Ouch! Why so salty, brother/sister?

We all know how the business of such testimonials works. ▮▮▮,

To understand the true worth of a litigating lawyer is to gauge how their fellow litigators speak of them. ▮▮▮. In any case, being engaged by the Department to argue for them speaks highly of the volume of the client-side work of this team.

▮▮▮.

Nobody is telling why ▮▮▮ associates leave within a year? Be it with LLM from NYU or CA or NLU rankholder. Are they all dumb or something else is wrong?

Why so much EGO bro? Are you sending rockets into the space or inventing a cure for cancer? This goes out to the whole corporate legal industry, WE ARENT DOING ANYTHING WHICH MAKES A HUMAN'S LIFE BETTER.

WE ALL ARE DOING OBNOXIUSLY BORING JOBS WITH THE AIM OF JUST MAKING MONEY.

T1: 16-20Lpa base, 3-5Lpa bonus, approx 15-20% increase in base salary and approx 25-40% increase in bonus bracket every year for the few first few years. Then the base stops growing much as a function of percentage, but the bonus grows exponentially.

T2: 10-16Lpa base, 2-4Lpa bonus - about 5% decrease in growth from T1 numbers

T3: 8-10Lpa base, 1-3Lpa bonus - much lower salary growth, but I don't have the exact numbers

I was curious to know if any high-frequency trading firms have in-house legal teams based out of Mumbai. Do these firms typically hire directly, and if so, what do they usually look for in candidates? Also, if anyone is aware of current or upcoming vacancies, I’d really appreciate any leads.

Hi everyone,

A friend of mine (who is a non-law student) is considering joining the MBA program at MNLU Mumbai (2-year course). Since doing an MBA at an NLU is a bit unusual, we are trying to gather as much information as possible. I would really appreciate it if any MNLU Mumbai students, alumni, or anyone who knows someone in the MBA program could help by answering any of the following questions (reply to whichever you have knowledge about):

1. How is the overall faculty for the BBA/MBA program?

2. Is it advisable to pursue an MBA from MNLU Mumbai, or should one consider other institutes instead?
3. For students in the BBA LLB program at MNLU Mumbai – how are your BBA professors?
4. Do the BBA faculty members (especially in Economics, Business Studies, and Financial Accounting) teach well and have good subject knowledge?
5. How many batches have graduated from the MBA program so far?
6. Does anyone personally know a student from the MBA program, and if yes, are they satisfied with the course and teaching?
7. Any other suggestions or advice for a non-law student planning to pursue an MBA from an NLU?

Your inputs will be extremely valuable, and any information you can share will be really helpful. Thank you in advance! 🙏

No information yet, but assumption would be no, a partner from another firm or trilegal itself is moving to chennai to set up a firm, Apart from TK Bhaskar, no one in Chennai right now is trilegal partner stature (apart from the ones at JSA, SAM, KCO, AZB already), and with Bhaskar sir having taken on less and less work as of late and essentially being semi retired, I doubt he leaves his firm of 20 years for Trilegal.

The atmosphere at the university is full of envy as a lot of top batch rankers are yet to land a job. This is because of Jindal’s horrendously random grade inflating marking schemes. This practice creates a false picture of the batch ranks. Whereby a lot of people end up higher than more skilled students just because they were lucky enough to be marked preferably. What ends up happening is that you end up with a lot of top batch tankers who won’t be able to convert to an offer letter if they sit for an interview.

+ Jindal’s recruitment committee is total disaster. Almost all the people who have gotten PPOs have bagged them with literal zero support from the recruitment committee. And mind you that more than 50% of the offers to the BO’26 are via PPOs. This means only 10-12 offers were facilitated via the recruitment committee. This is like only 10% of the entire batch 💀

Exactly. SAM is probably the worst place to intern. They take like a 100 interns through contact all for 2 weeks with zero stipend. There are 2-3 interns at a time per team + the HR does not understand the difference between Labour & Employment, real estate, M&A etc. The HR considers all of them under Gen Corp.

