At the end of the day, JSA is not a tier 1 despite its efforts to be one. This reflects in the firm's culture, processes, firm-wide infrastructure. JSA folks are also still vastly underpaid even with bill share compared to equivalent designations at legit tier 1s. Most teams operate by taking on a large number of low-value deals which leaves associates working round the clock but results in insignificant revenue.

Exactly the babu mentality that has held our country back for so many years. Why is it so hard to face reality? If you're a civil servant, you have reconciled yourself to a life on the cusp of being poor. That's fine TBH! Not everyone has to (or should be!) rich. Many can make a difference to the world despite not being rich.

His calculation is:

Salary minus tax, minus home loan, minus car loan, minus child's school fees, minus maid's salary, minus petrol, minus various bills, minus food, minus one holiday a year leaves you with ZERO savings.

https://x.com/IndianTechGuide/status/1936288215855480885/photo/1

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/I_qK5UUFXco

The options are plenty and depends on the kind of support you can expect to receive from your family and team/boss. I agree that unfortunately even today male colleagues exist who hate women trying to achieve both- motherhood and career and at the same time they quickly judge single women.

Options mentioned by you are still ahead of our times. How many single women or men do you know who had a child (through scientific methods) without a father. Adoption by single women is also still very difficult unless you are a celebrity and your own family won’t allow it. Pets cannot be an alternative to children. My personal view. They are a separate category and should be treated as such.

If you want a child it’s better to try and find a partner who agrees with your values and beliefs. Indian society is too backward and conservative still for single parents.

If you cannot find a partner than devote your time to your parents and to society. Or simply travel and enjoy life. But always take care of your health and mental wellbeing. Life is too short to overthink as we have seen through recent events.

This is mostly for students who may receive an offer from CAM during day zero or students joining. Things we wish we knew when choosing teams. Various things were kept from us due to opacity. We know better now.

1. Avoid low-billing/"chill" teams. They may not be able to absorb you, especially if they are top-heavy. This is a waste of your rotation. You learn nothing. If you want to switch firms, you are in deep shit as other firms probably won't count this as PQE.

2. Your third rotation is usually where you end up. However, if you have your heart set on a specific team/practice, don't bother rotating. Request that the partner retain you in your first rotation.

3. HR has 99 per cent control over where you end up. They usually respond negatively to partner intervention.

4. Low billing teams, such as IPR etc, love taking multiple ATPs. This is why the ATP program exists, you are at the firm's cost not the team's. You are not included in their target. It also helps the firm show reduced attrition in the first year.

5. Your bonus will be determined by your rating. Your first partner controls your rating. Your increment depends on your rating. The second partner will most likely match the first partner's rating. Very rare for them to improve anything.

6. Avoid extremely junior partners. They are frustrated about targets and usually are poor managers. Try to get a team with enough people at the mid and top level.

7. Keep interacting with your partner as much as possible. If you get a bitchy A1/A2/A3, they can influence your perception in front of the partner.

8. Most of it is optics. Figure out what kind of team you can gel with. The sanghi boys or the English-speaking liberals. The team that maintains boundaries or the one that overshares.

9. Bangalore has options for all types of transactional teams. Same with Bombay. Disputes is harder to get absorbed into. Save it for your third if you are unsure.

10. Most people are unhappy with the team they get absorbed into. But they cannot switch firms due to PQE cuts. Be safe we have warned you.

Your concerns are valid and quite common among young lawyers starting out in a niche practice like indirect tax (IDT). Here’s a balanced perspective, based on my experience working at a Tier 1 law firm in their IDT team:

It’s true that tax, particularly IDT, is considered a niche area. That said, it is not necessarily a trap — provided you are strategic about how you use the opportunity. If you don’t have a compelling alternative offer at the moment, I would recommend accepting the PPO. Use the year to build a strong foundation while tactically positioning yourself for a transition. Here's how:

1. Within your current team, actively seek opportunities with corporate or disputes work. For instance, if a client has a contractual dispute or transaction, try to assist your team on those aspects. Partners are more likely to allocate such work within their team.

1. 2. If your firm has a corporate team, understand how transaction documents like Share Purchase Agreements or Business Transfer Agreements are structured and not limit your understanding to tax clauses.
2. 3. While customs classification assignments may be mundane for you, they are often entry points into broader regulatory analysis — environmental, consumer, BIS, FSSAI, etc. These areas feed directly into regulatory, risk, and corporate advisory work. Learning to navigate these laws adds weight to your profile when considering a switch.
3. 4. IDT is more deeply connected to industrial operations — whether it’s understanding origin rules in trade, structuring global supply chains, or applying sector-specific regulations (e.g., in manufacturing, FMCG, pharma). This kind of industry-aligned exposure is less common in direct tax and could be a differentiator when you later apply to in-house roles or boutique practices.
4.
5. After a year of building skills and relationships, you will be in a better position to explore internal movements or lateral opportunities in Tier 1 or Tier 2 firms. Transitions are not uncommon — firms appreciate associates who are well-trained, adaptable, and proactive.

