One series of comments had let loose in language and tone that fell foul of our moderation guidelines. Such comments are generally par for the course and would have be moderated similarly on other stories. However, in this case apparently one person had left 10+ comments along similar lines in very quick succession, hence the quantity of moderated comments here appears to be higher.

I think that may be a bit too conspiratorial :) I don't think there's ever been an intentional refusal from an SBA, but we did reach out for help in compiling accurate faculty figures and alma mater of a few NLUs, but it's quite a big task and SBAs are busy, so while the projects were started, they were never finalised...

IIT K's scores are indeed interesting though and worth discussing more, either with respect to NIRF methodology (or lack thereof), or potentially about what IIT KGP is doing right on the research front, or what potentially the NLUs (mostly) are doing wrong. Also, maybe the legal mainstream (both NLUs and profession) doesn't seem to really care about IIT K, because it's so tiny and niche, though it might very well deserve the high rank it's consistently been given by NIRF.

However, in the bigger picture it is often acknowledged that Indian law schools and academia have historically not excelled at research, because most administrations have not made any strong push for it (with a few notable exceptions). That is perhaps gradually changing at some NLUs and maybe a few private schools. Nevertheless, while not 'trash', this is something that should be of concern to anyone interested in Indian legal academia (and yes, there is a now-quite-old and infamous 'research' paper that's kept doing the rounds from a certain NLU professor that could arguably meet the 'trash' standard, which is perhaps why hyperbole around this topic exists).

The Anonymous G comment above had shared some reference to NIRF data and our article had also pulled these out. Just on the NIRF metrics alone, NUJS has 71 on teaching, learning & resources (TLR) and 35 for research & professional practice, compared to say 91 for and 45 respectively for NLUD.
https://www.legallyindia.com/lawschools/government-s-nirf-university-rankings-to-be-released-tomorrow-20200610-11483

Sure, that may not be the conclusive final word, but it does show the opinion held by the commenter at least has some factual basis, and it's also one I've heard echoed by non-anonymous people out in the wild, so it's not too far fetched to believe it was at least in-part honestly held (even if there may also have been a hint of trolling involved).

On the other hand, saying all of X faculty are bad or whatnot is obviously hyperbole (though I'm sure many students of many institutions would make similar statements, while also acknowledging if pressed that there are exceptions and some good teachers too, at nearly all institutions).

Sorry to hear your sentiments. When we moderate words like 'troll' or personal attacks on other commenters in responses, it has generally been to try and keep discourse and disagreement to a more civil level, hoping to steer posters to engage with the substance (or lack thereof) of posts, rather than resorting to ad hominem, but it's a fluid process.

I agree some of the arguments had in the comments section can sometimes lead towards toxicity but at the same time I think that some of the discussions in this thread have actually been interesting and provide some useful information about institutions (if you ignore any personal attacks). Sure, often comments also sound like personal / ill-informed opinion, but usually those comments get disputed and disproven fairly quickly on their own merits. In this case, it does appear that Anonymous G's comments, for instance, were fairly honestly held and not unique either (though perhaps expressed more argumentatively and extremely than they could have been).

In my experience, these kinds of law school 'rivalries', if you want to call it that, flare up every few years in comments sections, particularly around CLAT time, but for the most part, most students or prospective students are not as parochial (although some element of college pride is certainly out there) and once people get it out of their system, things calm down a bit again for the rest of the year.

And at the end of the day, I hope that nothing in the comments section gets taken too seriously or personally either and everything needs to be read with a large grain of salt.

Thanks for your feedback. Generally we would moderate mentions of corruption, etc, for instance, unless those accusations have been documented in media reports or allegations had previously been made by named persons or student associations or the like. We also aim to respond swiftly when receiving reports about comments (see the 'Report to LI' button) and moderate if required, so if you specifically think any comment should not pass muster, please use the button and we'll take prompt action.

