Senior Trilegal partner saying clients are reducing scope of mandates because AI is helping them crack legal issues.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/delano-melo-furtado-5b29708_chatgpt-chatgpt5-chatgpt-activity-7366904966474608642-sjr3?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=android_app&rcm=ACoAACeEmDgBzGlnTHQfkklEjhll6TBgciQw_UI&utm_campaign=messages

In a world where remote work, technology, and AI are making work smarter, why are law firms still demanding 24x7 availability, endless all-nighters, and weekend marathons?

Why are young lawyers still working through sickness, exhaustion, burnout, and pain not because they want to, but because they’re terrified of losing their jobs?

I’ve seen colleagues work through a relative’s death. I’ve seen some log in from hospital beds, with fevers, with panic attacks. I’ve seen them pull all-nighters and still show up the next day with no acknowledgment, no recovery time. Work weekends, then dive straight into another brutal week.

It feels inhuman at this point.

Why do we still call it “dedication” when it comes at the cost of health, sleep, social life, and family?

Why is raising an issue met with silence, or worse, the threat of being fired?

And for what? A paycheck? Three vacations a year? A fleeting escape before the cycle begins again?

This isn’t resilience. It’s survival. And it’s breaking people.

Wonder what’s driving it: tradition, ego, or just greed? The kind that reduces human beings with dreams, families, and lives into nothing more than resources on a spreadsheet.

If every other industry can evolve, why can’t law?

If AI can read contracts, why can’t we read the signs of burnout?

If technology can transform business, why can’t we transform culture?

And more importantly, why are we not collectively protesting against it? Why are we still normalizing the idea that this is just how it is?

So, the real question is - will we ever stand up together and demand better? Because the system will not change, unless we do.

If you were to say that you don't have the money for their visa process, they would even offer you to pay in installments. However, they will definitely collect all the money upfront before they start your visa process. In the agreement, they tell they do not promise job or visa. They may vaguely talk about either job or visa interview.

They have ready made intimidating, defamation notices ready. I have seen almost everybody receives the legal notice with the same kind of accusations and language.

Spot on. In fact, as everyone knows NKC was this environmental law professor’s external PhD thesis supervisor and had rejected the thesis. These thesis was totally plagiarised and substandard. Then another external was assigned and passed it.

This information (barring NKC’s name) is officially documented. Pre-Covid, when students went on protest and forced the university to disclose minutes of previous years under RTI, one of the disclosed minutes had this.

Go back to LI archives, and you may come across the RTI archives. Else I will dig it out and share if you can’t.

Also, the famous PhD is accessible online, on the UGC Shodhganga database of North Bengal University. It is plagiarised from a now-defunct digital encyclopaedia called Microsoft Encarta plus various websites. Encarta was the Wikipedia of the 90s and early 2000s.

For what? Better exposure and better clients? Yes, you'll get that. But guess what? The work is routine. I've interned and practiced (for about 2 years in Delhi and 5 in Calcutta), and I can tell you - Calcutta is far better for any person from here. No expenses for home and all, and while pay and exposure may be less, you would be earning not less than 70% of your Delhi counterparts. Now why would I say Calcutta is better? Because you'll realise, after 5-6 months, or max 1 year, its the routine same work. Anywhere.

As a Bengali who has spent a good part of his life outside Kolkata (first in Bangalore, and then outside India) but who has lived in Kolkata for a portion of his life and goes back reasonably often, I must say I am very curious as to what you were doing in Kolkata in the first place. Totally godforsaken place to be. No progress of any kind there. Get out as soon as you possibly can.

Kolkata is a hopeless powder cake of religious sectarianism, ideological/political battles totally devoid of any level of critical thinking, the most toxic among the old fashioned attitudes of the world and economic stagnation. Living in such a place is deeply unhelpful to one's overall development, both as a professional and as a person.

And if you are talking about "culture" (in terms of exposure to Rabindra Sangeet etc), that is a mere paliative: as Wilfred Mulliner, the protagonist in some of Wodehouse's short stories once thought in an analogous situation, being given a good cutlet for breakfast when you are imprisoned and held against your will is not a net contributor to overall happiness. The influence of such things really varies based on circumstance: if the circumstances overall are good, then they are a significant bonus; if bad, they are no more effective to make them better than taking a pain-killer would be if you'd dislocated your knee and were stuck at home for three hours without being able to get to a medical facility!