This post honestly comes across less like a critique and more like a flex, a way to signal, “I’ve read Dworkin and used Westlaw, therefore I’m more qualified than half the judiciary.” It's unfortunate and honestly quite telling that a personal anecdote by the Chief Justice, meant to highlight access gap in legal education and celebrate the diversity of pathways into the profession has been twisted into an elitist rant against those very ideals.

The idea that someone is unfit to be a judge because they didn’t attend an NLU, or never accessed Lexis/HeinOnline, is not only intellectually narrow but classist in the extreme. By that logic, the overwhelming majority of India’s legal professionals and even some of its most brilliant judges would be deemed unworthy. That’s not just elitist… it’s detached from the lived realities of legal education in India.

Law is not about how many Western academic articles you can cite or how many international moot courts you’ve attended. It’s about applying legal reasoning, understanding human context, interpreting the law justly, guess what, sometimes grinding through bare acts because that’s what people’s lives and liberties hinge on.

The CJI didn’t “diss” NLUs. he simply pointed out a truth that legal talent exists beyond elite bubbles. It’s your job as NLU students or alumni to push academic excellence without sneering at those who came up through different routes. Yes, NLUs have brought in much-needed rigor. But no, they’re not the only metric of legal ability. And acting like they are just reinforces the exact kind of ivory-tower arrogance that makes legal education so alienating for the rest of the country.

Just to add to this. The British have introduced a system known as "solicitor apprenticeships" for those people who want to be solicitors - i.e., the types of lawyers who mostly tend to work in law firms. This system actually involves the student working in a law firm for six years to qualify as a solicitor. However, even in this system, the student takes classes at a university, because the way the system is set up is that law firms and universities partner up to offer "solicitor apprenticeships". So even the designers of a system created for people who didn't want a typical university education, but an "earn while you learn" experience setup, felt the need to build in some academic class elements into the system. Why did they feel this way? Because they understood that, without academic learning, kids who participate in such a scheme will be no more than paper pushers.

And you want to understand what they do for barristers? In other words, those who go in for litigation careers? Just look at the criteria for any good chambers you like in E&W. The first and primary criteria they have on their pupillage adverts, whether that's through the pupillage gateway or through some other source, such as their website, is "intellectual ability". And what shows that, according to them? Marks obtained at university, further studies (e.g., LLM) for some chambers or some practice areas and references (i.e., letters of recommendation) written by the university teachers. That is why people like the Rhodes Scholar Niranjan have done so well over there. In their system, even the inns scholarship setup they have to undertake post law-degree training has this as a criteria. This is because, whatever you might call them - old-fashioned, stuck in the Victorian past, decaying or any other adjective you like to use about them - they aren't stupid. They don't allow the wool to be pulled over their eyes, they don't allow themselves into being deceived that black is white or white is black. They understand that academics is essential to being a good litigator.

India has numerous fantastic litigators, from all kinds of universities, who were excellent students. Please let us not shoot ourselves in the foot by trying to argue about stuff that is obvious. And for god's sake, let's not do something that makes our system of legal education worse than that of E&W, whatever else we may do to shoot ourselves in the foot.

Therefore, such learning is required. England and Wales is a reasonably high class regulatory setup. Not as high class as the United States, perhaps, (which, BTW, requires you to have a non-law and a law degree) but the setup which has a system that, in some respects, resembles what is being spoken of here. Therefore, to the one who dismisses university learning so easily and casually, please think about what you are saying and kindly try not to talk nonsense. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Yes, that's exactly true. I have massive respect for teachers who keep reinventing themselves for students.

Internships, moots, papers help only if they secure you a job. In litigation, it matters even less- a person would be interested in getting the bail or an analysis of gender bias in lower judiciary?

I'd agree to this partially. If you are with a law firm or with a good advocate, you will learn how to use your brain by learning from your seniors. There may be subjects like International comercial arbitration or a specialized WTO law where you would want to sit, but extremely few people will be I terested in these subjects. Those who're interested can attend, those who aren't can intern.

Honestly, I see the zeal to learn in classes die down after 2-3 trimesters or semesters. After that, it's all autopilot and performing chores. This comes from watching students being extremely disinterested in their 4th year, when the faculty teaching them was one of the best in India. It teflected in their exams as well- horrible answers. If a majority isn't interested in class, why force them to attend ?

