Law school faculty survey: Please help make law teaching better & shine a light on a woefully underexamined area of Indian legal education

Wednesday, 4 May 2016 By Legally India Law schools

Say what you will about Severus Snape, but he definitely wasn't a good teacher

After overwhelming and very enlightening thoughts from all of you last month, we have taken all those and some of our independent research into account to put together a semi-definitive list of 14 questions on how to measure faculty quality.

We need your help but we want to make this very clear: this is not a law school ranking. This is not a bragging exercise.

This is an attempt to identify one of the biggest but least examined weaknesses in our legal educational system: a dearth of qualified and competent faculty and teachers.

For this, we need your help! (especially, since administrations rarely share any important information with the outside world)

We, current and future generations of students would be grateful if you could take 5 minutes of time to complete the below survey.

We will analyse the findings and publish the results and analysis.

Hopefully, those results can be used by students to pressure administrations into hiring better professors in future.

Click here or see below to complete the survey.

If you have any questions, please leave this in the comments, and do share this with your friends and on Facebook so there will be a representative sample size.

Ps: We are also happy to accept submissions from recent graduates.

legal education

Comments

Big 6 5 May 2016, 09:00

+2 -1

I'd ask you to remove the 'best teachers' category from the survey. It'll bring needless hostility between the teachers and also serves no purpose while preparing results

kianganz 5 May 2016, 09:56

+3 -1

Thanks, though it's not really intended to be a competition. Are you worried teachers will ask their students to vote for them and stuff? Don't think that's likely to happen much, no?

The aim is mostly that if a few faculty members are mentioned very very frequently as stand-outs, we may compile a list of best-ofs or investigate further...

Keep the best teacher 5 May 2016, 15:30

+3 -0

Kian please Keep the best teacher prize but have it from each NLU to make it fair (2 per NLU).

Not enough 6 May 2016, 07:08

Kian this is a good step but inadequate. You need to do field work and visit law schools and interview students to see how bad the situation is. You also need to interview alumni from NLSIU Bangalore teaching at Oxford, Cambridge, Ivy League institutions and seek their views. Ask them why such few alumni are teaching in India and what changes they would like to see. If you like I can give you links to web pages of NLSIU alumni teaching at such places.

You should also interview alumni of NLSIU and other NLUs who are teaching in India. NLUD has a few and Jindal has a bunch.

And finally, Madhav Menon, Upendra Baxi, Amita Dhanda, MP Singh: all these people should be interviewed. Menon especially, as he himself commented on the situation.

I think it's fair for us to expect this from you, as it's critical issue of national importance but you have never covered it. In comparison, you have done field work for law firm stories, but I am not sure if they are of public interest like this. If you actually do a good story and publish in Mint, you can even have MPs and senior lawyers commenting on it.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa 6 May 2016, 09:50

+0 -0

There is a problem with LI comments. It is almost invisible as one scrolls down. Please revert to the old format and scrap the scroll format.

kianganz 6 May 2016, 09:53

Oh no, sorry to hear that. What browser and OS are you using? Would you mind sharing a screen shot or photo with me of what it looks like on WhatsApp 0900 405 6651 or an email to kian dot ganz at legallyindia?

Will get it fixed for you, promise

Guestt 7 May 2016, 04:36

+1 -1

Hey Kian, here are some examples of NLS grads teaching abroad (some other NLUs too). Please interview them. it will be timely as CLAT aspirants should know the truth about poor faculty in India and brain drain abroad (or even to places like Jindal, for that matter).

https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/people/tarunabh-khaitan

https://law.nus.edu.sg/about_us/faculty/staff/profileview.asp?UserID=lawuv

http://www.law.cam.ac.uk/people/academic/s-ranganathan/2998

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/law/people/academic/pkotiswaran.aspx

https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/people/dev-gangjee

https://www.law.yale.edu/menaka-guruswamy

https://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/sbalgane/

https://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff85344.php

http://www6.cityu.edu.hk/slw/people/people_shubhankar.html

http://www.ip.mpg.de/en/persons/mrinalini-kochupillai-llm.html

XYZS 7 May 2016, 16:27

Even Azim Premji and NLUD have NLS alumni.. and very good ones at that. Azim Premji's case is interesting as it is in the same city as NLS. So why are they not at NLS?

Sidharth Chauhan 10 May 2016, 23:32

+1 -0

Well, NLSIU has not hired a single faculty member on a permanent basis in the last 8 years. All the appointments during the present Vice-Chancellor's tenure (since May 2009)have been of the 'ad-hoc' or 'visiting' variety, implying that they can be terminated without assigning reasons. This helps the institution to save money and keep faculty members in check, but undermines the quality of instruction available to students. You should of course take my words with a pinch of salt and seek corroboration from other sources.

anonnnn 7 May 2016, 15:03

Kian you should track such students, who are giving CLAT. Make CLAT rat race a little more human.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/gurgaon-students-top-isc-in-ncr/article8567838.ece

Guest 7 May 2016, 15:48

There are so many comments on LI talking about NLU faculty teaching abroad. Hardly any about NLU faculty teaching in India in places like NLUD, NUJS and jindal. Some of them even have degrees from the top law schools abroad. Why is this so? Is it that these people come back to India because they couldn't cut it in universities abroad? Or is it because they wanted to come back and work in India. If it is the latter, shouldn't we be talking to them instead of getting dazzled by people teaching in foreign universities who may be out of touch with Indian realities? Of course, if the people who come back to India come back only because they are not good enough to make it abroad then we shouldn't be talking to them. This is a genuine question, so please answer accordingly.

Correct 8 May 2016, 06:30

Agreed. Kian only does negative stories on NLUD and Jindal. These places have the most alumni from the NLUs teaching. He never highlights that.

Biased LI 8 May 2016, 13:32

+0 -2

LI is so biased that even the NLU-D death penalty report has not been mentioned even though it is all over MSM and even parliament discussed. And, of course, every other day an anti-JGLS report without highlighting how good the faculty is.

Commenting is closed for this article.