Yeah when one office is going supremely good, they may not be interested in sharing their revenues with others and rather go on their own. Including opening in the cities where they were not having their own office, but were relying on the JV partner presence..very simple logic.

Mumbai office is 100+ strong and doing better than ever with huge expansion on cards if you are even a little aware of developments. Multiple teams joining them. Transactions is not splitting but rather expanding with a couple of partners leaving and being replaced by many more.

Please avoid such societies and focus on your grades instead! Grades will be your ticket to a good job, not participation in societies. These societies are full of dirty politics and you will have to suck up to the admin, which is corrupt and incompetent.

If you have time to spare, why don’t you enrol for part-time MBA or IAS coaching instead of societies?

Image- Great pay, Awesome Work life, Good progression.

Reality- Very low in-hand, Work life balance depends on your manager (just like in private), no career progression because you are a cost- centre. Absolutely no learning curve. You will only be fixing dates and getting on calls so that the business can explain things to "legal" (which won't be you).

If you want money- go for law firms/ inhouse.

If you want work life balance- go for academics/ setting independent practice. ( Struggle initially but get rewarded later)

If you want neither and can settle for selling your self- respect to make cents- go for PSUs.

Even if the number is true, you've to keep in mind that the crowd in Jindal comes from extreme privilege. The students there are much likelier to be related to or in the social circles of clients of Tier 1 law firms. Getting internships becomes so much easier at that point. No doubt they put in the effort and do well at these internships, to get PPOs. Law firms don't say no to client referrals for internships, they can't say no. But there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of other smart, hard-working kids from other colleges (including nlus) who never get these opportunities simply because they've never interacted in these circles. If the trend for tier 1 law firms is to hire more on the basis of PPOs than campus placement (which makes sense from their perspective since they can assess over a longer period rather than over a short interview), it is entirely logical that they'll hire more from Jindal than from NALSAR. Unfair? Yes, but also the ground reality.

Brother, you’re doing false information now. In the batch of ballb, bballb, bcomllb and llb, 1/4 of the students goes for higher studies. Meanwhile, some students go for NGOs, corporate legal councillor, work under their family business or go for law firms. Some even go for opening their own chambers or to become a judge. So with that, the top tier firms like SAM, Trilegal, etc, they actually consists of many Jgls students because they prefer more Jgls students. This is due to jgls’s alumni, connections and that the professors from top tier universities like Harvard, Oxford, etc teach us here and they make it mandatory for us to take 1-2 internships per semester. Most of us are able to get very good internships and many students have also done internships at white and case. Yk you should reallyyy need to stop trolling.

Yes I agree. While few students work with their relatives/family, the rest may go for solo practice, higher studies , corporate legal teams and law firms. The competition can be fierce depending on how many students actually value it, I can assure atleast 10% students may not be really serious or be good at this field.

What’s the point of you even talking about ABZ’s reputation for bad workplace environment? That’s something you’ll everywhere. Also even if it were a bad working environment then why would it be one of the top tier firm and still have positive reviews of the professionalism of the lawyers there? Doesn’t bad workplace environment means that your workers will get inefficient and demotivated over time? Bruh be fr, it’s either that you were just trolled by someone informing you this or that you just want to hate on Jgls grads💀

I spent sometime in Bangalore and from what I experienced except for the whether everything else was downright pathetic. Driving on road would feel like walking in a fish market worrying about not being pushed by others and then get blamed .and I I talk about travelling via bus dude if u don't speak kannada just don't bother . rather then calling it a city I would call it a village with buildings and. Too many people. And their are many such instances but let's just say everyone know it's better to leave Bangalore.

Either you need to devote the time, or you need to spend the money. You can try forums like Zlibrary to download many books, especially foreign ones. However, for the rest, there is no other option, unless you have access to second hand stores selling law books in your locality. You can also try asking your fifth year seniors if they would like to donate some of their books before leaving.

As someone who was in your shoes and made a very bad decision to join SLS Noida for the brand value. Just don't. However, I would also like to add one thing that SLS Noida does offer 1 thing which you won't find in local colleges and by local i include those IP University associated colleges too as I have lived with people from such colleges. It is competition. personally, I need a competitive place to thrive or I will become complacent in the bare minimum. I am a person who can self study but only if i know people around me who are doing much much better than me. The feeling of defeating them thrills and motivates me. I know it sounds psychopathic but it is what is it. So that is something you will get at SLS Noida. When we talk about placements there are barely 30 placements out of more than 300 students.

