And you need to learn to articulate in English. That's the most crucial indicator. Someone badmouthing an entire generation, engaging in whataboutary, continuing to deny the presence of huge social wrongs or to admit their part in the perpetuation of such wrongs, all in terrible English... who else will they be, but a baby boomer Indian uncle? Which other category of person in the world is so lacking in self-awareness?

Founding partner is into some spiritual guru and wants other senior management are obviously expected to embark on the same journey. The guru has a major say in policy matters of the firm. Is this common in law firms. Have also heard about similar stories in other firms but not to this extent. Senior management was taken to an ashram instead of a resort in one firm. Please share your perspectives.

Yes, because pursuing anything in London is no more feasible. Read up on abolition of "non-dom" in the UK. Due to this, H. Salve has also moved out to France. In short, the abolition means that people like GS and HNS will have to pay UK taxes on their Indian earnings. Well ofc they wouldn't be fine with that. Rishi Sunak and his wife are to blame for that.

As M&A lawyer:

I think the average CS focuses too much on compliance aspects without zooming out to see larger picture. In a global deal, that Companies Act fine upto INR 500,000 for some pointless missed / incorrect filing is hardly ever "material".

If you, as a CS, are able to think a little laterally and suggest approaches apart from parroting "do compounding", you will go far.

To add to my brother Alex above, please search LI for other threads on Banking. Banking is notorious for being voluminous and you will constantly be drowning in documents and working on weekends.

While B&F has decent exit options to banks for better WLB, the work hours and the brain dead work of revising templatised work in law firms is not worth spending 10-12 hours a day in office 6 days a week. But when you work in an environment like that for 6 days, you start normalising it just because the job pays you slightly above market. In fact, you might even feel proud because your peers in law firms may appreciate you. When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.

Some might say there is interesting structuring work in DCM and banking, but that is post 5-7+ years PQE and definitely not at associate level. If you are a hard worker, who is afraid of taking risks and can put your head down and work for long hours, banking might be a good fit. If you are someone who is smart and who wants to do interesting work, you will realise there are better things to do in life

Giving you genuine advice my friend

See if you can find an inhouse that pays well (FinTechs have been very good paymasters of late for B&F lawyers), life will definitely be better there in most aspects.

Any decent tiered law firm with a banking practice is bound to be ruthless at some point on account of the lower fees you generally make in banking mandates. Which means you have to complete a lot of deals to justify the costs at the Firm. I really hope you find a place that fulfills your criteria (which from a logical lens is not unreasonable at all), but banking as a practice area is doomed, and will continue to be so in the near future. Even if someone does manage to shake things up a bit and try and improve the filth, the clan will eventually drag him/her down and force him to and make his team slog.

When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.

I am a 2024 law graduate from a top tier law school and had joined a T1 law firm and worked there for about an year. I moved on from the firm due to toxicity and internal politics. Since then, I have been trying to land interviews at T1 and T2 law firms through Senior Advocates/ AORs (contacts of parents) who oblige by sharing my CV with a partner in the firm. The firms also oblige by taking my interview. However, things come to a standstill after that. My interviews are going really well, however the process hasn't reached a conclusive ending as I am yet to receive a offer letter. Do law firms avoid hiring sons/nephews of acquaintances/friends of Partners due to conflict of interest and their inability to fire them due to non perfomance at a later point of time? Please pitch in with your gyan. I am also wary of negative reviews by my previous firm. Are my fears unfounded?

Apparently both went to do something about the la Gogoi affair. Then things happened inside a blackbox and life continued. Maybe DYC is jockeying again for a cushy sinecure or assignment somewhere. In any case SC rarely disappoints it's own. So many arbs and commissions. Later can be created too.

Kindly check EC records bfr you rate MPS so highly. Please scrutinize the actual role and operations of the so called standing committee that MPS had ▮▮▮ created. Why was it disbanded eventually and never made alive again by his successors? Also the seeds of subsequent distance education and UGC funds mismanagement were sown during his time. Ofc his successors and their minions have been constant gardeners and now we are receiving fruits from the poisoned orchard

A certain teacher at NUJS had collapsed in a epileptic fit. Due to stigma surrounding epilepsy no one but a senior teacher who was then the Registrar too knew about her history of epilepsy. The teacher had fallen face first and broke her tooth that pierced the lips and caused fracture to her nose as well. She bled profusely. Students rushed her to a well equipped hospital some distance away. Nearby hospitals hadn't come up then or lacked facilities. This was early days in Salt Lake. No one from admin even accompanied this teacher and her students. The teacher of course had no clue. Knocked unconscious. When the some of the students came back to plead the admin, esp the Registrar to at least intervene with insurance paperwork and further payments (students paid the initial amount with whatever they could manage then) the Registrar thundered, threatened and had the teacher sent to an infamous minimally equipped govt hospital in Salt Lake because the teacher did not have medical insurance. A certain student had an elder bro studying medicine and he used contacts to ensure the basics. Throughout her stay no one but students visited her during recovery. On returning to campus, she thanked students and resigned quietly.

Btw, this was the so called golden days of a great Padma, NRM Menon who was very much on campus and fully aware. Students had approached him and later even complained against the Registrar, his pet. He glared and boomed that students should only be seen in classes and hostel rooms. End of story. Also the planned health centre was later leased out to a bank, which continues to pay a measly rental despite holding crores of NUJS money. Here too the great Padma forced the bank on NUJS despite offers from SBI etc only because of a parochial reason. The same reason NLS also got the same bank on its campus.

I heard this from a former Noojie and could only mumble back that things remain the same even now. Thankfully we now have good hospitals nearby but rest is between God and that unfortunate person.

