Some general computer tips that might be helpful, which will range from complete newbie level to a bit more advanced.

1. Get comfortable at (or lose your fear of) Excel / Google Sheets / LibreOffice Calc, etc. It will pay dividends down the road and you can achieve some surprising things with it, besides just making graphs. There are lots of tutorials online, but there will be times that you can save hours using simple numerical operations instead of using a pocket calculator (enter something into a cell like "=A1+A2+A3" or "=SUM(A1:A3)") or so-called string concatenation (enter into a cell: "=A1 & ' will be combined with ' & A2" and it will combine the text of those two cells, and you can even automate things with simple logic to give you different output).

2. Get comfortable with Google or other search engines, especially using advanced commands like "site:legallyindia.com insertsearchqueryxyz" or "filetype:pdf". A very useful blog was written on this on LI before:
https://www.legallyindia.com/views/entry/researching-without-legal-database-the-alternate-google

3. A little more advanced perhaps (and probably will not be allowed on Citrix or other locked down work systems) there is a software for Windows called AutoHotkey, which at the simple end can save you a lot of typing. You can for instance define it to type "agreement" whenever you type "agt" or other similar contractions that you use frequently (there are also some specialist "text expansion" tools that might be even easier). Once you get more into Autohotkey, you can program simple macros that will repeat certain repetitive actions over and over again (there are other macro recording programmes also that can do this).

4. When working with PDFs and fed up with how slow Adobe PDF reader is, do consider installing SumatraPDF as an alternative. It starts up super fast, can view most PDF files and generally doesn't have all the Adobe bloat (but beware, it does not deal so well with fancy interactive PDFs that contain embedded other documents, forms, etc, but for those you can use Adobe).

5. This software (or other launchers like it) are very useful and can save a lot of time in the long run, letting you do quick Google searches from any other programme with a hotkey for instance: http://www.launchy.net/ If you customise it a bit (which isn't too hard), you can even set it up so you can launch searches or commands on many different sites you often use or search with just a button press or two, plus do other things like instantly do calculations, work with your clipboard, etc.

6. Not so much software, but a lot of people swear by buying a second monitor for research or any work and productivity. That way you can have a word document open on one screen, while you have a PDF and some research database on the second screen, so you can just glance between your notes and research screen easily. If you can't afford / don't have space / don't want a second screen, another small tip along this line (which some people might not know) is to tile your windows. On Windows it can be done by dragging your word document window by the title bar all the way to the left of the screen, at which point it will resize to take up the left half the screen. Then select a second window (like a browser window or PDF or research to the right of the screen). If your computer screen is big enough / your eyesight is good enough, you can then view / work on two documents at once.

7. If you are a newbie, try learn to use keyboard hotkeys in all your software. In windows that includes using the windows key to open the start menu, and you can type the name of programmes and open them up (if Cortana doesn't get in the way), rather than hunting for their icons, or even pressing Win+E to open Explorer, etc. In Word, you will no doubt know Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I etc, but you might not know that nearly all commands have keyboard hotkeys (which are listed in the menus) and can also be customised from the settings. So if you use Align-Right or Justify often, learn the Ctrl+R or Ctrl+J hotkeys, for example by using them often (or writing them on a cheat sheet as you learn new ones). Over years, it'll save you years of your life spent clicking things :)

Not sure if any of these are useful or too basic / not relevant? If they are or anyone would like any more information or has similar tips, please pipe up below.

Yes, apologies for expressing that somewhat confusingly: 2.3.1.B.1 @Cambridge LLM above is correct: we do not track IP addresses and only store commenter IP addresses anonymously that does not allow identifying individuals. We obviously would not release commenters' IP addresses either in this present case (in the unlikely event someone would request it) nor have we ever disclosed a single commenter's IP address to anyone.

The "agree" part of our earlier comment was only in respect to us requiring an overhaul of our privacy policy - we do have one but it's a little out of date: https://www.legallyindia.com/non-editorial/privacy-policy-20090318-015

Since then, for instance, we've removed storing and tracking of identifiable IP addresses, and have removed all Google, Facebook and other third party trackers and analytics to protect user privacy further.

First, bullying is never ok and the polarisation that has happened between so-called 'left' and 'right' should not have a place in a university, which should provide a "safe space" for ideas, as you say.

But claiming a 'deplatforming' of people like Sadhguru, government supporters or a state governor seems a bit disingenuous. A university surely does not have a duty to give a platform for those who have millions and millions of followers or supporters, nor does a university have a duty to give a platform or space to a party in government or defenders of government policy, who surely have wider reach, support and a greater platform than nearly anyone else?

