Quality of life from what I have observed.

Even after earning 100s of crores, senior advocate's have a non existent work life balance add to that pollution, traffic, broken/clogged roads.

Don't forget UK also has many filthy rich Indians which require legal assistance for their company and themselves so Indian lawyers do come in demand due to a strong diaspora.

But in house has many benefits also. My work is light and easy. I earn 75 lakhs a year after tax, with weekends off and no office after 5.30/6. My law firm colleagues work twice as hard to earn the same amount. I get perks too, like foreign travel, AMEX card, membership of a cricket club etc. And my office is fab. Has a gym, cafe with great food etc.

The direct recruitment is very less. Not sure about Haryana. Delhi is far more regular with promotions, also because there are many specialised courts now which require ASJs and ADJs like commercial courts, POCSO courts, CBI and MLA MP Courts. I know these courts have resulted in more vacancies in Higher Judicial Services in Delhi for sure, again, cannot say about Haryana.

I think people should calm down with the GOAT talk. He was an excellent lawyer no doubt - just that we've had and we continue to have many excellent senior advocates. When you talk of GOAT, names like Nani, Seervai, Fali, MK Nambiar, Daphtary, Anil Divan, KKV, Ashok Desai etc come into play. Jaitley was an erudite and strong lawyer but probably a notch below the stalwarts mentioned above.

No. A tier-1 NLU brand is not overrated. Haters who flunked CLAT/AILET will argue that it doesn't matter, but a brand from a top NLU opens many doors and opportunities . More importantly, it's an indication of credibility especially given the fact that law is longer degree of 5 years. I would personally trust anyone from one of the top 5 NLUs over any other law school, or atleast give them the first-hand benefit of doubt, over any private college including your dear JGLS, Symbi and whatnot. And how on earth is SP Jain and Lancaster, etc., tier-1 for MBAs, lol? These places are the JGLS of IIMs. They suck, basically.

The biggest problem is that a myth was spread that NLSIU is the Harvard of the East and that NLUs are like IITs for law. So people started imagining themselves to be comparable to the wizkids in tech and business produced by Harvard and IIT. In reality, the first myth was actually spread by NLSIU students/alumni, while the second myth was spread by students/alumni of newer NLUs, who needed validation. The reality is that neither of these myths are true. Also, the legal job market in India is quite poor.

Bhai tu aata hi upper middle class se hai. People do not realise that law firms make sense for someone moving from middle class to upper middle class. One can shift their entire family of 4-5 into upper middle having slotted 10-15 years in law firms. For those of you already in upper middle these jobs will make less sense. I mean I would borrow few tens of lacks from my dad and start something of my own if I were you. Bank FD karde 1-2 crore ki uska interest will be associates ka salary. For those who need the money they will keep working. It's not bad money by any metric. You keep comparing wrong places and hence will have get wrong answers.

Yes. I have talked about this before but was called a greedy hag. We do not get paid half as much as we should for the amount of work we do. The skill ceiling is too, too high. Unreasonably high. Either you break it to go beyond, or you stay mediocre and earn your allotted betabux. There's no in-between. Not quite the case in other professions.

The specific facts of the two cases you cite must be considered - some of this was about more than immediate “economics”/ revenue inflows, i would imagine:

(i) With Manan, CAM effectively consolidated the 2 largest and “highly regarded” cap marks teams into 1. I guess that this has significantly increased their ability to control/increase rates in a practice area that isn’t a money printer by any measure. I would also imagine that Yash and Manan (and possibly Lala ji as well) must have had a chat with their business generating Partners and instructed them to not undercut each other otherwise none of this would work.

(ii) With Nisha, it looks like she capitalized on JSA’s want to not be a T2 firm + the fact that equity was opening up with some of their older partners retiring. Mind you, Nisha may have her own clients, but antitrust teams require transaction teams to feed them merger control work especially the USD/EUR/GBP billing transactions. A single LARGE transaction can yield about 2+ crores for the acquirer’s antitrust team. A single LARGE competitor-to-competitor transaction (which will come along very infrequently) may yield more if the competitors are market leaders. But most of those would be referred to the antitrust team by the transaction team. This makes it tough to quantify the pay bump for Nisha and the value add for JSA.

(iii) There is a high degree of PR surrounding these two individuals which is why you pick them up as examples, presumably. Gautam Saha’s shift to TT&A saw a shift of a higher number of Partners and other lawyers, not to mention the amount of money at play being far in excess. A friend at TT&A joked that their Delhi office has basically become “Gautam Saha & Associates”. I wont be surprised if there are other examples of team movements which are skipping my mind at the moment.

In terms of impacts on As/SAs/PAs, there will not be a significant impact on the large majority since these moves are only driven by the personal motivations of the rainmakers. Some of the PAs might become Partners, maybe everyone gets a slight pay bump but that’s about it. All of this is assuming that the juniors have been asked to move - apparently Nisha didn’t invite her fellow TL partners and the juniors mapped to them, although she controlled everyone.