▮▮▮. The hospitals that he was taken to admitted that had he gotten timely medical intervention, he would've lived. ▮▮▮ We cry about admin issues because people like you try to normalise bad ones. We will cry because we don't want to show for one second that we are passively submitting to or accepting their incompetence.

Well Mr. Saraf

Let me reiterate some parts of what you said and then respond with our expectations.

MS: "Discipline and accountability are essential for our continued growth and success, and I expect all members to follow this policy without exception."

Response: That's true. But who is accountable for our delayed bonuses? Who is accountable for our delayed arrears? F£cking September is about to end we don't even know how much increment we are going to get. Where is the discipline when it comes to paying your associates on time? Do you call sitting over your associates' money, discipline?

MS - "All members of the Firm — from Senior Partners to Associates/ Support — must be present in office during office hours."

Response: Please understand that we work till late night, sometimes overnight. Unless you're willing to pay for overtime, don't make a fuss about coming on time. If you expect us to come on time, we expect reasonable working hours that allow us to leave on time. It can't be one sided.

MS - "Senior members are expected to lead by example"

Response: You delay our bonuses by 4-5 Months. You don't even pay the rightfully accrued bonus to those on notice period or those who have left, despite the fact that they stayed for the entire year. It was your fault that the bonus was delayed. Why cut bonuses of people who are leaving after completing the entire year? You're cunning enough to pay proportionate bonus to those who joins mid year, because they worked 4 months less than an year. But when it comes to someone who's leaving, you forget that the person worked for an entire year and then served notice too. You don't announce the increments till October, November and arrears are not cleared till then. You don't give autonomy to the partners to decide bonuses for their teams, instead, you randomly deduct people's bonuses who you've not even worked with. You don't know my work, you don't know how much hardwork I put in for the entire year. You just woke up someday and decided to cut my bonus by 5% from what partner recommended and you did it. Where is the accountability? Such a nice example you are setting. Stop talking about seniors leading by example, when this is the example that you are setting.

MS - "WFH is permitted only on Wednesday for counsels. The earlier WFH policy remains applicable. Please find attached the policy for WFH."

Response: Stop micro-managing already. We are professionals, not your employees. Treat us like professionals.

MS - "I am not happy with the way the Firm is presently being run. Discipline and commitment are non-negotiable."

Response: Neither are we. Trust me when I say this. Only complacent people are staying here willingly. Everyone is looking out already. It's just the pending bonus and the arrears that keeps people from resigning (I see why you don't release it on time) Headhunters know this. Hence they are poaching partners, PAs, SAs and Associate from S&P very aggressively. Last year we have seen this firm taking the hit of the exit of some top shot partners from disputes team. You may live in denial, but the accounts and billing team knows the impact it had on the revenue of the firm. I have reached out to accounts and billing teams to research on this. You should be grateful I'm not posting numbers here, but I have it and I know where this firm stands today.

Mr. Saraf, please know that this firm is more replaceable than we are.You are more replaceable than we are. You make things hard for us, and all of us will leave. Headhunters are in our inboxes at all times.

You don't have good revenue, you don't have good profits. So you resort to ▮▮▮ tactics like cutting bonuses arbitrarily. Keeping the arrears on hold, not paying bonuses and arrears to the people who leave.

Furthermore, the firm is in such a condition that you're now asking people to leave. Clerks and other support staff were warned of retrenchment. I know atleast 4 people that were asked to leave the firm. This included 2 trainee associates who had worked here for 1 whole year and then when the partner recommended their confirmation as an associate, you refused. If you don't have the capacity to retain them, don't play with their future. Don't waste their time. It seems you just want cheap labour with no intention to absorb them.

So yeah "I am not happy with the way the Firm is presently being run. Discipline and commitment are non-negotiable." And so is accountability and ethics.

Now how do I know all of this? I have good relationship with admin, partners (seniors and juniors) and associates. I see all the messages you post on the Partners' group. I know exactly what goes on in the partners' meetings. So I know.

▮▮▮

Regards,

Copilot

I also work at a Tier 1, and have more experience than you. Saraf is not a Tier 1 (alteast not as per Chambers). Tier 1s are mature on all the fronts. If you speak with your friends at other Tier 2,3,4, you will observe this quite frequently.

Not in any way supporting the approach which MS had in this email. This could have been way politely undertaken at the firm level.

Given that some people do this- but isn’t it also true that firms assign “urgent” work (only to be reviewed a week later) at 7 pm (after wasting the entire day on nothing)? Or give work on weekends? I started off at my T1 as an early bird but their “urgent” and late night culture made me come in to the office by 11.30 AM. If you won’t let me have my evening, (and ofcourse i need some time for family/gym/etc), I by coming late in the morning!

If India persists in its ‘socialist’ cult of smallness, it will remain a society optimised for mediocrity
=========================================================================================================

Economic Times Op-ed

https://m.economictimes.com/opinion/et-commentary/if-india-persists-in-its-socialist-cult-of-smallness-it-will-remain-a-society-optimised-for-mediocrity/amp_articleshow/123952164.cms

https://news.careers360.com/nujs-protest-student-vice-chancellor-vc-resign-kolkata-sex-harassment-campus-infrastructure-law-courses-elective-faculty-cag-audit

Another squandered opportunity (▮▮▮?) by SJA to ▮▮▮

Basically,it's been one month into a random no name law school- but they push us to write 1 research paper per subject EACH semester (that's 6) and they said we'll only get full marks if they're published so I figured I should try to start publishing. Anyway me and a few of my friends got published in some ( what seems to me as pay publishers) journals- IJLRA IJLLR and IJIRL- but I feel like paying 800 every single time I need to publish seems pricey. Not to mention, the ones I found from NLUs seem to ask for application fees? also I know its hard to get published in the first year so I want some tips and recommended journals to apply for publication.
Thank you.