If anything, academically a university arguably has a duty to represent and make heard voices that are not front-and-center on TV, newspapers, Twitter, WhatsApp and everywhere else.

Also, supporting ruling governments has rarely been 'cool' or fashionable on university campuses throughout history, so it's not surprising that a majority of students might disapprove of those supporting or defending some policies of the current government (the worst of which are arguably not merely 'conservative' but actually far-right and anti-democratic).

(That is even if a large part of that polarisation is cynically and intentionally created by politicians, and even if 'conservatives' are not at serious risk of getting arrested outside of campus for making their views known, unlike the 'left' currently).

But again, it is also a disservice and confusing when you use "RW student" or "Modi supporter" or "conservative" interchangeably, without defining further (and of course, the 'left' is as guilty of this conflation of the right much in the same way.

Are you claiming for instance that if you said, "Adam Smith is awesome", people would bully you? And would you think social opprobrium as unfair if someone made a statement on campus such as "homosexual relationships are against the order of nature" or "India should be first and foremost a nation for and of Hindus"?

No doubt students in law and politics especially can be very passionate about the ideas they study and learn, and it is conceivable that certain ideas are unfashionable and will result in social opprobrium or castigation, and in some cases the issues are so emotive and the debates are so charged that it might feel like the freedom to express different thinking is stifled.

But without actually specifying what exactly it was that others labelled as 'problematic' or disagreed with, this post does prima facie seem to be a troll post merely intended to incite a flame war.

If you are genuinely interested in debate on political issues, we will endeavour to continue strictly moderating responses to allow you and others to "make their point on any issue", and to attempt to engage the substance of the argument and ideas rather than insulting the speaker making it.

That is if you are genuinely interested in debate on substance.

This is a very fair question, it is unclear why it is downvoted. The issue with most of these debates of 'left' vs 'right', is that both are very very wide ranges. Being socially conservative vs economically conservative are potentially two very different things, though many political parties may stake a claim at being both and this therefore making it seem like a binary choice.

The same goes for the so-called 'left', many of whom might consider themselves to be liberal on social policies but are effectively in support of free market capitalism in their day-to-day ideology.

Yes, that sounds like a sensible suggestion if you have some space on your CV and your experience in an internship involved more than just making (virtual) coffee...

Maybe rather than listing the transaction, also make sure you describe the skills you learned or employed, such as "legal research on FEMA in a multinational acquisition in the telecoms and technology space".

Thanks for pointing out, that's now been moderated, apologies for the delay: https://www.legallyindia.com/convos/topic/171637-a-look-at-law-firms-hourly-billing-rates-and-the-proportion-of-it-that-trickles-down-to-the-associates#comment-171715

Paper is great, but have you considered storing those digitally at all? Software such as OneNote, Evernote, Joplin and many others like it can be quite useful, as later on you can search them easily for keywords, areas of law, case names, etc, and you can even embed files, screenshots, copy-paste articles and notes relating to it, etc...

There's no doubt the liberal media has been exhibiting a blind spot in respect of the early theories that it escaped from a lab. This here might be interesting: https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/05/by-the-way-nearly-40-of-americans-already-believe-covid-19-was-made-in-a-lab/

However, the crux is that 'bioweapon unleashed by China' still remains just a theory without any actual proof. That paper by the Daily Mail does not yet appear to have been peer reviewed or published yet. And even from the abstract published it does seem like it is largely circumstantial speculation that explicitly states "absolute proof can not be provided", and they "assess hypotheses" and "reasonable deduction". None of us in this thread are virologists, but the abstract's conclusion basically says that more research needs to be done (and that by their arguments, those claiming a zoonotic origin need more "persuasive evidence" before their theory can be accepted).

The Daily Mail headline seems rather more sensational than the abstract would suggest. And the authors of the paper seem to have previously, in 2020, also over-sold the conclusions of a Covid-China paper pre-publication in the media, with the eventually peer-reviewed article not containing the same explosive facts: https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus-claims/ (one co-authors is also a UKIP politician, which does not necessarily bode well for scientific independence).

In short, the original points stand: until an actual open investigation of the Wuhan lab, it will be hard if not impossible to prove or disprove either theory, though the zoonotic theory is still the most likely and accepted as most plausible by most scientists.

