The ability to communicate properly, break complex issues down into simpler bits for easier understanding, and not looking for rote learning but ensuring the understanding of the subject.

In my own experience, I have found that teachers who are able to impart practical knowledge (apart from the require theoretical aspects) make the best teachers. Professors who did a serious amount of document review exercises with us, such as drafting, reviewing agreements/contracts etc. not only helped us understand things better, but also ensured that we weren't unprepared when it came to internships.

According to me, the main problem is the dearth of experienced senior faculty.I clearly see the difference between the novice and veteran faculty.I would definitely attend few classes if there is no attendance requirement.the most frustrating thing is teacher giving you reading material and wants the exact terms mentioned in it in your answer sheets.the paper should be subjectively evaluated.teaching through PPT is a crutch of some faculty without which they can't teach or let me say, pass 1 hour .

Thanks Kian for taking up a very important topic. I wish you take it up further and interview students and alumni. It's no secret that the quality of faculty in Indian law schools is pathetic, even the top ones. Here is what I think makes a good teacher (and what most teachers in India lack):

1. Knowledge of the subject: Good-quality practical experience and education from good law schools often leads to this. As does research of high-quality, whose evidence is usually publication in good journals. Very often, faculty members we complain about are from unknown law schools, have no practical experience, and have a poor research record. I am not saying that this is always the case, but all too often.

2. Communication: Most teachers in India are unable to communicate well. They cannot explain concepts clearly. Most also have a weak command over the English language, which is a big problem.

3 . Connecting with students: Another problem is that the students in law schools are from big cities and cosmopolitan families, whereas professors are often from conservative backgrounds. Sometimes professors become hostile and resent the students instead of trying to connect with them. Shortsgate is an example.

The ability to make classes engaging is the primary and sole criteria for judging a faculty in my opinion. There are people who know everything that is to know but their classes are the boring monologues. Nothing is stopping a student from accessing the materials himself/herself, NLU or not, most colleges have access to a good library with a bunch of e-resources. What really distinguishes a faculty is how interesting can they make the subject, can they really hold the attention of the class for the entire length of the lecture, will I take up their class if they offer an elective? Most if not all know their subject, what is important is to make sure that it remains interesting. And it would be great if universities give more attention to student feedback rather than how many paper a faculty publishes in a year.

I completed my first year in the best law college in mumbai.
I am not at all satisfied with the classroom experience. To begin with, we don't have proper faculty of law and other basic legal subjects, in terms of both quantity and quality. Sometimes there are no faculty at all for a subject. We do not have debates in classes wherein we can diacuss what we are taught. The classes are like dictation. Only a couple of veteran professors focus on the concept and depth of the subject.

In the first year (Especially the first semester) it is important that the faculty is helpful and encouraging with some practical experience.
It makes no sense to have professors who just throw around big words that end up intimidating students instead of building students' interests in law.
It doesn't help when the students have just entered law school and are not even sure of if they really want to be there and the faculty tells them "I'm sorry, law is a dry subject. There's nothing you can do about it"

Kian, You should not restrict this to NLU. The situation in the non NLU colleges should be very alarming. Most of the non NLU offer poor pay, and so may not attract NLU grads, leading to faculty who are not inspired and who may not be uptodate.

Great initiative, LI. About time too.

I'm about to graduate from a 3-year LL.B. Over the last six semesters, barring maybe like 5 teachers who were excellent, all others exhibited decidedly poor standards of teaching, mainly because of the following problems:

1) They are not making students ask enough questions

Teaching anything requires facing the students with the various questions, dilemmas and grey areas involved in that thing. This is much more true for teaching law, where everything from a law being 'right', to the various problems the way a provision is drafted leads to, to different ways of interpreting it, the reasoning used by judges in judgments, etc. - ALL sorts of things need to be questioned and thought about.

Most of the faculty at my college neither seemed interested enough in the subject they taught to be asking too many questions themselves, and certainly did not encourage students to think and research about things that are grey areas and moral/legal dilemmas (say, the role of the law in temple entry for women).

This includes the oft-heard point about no debates or extensive classroom discussions. Most classes I attended in my 3 years were dry monologues delivered by an unexcited teacher, with occasional contributions or doubts from 2 or 3 students.

2) Different requirements for different kind of subjects

Subjects like civil and criminal procedure, limitation law, drafting/pleading/conveyancing, and even minor acts such as court fees etc. definitely benefit more when being taught to young unaware students, if they are being taught by practicing advocates, or people who have practiced at some point in the past. The level of detail they would bring, and the way they could emphasize on the significance of procedure etc. can never be done by young teachers only recently out of law school themselves who have hardly seen the inside of a courtroom (which is what we mostly got).

