•  •  Dark Mode

Your Interests & Preferences

I am a...

law firm lawyer
in-house company lawyer
litigation lawyer
law student
aspiring student
other

Website Look & Feel

 •  •  Dark Mode
Blog Layout

Save preferences

Leagues apart / Issue 25

LegallyIndia_KianGanz-180
LegallyIndia_KianGanz-180
As is to be expected in an adversarial legal system, lawyers are generally a competitive lot, fighting for instructions, poaching talent and besting the opposition in negotiations.

However, while not yet fully-fledged, law students are easily on par with their qualified counterparts in the competitiveness stakes.

Rivalries range from national versus non-national law schools, five-year versus three-year courses, LLMs versus LLBs, North versus South and more or less everyone versus NLS Bangalore.

Now the competition is about to become a whole lot fiercer, as Legally India has begun tracking the colleges' performance in the 30 most prestigious tests of students' legal mettle: say hello to the Mooting Premier League 2009-10.

Despite only a handful of concluded moots and NLS Bangalore's win in one of the top international moots, the list is already looking far broader than just the top 10 of various magazines' law school rankings.

Many law students have expressed concern to Legally India that the coveted highly-paid law firm jobs do not go to students outside the top-ranked colleges.

In fact, some law firms are known to pay student interns from "lower ranked" law schools less than those from the usual suspects and many more students find that they can not even get their foot in the door.

This is not a problem peculiar to India – US white shoe firms and London's City have long suffered from Ivy League / Oxbridge biases respectively.

But in recent years many international firms have realised that great talent can also be found in out-of-the-way places and initiatives such as the Sutton Trust's in the UK have grown to encourage this.

It is understood that Clifford Chance meanwhile, is following a similar strategy to attract legal talent to its offshore legal service centre in Gurgaon, visiting almost 20 campuses to try and pick the best out of schools that lie off the beaten track.

If nothing else, Legally India hopes that this first comprehensive Indian Mooting Premier League will highlight the achievements of talented young lawyers.

And perhaps it will also provide incentives for firms to put on their travelling shoes and hit the less well-travelled recruitment road.

------
Qualified lawyers too have been battling and batting in Delhi's Twenty-20 cricket tournament between 12 law firms. But after some sound performances by lawyers from Dua, Luthra and Trilegal, there is (almost) everthing still to play for.

Delhi is no longer the undisputed centre of the action: the Society of Indian Law Firms (SILF) is launching its first real push in Mumbai with a continuing legal education series for associates. The local chapter hopes to act as a forum for open debate, to improve the legal market and perhaps even liberalisation will be discussed one day…

This week has also seen Amarchand's Cyril Shroff completing one of the most complicated transactions of his career and Luthra & Luthra and JSA closed a cinema slump sale.

Allen & Overy, after talking the talk on legal process outsourcing (LPO) for many years, has now walked the walk to India. Seems like LPO to India is gaining acceptance in the UK.

This week's legal opinion examines the wake left by the various Press Notes in foreign direct investment (FDI) in the retail space.

And finally, the legal world's favourite cartoonist Legally Drawn is back.

To get future newsletters straight to your inbox every Friday for free, please enter your name and email below.

No comments yet: share your views