But yes, scientists should keep investigating and researching. And a full fact-finding investigation should be carried out in China. But whether that will happen is largely politicised at this point, as is the 'Covid bioweapon' theory itself.

There seems to be a bit of a logical fallacy at work here. How many NLS alumni condemn other SH accused who are not from NLS? I imagine that 99% of them don't. And if a few of them, say, speak out against Weinstein or harassment in the judiciary, or support #metoo, they are therefore under an obligation to condemn all incidences or allegations of SH everywhere in the country, at every college, at every workplace, and especially so if an NLS connection is there?

And what if they don't? At that point all left of centre NLS grads are automatically hypocrites?

Yes, a good idea, we have been thinking about things along those lines and have added it to the feature requests thread: https://www.legallyindia.com/convos/topic/167985-start-new-conversation-suggestions-to-improve-conversations#comment-170587

Do you mean a bookmark-ish feature, so it is easy to find / follow favourited comments again in future?

adding related feature suggestion via https://www.legallyindia.com/convos/topic/170527-how-to-deal-with-the-stress-of-possibly-going-unemployed#comment-170569

>is there any possibility of LI introducing a feature where users can 'star' important comments?

Agree, the majority of the comment was not trollish. Our main 'trollish' yardstick is currently that if a comment is ad hominem, or includes partial ad hominem against another poster (even if only a sentence), it is trollish at least in intent, but we are hoping to refine this definition a little bit. In case of any suggestions, please let us know...

Is that actually true? Don't most law school students of most law schools go for the high paying law firm jobs most of the time if there are any available? It's not like Marquee Firms are having a hard time finding enough candidates when going for days zero at any of the top NLUs, right?

Truedat, on a recent rewatch, half the punchlines basically seemed to be about one of the male friends insinuating they themselves or one of the other male friends was gay, effeminate or not manly enough. Then there's the recurring 'joke' of Ross' now-lesbian ex-wife, and Chandler's cross-dressing father being regularly milked for not very good laughs.

The fact that cultural mores have changed is a normal part of societies' evolution, much like many TV shows from the 80s, 70s or 60s are for the most part rather tone deaf and full of sexist tropes that are not as funny anymore (and maybe never really were either).

That said, Friends is still a great show that still holds up in many parts (or maybe that's just nostalgia).

There's no doubt that much of the American corporate news media (which, with the exception of Fox News usually should not qualify as 'news', tends to lean slightly-left-of-centre), has been going through a bit of a crisis of faith and purpose in the Trump years. And they definitely have their own agenda and many have also lost some perspective and impartiality in respect of Trump and his supporters (which is understandable when every other word coming out of his mouth was seemingly a distortion of facts).

But the 'bioweapon' theory that Covid was intentionally released remains a conspiracy theory, and the 'accidentally escaped from a lab' theory is also just that at present, a theory.

But yes, more impartial investigations of its origins should happen. Will they? Probably not any time soon.

Obligatory health warning: Do not decide to invest in crypto (or any other risky or even non-risky asset class) without having a good understanding of what you're getting into and do not go by advice from anonymous people on the internet.

Or with regard to crypto, do not trust even most non-anonymous people: whoever says they 100% know what will happen to crypto over the next 12 months is lying.

So, some good baseline advice might be:
1. If you have to ask, don't do it.
2. Don't ever invest anything (especially in crypto) that you're not ok theoretically losing 100% of (for more reasons than purely the price fluctuations in crypto).
3. If you're looking at crypto as an alternative to Fixed Deposits, don't do it.
4. Understand that with crypto, you are basically gambling: it is not a safe investment by a long stretch, even though it might be getting lots of publicity right now. So unless you understand the crypto markets and technology and unless you're ok to gamble, don't do it.
5. If you still want to go ahead and do it, good luck :)

Fun discussion and opinions, thank you all for sharing 😄

End of the day, there is plenty of space for everyone in the legal market and we are not intent on competing with B&B or LiveLaw, which have both done incredibly well in their own ways. LI, however, has always been a bit more scrappy and much more happy to carve out our own niche by doing our own thing(s) in our own way(s).

B&B and LiveLaw almost certainly have more traffic than LI these days but they obviously have very different core audiences, targeting the much larger pan-India population of advocates and also non-lawyers / news hounds with breaking court reports (effectively directly competing with / complementing coverage of national newspapers and TV stations on that beat, which is a much larger pie).

