Only 80 students participated in the GLC placement committee activities out of a total batch strength of 440, with 220 respectively in each of the three-year and five-year courses.

The GLC placement committee placed 50 students into law firms as associates, corporate houses or legal process outsourcing (LPO) companies, said GLC placement committee head Manvendra Singh Bhati.

Law firms such as AZB & Partners, Nishith Desai Associates and Amarchand Mangaldas recruited GLC graduates, according to the committee (see table). [update: PXV Law Partners has hired one GLC graduate for its Mumbai office, taking the total ‘desk jobs’ up to 51]

Name of recruiting organisation- Amarchand & Mangaldas - 2

• Nishith Desai Associates - 1
• AZB & Partners - 1
• Bharucha & Partners - 3
• Update: PXV Law Partners - 1
• Axis Bank – 3
• Aditya Birla Group – 2
• Indiabulls – 2
• Heinz India – 1

However, he added that a large percentage of students had also independently secured placements in law firms after good performances in internships through pre-placement offers (PPOs), which the placement committee did not track for this year’s batches.

Soliciting jobs

Bhati noted that in the recruitment process a significant number of students had signed up with various solicitors’ firms in Mumbai for articleships to become Bombay Incorporated Law Society solicitors – a process that usually takes two years of working under a senior solicitor and requires the passing of a highly competitive exam that only four out of 205 candidates passed most recently in December.

Solicitors and law firms with practising solicitors such as Wadia Ghandy, Khaitan & Co, Bharucha & Partners, Kanga & Co, Majmudar & Co and Crawford Bayley have selected students from the third to fifth years at GLC to join as article clerks.

After graduation most of these students would be recruited by the same firms, explained Bhati. “NLUs say that they get PPOs before they enter their last year. In GLC, however, I would say that students get placed in their third year itself when they sign up as articled clerks or interns with law firms.”

Litigation is the way

A large chunk of the batch would also take up litigation as a career, joining the chambers of senior counsel and other advocates, or go on to independently practise litigation.

Of the litigation jobs that the placement committee assisted in, senior counsels including Satish Maneshinde, JP Cama, Mahesh Jethmalani, Janak Dwarkadas and Rafiq Dada recruited GLC students to join them as juniors.

“Unlike NLUs, the culture in GLC has always been to pursue litigation as a career or sign up articleship for the solicitors’ exam,” noted Bhati. “As the timings of the college are flexible, i.e. from 6am to 11am, most of the students join law firms as interns either independently or through the placement committee in the third year itself and are later absorbed into the firm due to their exposure and practical experience.”

Further studies abroad

At least 10 graduating students would pursue LLM degrees with offers from the following universities:

• Oxford University (one student)
• NYU law school (two students)
• Manchester University (one student)
• King’s College (one student)
• National University of Singapore (NUS) (one student)
• Warwick University (two students, one of whom also offered from Queen Mary College, London).
• Georgetown (two students, one of whom offered Cornell and Michigan Universities).

Bhati and a GLC student council member added that a few other students were also pursuing litigation with parents, friends or relatives in various courts in Maharashtra.

Although full data was not available for this year, the placement committee told Legally India: “In the absence of a centralised system for tracking the recruitment of students’ placements, it was not possible to gather data for all students. However, efforts are being made to make the recruitment data of all graduating students available from next year onwards.”