I need help regarding what relevant and important topics in TOPA does one needs to study for a fresher's interview in the transaction practice.
If anyone could help me regarding this, it would be greatly appreciated.

All the associates/senior associates/principal associates/partners, please help your fellow junior with regards to this.

Curious to know how placements have been shaping up, recently my friend mentioned that faculty exits and internal issues have affected student prospects for the batch of 25 but placements apparantly havent been that bad the past few years with SAM, Tri and LKS hiring people. for the '26 batch is any real support from the university side, or are students mostly on their own?

Don't do it. The administration and faculty are proving themselves to be absolutely incompetant and despotic. The UG Dean doesnt listen to students. In an absurd and infantilising move, they’ve now mandated that final-year law students, 22 year olds, must bring their parents to campus to fill out admission forms and attend a so-called "parent-teacher meeting."

Electives are an absolute joke. The IPC head (who also studied here lol) behaves like an insecure teenager with an unchecked ego and this has directly compromised placement opportunities. The handful of competent faculty members are either being pushed out or are leaving voluntarily, having recognised the sinking ship for what it is.

The campus itself is a nightmare, concrete and sand, a scorching 35°C most of the year with no air conditioning, barely edible mess food that causes frequent food poisoning, and a non-teaching staff so hostile it’s as if they were hired specifically to make student life miserable. If you’re non Tamil, good luck. What’s truly tragic is that despite all this, TNNLU has attracted a few truly brilliant students over the years. But their achievements whether winning moots, publications, or placements, have come in spite of the university, not because of it. Every bit of success has been self-earned, often with the administration doing everything it can to obstruct rather than assist.

Before you consider joining, speak to some alumni. The successful ones are too busy erasing this place from their memory, and the unsuccessful ones are probably stuck here, teaching.

I get your point but let me put it in a different way and we can assume that CNLU will always be better than CUSB for law but the reason for this is that only Upper middle class or say middle class can study in CNLU because the fees is high and placement are also not that good another thing is that even the fee for appearing CLAT is Rs 4000 many student can’t afford so the point is that not having poor students is a very big advantage ( No offence to anyone ) another advantage is that it is located in Patna that too in the main city and since it is law specific college it has less red tapism but the Infrastructure and faculty in CUSB is Good.

It may be worth reflecting on why the work environment makes him feel like he needs to make up ailments in order to get a day off. Would you have given him the day off if he’d cited no reasons? In a reasonable work environment you should be able to take legitimate time off (within whatever annual leave is available) without having to explain yourself.

I wouldn’t fire the guy, just explain to him that he doesn’t need to be silly about taking legit earned leave to pursue whatever his hobbies are.

First of all my intuition says that GSTAT will still take more than one year to establish, Custom matter gets you decent fees and yes the volume is low but it will grow with the size of economy unless ofcourse paperwork for import and export is decreased for the sake of ease of doing business. Direct tax is largely settled law whereas indirect tax has variety of taxes the primary one is GST now the bad thing for lawyers in GST is that the law is largely same (not exactly same) across all state and it has become comparatively easy to interpret it where as earlier during the CST and VAT regime the wording of VAT law was different for every state therefore the game of interpretation was on a very different level but still IDT is one of those practice area that if one day you decide that you want to live in your hometown IDT matters will be there maybe less in number but that is not the case with other practice areas like M&A and Capital Markets.

Stay where you are if you like the work and the environment. Just because the other firm has a more established name doesn't mean you'll be getting a similar experience, a learning opportunity or the environment. Learn from the seniors in your current firm and make a switch once you feel that the work is getting dry and there is no learning opportunity left.

Bumping this up. In the same boat. Started at Law firm M&A team. Litigation gives the change of working independently in the future, I believe it is very difficult to become work independently as a corporate lawyer. Corporate lawyers start off with good salaries, but have very less chance of an exit. No option left but keep going to the same toxic office and toxic boss. Even when you're hating your environment, a corporate lawyer has very little power to change his circumstances and has not control over time whatsoever.

Here’s the hard truth — the falling academic standards at NUJS have led to a situation where students have become indisciplined and lost respect for authority. Even JNU and Jadavpur university students, despite their rowdyism and radical politics, would not behave with a guest professor like this.

Can you think of any other university in India where students would unilaterally write to Jagdeep Dhankar’s office and retract an invitation? All because he supported a law which the Supreme Court has also not interfered with? And which now has some justification after the attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh?

Also curious how such rage disappears when it comes to seeking accountability from the admin or the state government.

I had the opportunity to attend his classes at NALSAR, both in Constitutional Law and one of the electives. He is one of the few professors who has a truly holistic understanding of the subjects he teaches. With his depth of knowledge and clarity of thought, he could easily have been an equity partner at a Tier-1 law firm or on the path to becoming a Senior Adv. But he chose academia because he really is meant to give legal education something in return.

Although our interactions were limited, what stood out to me wasn’t just his teaching (which was excellent), but his kindness as a person. There was an incident, something I would prefer not to detail, but during a hearing, he remembered something about me from two years ago and actively extended his support without even asking for it. That gesture stayed with me. That day, I saw beyond the professor and truly recognised the warmth and empathy he carries as a human being.

Also, he is very enthu, he ran several things in NALSAR from the front and back-end, which he should in NLS as well, but ofc, for next 2-3 years he should focus on completing his phD, publications and his research output which is lacking as of now as he did not do that for a long time, AND IT IS FINE.

You will usually be assigned work by associates/partners as and when they need you. They will mostly come upto you and give you work, but if you feel like you're sitting idle for an extended period of time in the day (couple of hours etc.), its best to go to the team members individually and ask if you can help them with anything.

Remember that the quality (and quantity) of work you do has the most impact on your final assessment. If no one from the team particularly remembers you or the work you did, they will not be inclined towards giving you a more permanent role.