Your impression that law firms or most lawyers in firms at least do “clerical” work is unfortunate and respectfully, absolute ignorance on how law firms function today.

law firms draft, file, defend and argue and most importantly strategise and some also argue. Very often, the biggest of the senior counsel fail in strategy. Most law firms today handle statutory tribunals and arbitrations matters in house which is also great legal work and “shaping the law”.

On the corporate side - If law firms did clerical stuff, then why are the biggest PEs and MNCs going to the top firms instead of letting a senior counsel’s clerks or office handle it.

It is only unfortunate that law firm lawyers don’t get the recognition and “senior counsel” gown that they equally deserve.

1. During my time as an A0, I had to prepare and send my senior some 125 signature pages to be signed next morning. It was my first month in the job and I didn't knew that emails through Outlook are actually sent around 5-10 seconds after hitting the send button. I was working on this till very late; was super sleepy so just pressed the sent button and immediately put down the laptop lid (before the mail was actually sent) and went to sleep. Unfortunately, the email was not sent and remained in my outbox. Senior kept waiting for the signature pages to be sent to the client. He even called me but it did not wake me up. Eventually, the signing was delayed. My Partner was super angry and I was scolded a lot. Nevertheless, the signature pages were sent in the afternoon and were signed the same day.

2. A few months later, I issued a CP Completion certificate to investors even though one of the CP was not completed. Informed my senior about this and he panicked a lot after learning about this blunder. We soon contacted the Company Rep to issue us the completely executed document which was the missing CP. Resent the CP Completion email. No one said anything and we never discussed about this mess I created.

Corporate Lawyer A1 here:

I was working on a PE/VC transaction representing the Company. The investor counsels finally gave the greenlight and I was supposed to circulate the document for signing. It was Diwali Time and I was in celebration mood. So I didn't check the pre-execution versions thoroughly and just updated the placeholders, formatting etc. and circulated the transaction documents for signing on DocuSign. The investor counsel calls me few days later saying that clause referencing on the circulated doc is incorrect and to edit it in the final doc. I started checking the document to correct the clause referencing and meanwhile realised that there was a major fuck up - i.e. while I was formatting the document before circulating on DocuSign, I had also deleted several important clauses like liquidation preference, pre-emptive right etc. by mistake. Now the document I had circulated on DocuSign to all parties didn't have these clauses and only I knew it. I couldn't cancel the DocuSign document since majority of signatories have already signed it and also since Promoter had wanted the document executed on Dhanteras, which day had already passed by then. I was afraid that the investor/their counsels/client/ Partner will find out and was super stressed. Once the document was fully executed on DocuSign, I downloaded it and tried editing it. But since few clauses were missing in entirety, editting was difficult since DocuSign had the envelope ID on top - which meant I couldnt add a new page in between with the missing clauses. In the end I finally added pages in between and copy pasted the DocuSign envelope ID to the new pages so that it didn't look like it has been added. But still because of these clauses insertions in between the formatting ended up very fucked up - by which I dreaded my opposing counsels would figure out the manipulation I did to the document. I sent the updated executed doc to investor counsels and dreaded their call regarding the docs. Finally days passed and investor counsel didn't notice and nobody noticed and finally I felt relieved 😅..

While this is certainly the intern's POV, what nobody will tell you is that the intern didn't bother checking the work even once: when he wanted to impress someone to get a job, no less!

Also, forthrightly (we've all done it) blaming IT is the easiest thing to do when you've screwed up; the thing about making a change but it not showing up is probably because the change needed to be made in multiple places not just one.

As usual ATU has vacancies but avoid this group by all means. If you must consider JSA bnf, then please try AM/PK or KM or SM. You can also consider the vertical which is supposedly only under AS but then no one can guarantee that you will be able to avoid working with T & U since all clients of T & U have been originated by AS. T has something of his own book and is comparatively a better team within ATU.

That's like asking what are the advantages of doing Oxford BCL over Sussex LLM. Just brand value, actual academic rigour, a proper and professional way of doing things, not being allowed to do things in a half-arsed way, having Oxbridge and Ivy League-educated faculty over mediocre TLC products, understanding law on a deep theoretical level (as someone going in an academia direction should).

Hi

I'm someone who has done both. I won't say where I am now, but I can speak with some experience.

Shifting after 1 year PQE is effectively just resigning yourself to being an in-house lawyer. On average pay is subtantially lower than Tier 1 pay, and increments will be limited (not to mention no bonus).

To summarize:

Law firm pay is largely about survival. The longer your survive (and survive decently), the more you get paid. But ultimately, life and health takes a back seat.