LI doesn't do that and we decided a while ago that going for court reports and competing for numbers in that space was not for us for a variety of reasons. Instead LI aims to cover the things no-one else covers, and we hope we can cover these differently, better and (usually) earlier than anyone else. We also hope that provides unique value, transparency, discussion and also sometimes a bit of entertainment in these sometime dark days to our core readership.

So do we believe are our core readers? Primarily Indian and foreign corporate lawyers, as well as law students, aspirants academics and other lawyers with an interest in legal careers, institutions and organisations. However, we will hopefully keep evolving and changing with the times and the preferences of readers, so if we've left you out of the above list and have ideas for what we should cover, improve or change, please let us know, we are always listening.

Lots of Love,
LI

There does not appear to have been any real development or interest in such a bill by anyone really, even from Meenakshi Lekhi. At this point it appears to be a non-starter and neither NLUs, the centre nor the states seem to have any real interest in making this happen. It is also unclear what problems centralisation would solve (and indeed, which problems might not get worse if centralised under a new bureaucracy)?

Note on moderation: the response by OP appears to contains several statements that are not prima facie made in good faith. The statements were also an attempt at misrepresenting the OPs comment and intent and language originally used (such as by citing statements made by individual members of 2 parties as support to describe all 4 parties originally named by OP with the same islamophobic term). Other examples and purported 'proof' above also appears prima facie disingenuous and relies on sourcing from propaganda sites that regularly publish fake or misleading news items (links have therefore been removed).

The comment regarding the CPIM appears to be mostly political propaganda based on unverified information from 60 years ago: https://www.freepressjournal.in/india/chinas-chairman-is-our-chairman-why-china-will-forever-haunt-cpim
Other 'proof' about original claims appears to rely primarily on a website that regularly publishes unverified information, and in this case the article linked to in support is not a bona fide report but clear misrepresentation and distortions of what was actually said in the video and its intent.

Regarding the TN-related claim, prima facie OP's evidence is not sufficient to claim that all Tamil Nadu based parties ending with a K meet the OP's allegation.

End of the day, we welcome political debate on LI but obvious political propaganda or fake news that is not verifiable, factual or relies on questionable sources or uses language or arguments that are obviously in bad faith will be moderated.

The chances of becoming a successful vlogger or influencer who makes lakhs let alone any money are probably 1 in a lakh, if not 1 in a million?

Also, the illusion that vloggers or influencers do no work is probably not true in most cases (unless they're already famous from the start or just become an overnight sensation). Especially when starting out, some of the most successful ones would have been working way harder than most corporate lawyers, plus have things that you can't necessarily learn, like a certain 'look', talent, performance abilities, video editing, huge amount of drive, some ego, and so on...

From that perspective, corporate law might have better and safer odds of making you good money (at least once you've been able to get into a good law school and your foot in the profession, which obviously requires a lot of privilege).

Would disagree: you could argue that GLC Mumbai grads know how to hustle and work harder than anyone because the university gives them not much and 90% of what students achieve, including mooting, academic achievements, etc is through their own efforts, work experience and networking that students get done themselves. Plus many will be juggling (albeit limited) studies and internships...

This will be an unpopular opinion, but the main reason law firms like hiring NLU grads is because it is easy for them to do so. You hire from the top few NLUs and the odds that most interviewees are smart enough to work in law firms (due to CLAT), the baseline teaching and legal knowledge is good enough, the competitive crucible of a residential NLU can give students good work and extracurricular experience, and finally, RCCs often already do a lot of pre-selection, and finally, Days Zero are a really efficient and cost-effective way of hiring many low-risk candidates in one go.

We'll show ourselves out now... 😊

Have you already begun studying any of those foreign languages from scratch? You should definitely start as soon as possible to see if you have an interest and aptitude for learning languages, and more importantly, whether you enjoy it.

Even if it turns out not to be a career for you at the end of the day, learning a language is always useful and might open up other opportunities in future and will simply help you sharpen your minds and improve your English and other skills also.

There are lots of great resources online for learning languages and many are free also. A really great app that's well taught and would be worth a go might be this one: https://www.languagetransfer.org/

There are also better known options like DuoLingo and Memrise (which are a bit more for vocab) and lots of YouTube conversational videos and also some cheap paid-for options.

We'd have to check but it seems like some of this ranking might be ignoring a few firms, such as large IP firms, or even Kochhar, which has around 50 partners.

Some semi up-to-date figures on partnership size (and sometimes fee-earners) at least are available in our database, by which the ranking is somewhat different, depending on how you count (Khaitan is largest by partner size, for instance):
https://www.legallyindia.com/db/

This is interesting, thanks for articulating your thoughts.

