Amarchand Mangaldas and Trilegal conducted interviews on NLSIU Bangalore campus with 35 students yesterday (25 May), making 15 job offers and hoping to steal a march on competitors in the recruitment war for 2011 graduates.
Amarchand interviewed a pool of 28 applicants all day yesterday, offering jobs to 10 and internships to six in its Bangalore and Mumbai and Hyderabad offices, before the current batch of fifth years had even passed out.
Trilegal interviewed a total of 35 applicants and offered five jobs in its Bangalore and Mumbai office.
Although Amarchand released its offer list at around 4pm while Trilegal was still conducting interviews, the firms largely avoided treading on each others’ toes, making only one offer to the same candidate despite both interviewing 28 of the same students.
However, the Amarchand job offers lapse after only 48 hours. Last year Amarchand had introduced a 24-hour time-limit on accepting applications as law school recruitment patterns had changed from fixed IIM-style recruitment weeks to rolling year round recruitment, explained an NLSIU recruitment committee source.
Earlier recruitment committees had allowed students to interview with multiple firms in the same band on the same day and choose between offers but the reduced recruitment in the recession increased the bargaining power of the firms and put in place one-job rules, which forced students to make choices on the spot.
One NLSIU student who did not interview with either firm yesterday said: “I don’t want to have to say yes or no to a life choice in one day - I would rather wait for all the firms to come and then choose. So I am not applying right now at all.”
Last year’s recruitment season started in June for Amarchand, which hired 11 from NLSIU and in July for Trilegal at NUJS Kolkata, with the firm recruiting six months earlier there than the previous year. Amarchand in particular is understood to have been keen to beat the recruitment competition from foreign firms on campus, pressuring the recruitment committee to move its interview date forward after the firm recruited only four students from NLS’ 2009 batch.
However, Trilegal had shunned NLSIU in its 2009-10 recruitment milkround after Amarchand’s early visit to campus, according NLSIU recruitment committee sources. Instead, Trilegal hired primarily from NUJS and NLU Jodhpur in 2009.
This year, it is understood that extensive negotiations took place between recruiting firms and the NLSIU recruitment committee, with all ultimately agreeing for Amarchand and Trilegal to recruit on the same day. The main recruitment interview period is usually in December.
Amarchand and Trilegal were unavailable for comment at time of going to press.
NLSIU’s 2011 batch consists of around 100 students.
Comments
smart to ploy to make toppers commit before the magic circle firms approach them. wonder if any topper will be dumb enough to fall for this trick. yes, it's true the foreign firms are cutting down recruitment drastically, but the top few will always get recruited by them. it's also better for ppl to do an llm if their marks are good enough to earn them a scholarship.
job offer lapses after 24 hours eh? wonder why!
smart to ploy to make toppers commit before the magic circle firms approach them. wonder if any topper will be dumb enough to fall for this trick - what trick?
yes, it's true the foreign firms are cutting down recruitment drastically, but the top few will always get recruited by them. - and thus it was prophecied!
it's also better for ppl to do an llm if their marks are good enough to earn them a scholarship. - incredible career advice. final year students please lap up all the information provided here. pearls of career wisdom.
job offer lapses after 24 hours eh? wonder why! - beats me man. any guesses?
Yeah, 35 interviewees and 15 offers seems like a cold start.. I thought this year would be 'aggressive'?
2) 53 is the number of general category candidates. 80 students are admitted each year. And yes, people do fail. There are about 90 odd students in the current fourth year batch.
Shame on you!! Lawyers must be concerned with serving society, not with money. [Sarcastic post follows, yes, very funny but we can not publish personal attacks. -Ed]
As for terminating a retainer, great, highly ethical start to a career in the legal profession that!
amss hasnt officially said anything abt its pay but last year they paid 12 L
[Sarcastic post follows, yes, very funny but we can not publish personal attacks. -Ed]
OK. Here's the edited post. Hope I can make it past the censor this time:
The owner of an Indian law firm called ****** suggested that law firms from *********** should not be allowed to enter India because they are only concerned with *****, whereas Indian law firms are inspired by the selfless and noble ideals of ******* *******
I personally think that these views are a ***** of ****
a) could not gt thru NLS
b) realize an anonymous post is a good way to advertise their stupidity.
At least, tell us which institution you're from, when you find 15 placements in 4th yr itself a 'cold start'... or make sweeping statements about law firms ...before launching in a vitriolic tirade against capitalism and money-making ambitions.
As for you loin cloth, it was replaced by fabric because someone entered the market with something better to offer !!!
The students did not decide to call the firms. These particular firms decided to come early.
surprisingly no!!! Especially not trilegal. They had quite a tough interview process and they offered jobs to a mixed bunch ...
just proves GPA is not everything !
#37 is correct, the selections were not strictly rank based. This was also because (as the article pointed out) some high rankers did not sit for the interviews and decided to wait for some other recruiters. While recruitments at NLS have always been good, I am confident that this year will be better. Almost 20 students with offers from domestic firms even before the year starts is not a trivial feat. Add to that the foreign firms and the other top Indian firms which are yet to come, and this batch seems very comfortably placed.
From a students' perspective as well, this scenario does not bode well.. students will become tunnel visioned in their effort to be placed with tri, bi, quadri and penta legal and whatever other names law firms will conjure up....
CLAT results only show that NLS is still the SAFEST choice and not necessarily the best. It's like choosing between a mature Gavaskar and a young Tendulkar. There is no reason to say that one will score more runs than the other in a given match!
Would respectfully disagree with the latter part of your comment! The type of the pool of incoming students is pretty much the same in all law schools. While all that is debatable - Hyderabad and Pune most definitely have hotter women!
Trilegal and AMSS are doing this in every law school. NALSAR had to threaten to boycott one of them to sort out the mess (last years batch also boycotted Trilegal). All NLUs should come together to boycott such early recruitments. How focused can the students who already have a job be throughout their 5th year? Once again the age old debate of whether our law schools are just the training factories for these law firms..