously), which results in women dropping out before they get to the seniority to be eligible for partnership.
5. That creates a vicious cycle: by having fewer women in leadership roles, you end up with more of a boys' club, and correspondingly more women dropping out before getting to leadership roles, and therefore fewer women who get promoted to partner.
6. There are several things a firm can do to address that issue: try to gradually change things from the bottom down and hope that in 10 or 20 years things will be different. Or, change things from the top down, by making a conscious effort to identify and groom more women for leadership roles.
7. Even if this might give women some minute advantage vis-a-vis an equivalently qualified male candidate, most male candidates would have had the benefit throughout their career of the boys' club and gender imbalance at senior levels across the firm.
If you disagree with any of these points, please do share your counterarguments.