We are considering overhauling the way threads are moderated and involving the community more in that, though it may be hard arriving at a consensus about exactly where to draw the line, so feedback on the above is much appreciated.

Some of this may also be solved by allowing readers to completely hide conversations about certain topics, such as Covid bioweapons, though to be honest some of the responses and the like in that comment are also fairly amusing and harmless if they are moderated strictly and fake news, propaganda or conspiracy theories are weeded out somewhat...

Reader opinions on this are very welcome.

We've covered sports lawyers a few times on LI, but there are definitely a few more out there also:
https://www.legallyindia.com/law-firms/jsa-grows-sports-media-with-vidhii-nandini-mehta-20130415-3595
https://www.legallyindia.com/law-firms/ashurst-bestie-ilp-hires-2nd-mumbai-partner-with-sports-lawyer-kiran-desai-20160720-7852
https://www.legallyindia.com/law-firms/tmt-re-absorbs-half-of-sports-law-start-up-ludus-ludus-re-launches-as-krida-20160323-7341

What price range does entry-level mean? If you're a little bit adventurous and want cheap, environmentally friendly and robust, we at LI swear by second-hand Thinkpads via OLX or similar sites. Even a 3-6 year old Thinkpad model, many of which are available cheaply due to corporate cast-offs or end-of-life for between Rs 15,000 to 45,000, will likely still run and run for years and perform well, though you may need to do some research about which ones you like and at some point replace the battery yourself or through an electronics shop.

Many in the Thinkpad X1 series (4th generation and up generally great) are some of the nicest, thinnest and lightest laptops money can buy and you're going to love, if you can find them, and can go from Rs 30,000 to Rs 45,000 or more (new they often cost between Rs 1 to Rs 1.5 lakh).

Slightly cheaper are the X250 series or thereabouts (like X240 or X260 - bigger numbers are usually newer and better), which have a smaller screen than the X1 but are still very light and have long battery lives. Very popular for business users.

Then you have the cheaper and less elegant & chunkier T series (T440, T450 or higher models are new enough - do a bit of googling on the exact model and whether it works for you). They have solid battery life and can be had for as little as Rs 20,000 or less sometimes, depending on how old a model you're getting. They are nearly endlessly repairable and upgradeable and will get the job done.

Whatever laptop you get, try to make sure you get at least 8GB of RAM if possible (though this can also in some models be upgraded by your electronics shop expert for not much money) and an SSD hard drive (which most modern laptops have).

If you're buying new there are lots of entry-level options, though the build quality likely won't be as good as even an old Thinkpad but would be interested in other readers' suggestions and favourite brands and specs...

Learn how to read and research stuff that is not easy to understand or badly written and get comfortable translate it into plain and clear written or spoken English... That and the discipline to persevere with tasks like this will probably serve you well no matter what carer you get into later in life.

That's indeed a very good question. We may start a new thread in some time to clearly state the rules of engagement and etiquette of battle, so we can evolve or maybe even come to a consensus (hah!) on what the community would like moderation to look like going forward.

I agree that trolls can derail discussions pointlessly, though sometimes they can also be amusing or lead to enlightening discussions (usually unintentionally). Our pro-active flagging such trollish content and making it less visible might discourage such derailing, without requiring a response from non-troll readers.

To get an idea of what readers / commenters would prefer, a quick straw poll:

1. Please like this comment if you feel that moderation of trolls is currently mostly acceptable / on the right path.
2. Please dislike this comment if you would like to see much more aggressive moderation / more hiding and demotion of trollish content.

If you have any other thoughts on moderation, please do respond to this comment.

Ignoring the irony that it seems a bit 'snowflakey' to feel anger, disgust and disappointment about a bunch of icons, we would tend to agree that the broken heart is not hitting quite the right note. 🙃 On the other hand, the like heart is quite pretty and might subconsciously impart a bit more civility and niceness into the convos, champions battling notwithstanding, so that could be a benefit.

End of the day, we needed to pick some iconography since the texts 'like' and 'object' made the page inordinately busy. If you have any suggestions for good icons, please let us know.

Here are some possible directions like could take: ⭐ - quite nice but also denotes 'favouriting' something so maybe confusing
👍 - very easy to understand but very Facebooky and boring
😎 - could be fun but maybe confusing?

Regarding dislike, any thoughts on the following potentially, using a gavel to indicate objections?