Did LiveLaw copy from other websites? I don't specifically remember anything egregious or intentional...

In any case, we're not boycotting the LiveLaw BCI story - we have tweeted our support I believe and BCI Fan is on the job to write about this, hopefully soon. Nor is there really any rivalry: I personally think LiveLaw is doing a great job and I wish them only well.

You missed one of the two definitions :)



https://www.thefreedictionary.com/nab

You're right, AILET is definitely. https://www.legallyindia.com/pre-law/ailet-2016-results-nlu-delhi-website-gets-hammered-goes-down-alternative-link-here-20160518-7608

(as is probably DU).

Article updated.

Not sure of the specifics, though some people put their last position in a place on Linked-in rather than as when they started - the interface doesn't make it entirely clear or obvious sometimes, so I wouldn't imagine it's intentional misrepresentation... Have updated the profile in the article also to reflect.

Thanks for your response and points. Though the Uber part of the argument was specifically about whether a publication has a specific duty to report about advertisers, but it does not logically follow (nor practically, in our case) that we'd never also cover an advertiser.

The reasoning above is genuine and practical though. It has actually been our policy for a long time to stay out of covering private commercial players, in part also because it's such a big field. Do we cover every legal ed or legal tech start-up by a lawyer? Do we cover every single time one of these does something stupid or might release tone deaf marketing materials, tweets something stupid or goes out of business or is facing financial difficulties (and I believe many of them have at one point or another)? How do we decide whether a player is big or important enough to 'warrant' coverage when they mess up or succeed? Based on how good their marketing is? Or based on how much outrage there is on Twitter? Do we cover their product launches? Do we cover every time they win a client or sign up 1000 more students?

In short, if we start covering LawSikho et al, we're looking at a huge sector and huge new beat to cover, and I don't think there is a huge amount of interest from our current audience for that really (but please correct me if I'm wrong there). In this case, I don't really feel this is a significant enough story of wider interest to warrant making an exception to our rule because 'massive Twitter outrage' plus 'spectacle' plus 'sexism = bad'.

But maybe that assessment is wrong and, you're partly right, maybe it's also a "we don't want to". It feels like there's nowhere for this story to really go from here, after apparently a few days of Twitter outrage and videos and commentaries, is there anything left unsaid in this that's not been said already (and indeed from pretty much all sides)? Despite calls to the contrary, considering the size of the company, it seems highly unlikely the CEO/co-founder will quit or be ousted (but who knows)... It's possible their business will get affected negatively by this. Or maybe all the negative publicity is actually having the opposite effect and lots of single men are flocking to them to learn law now, having heard of them for the first time. Again, who knows... But the main point may be, that I'm not sure finding out is really within LI's remit at the moment nor do I think would it be particularly interesting to our current readers... (again, please let me know if you disagree).

Advertising is ideally separate from editorial, and whether a company has advertised (or not) should not be a factor into whether that company is within the editorial ambit nor create an additional editorial duty to report something. I.e., Companies like event management companies, or the Times Group or Uber or books publishers have advertised on LI in the past: do we have a duty of care to readers to then expand our editorial ambit to report on potentially sexist or stupid things that might be happening there, day in, day out?

Just like we don't cover the construction sector or the advertising or IT industry or what happens in engineering colleges (even if law graduates may be involved in all of these somewhere), in this case, we have always drawn a clear editorial line and that we don't cover private legal education providers, unless there's an element that is directly related to our core topics.

That said, the behaviours and decisions made seem to be pretty hard to excuse, and unsurprisingly very few people have (even from the company and CEO himself, who eventually mea culpa'd). While there have been a lot of words spilled on Twitter and some opinion pieces in various places, it's pretty hard to disagree with those and there's no real debate to be had here.

At the same time, no one has written any news stories as far as I'm aware, because I am not sure there is much news here besides its semi-virality in Twitter bubbles. "Small legal education start-up does awful, sexist webinar, apologises too late" doesn't seem to have much point beyond a naming and shaming, though watching all the terrible decisions and reactions unfold on Twitter and on video, certainly had a bit of an exciting 'slow motion car crash' quality to it, I imagine, which is why it was so viral.

