Prior potentially related threads:
General book recommendations:
https://www.legallyindia.com/convos/topic/164466-book-recommendations-for-lawyers

Constitutional law recommendations:
https://www.legallyindia.com/convos/topic/171612-the-best-books-on-constitutional-law

Please take care with responses here. Anything that is obviously advertorial will be moderated, as well as things that seems like rants. That doesn't leave huge space for responses but hope the above makes sense.

Honest general questions though: does where you go for CLAT prep really matter hugely? Are some much more expensive than others? Are there any free materials online that could provide similar value, or in order to crack CLAT do you really have to pay for it?

This constant trickle of threads on certain legal education providers either seems like a bit of a disingenuous attempt to start flame wars or veiled advertisement for private education providers, which is a potentially slippery slope and will invite more spam and marketing. In this specific case, it does seem like enough digital ink has been spilled on these topics though in other threads and unless a thread genuinely offers a new insight or discussion, we'll be moderating these as trollish.

So sorry to hear that. First of all, if you are having such thoughts, please please please do try and call a confidential suicide support hotline, such as this one: https://hellolifeline.org/

Your life is a million times more important than any exam, even if it might not seem that way to you in this very moment. And family pressure is hard and there are no easy answers to dealing with it, but know that things will get better, 100%, even if it's hard to see that longer perspective right now.

Also know that in a couple of years, all of this will be a distant memory. Life is really long and will have so many more opportunities that you can't even imagine right now, and which don't depend on a single exam, which at the end of the day is primarily a lottery.

However, the advice we can give in an online forum will be limited - please speak to someone you can trust and you can be open with about how you feel, even if it is a telephone hotline with counsellors.

In any case, things will get better, even if not immediately, you will get through this setback and discover new opportunities.

Hehe, would agree but this was actually a comment of someone quoting a specially encoded JPG picture 'inline', which unfortunately can't be displayed by our boards at present.

A sneak preview of what the comment looked like: "data:image/jpeg;base64,/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD" etc for 2234 'words' :)

Sorry for the confusion, we have now deleted the comment.

English.

(seriously though, trolling aside, we hear French is a little bit useful due to the ICC being in Paris and it being used in some parts of Africa. End of day though, any foreign language will be valuable in some way - pick one you like and that's spoken in a country you'd like to spend some time in some day, and go for it, a language learned is never a waste of time).

Some of those questions we don't have full answers to yet but we do believe the LI platform is providing a useful service to the legal community and in particular to the LI community, which we hold very dear.

We therefore feel that a non-commercial and part-community-run model might be a more robust and healthy one in the long-term, both in light of the new regulatory regime and to allow the continued open exchange of information by readers.

As such, we are looking at this as a new beginning, rather than an end.

As mentioned, we are still working out details and will keep you posted. If anyone wants to get in touch in the meantime with thoughts or ideas, please drop us a line ({contactus}) with a WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal-enabled phone number. We'd love to hear from you and we'd be happy to chat further.

Hi, apologies for the lack of updates, LI is on a bit of a summer/monsoon hiatus at the moment.

Also, partially in light of the Intermediaries Rules, we are currently still finalising the long-term plans for LI. The picture as it currently stands is: LI is not and will not be involved in any business activity whatsoever anymore and we have removed all monetisation from the site.

This includes a stop on all advertising (as you can see in the banners above in association with the Covid Rural Response Tracker project, we may only be carrying ads of non-profits or other non-business causes in future, without payment).

We have also closed paid subscriptions but will be grandfathering accounts of former subscribers at some point into free legacy subscriptions, where they will continue receiving alerts and early access to articles.

The quantity of articles will likely decrease, though we still hope to cover things important to the community going forward, though maybe not with the same regularity as previously.

Happy to take (non-trollish) feedback and suggestions from readers like you, of course. :)

Hello, nothing shady here but we are still in the process of fully evaluating what the rules mean and the outcome of various court challenges. In the meantime, as before, we can reiterate that we do not store the full IP addresses of commenters, also in compliance with European and other international data protection legislation. We also do not believe storing of IP addresses is required under the Intermediaries Rules in LI's case.

We do store redacted and pseudonymised versions of IP addresses to prevent spam. On a more technical level that means: an IP address consists of four bytes (e.g: 255.255.255.255); when we store a comenter's IP address, we drop the last byte of that IP address. Furthermore, in that redacted IP address the first three bytes are then converted into unique words from a dictionary, which is also shuffled randomly regularly.

Any cookies stored on LI don't contain IP addresses or other identifying information to the best of our knowledge. If you have any queries, please do let us know.

The majority of comments appear to have been ad hominem so far, which doesn't contain facts or useful information. How many recent exits have there actually been in the team, which has nearly 20 fee-earners, right? Please do share figures / names (we might redact the latter, but can confirm whether those are indeed accurate).

You're right, these need to be spelled out a bit more at some point...