Take an example: you can have (if you know how to play your cards right) a perfectly satisfying career in Berlin, Germany, with the equivalent of the good cutlet being a bonus in that situation being that car radios in Berlin and Vienna tend to broadcast Beethoven violin concertos or Mozart operas, as opposed to the generic junk you hear on car radios almost anywhere else (including in big Indian cities, such as Bangalore). The trouble is, in Kolkata, through "cultural exposure" (if you have any), you are getting the equivalent, in Berlin terms, of all the professional advantages of Berlin being taken away but the Beethoven violin concertos and the Mozart operas still being played on the car radios.

I am not insulting him for his background. I am insulting him for the fact that he played truant while at university, and that, being from a privileged background, he felt secure enough to do so while the rest of us actually have to put in some work in life. He could have been from any "law college" as far as I care. But glorifying laziness and lack of hard work, whether coming from somebody at Oxford or at GLC, is totally unacceptable.

Haha. I didn't even attend an NLU for my undergrad. It's you guys who are getting your nickers in a twist over this stuff.

What the post is saying is very simple: there are certain objective, proven, ingredients that make up a good legal education (whether in India, or outside). These are aspects that help to build the foundations of a good lawyer - and reading Dworkin or using Lexis/Westlaw is among them, Dworkin being one of the common law world's foremost legal philosophers and Westlaw/Lexis being some of the foremost legal databases of the world. I am really sorry, but I don't know how we are even having an argument over this. Even other old men consider the learning of tech properly at an early stage to be essential. I attended - that is to say, physically attended - a lecture that Sir Geoffrey Vos, the Master of the Rolls, gave at an event conducted a few years ago by the Legal Services Board, which is the oversight regulator holding the SRA and BSB (the regulators for solicitors and barristers) to account. You would imagine that such a one as he would advocate for getting dusty in libraries or old archives to find law reports, etc. No. Instead, he warned that not being up to scratch with developing technologies would mean that lawyers weren't useful. In Sir Geoffrey's worldview, anyone whose acquaintance with legal tech is confined to good usage of Lexis and Westlaw would be what the British tend to call a luddite (i.e., one opposed to change). (And BTW, Vos is older than B.R. Gavai.) Is agreeing with luddites really the school of thought you want to be associated with? Is going in the opposite direction to the (sensible and perfectly valid) advice of one who has responsibility for one of the world's most highly regarded systems of commercial dispute resolution what you are arguing for?

Of course the post is expressed in a childish way. It assumes that Gavai is incapable in this regard. For all you know, he can use Lexis and Westlaw better than the post author. He may even be better at using Chatgpt or Perplexity than most of us are. We cannot tell without further enquiry. But considering Gavai's really disappointing remarks, the post raises valid concerns.

In one sense, you are right. Give it to the fellow with more experience and a good track record. But if you have an NLU lawyer with as much experience and a lawyer from "Maharishi Dayanand University" (what uni is that, BTW? Never heard of it.), then you'd be taking, let's just say, rather interesting decisions in doing that, unless you had (I don't know?) prior professional dealings with the "Maharishi Dayanand University " alumnus.

DeaR Team LI,

I wish to seek guidance on how to start working in a dispites team or a litigation team at a firm. I passed out this year from a T-3 college and have very little litigation experience. hoping for it to be a firm for a decent pay instead of counsel or chamber.

pls guide. thanks you

No, your feelings are completely valid and rational. A person cannot survive without a work-life balance but at the same time, I believe that since it has only been two months since you joined, you need to give this profession a chance and wait for some weeks/months and if this problem persists, switching could be option but the truth be told, this profession demands long hours.

An Indian employer has called out Gen Z, short for Generation Z, for being entitled after hiring a junior worker who expected to be spoken to differently. In a now-viral post on reddit titled "Gen Z Entitlement Rant", the user remarked that it was perhaps the 'generational difference' that dictated the behaviour of most new-age employees.