At the end of the day, is there a wider problem of toxic masculinity in law? Yes, most probably. Is this unique to the legal profession, or is it surprising anyone that some lawyers behave in a sexist manner? Probably not. Does this LawSikho episode teach us anything or is it particularly illuminating about whether this kind of behaviour is systemic in the wider profession? Shrug

Lol, Twitter's (and the comments here) have been set ablaze with this LawSikho thing it seems. First, full disclosures and all, LawSikho's previous/other avatar iPleaders used to advertise on LI a little bit, many many years ago. We had also worked closely with the two founders many years ago on a larger side project.

tl;dr: Our long-standing policy is that we don't private legal education players at all editorially, for better or for worse.

So, some lengthy thoughts on this and LI's decision (so far) not to cover it. Primarily, by way of editorial policy, LI has generally (since forever) never covered news in editorial relating to service providers to the legal industry at all. Since lawyers are LI's primary audience, we get lots of approaches for publishing PR or puff pieces (as well as advertising sometimes) from those offering products or services to lawyers. So this policy makes it easier to simply say no to editorial, rather than battle the (sometimes) sophisticated PR and content marketing machinery. It can also be difficult to draw the line between such PR and advertising, in this context, LI has elected not to have to spend time making such decisions day in day out.

For example, unlike the main areas that we cover - law firms, legal education and, to some extent, regulation of the profession - we don't cover people hires or new business ventures or new office openings or successes at the LawSikhos, MyLaws, LexisNexises or EBCs, for instance (unless they strongly and inevitably overlap with our other areas - more on this below).

But if it is an editorial policy not to accept spin from service providers, then is it fair that we only cover their failures? I feel that such an approach would be problematic and ethically a little murky.

As far as I recall, a few exceptions to the above have been made when what such service providers do strongly overlaps with those areas that we do cover (i.e., the rise (and fall) of the bar exam, senior moves between the sectors or larger trend pieces / features, relating to such sectors). Happy to dig out some examples if interested.

That said, my personal opinion in this specific case (though I haven't seen the full video or read everything about it): a (small) company and CEO screwed up by making a terrible (presumably lockdowned) judgment call that a sexist webinar would be appropriate, then reacted badly when confronted about it live on camera, a shitstorm ensued mostly on social media, company apologised, CEO apologised a bit too late (but eventually) and admitted to sexism and thanked everyone who called him out about it (in something like 100 tweets), while Twitter shitstorm continues growing with calls for CEO's head / sacking, etc. In short, as so many things Twitter, it seems to have its own momentum and might blow up further into mainstream media or might die down. But at the end of the day, I'm not sure what LI or comments here could substantially add to this beyond what's already all over Twitter?

Happy to hear readers' thoughts, in any case.

Hi John Doe, thanks for your feedback. Overall I think the model seems to work for us and most subscribers, I think, with the main draw being the live email or Telegram alerts of exclusive industry stories or other topics readers want to subscribe to (rather than necessarily the period of exclusivity, which often starts out at an hour but sometimes gets stretched out a bit). It doesn't pay most of our bills but it does help, and it seems fairer way of seeking subscriptions than locking away our archives or all stories behind a paywall for those who can't afford it.

That said, we're happy to consider feedback and evolve if required, so let's do a simple poll. Please:
- OBJECT to this comment if you would prefer LI to lock archive stories older than a few days/weeks behind a paywall, like B&B/LiveLaw, or
- LIKE this comment if you prefer our current system, where some stories are locked away for a few hours and then free for all time.

Finally, regarding your (hypothetical :) note, I am aware of one or two loopholes but would always be interested to learn more and to receive bug reports. You can anonymously submit it via Send Tip, and I will be grateful. And if you include an anonymous / redirector email address, we can create a free gift subscription for you if it's a legit bug.

