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Thinking about next steps, which will allow me to earn something decent without destroying my health and sleep.
II) He holds a decent brand value to his name in corporate dispute resolution (Energy law), which aligns with my interest area.
III) I want to hear whether it would be naive idea to directly text him for internship.
IV) or do sometimes partner gives head to such texts & offer internship?
V) Also anyone in the same position (partner/ equity partner) who wants to share some good tips with respect to manner in which you want be addressed by a student on WhatsApp.
VI) What could be a most feasible & safe code of conduct to bag an internship through these non-anonymised channels (WhatsApp/Telegram).
VI) Anyone who have experimented with this sort of unconventional method ever before, wants to share their experience, please proceed to elaborate it. It would definitely help me craft my further steps.
Don't know if this is a good decision at this point but I just cannot survive law firm work life right now. Can you guys please advice based on your experience.
- You need patience in this space. Starting salaries are low but will go up with time. Don’t be depressed early on if you get low pay. I myself am an example. Thought I don’t earn as much as a CAM corporate partner, it’s still very good pay. I started by earning peanuts.
- The top lawyers and law firms in this field survive entirely on foreign clients. Indian clients are 🤮 both in terms of work and billing. If you happen to be in a firm which advises mainly Indian clients, that’s not a good firm! Many small boutique firms have very good foreign clients. Join them.
- The future if this field is tech. Tech. Tech. Tech. You must keep yourself up to date with the latest developments in this space and get to know about the tech itself.
- Finally, just like in corporate law, there are some law firm owners who unfortunately are oligarchs in this practice area: keeping salaries low, promoting nepo kids and making no investment in continuing education and training. If foreign law firms come in they will hopefully fade away.
1) The IP practice in India is dominated by boutique IP firms who operate primarily in cities that have a branch of the IP office or a High Court that regularly takes up IP matters (typically Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata). These boutique law firms are involved in the bulk of prosecution work, which is the bread and butter of any IP lawyer.
2) A pure IP practice can be classified into three major areas - prosecution, litigation and transactions. Prosecution pretty much relates to all IP filing work (including responding to office actions, opposition proceedings) and corresponding advisory work. This accounts for a bulk of income for IP firms. Litigation, naturally, relates to IP disputes. Most firms work straightforward cases related to trademark, copyright or patent infringement. Since IP is still growing in India, complex cases involving various questions of law usually go to a few boutique firms who have a history of doing good IP litigation work (such as Anand, Remfry, Singh, Saikrishna etc.). These offices are primarily based in Delhi due to the IP Division having judges such as Pratibha Singh, who were former IP lawyers and have a deeper understanding of IP law. Transactional work is available with very few firms, but typically involves drafting and negotiation of agreements (licenses, assignments, co-existence agreements, JV agreements etc., that are IP centric). Such work is also very sector specific, with firms such as ANM Global, Khimani etc. dominating the M&E industry and regularly making production, artist agreements.
3) A few full-service law firms (T1 and T2) such as Khaitan, AZB, SAM and now CAM have fully functional IP teams. However, these firms (barring Khaitan) do not do a lot of prosecution work due to the clerical nature of work, and abundance of competitors who are willing to do such work for much lesser fees. These firms typically work on IP transactions (assisting M&A teams with IP portion of transactions), negotiating IP agreements and allied agreements for larger clients. They also tend to do a lot more advisory work across IP and allied fields. The IP team in AZB, for example, also handles a lot of pharmaceutical regulatory work whereas Khaitan seems to be doing a lot of technology related and advertising regulatory work. Can't comment on SAM, and CAM has recently started an IP team so not too sure about the kind of work they do.
4) Breaking into a boutique firm is SIGNIFICANTLY easier than joining a full-service firm with an IP team.
5) Ideally, one should always be very clear with IP prosecution before venturing into other areas of IP (including litigation or transactions).
6) The industry is slowly (but surely) becoming more sensitive towards IP as a practice area. This is also evident with the increased involvement of IP and Tech teams on commercial deals (go check any deal reporting by major law firms and see IP partners who have assisted such deals). However, understand that as a practice area, IP is very very concentrated and there is an over-availability of lawyers. If you wish to succeed and make it to the top (which is where the money is, unfortunately), you need to have a very deep industry / sector understanding, along with experience in allied fields such as TMT, Data Protection and Privacy etc.