Similarly, subjects such as jurisprudence and maybe even constitutional and administrative law require a teacher with VERY strong philosophical grounding of the subject. Someone who cares about how the principles explored in these subjects are the bedrock of all law, and is well-read on them too. Instead, we got people who would fulfill bare minimum responsibilities by basically just rushing through the key words and phrases of a thinker/jurist's school of thought, or rushing through key holdings of a consti law judgment without ever discussing its fallout or underlying philosophical grounding, if any.

Commercial and corporate law subjects too could benefit so much more from people who have an idea of how the market pertaining to a certain area of law actually operates.

3) They had no regard for using current context, and academic approaches

Almost never in class would we hear a teacher excitedly/enthusiastically telling us about the most current struggles/developments pertaining to a topic they had just taught. What people read daily in the newspapers or on their News Feed matters a lot since if that is clubbed with classroom discussion on what you're being taught, one is MUCH more interested and attentive.

Similarly, and very problematically, literally no teacher ever (even the good ones) ever encouraged students to read journals or other works by legal academia and jurists. Or even to read the teachers' own works pertaining to the subject they were teaching.

Most, if not all, of them were blissfully unaware even of the active blogging and conference/talk scene in the legal community that cares both about current context and academic grounding.

4) Communication skills

While the spoken English of many teachers pretty much sucked, I have always been able to overlook this flaw if the teacher had a great grip on their subject which they could use to otherwise communicate their ideas somehow.

The more worrying thing was that often the teachers would sheepishly refuse to engage with certain questions aired by students that were counter-intuitive to 'common sense' or questioned some very basic assumptions. Conservative backgrounds could be one reason, as commented above by someone else. Another could simply be not having asked enough such questions themselves.

All of this would often reflect on what students even otherwise suspected to be average qualifications of some teachers (some, not many, certainly not all). So would the conduct of a handful of teachers who would often come really late to deliver a scheduled lecture and leave really early, or cancel a lot of classes.


So that was pretty much my faculty experience at my college. I'll conclude by answering a few of the other questions LI has asked us to send in answers to.

- "In how many papers of your current curriculum do you rely on self-study, instead of classroom discussion?"

28/30 over 6 semesters.

- "If there was no attendance requirement, how many of your classes would you attend?"

One or two out of five, per semester.

- "During your corporate or litigation internship did you find the theoretical instruction received in college very useful, useful, somewhat useful, marginally useful or not at all useful?"

Somewhere between 'not at all useful' to occasionally 'somewhat useful'.

Really great responses and ideas so far, please keep 'em coming.

A great initiative Kian. Below are some points you may find helpful for your research.

I don’t think any student is satisfied with their classroom experience because many of us have a “fairytale notion” of awesome professors, which is based on stories we read about professors at Ivy league institutions. However, I believe there are a few amazing professors at every institution which makes the experience worthwhile.

Typically, there are half a dozen excellent faculty members, half a dozen decent faculty members, and a dozen horrible faculty members even in the top colleges (when it comes to horrible faculty members, students just follow the curriculum, bunk classes (if possible), and try to figure out what questions the faculty is likely to ask). However, some colleges apparently have zero good faculty, although this assertion is moot because the students themselves somehow feel terribly disillusioned by the overall situation and paint all faculty with the same brush. I personally feel that one or two good/decent faculty can make a tremendous difference if a student follows the approach advocated by such faculty in other papers. Of course, it would be nicer and easier if all faculty were good (again, fairytale!).

KEY PROBLEMS WITH FACULTY:
- Lack of basic knowledge
- Lack of general basic competence (be it communication, evaluation, accountability, etc.)
- Lack of interest in excelling and inspiring
- Inability to facilitate discussion / answer questions
- Inability to maintain discipline

WHAT GOOD FACULTY MEMBERS TYPICALLY DO:
- Displays good (if not awesome) understanding of the subject
- Pushes students to read leading cases and top commentaries
- Encourages and facilitates classroom discussions
- Ensures discipline
- Evaluates strictly and gives feedback
- Does not allow anything to be sham (whether attendance, or viva, or anything else)
- INSPIRES

IF THERE IS NO ATTENDANCE REQUIREMENT, many students will not attend classes. Some would do so because they lack discipline anyway. Others would bunk because they have a moot to prepare for or a project of publishable quality to make.