But in a nutshell, the intent behind moderation is reflected in the placeholder text before you leave a comment, which (vague though they admittedly are) we try to use as the fundamental basis for (admittedly imperfect) moderation decisions:

Quote:

We and fellow readers love when you share your thoughts in a comment. However:
(1) No ad hominem: Address the arguments, not the person making them.
(2) Don't be a troll: If in doubt, be nice to other humans.
(3) Use complete English sentences and words.
(3) Follow Legally India's full terms and conditions. We reserve the right to moderate, republish or edit your comment for any reason.

This might be a useful starting point from 2014, though mostly about salary partnership: https://www.legallyindia.com/law-firms/partnership-track-at-indias-top-firms-20140509-4697

The tl;dr from that suggests it takes between 9 and 13 years to make EP on average (though it excludes the many many who never make EP or leave the profession or firms before they do). It also does not explicitly take account of equity partnerships at all firms (and is a bit outdated).

As far as we understand, being an equity partner (besides the promoter equity) at most firms doesn't necessarily translate into a huge bump up in pay, though it can. It would very much depend on the exact equity model (or even non-equity revenue share model) that a firm follows, and potentially also how much your own team makes, etc.

Would agree that bhakt is sometimes a tough one to moderate: at which point is it merely descriptive and at which does it become derogatory? I.e., is calling someone a bhakt fundamentally describing their relationship and belief in a short-hand, like calling someone a RaGa fanboy or Congress worshipper? Or is being called a bhakt of Modi functionally the same as a troll calling people left of centre they agree with "sickular", "libtards" or the other similarly 'creative' terms that have been moderated on this forum?

In moderation, we tend to currently allow use of 'bhakt' if used in a descriptive sense, but if it's accompanied by clear intent to abuse or troll or incite a flamewar, then it would tend to fall into the trollish camp. Likewise, RaGa fanboy or Congress worshipper would probably be fine in isolation but if it becomes ad hominem in intent, it would be trollish.

Happy to take some feedback on this.

It does seem like a bad idea to encourage anonymously tracking down law students who have good CVs and then seeing if it's possible to poke holes in or criticise their CV?

Please keep it civil, at the end of the day, everyone will have a different approach, capacities and priorities in how they approach their legal careers, and some might succeed and achieve what they're looking for or find careers that fulfil them.

Suffice it to say, to aid the general discussion, the shared LinkedIn link was of a law student with voluminous CV of work experience, internships, positions, honours and publications. And without digging too deeply, the list of 50+ publications does seem to look like it's with real publications and potentially legit.

In short, purely by the quantity it is impressive and one does wonder how there are enough hours in the day. Then again, some people barely sleep and have boundless energy, drive and purpose, and it certainly does not seem impossible.

But more importantly, don't try to measure your own worth against others - do what you like to do, explore the career options you find interesting, push yourself out of your comfort zone to write articles and do internships and volunteer and other positions that you think are valuable, and a career and job will find you sooner or later. Even without 50+ publications, guaranteed!

Indeed, true story, thanks for sharing:

https://twitter.com/pranjan12781/status/1402837598314270724

Quote:

I will be joining Jindal Global Law School, @JindalGlobalUNI
as a Professor and Vice Dean on September 1. Very excited! I thank JGU for the trust reposed in me and will strive hard to live up to their expectations. Certainly going to miss my colleagues & students @SouthAsianUni.

A speculative answer: perhaps less pressing competition from foreign firms? For a while, Indian law firms were maybe more worried about more foreign firms snapping up the best grads and eventually opening offices in India? That maybe 'concern' appears to have receded somewhat...?

Agree, the quote was not trollish though at the end the comment became clearly trollish and disingenuous in intent rather than advancing any rational argument, when this language was used: "But it's an unpopular opinion among the woke NLU crowd and will lead to one being ostracised, as seen on LI comments. Palkhivala would have been cancelled had he been alive today."

Debating the merits and demerits of reservations should be absolutely fine in the LI comments section, but considering this is a sensitive issue, please keep to facts and actual arguments rather than prejudices, half-truth opinions or provocations...

Prima facie, this seems to be a trollish post intended merely to stoke outrage and debate.

However, proceeding on a good faith basis, please provide some constructive thought or suggestions for alternatives, rather than just saying all reservations should be banned (quoting Nehru does not count as an argument).

Do you accept there are still caste- and background-based inequalities in society. If so, do you agree it is incumbent for the government and laws to address these?

If so, and if reservations are not the answer, what would be an alternative? For instance, could a purely means-tested system work in India to replace reservations? And do you think it would even be politically possible to remove reservations (even if replacing it with something better / as good)?

We actually had an Android app on the Playstore but it's been pulled for some mysterious and opaque Google reason. It was fairly simple but got the job done in terms of getting updates of latest stories (though the conversations feature didn't work properly on the app).

We'll try to get it relisted in the App Store soon. In the meantime, if anyone has any feedback on the app, etc, please let us know.

Yes, seconded, many Twitter threads seem to be asking about what kicked this off and there are some vague references to a student having made some statements but there does not seem to be a recorded originating event or tweet. Please share. Though not like things trending on Twitter has any logic or reason behind it...