7) Hours are not, as others claim, "chill". This is completely dependent on the firm you work for, and the quantum of work they have. This is especially true if you're working for a fullservice firm's IP / TMT team. Due to the smaller team sizes, the quantum of work often gets overwhelming.
8) Money, especially in early phases, is significantly lower than Corp Teams unless you manage to break into a Tier-1 firm. (Do your research about differential pay here too).
9) If you're interested in pure IP work, join a boutique firm. No better place to learn and do only IP work. Personally, felt that such work was very mundane and wanted to have a taste of all work under IP and related fields, thus chose to join a T1 full-service firm. Work is fun, regularly get to work across sectors including M&E, Pharma, Tech. This means work isn't purely IP, but also a lot of compliance, advisory and regulatory work.
10) DO YOUR RESEARCH about the kind of work the firm does. Boutiques may also place you in over-specialsed and demarcated groups such as 'prosecution' team, where you may be stuck doing purely IP prosecution. While you gain immense expertise in the prosecution field, I feel like you shouldn't limit yourself to only one area, especially as a fresher.
Kinda nervous moving to Delhi without my friends circle.
Whether I should still go for it and try my luck?
Paisa hoga to sab relatives aayenge milne
Would that be weird in anyway?
I don't see it being useful for students though. It's useful when referring to multiple documents within a case during arguments.
I think the other judges on that bench - of whom DYC is the only one still serving - got a lower level (Z or Y+).
Previously Dipak Misra had received Z+ security because of Yakub Memon ruling & subsequent threat.
You can spot DYC's convoy at any event or on Tilak Marg. It's not Z+.
On the other hand, I can witnessed people around me get noticeably better. I saw people get published at increasingly better places, winning increasingly better competition. It's not like I have not tried, I have. I don't know what to blame it on, so I have decided to put it on inherent lack of capability/intelligence in me. It makes sense too. I can from reservation, where my general batchmates ha to get an under 100 rank, mine was around 700. That too after multiple attempts. Logically, that makes me 7 times worse at everything law school than them. 7 times worse English skills, 7 time worse comprehension, 7 times worse retention capacity, 7 times worse writing ability, 7 times worse conversation and speaking skills, and so on. I have tried very hard and things don't seem to get better. My GPA keeps tanking every semester no matter what i do, and I'm never satisfied with the amount of work I put in. It's cyclic in a way i believe, where capable people upon getting more positive feedback from their endeavours get further motivated to do something even better, whereas i, on consistent failure, find it impossible to even gather enough courage to start, try a new thing. I don't know what to do, and if things continue the way they are, I'm afraid i won't be employed. I have loans to pay and a family to feed (papa retires in 2 years), so not sure how that'll turn out. Rant over.
Its just not how the law works.
And an estate duty/ tax is not the equivalent of taking everything away from everyone and ending inheritance. It would depend on how much wealth is being passed down and in what way- but it likely wouldnt affect most people.
Sheth is the guy who made Indian airforce work for a private dance party & opposed GST & Aadhaar only to make a U Turn
https://www.livemint.com/politics/news/did-bjp-amit-malviya-jayant-sinha-once-favoured-inheritance-tax-idea-congress-shares-tweet-sam-pitroda-lok-sabha-2024-11713967797818.html
And read generally whatever interests you.
Anyway, as per the standard definition of "merit", you don't deserve anything you did not work for. The same logic should apply to your parent's property.
Inheritance tax does not prevent people from liquidating their properties or doing anything with it during their life time.
Afghanistan was too close to 9/11 and everyone was still recovering from that to have a detached view of the situation. Plus there was no moral ambiguity about the Taliban since they had overthrown an elected government.
There were protestors for every war since Vietnam across American universities. But this is something new. This isn’t protesting- they’re waving the hezbollah flag and chanting about burning tel aviv to the ground and harassing Jews. These aren’t left wing things. These are authoritarian things. And they’re - ignorant Americans thinks the whole world and all of its problems are about race thing.
But look - you’re there now- the place opens up opportunities. Try and make the most of it.