Hii. Just got done with my 12th, gave clat in december last year, got a shitty rank, might fetch me t3s in vacancy but not relying on it.
I also got in christ blr but missed the payment daedline. Now the only options that i have left are local colleges in kolkata and sls noida. I never really wanted to come to this legal field in the first place, but basically my family wants me to go for law school. My only goal for right now is to secure some sort of decently paying corporate job and stay as far away from court practise and judiciary exams as possible. The way I look at it, I have to ways of going about it

a) Join local college and prepare for CSEET and CLAT, in case i fail to secure good clat rank again I can go ahead with company secretary course

b) SLS Noida, work my ass off to get some internships and ultimately secure good PPO. (maybe try for clat again, tho idk with the all the shifting and adjusting if thats gonna be possible)

Another thing to keep in mind is SLS noida is a bit expensive for us, we might need to pay a part of total fee with loan, and I dont know if its even worth that price. Like sure it has "location advantage" and "Symbiosis brand"(if that even is a thing), the fear of not securing a job kills me. What should be my course of action in this scenario?

Hi, I'm an NLS student. I recommend getting a Mac M1/M2. Anything more than that is overkill, you won't need it for any college purposes. Mac also beats Windows in terms of its performance any day of the week, and it lasts longer too. So don't get a Windows - it won't live up to the mark. Don't go for the iPad first (it's as a supplement at best). iPad doesn't offer the laptop functionality which you need for writing projects, navigating websites etc. all the best!

Most of the 'so called bonding' in these law schools takes place through alcohol and drugs. I find it hard to believe that any of this leads to a very wholesome connection between people. Apart from investigating the admin's conduct for this (which should take place), I do feel people in these unis need to introspect into what a sense of community means for them. I am pretty sure that alcoholism and substance abuse do not help with mental health issues. I hope something like this never happens again. RIP.

Is it possible to shift from a hardcore criminal litigation job, to a disputes or white collar crimes team in a corporate law firm, especially tier 1 or 2 which pays well?

Have a decent CV with a few disputes/arbitration internships in addition to the 1 year experience of criminal litigation. I am from a tier 1 nlu.

Please let me know of any such possible switch after an experience of criminal litigation for an year, and how exactly can one go about it.

Someone at a Tier 3 makes a not so significant amount. However, they are moving cities and joining a Tier 2 in a more expensive city. The base pay for even A0's in the Tier 2 is nearly 70-80% of what this person at a Tier 3 makes. How does this person put across this point regarding pay in an interview ?

I got a call for PhD at NLUJ. The final selection would be 70% net score and 30% interview scores. Now the problem is that my net scores aren't that great, almost below the barrel. However looking at the list, there's atleast a 100 applicants.

Just based on my assumptions I feel majority would have JRF or even net scores better than mine. So even if I score exceptionally well in the interviews, there may be a chance that I won't make it through to the final list. Should I still go?

Wouldn't it be futile, that I do well in interviews but absolutely can't get through cause of my net scores. Help me decide.

I'm from CLC, got an associate position with a lawyer working at the DHC and district courts. Paying 25k, I expected a bit more from it but I also understand how the litigation scene is especially for first gen lawyers (especially who are also not from NLUs). Looking for any helpful tidbits, advice, warnings about surviving in litigation, enjoying the work, dealing with work-life balance etc!

Yes...got know from a friend..that in an effort to compete with Tier 1 firms, ▮▮▮

The firm was once recognized for its strong work-life balance and collaborative environment. However, it’s now gaining a reputation for a much tougher culture, prompting several loyal and reliable employees to leave the firm.

That said, the founding partner remains a standout — both a great leader and a genuinely enjoyable person to work with. He is the only hope who can make great changes to the firms policy and take tough decisions...If you have the opportunity to join his team, take it. His approachable and supportive nature is what made Lex Consult attractive in the first place. He has the vision and capability to elevate the firm to a new level, securing high-profile deals while building a strong, well-trained legal team.

One hopes that Lex Consult can revive its original collaborative spirit — attracting not just employees, but driven, talented individuals who are in it for the long haul. With the founding partner at the helm, there’s real potential for the firm not only to match Tier 1 standards but to become one of the top legal destinations in the country, where young graduates compete to join and clients seek out the best legal expertise.

I did my internship with the corporate and commercial team. It was a really nice experience because they had pretty good mandates from acquisition, power delivery Agreement, international PPP, and Insolvency auction deal.
It depends on the team that you intern with at HSA Mumbai. I was curious to learn, so some days I even stayed till 10 in the office. Partner is very chill, and all the associates not only guide you but also teach you.

Ok this might be a silly question but if a firm (TT&A) sends a rejection letter for an internship the very next day but says "we would be keen for you to apply to us later", is that just a formality thing or should I actually just try applying again for a later date (I applied for an internship for the very next month in the original mail)