"I work in Tax. We recently hired this junior, Gen Z, smart, very pretty, and very aware of it. Within weeks, she wasn't just asking what she could learn but also when she'd be leading negotiations. She actually told me, "I think I have the presence for it." Presence, not skill," the user wrote in the r/IndianWorkplace subreddit.

The OP highlighted that whenever a senior gave instructions to the new hire, she replied saying she did not like the tone and expected better.

"Not because she was insulted rather just because she feels she's owed extra softness, extra patience, extra polish. She did once mention something like 'my facecard never declines,'" the user said, adding that her behaviour may have been tied to her 'looks' as she was used to doors opening and people being excessively polite to her.

"The entitlement is wild. Back when I started, seniors could tear your draft apart in front of the whole team and you'd thank them for the lesson. Now, she wants her mistakes pointed out like a spa receptionist breaking bad news."

https://www.ndtv.com/offbeat/employer-rants-about-gen-zs-entitlement-at-work-calls-it-generational-difference-9193602

https://www.news18.com/viral/employer-rants-about-gen-zs-attitude-at-work-internet-says-this-new-generation-isnt-taking-sht-9540358.html

https://m.economictimes.com/magazines/panache/from-dont-like-the-tone-to-facecard-never-declines-senior-employee-slams-gen-z-colleagues-workplace-attitude-internet-is-divided/articleshow/123612737.cms

I am an IGNOU student who is about to resubmit some of my assignments because apparantly they misplaced them, I came about to know this information a few days after my admissions into LL.B got confirmed on a provisional basis.

I really want to not lose this year, losing the first semester's fee is a secondary concern for me at best, my degree will say that I graduated in the month of January and took my last examinations in December, what do the guidelines have to say regarding my situation?

Mixed bag experience.

Work :

There is debt and equity work. You’ll get to work on early stage VC deals, and do fundraising work, and also work with debt funds. Depending on the client, it can interesting or very demanding.

Otherwise, they have some legacy clients, for whom they sometimes tend to creat unnecessary urgency to please these clients. The firm also takes up lot of secretarial work for such clients instead of hiring a CS.

Work hours:

At times there can be immense work pressure, when you’re working till 2-3 am daily and also working on weekends. But there will be periods of less work pressure also when you leave at 7:30/8pm.

Work experience:

This firm has a semi hybrid structure - at associate, SA, PA level, you are working across Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore. Your SA can be in Mumbai while you’re in Delhi or vice versa. Technically, you may be working remotely, but you still have to come to office. Also, depending on who your senior is, you can have a very different experience. Mumbai team works hard, but they are more reasonable and easier to work with. Delhi team has some people who are difficult to work with and who micromanage a bit. Bangalore team is slightly relaxed.

Leaves - they say they are ok with people taking leaves, but often times seniors call up juniors who are on leave or make them feel guilty for taking leaves. While some seniors do make an effort not to disturb others on leave, some seniors don’t care as much.

Culture:

Lot of the seniors are home grown talent, and haven’t worked in other firms. Since they have been trained under the same person, they have a similar way of working. The firm has its own non legal training sessions for its lawyers, and the overall emphasis on certain things and way of functioning can give off cult vibes.

In the firm, the seniors do discuss about trying to create a balanced workplace, and of adopting innovative methods, but there is still lot of groundwork that needs to be done. As someone above mentioned, you can’t cram decades of innovation in 1 month.

Overall, the firm is trying to be better, but since most seniors have a similar way of working and thinking, it seems sometimes they are unable to recognise their own blind spots.

Left the firm a while back. If you don’t have other options, you can join the firm to learn basics and use this as a stepping stone.

The only people who are not on contract are those who joined several years ago and were hired on or converted to open-ended contracts. For the last 7-10 years, everyone has been on contract and it is exceedingly rare to get converted. However if you're doing well it isn't an issue at all

I worked as an associate in the firm even after 6 years of Work ex. The salary structure is extremely poor. The have a record of salary delay for 2-3 months. You keep writing emails to accountants. so if you are someone who will have monthly bills or rents to pay, pls plan accordingly.