DURING INTERNSHIPS, the basic understanding of law is notionally helpful (at least in litigation), but we do not have industry facing professors so one typically cannot use the theoretical instruction received during internships (exception being regulatory law courses involving FEMA, RBI and SEBI Regs., etc. which may be useful since the intern has some idea about where to start/look). The practice of corporate transactional law involves 30% law and 70% drafting/ diligence/ commercials/ industry-practices, which cannot be taught in lawschool. In any event, interns typically don’t do more than research (at best, diligence), so theoretical knowledge is rarely handy except in litigation. However, if an intern doesn’t know basic law, it will show, and it will cost them since they won't be able to make the most of the internship. A lot of research questions requires the intern to be proactive and generally good at research (e.g. find the licence requirements for setting up a particular factory), so mooting and high standards of project evaluation can help in ensuring that students learn to research well. To elucidate further, an intern can use theoretical knowledge to make a note on damages for breach of contract or the procedure for liquidation of a company, but theoretical knowledge will not help in computing the damages typically awarded in a certain type of cases at a certain forum. So research skills are essential and a college must impart that. Advanced research questions like taxability of a non-resident in a certain kind of transaction, or whether price fixed pursuant to a a power purchase agreement can be renegotiated, or whether a certain representation provides enough “comfort” to bankers are not things that a lawschool can teach. In a nutshell, theoretical knowledge may not help an intern (except in litigation) but research skills do, although theoretical knowledge ensures that the intern at least grasps the question or its significance.

THE FURTURE: Unless colleges involve practising lawyers in their faculty nothing will change. Since senior lawyers can at best do a lecture or two per semester, it is important to attract younger lawyers to teach as visiting faculty. However, one good development is that some recent graduates from top lawschools with foreign LLMs are now choosing a career in teaching. Unfortunately, not all of them have practicing experience, which means that they can impart theoretical knowledge but not practical knowledge. Having said that, it will suffice if faculty members manage to impart theoretical knowledge, given that practical knowledge is supposed to be acquired during the course of practice. THE MOST IMPORTANT thing remains competition among students, opportunities to participate in competitive events, and research skills.

Most students who manage an elusive training contract are hard workers who make the most of lawschool by being supremely competitive and learning application of law and research. Such efforts have a directly proportional impact on their analytical and cognitive ability, which is the most important aspect that requires development.

Hope this long and not-so-well-structured rant is useful. Cheers!

Kian, why not ask people to name three faculty members at their law school who they think are the best, and why. That'll give us concrete examples rather than abstract generalities.

Few things that make a professor amazing:
1. Engaging Classrooms.
A professor may have a lot of experience, he might be brilliant but if he can't motivate the students to be engaging and if the students are sleeping in his class then there goes the advantage of brilliance.
2. Practical Teacher.
The best thing is whether he can impart practical field skills. Makes the class more interesting it does.
3. Class Activities.
One of my International Relations professor here at Nirma, has an amazing method of teaching. There is an student presentation on an latest IR issue every week followed by a brilliant discussion which is a mix of theories and practice. Students understand. They decipher. They apply. Another is the video classrooms, where we upload a video lecture of ourselves in a topic for fellow students.
4. Curriculum.
It plays an important part of how good a teacher is. A curriculum can make a teacher interesting. Should be up-to-date. Include case studies, and practical problems that suits the practical needs of the profession.
5. Connecting the dots.
I appreciate any professor who can connect what I learn in his classroom to how I use it with what I learn in another's.
6. Learning how to learn.
The most important part. Lectures we might forget, skill though stays for lifetime. Classroom lecture should impart the basic knowledge true. But the most important tool the professor can provide his students is cracks and shortcuts to gather expertise on the subject.

This are just some brief things. I believe if all this things are present in a classroom. Then barriers like language is not hard to surpass and most definitely not important.

Ok, Kian --- let it out. How come LI is doing such interesting stories? Have you hired more staff? Or did Bar & Bench wake you up?

Faculty who teach law outside the country like Umakanth or who teach on a part time basis like Sandeep Parekh should also be part of the analysis.

Prachi and Kian. what is the point of this exercise? Will this lead to a bigger story?

Many NLUD-haters on this board who are down-voting pro-NLUD comments. Can't accept that NLUD faculty is better than the other NLUs. Instead of being jealous try and improve the faculty in your own law school!! The star faculty at NLUD anyway happen to be alumni of other NLUS!!

A few weeks ago, there was a story where NALSAR had answered some questions about its faculty, course offerings and institutional challenges. Have any of the other NLUs answered those questions? Faizan Mustafa often makes tall promises which are hard to implement, but he seems to be open to admitting shortcomings and taking remedial action. He also has a group of younger faculty members who are going to come into their own in the next few years. At the moment they don't have enough exposure in terms of publications and research-based initiatives, but that can change very quickly.

If NLUs are so great why do their graduates all do LLMs abroad? Surely this is because the faculty abroad is better? Maybe you should speak to students from NLUs who did their LLMs abroad and ask them.

Kian and Prachi, it's a bit lazy t just ask people to comment. You should do some proper reporting. Speak to Indian law graduates teaching abroad. There are NLSIU alumni who are professors at Oxford, Penn, LSE, King's, NUS etc, and one person is even Dean of a law school abroad (Deakin). You MUST interview these people. You can also interview the handful of NLSIU and other NLU aumni teaching in India.