That seems to make sense. Presumably, behind the scenes mooting teams could have 100 researchers and people helping, so long as formally no more than the allowed number are part of the team (or registered with Vis, for that matter)?

E.g., quite a few colleges have mentors or alumni (who may have won the competition before) or faculty advisers to mooters, who may also help a little bit in research and strategy and the like, yet they are not formally part of teams. Plus, it might be pretty much impossible to police whether anyone is helping the researchers, particularly in a virtual moot?

Yes, great point. Also, please don't forget the drug war in the Philippines, which has seen thousands killed by the state! And the Vietnamese government has been arresting people for making Facebook posts and is generally being communisty! Also make sure you protest against Saudi Arabia for the murder of journalists, dissenters and oppression of women! And against Myanmar for its ethnic cleansing campaign of Rohingya! Don't forget Russia and its extra-territorial murders of dissidents! While you're at it, also include North Korea for its human rights record and international cyber-attacks! Uzbekistan and Belarus' regime probably also deserve a tiny little protest for terrorising its own civilians!

In short, the constitution should forbid people protesting about things at home unless they first hold protests about everywhere else (if there is any time or country left afterwards, that is).

For context: https://twitter.com/tushargiri3/status/1207712422120656897

A full list of apparent signatories of this petition is circulating on Twitter - picture here: //www.legallyindia.com/images/uploads/20191219-182353.jpg

Unless there is direct evidence to the contrary and someone on the list gets in touch to let us know they did not consent to signing it, it seems safe to assume that the signatories are genuine...

Honestly, that rumour has been floating around for a while and we've looked into it a fair bit over the years with absolutely zero corroboration, other than hearsay. If you have anything concrete that's possible to stand up, please share anonymously in a reply and will take it up.

Thanks for your feedback. Agree that the Algo isn't super new anymore, but I believe we are still the first to cover what the firm is intending to do.

Regarding subscription, our strategy is very much to put more and more stories behind a temporary paywall accessible only to subscribers. Some of the news may be super fresh, some may have been kicking around the market for a while longer, but I think most are interesting and relevant reads about the market. This story, judging by the reader interest and traffic at least, certainly seems to be one of those.

In any case, I think this kind of front-ended paywall is a lot better and fairer to readers than hiding all our archives or all our articles behind a paywall, which would be an easy road to take. But for those who enjoy being in the loop on the cutting edge of what's going on in the Indian corporate legal market, I think it's a good way of supporting independent publishing, while still giving access to information to those who can't afford it.

Thanks for your feedback. In this case we classed as M&A, since it took the stake over 25%, which is our de-minimis for counting something as M&A in the methodology (rather than plain PE/VC).

Would be happy to take views though if you don't think that makes sense within this context.

Hi Naik Znag (great name btw!). The only course correction, if any, as I had often explained in this comments section, has been that before we generally had zero comment from the firm on all their exits, so there was no other story to tell, really.

Now the firm is actually giving their point of view about exits and submitting corporate deals, the volumes of which this year and last are not nearly as dire as all the exits would make one believe (including the firm's lack of visibility on third party league tables): https://www.legallyindia.com/db/firm/L%26L_Partners

That's not to say that those exits aren't going to hurt the firm's corporate practice, which is why we have mentioned 7 exits over 3 years in this article (and linked to the most recent article, which has the full list of exits).

We currently don't draw a distinction between competition mandates on M&A transactions and vanilla advisory mandates. Agree that this is something we should potentially look at demarcating (although fees for competition or standalone tax advice can sometimes rival that of main advisers', and they also tend to be closely involved in the transaction).

Deal values not being recorded could be due to a variety of factors, but mostly would be:
- the deal's value may not have been publicly disclosed or reported,
- if a deal was primarily not Indian, we don't capture deal values (unless an Indian-only deal value can be attributed).