Herbert Smith partner Chris Parsons and Oxford Professor and law faculty dean Timothy Endicott will kick off a now-annual lecture series at NLU Delhi followed by five days of lectures at NUJS Kolkata with plans to hit Nalsar Hyderabad next year.
On 19 February 2011 India practice head Parsons (pictured left) will hold one lecture at NLU Delhi on the takeover of Corus by Tata Steel. “The infrastructure at [NLU Delhi] is amazing,” said Parsons. “They have a wonderful mooting hall and an extraordinary lecture hall. [Vice-chancellor Ranbir Singh has] done a great job in Hyderabad and I have no doubt he’ll do a great job in Delhi too.”
Between 21 and 25 February Parsons and Endicott (pictured right) will then visit NUJS Kolkata and hold five four-hour-long lectures addressing between 45 or 50 students, Parsons told Legally India.
He would be lecturing on cross border mergers and acquisitions and running a module on negotiation skills, while Endicott would lecture on private law and English public law, which would be followed by an internal moot.
“It’s very interactive,” he said. “We want them up negotiating, discussing points, writing things on the board, etcetera.”
“Timothy and I are keen that it should become an annual fixture – we may still decide what we present on [in future],” said Parsons, noting that Nalsar Hyderabad was currently the top candidate for hosting the lecture series in 2012.
Herbert Smith’s former senior partner Edward Walker-Arnott would also continue with an annual lecture series visiting NLSIU Bangalore for five days on 21 March, having previously been to NUJS and to Nalsar, according to Parsons.
Allen & Overy and best-friend-firm Trilegal ran a finance course at NLSIU in July last year, having planned to rotate it to Nalsar this year.
Comments
P.S.- No pubicity is bad publicity! :P
Can now see why the Indian market will be closed for a long looong time for these guys!
Hello Mr. I am against Foreign Firms. We are all in law schools, to land a sweet sweet job with a brilliant form or basically to earn money. Some of us might go the other way, which is absolutely commedable, but most of us are studying to earn. A HS Package for one person would probably be more that all past batches of your 'Against Colonial Hangover Law School' and if given an option, I am sure your colege people would love to come and attend this lecture. So please keep that brilliant Republic Day hangover statements to urselves.
NLUD is rocking it, be it Mooting, or contact for placements, and you are just not getting a piece of the cake, and hence justifying feeling bad by bringing up nationality. feel ashamed.
http://www.outlookindia.com/printarticle.aspx?269748
Therefore lets not carry the beacon for the foreign law firms who are desperate to enter the lucrative Indian market. That is not to say that liberalization will necessarily be a bad thing. In any case many of these firms are running thriving India practices out Singapore and London. It would perhaps be preferable for this work to be done out of India with more employment opportunities for Indian lawyers, generating revenue for the Indian exchequer etc.
Request that we have a more informed debate about these issues rather than engage in mindless slogan shouting.
I work inhouse for an Indian company, and am just inundated with requests by these chaps to come and see us or make presentations on things (many of which are of no interest to us). I sometimes ignore these emails but then they follow it ip with calls and persist to a point where, out of politeness, we agree. Then they come with plastic smiles fitted and showing phony warmth. Once in a while is ok, but when it happens every couple of months it is helluva damn irritating!!! Even worse is everytime our company is mentioned in the media, they drop a line or call asking if they can help. Don't the laws on unsolicited advertising or marketing apply to these guys???
Listen chaps- if you need you, i will get in touch. But please remember i have a job to do and let me get on with it!!!
How about this one for starters:
http://www.legallyindia.com/20100217504/Corporate-/-MA/azb-herbies-links-scoop-107bn-bharti-zain-mega-takeover
Just because you feel insecure about your college's lectures don't start cribbing about people you have no idea about.
It's a one hour lecture in a college. It doesn't make a college 'brilliant', 'rocking' or 'awesome'. It happens in every college. Good for the students if they learn something. It's also something done by the admin of the college, and doesn't reflect on much. Parsons and Endicott went to NLS last year, going to different colleges this year. It's as much as political move for them as anything. Doesn't mean anything.
If fancy people come for one hour lectures, the college becomes the best? Please. Stop this nonsense. Don't compare and exxagerate to the point of idiocy.
What is much more important than a one hour lecture by a one person is the lectures you get everyday by your professors. That is something which, unfortunately, no one cares about.
One of the key qualities of a good lawyer is "attention to detail". You obviously have not cultivated that quality since it is evident from your response that you didn't bother to read my message carefully.
Not for a moment did I suggest that foreign law firms should not be allowed entry into India. I am all for it. My point is that if a college is going to tomtom its achievements merely because some unknown entity from a "FOREIGN LAW FIRM" is coming to give a lecture on M&A, thats rubbish - work in an Indian law firm for a year and you will realize that people at senior levels (esp partners in reputed law firms) are as good as anybody else anywhere in the world. You dont need to fly down ppl from HS to do this job!And if we were that bad, FOREIGN law firms wouldnt be hiring Indian students en masse, would they?
Just by way of clarification, I come from India's top law school and have been working in India's finest law firm for some time now. Foreign firms pick up students in big chunks at my law school - that does not mean students don't consider other (and better) options.
- the concept of lecture series in Indian law schools was started by A&O at NLS. Initially, it was exclusively for NLS students but later on A&O opened it for three other law schools (NLU Jodhpur, NUJS & NALSAR);
- Herbert Smith first used the lecture series concept in NLU Jodhpur when it conducted a two day workshop in February 2009, after its failed initiatives of hosting an essay competition with Nalsar.
Sources close to HS inform us that 2013 will see HS going back to NLU Jodhpur for the lecture series.
However if the racism issue is true Mr Parsons will not be getting any work from me. In fact that should be the reasons for clients and even the law schools to boycott him.