Do a proper article for Mint to raise greater awareness. This is a very important issue that must be addressed by the government. We cannot hope to produce world-class universities unless we have good faculty.

Most of the law schools have teachers teaching more than one subject. For example, the teacher who specialises in family law is made to teach Indian Contract Act and criminal law. The issue with this structure is that, a teacher is so over burdened with preparing for three subjects , that he/she is unable to keep herself/himself updated with developments happening in any of the fields of law. Therefore, the overall quality of teaching goes down.

The law schools should make sure that one teacher teaches only the subject in which he/she specialises, so that they keep themselves updated in that field of law.

Quality of faculty usually depends on the VC. A good VC attracts good faculty while a bad VC makes good faculty go away. It's not to do with salary. People say that a private college like Jindal has good faculty because they pay them like law firms, but if NLUs have good VCs these people will happily go to cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad and Kolkatta rather than teach in Panipat. I am sure NLS grads would love to teach in Bangalore, if NLS had a good VC.

Another problem you should address is the regionalisation of law schools, such as domination by the South India lobby, Maharashtra lobby, Jat lobby etc.

Simple solution to the problem: hire alumni as adjunct professors.

I believe a good law teacher is someone, who permits an unrestricted flow of thought to student's ideas.. Identifies them, channelizes them and helps the student to conclude it. Therefore, neutrality in opinions and thoughts is the key aspect which makes a good law teacher.

Secondly, communication skills. I would like see a law teacher in whose class, students speak more than the teacher.. Listening carefully is the most important part of communication..

Kian, an anonymous NLS Bangalore student has made some very revealing statements about faculty in the comments section in Bar & Bench. It exposes the state of affairs at India's so-called premier law school. You must read it and investigate what he says further. Please don't censor this comment and link just because it's a rival website. In any event, LI is much better than B&B ;)

Link (see the anonymous comment at the end):

http://barandbench.com/good-writing-missing-law-schools-prof-nigam-nuggehalli-azim-premji-university/

So what is all this leading to? Is LI just trolling people to vent or will you do a detailed story on the situation? For a start you can look at the top 5-6 NLUs and map how many faculty are BALLB alumni of those NLUs or other top NLUs (visiting lecturers and adjuncts don't count). Why do only LLM alumni with BALLBs from unknown colleges join? In most cases the faculty info is available on the website but you can also contact the VC/Registrar or(if no response) the student body presidents or (if no response) file an RTI.

This is the biggest scam and I hope you cover it. Just think about it: virtually zero BALLB alumni of NLS, NALSAR etc are teaching at the institutions they came from. Contrast this with Harvard, Yale etc, or even the IITs. How can this be? And to think NLS has the audacity to call itself the "Harvard of the East", when China, Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong are light years ahead. NLS does not even feature n the QS rankings of the top 200 law schools. If any law school can be called the Harvard of the East it is NUS Singapore.

Kian and Prachi you should cover this development and ask people from law schools what they think:

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/education/story/foreign-university-campuses-in-india/1/644180.html

Hey Kian, Bar & Bench one did a story on NLU faculty but botched it up by rating Chankaya as #1 (LOL). They gave more points to people with PhDs from third-class colleges rather than BALLB graduates from top NLUs who did LLMs abroad. They omitted the fact that many profs abroad (including the Harvard Dean) just have a JD, no PhD. I hope LI can do a better story on NLU faculty and rank them.

Here is the correct objective ranking of law schools (forget Legally India):

Placement ranking:
NLS>NALSAR>NUJS>NLUD

Faculty ranking
NALSAR>NLUD>NUJS>NLS

Infrastructure ranking:
NALSAR>NLUD>NLS>NUJS

Convenience of location ranking:
NUJS>NLUD>NLS>NALSAR

VC ranking:
NLUD>NALSAR>NUJS>NLS

Moot court ranking:
NLS>NALSAR>NLUD>NUJS

Having studied in one of the celebrated law schools of India, I have to say that the quality of education I received was mostly poor, with the exception of a few professors, who had great knowledge and passion for their subjects.

The law cannot be taught through just books and bare acts, and the emphasis on memorising answers needs to be diluted. Memory is a key factor of being a successful lawyer and must be honed through law school, but at the same time, the focus needs to be on clearing concepts. Simple concepts like contracts of adhesion, damages, compensation etc. are not 'taught' but merely recited. Case studies, mock trials/suits should be focused on. This is a way of imparting actual practical legal education. Expecting a law student to memorise the arbitration act, without having any understanding of why section 11 is not within the purview of Section 42, is not the aim of a legal education.