1. What you types who bring up "free speech", "entitled to his opinion" sort of arguments don't seem to realise is that those concepts mean that if someone gives an opinion which, of course, they are entitled to, regardless of whom they might be, that someone can get criticized for it in various ways. You cannot stop the criticism. You can be critical of the criticism: maybe it is wrong, maybe it is misdirected, maybe it is overblown/exagerates/blows up the remarks/comments made to something much bigger than intended, in your view. But you cannot shut down the criticism. That just isn't allowed.

2. Tell me how many of those types of students:

- Are Rhodes Scholars.

- Have done TCs at foreign law firms right out of university and gone on to achieve partnership at said firms.

- Are King's Counsel (their equivalent of the Indian 'Senior Advocate' designation) in England and Wales, despite having taken law degrees in India.

- Have been admitted to JD programmes at the likes of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, UCLA and NYU and then gone on to achieve success as U.S. lawyers.

- Are professors at the world's greatest universities.

- Have published world-beating publications (books and articles) which, if you haven't read, mean you are poorly educated, akin to the likes of Tarunabh Khaitan (in other words, how many Tarunabh Khaitans have the unis and kinds of unis you name produced?).

- What percentage of those students from those unis and kinds of unis are up to scratch, objectively?

Answer all the above, and then we can continue this conversation.

So? What's wrong with his statement, he is entitled to opinions and expressing them. As a member of the legal fraternity you should be understanding this first and foremost.

Secondly his words do carry relevance; i have seen many govt. or even pvt. college students from the likes of IILS Siliguri, OP Jindal etc. that have produced remarkable legal alumni in the last 5 years who carry significant practice areas in many different fields.
Corporate Law and firms aren't everything OP.

Academic rigor is only for freshly minted academicians. Even they stop trying once they have 5 years as an assistant professor, because now they're well settled. What he's saying is the realistic form of law. It doesn't matter what your score is, what your internships are, how many papers you wrote, how many moots you won. In the end who you work for in reality after graduating is what matters. It's all about the connections. Nothing more and nothing less. So grow a spine and just stop following what these NLUs are spweing.

Third year law student in a t2 nlu and I kinda feel lame at the fact that im so fucking lost when it comes to publications, meanwhile my batchmates have already published in reputable places like slr, irccl, nls blr etc. I kinda get intimidated by the fact that it seems a little time consuming and can stretch for a month or so if you want to fine tune it properly. I need genuine advice on how to get on with it. want to ensure that I have atleast 2-3 before entering my 4th year so that I have something good in order to secure internships w t1 and t2 law firms. really need help with this.

JJ’s team has hands downs the smartest lawyers with the most diverse work. JR is a super sweet partner to work with but the associates are not as competent and the work is limited to crypto/data. JJ’s fintech team gets better and more diverse matters. NN has a fantastic practice and team with some really smart lawyers (with some associate level exceptions lol). Having worked on matters for all three team’s as an intern, I personally would rank the partners in the following order JJ>NN>JR purely in terms of work.

Title. Is this a good place to learn and earn well? What are the salary pay bands here? Also - how on earth is a designated senior advocate running a law firm? Isn’t it prohibited? Is this because nobody cares or checks such things or is the law on this not even worth the paper it’s printed on?

i think the team is great and the work is varied. like electricity, IBC, and certain ICC arbitration matters. But the problem is, you can work really well, but they don't respond to messages or fill out your feedback form. I completely fail to understand this exploitative behaviour. Not just my personal experience, heard from others as well. (even T1 college's interns share this experience)

I'm not confident of my advocate, since he doesn't argue much, as a consequence I have lost 2 cases, 1 he withdrew and other he compromised against my wishes. how can I engage an arguing counsel to represent me or should engage new advocate? I'm thinking of the former i.e. arguing counsel. People have told me I have strong proof: documentary and A/V and other party has made a lot of mistakes which I have rebutted in writing with proof.

Please guide. Any help is appreciated.

Also, what essential questions that I must ask before zeroing on a prospect candidate and how do I approach/find the candidates? should I just go to the high court and meet advocates in their chambers at random or should I first schedule an appointment? I'm an introvert and socially awkward hence the anxiety.

Thanks.