In-house is largely about lifestyle management. If you are already reasonably well off, or otherwise don't want to "migrate up" in class or are content with your station in life, then a good in-house job gives your certainity, work life balance and an overall stablity. It is also the case that you are setting yourself up largely for a life of in-house jobs since law firms will rarely (if ever) hire someone who has been in-for most of their professional life. It will also be the case that the skillset needed to be a Tier 1 lawyer will be lost after a few years of being in-house.

So it's entirely up to you. If you get a good opportunity go for it. But expect compromises on lifestyle in terms of wealth (but benefits in lifestyle in terms of health).

They call final-year students for assessment internships, which happen almost every month. Even if the firm is not hiring, doing this internship counts as an assessment.
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Be aware that the work culture is ▮▮▮, but the pay is good, so choose accordingly. It's above 50k.

Hi, I'm from a T1 NLU with a PPO at a T1 firm in my preferred vertical. I was happy when I received the offer, but the thought of living the way I did during my internships for the long term is dreadful.

Has anyone left a PPO/offer at a T1 firm for greener pastures right out of law school? I know many have pursued TCs/masters abroad, but what are other trajectories people have successfully explored right out of law school in India?

Hi all, I'm an A3 currently working at a T2 in a GC team. Planning on switching to an in-house role. Role is as a part of the Legal Ethics and Compliance team of a company. Interviewers mentioned that work would be quite monotonous, and includes filing and maintenance of varied forms and compliance work.

I have not worked in a compliance team before. Wanted to ask the good people of LI what this role entails. If anybody could offer any practical insights on the nature of work, growth, pay, and job security (given the advent of AI), it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

The best and prime example is Mr. Vikram Nankani, Snr Adv-he was head of ELP prior to designation.

Viyapak Desai from NDA left the firm and became counsel recently.

AZB Delhi has long history-Almost, all past litigation chair at azb delhi turned designated senior counsels. Including many other attorneys also got independent and doing fairly well. Mr. Sanjeev Puri, Mr. Nanju Ganapathy and Mr. P. Bellimoria to name few.

JSA partners also got gown recently. Biswajit Dubey from CAM also left the firm for independent practice. Mr. J. Sai Deepak is also prime example, he left Sai Krishna and now conferred gown also.

For litigation partners, once you enjoy fair face value before the benches they prefer to go independent. Generally, their mother firms brief them as go to counsel.

Hey Boomer, I actually work at a Wall Street firm and assure you people are not verbally thrashed and humiliated daily. The capitalist work culture actually remunerates you way better for the intense work hours. Which are intense periodically because of actual work not bad management by partners.

Largely because, legally even a flimsy distinguishing factor makes it permissible.

The paper is also favourable for engineers due to math, if the paper did not account for math (something which is largely irrelevant for working as an MBA grad) then the difference would be unfair but the end goal is to end up creating jobs and no company would want 80 engineers male as their only management pool, hence why IIMs favour non-engineers and female candidates cause companies themselves want such diversity and if they dont get it from the IIMs, they will just hire from another university.

I will be graduating this year, I have a job offer at an inhouse providing financial services, the pay is average, should i just join this to look for stability, or should i pursue more and try in law firms, I know the scope of growth in an inhouse is not much as compared to a law firm, I know the struggle will be there but that does not scare me, i feel like its easier to choose comfort, the hard choices ask more of you, if I join this inhouse and in future want to switch to law firms i know then i will be treated as A0 because the law firms dont relaly consider inhouse experience. Please, someone in this setup, have any guidance for me, it would be much appreciated.

Our Vice Chancellors "grand masterplan" which involves re-developing significant portions of the college campus is taking its toll on students. The present ongoing works are for the two main academic blocks, portions of which have already been demolished and are now being reconstructed. I am not really sure what was going through the VC's mind when he wanted to introduce such groundbreaking reforms, but he definitely did not conduct a feasability study on student life and their mental piece. Classes (which go on from 9 to 7 PM) have been severely disrupted this entire trimester because of the continuous, deafening, crass, unbearable noises that are created by the hardworking construction team located directly adjacent, above, or below classes. Concentrating in class for a few subjects is already hard enough, and it gets so bad in some cases where we cannot hear the teacher/speaker or content being presented even after using microphones. Ironically, this has happened in classes taught by the VC himself, but this was all in vain - he just continued to wax eloquence on the intricacies of Jurisprudence II and feign indifference What makes things worse is non-action on part of stakeholders, who have been reduced to "passive observers" and just seem to normalise noise pollution. I hope someone who has g**d mein gooda files a PIL in the Karnataka HC challenging this bloody nonsense. Enough is enough.

How is/are SAM litigation office/teams ? Which partner is the best to work with ? How is the work culture? Work hours and all ? Is SAM mumbai like a typical lala law firm or better ? How good is it for lateral hires ?Pay structure for 4-5PQE?

Please if somebody can answer these questions.