Outlook India
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Outlook ranks NLS: Outlook India magazine ranked NLSIU Bangalore as India’s “best” law college, ahead of Nalsar Hyderabad, NLIU Bhopal, NUJS Kolkata, ILS Pune and NLU Jodhpur, Symbiosis Pune, GNLU Gandhinagar. Ninth was Amity Delhi, followed by New Law College Pune BVDU, Jamia Islamia Delhi, VHU Varanasi, MS Ramaiah Bangalore, Osmania University Hyderabad and Bangalore Institute of Legal Studies [Ranking, via Bar & Bench]. Rival weekly India Today ranked Nalsar Hyderabad as India’s “best” law school last week. Legally India has reduced coverage of third party law school rankings since last year.
Previous years’ coverage of various national magazines’ law school rankings has turned into a bit of a media circus and has not really contributed in any way to improving the quality or transparency of Indian legal education.
The magazines’ law school rankings have been often criticised and little understood, while colleges’ rank often varied widely and seemingly randomly from year to year. Please feel free to read previous stories, drama and hundreds of comments on this topic.
Legally India has therefore taken an editorial decision not to analyse, publicise or give major editorial space to such magazines’ rankings.
National magazine Outlook India has ranked four national law schools as India’s best law colleges followed by two private Pune schools but following a spat with the magazine last year, NUJS Kolkata declined to provide data and was not included in the list while NLU Jodhpur re-entered this year in fourth place.
Outlook India defended itself against the criticisms in last year’s complaint by NUJS Kolkata professor Shamnad Basheer and two students against Outlook and India Today for publishing allegedly error-riddled and misleading law school rankings. Outlook revealed the details of its complex weighting system of ranking but declined to publish further information, in what the NUJS complainants called a ‘lackadaisical manner’.
NUJS Kolkata professor Shamnad Basheer and two students have threatened to complain to the Press Council of India about the law school rankings of national magazines Outlook India and India Today, which they allege suffered from "gross inaccuracies and methodological flaws" that violated "canons of journalistic ethics" and did a great disservice to students.
Indian weekly magazines India Today and Outlook India have both ranked NLSIU Bangalore and Nalsar Hyderabad as India's top law schools, while NLIU Bhopal and ILS Pune occupied third place in each respective ranking and NUJS Kolkata found itself in sixth and fifth place.
New Delhi
India Today and Outlook have published their annual rankings of colleges accross India. Among law schools, NLSIU is placed first in both the rankings. India Today placed NALSAR at second while Outlook placed NUJS in that position. We have painstackingly managed time to explain the hotch-potch of rankings after that.
India Today’s representative when asked about the difference between rankings of itself and Outlook answered, “See during our first year we were unaware what NUJS was till one of the boss’s kids told him that this national law school has opened in Kolkata”.
“In the second year we were driven away by some Bong faculty. Its only after that year, that NUJS featured in our rankings. Hence we can only slowly move up its rank so that we maintain a sort of consistency with our previous years’ rankings”.
Delhi University is placed third by India Today while Outlook has NALSAR in the position. An Outlook’s representative explained, “See, we have copy catted India Today. So we try to be different from them. Hence we placed NALSAR at third, just to sound different you know”.
“For the top three we have three slips NLSIU, NALSAR and NUJS. Our boss picks up a slip and our researchers write down the name of whatever name comes up”, said the lead researcher of Outlook, Mrs. Bahari Dekha explaining Outlook’s rigorous methodology.
“For the 4th and the 5th slot we have chits of NLIU Bhopal, NLU Jodhpur, ILS Pune and Delhi University. A similar process is followed and afterwards, chit picking becomes too slow and tedious. So we just pick and choose a cooler sounding law college”, she added.
“In short it is first chit picking and then pick picking. There is no nit-picking”, she explained.
We asked India Today’s boss Bharat Aaj about the experts his team had consulted: “Our team in itself is an expert. We have pioneered the rankings. We are the experts. And more importantly students believe us. Don’t tell me we should consult anyone else”.
Our next question to Mr. Aaj was whether his team visited the law schools: “See we did not visit Bangalore because we had pre-decided their rank. NALSAR told us that they would put up an advertisement and so we gave it a skip. We did not visit NUJS as that day was a bandh in Kolkata. Jodhpur was way too hot. And who’ll visit a place like Bhopal”?, he answered.
“We visited Amity Law School, though. It is right next door. We were treated to a dinner and great drinks, as always. They also have a front page advertisement and we have mutual respect for them”, he added. Amity is ranked 10 in India today rankings and has remain unmoved in that position.
Ankit, a 17 year old student law aspirant who was seen carrying all the issues spoke to FNWB: “I buy the magazine to see some hot college chicks and generally see what the cool dudes are upto, as far as trends and all is concerned”.
If you are worried about your college ranks, the legal horoscope might be of help.
Kolkata's WB National University of Juridicial Sciences (NUJS) has come out in second place behind National Law School of India University (NLSIU) Bangalore in the latest edition of Outlook India magazine's top law school league tables.