JGLS Sonepat has recruited 25 new faculty, including eight national law university (NLU) graduates, to take its total faculty tally to 140 and that of teachers who are NLU graduates to 44.

JGLS dean Prof C Raj Kumar commented: “[The salary we offer is] significantly more than a typical public law school, the NLUs, central universities and state universities. 20% of our full-time faculty are non-Indian nationals.

“We are the largest non-corporate employer of NLU graduates. As a university we have over 44 NLU graduates [employed with us].”

Clarification 04:32: The initially published story stated that there were over 150 professors at Jindal. The number of “full-time exclusive JGLS” professors is in fact 140. Another 60 faculty members at other schools of Jindal Global University offer electives at JGLS, said Kumar (from the Jindal Global Business School, the Jindal School of International Affairs, the Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, the Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities, the Jindal School of Journalism and Communication).

The hires follow the young law school, which was set up in 2009, having last year increased the size of its intakes to 480 in its five-year LLB programme, 120 students in the three-year LLB and to 50 for its LLM. The tuition fees for the 5-year LLB are listed as Rs 5.5 lakh per year, excluding scholarships.

The law school’s teacher to student ratio continued to stand at 1:15 Kumar said.

The 25 new teachers include 2 new professors, 4 associate professors 2 of whom are also associate deans, 9 assistant professors, 7 senior research associates and 3 research associates.

The 3 assistant professors are all Nalsar Hyderabad graduates, 3 senior research associates each are graduates of NLSIU Bangalore, RGNUL Patiala and NLU Delhi, while 2 research associates are from GNLU Gandhinagar and NLU Jodhpur.

A total of 15 new hires have LLMs from foreign universities, including professor Prof Michael C Davis with a Yale LLM, as well as associate professors with LLMs from Cambridge University, University of London, Yale, University of Sussex, New York University and Michigan University.

Kumar said: “We have a very strong research ecosystem. Every faculty member has access to a research grant of up to Rs 20 lakh. We also have a research rewards scheme where for every faculty publication, if [the faculty is] publishing in one of the top journals they get Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh as research reward. We have a very generous sabbatical policy, we have summer and winter break.”

While he declined to confirm precise remuneration paid to faculty members, he added: "Most of the time faculty members are not so interested in a lot of money but in academic independence, autonomy, an ecosystem that favors research. We of course like to make it attractive financially but I think for most people who join academia it never is the money [as the primary motivation].”

Editor’s note: Kumar has now told us that the total number of NLU graduates in JGLS teaching staff is 44, instead of the previously stated 35, and that NLU graduates make one-third of the law school's teaching staff. The break-down is: NLSIU Bangalore 7; NALSAR, Hyderabad 9; NUJS, Kolkata 15; NLU, Delhi 2; NLU, Jodhpur 3; GNLU, Gujarat 5; NLIU, Bhopal 1; RGNUL, Punjab 2.

The new hires