A few more points -

(i) Factually speaking, 30 crores isnt the highest billed by antitrust teams. There are other T1 teams - some bigger than NKU’s and some smaller - which recover more than 30 crores per annum (also, the metric that firms care about is “recovery” and not “billing”). While I am no fan of hers considering the stories I’ve heard, I will concede that there is a good chance that NKU does/did more than 30 crores of recovery per annum. Anyhow, the highest revenues are probably at SAM competition - with around 12 partners (3x of team NKU). They may have a lower profit per partner but would definitely have a higher revenue figure. They simply wouldn’t keep promoting people to Partner and hiring juniors otherwise - and the suggestion that the team is exempt from usual law firm economic rationale is foolhardy. While Shardul’s lalaji vibes aren’t as intense as Cyril, make no mistake that SAM is a money driven law firm like the rest.

(ii) Saying things like “Cravath scale” is just not an accurate way to talk about this - not to mention that the context in which you’ve referred to it also seems inaccurate (i think you meant lockstep?). The Cravath scale - the highest pay for lawyers in the world - refers to a very specific set of numbers, i.e., what Cravath and similarly placed firms pay their lawyers. While there are firms outside the US that pay Cravath (mostly foreign offices of US firms), NO indian firms pay Cravath (unless youre lala ji’s family) because they simply arent at that level as much as some of these firms pretend otherwise. Some of the Indian Managing Partners’ rates (usually 1k USD per hour) are the same as/around those of foreign Associates (junior Associates in foreign Big Law are charged out at USD 700-850 per hour). One just has to look at metrics such as total turnover (some foreign firms rake in USD Billions) and average revenue per lawyer. There are foreign firms with headcounts similar to CAM and TL which make MUCH more. Lastly, there is also the fact that you don’t have lalajis like Cyril and Zia in these Cravath scale firms sucking up a significant chunk of profits - even from highly profitable teams - because they provide the “platform”. The lalas basically capitalise on the lethargy of some rainmakers in terms of setting up admin processes and taking on the risk of some fixed costs. As someone who knows some rainmakers who broke away from T1s to start their own gig, those guys begin to make a LOT more after breaking away.

(iii) While gender inequities do exist, you need to appreciate how they do/dont play out in context of law firms. Many of these “top-performers” do not have a personal life (no spouse, no kids) and they reach a point of emptiness where they are all consumed by work and the thought process is “control these little shits and make money number go up brrrrrrr”. Of the two mentioned in your post, one doesnt have a spouse and children while the other got a spouse many years their junior not too long ago. There is no judgment here, just a statement of fact. There are other rainmakers who are divorced because their spouse didn’t want to put up with the absence and/or have terrible relationships with their children because they were absent. Mind you, some of these children end up having a bad long term trajectory because daddy (it mostly is daddy) compensated for their absence by making their wealth available to the kids without supervision.

Lastly, I am glad lawyers in India are beginning to have conversations like this. Remember, its all about the money - the “prestige” of having your matter mentioned in the newspapers doesnt mean anything. The fact that you spent your nights away in office / on screen doesnt matter. Most Associates won’t make Partner. Most Partners won’t make Equity Partner. Barely any Equity Partner will be a Managing Partner (and none will in a lala set up). Focus on securing the $$$ while youre in the system. To do that, conversations like this are important. To do that, Partners also need to step up and promote these conversations (even if anonymously through this platform) irrespective of the fact that their lala ji MP promotes a different “culture” - remember, you’re not getting the best deal either. Alternatively, they can always dance at lala ke bete ka sangeet and hope to get a few extra pieces of silver thrown at them.

The Nationalisation of NLUs will only happen when an NLU grad is a powerful minister in the Union Cabinet and this will take time maybe 20 years atleast. or if the Supreme Court asks Union Govt to look into it. This is the simple harsh truth. We will just have to wait. Can’t do really anything else.

Do they do research/ compliance/ transactions of only tech companies/ data privacy chapter of DD? The main purpose of this question is to know if I can learn as much about deals as an M&A/PE/VC team if I apply for a TMT team? Is it purely advisory? Will they test companies act during interviews? If someone who is interest in both tech laws and wants to gain experience in gencorp aspects too, should they apply for TMT? The demarcations are not clear out there imho, very confused. Or are these demarcations firm specific? Will be super super grateful if someone can answer!!

Just study, man. It's not that difficult. That's what the top 75%ile of your batch has been doing and that's what you should do too. Getting a T1 placement shouldn't be your goal till you actually have something on your CV to even consider it. While yeah people with lower grades do get placed too - it, in no way, is the norm.

if you are only doing the course for placement then I'd suggest not to. 11LPA being the highest clearly means no T1s are hiring from here and the ones who are will give you a job even with just a long term internship. Additionally, I really don't think there is any theory in cap marks which you cannot learn by yourself and need to spend 4lakhs on, just pick up any drhp available on SEBI and read it along with Schedule VI ICDR, everything else is just clerical work which you will master within 1 month of an internship.