A total of 153 unique public votes are in and tallied and three judges have pored over the entries to determine the best student and qualified lawyer blogs written in the Legally India blogging competition. Congratulations to the clear run-away winner in each of the categories.

But first of all, please meet the three competition judges. All were acting in a purely personal capacity and have closely followed the blogging competition since its start. Judges ignored reader comments, the popular vote and other judge’s votes or views so far as possible to independently arrive at conclusions purely on the basis of the content. It was hard work.

Sanjay Bhatia is the Mysore-based head of operations at legal process outsourcing (LPO) company SDD Global Solutions. He graduated from NLSIU Bangalore in 1993 where he was a particularly active participant in the “pre-historic equivalent of internet blogging” - the law school’s iconic notice board “19(1)(a)”. Between 1997 and 2000 Bhatia also wrote for the Hindu Business Line.

Aniket Sengupta is a Mumbai-based finance partner at Luthra & Luthra and a 2000 graduate from NLSIU Bangalore. Sengupta loves good writing. Catch-22 is one of his favourite books and Douglas Adams is one of his favourite authors.

Kian Ganz is the Mumbai-based editor of Legally India and appreciates good blogging when he reads it.

Each of the winners in the below categories will win Rs 5,000 each. Congratulations to them and all participants - it really was very very tough to select only four from the best posts. Please stay tuned for the voting and selection for the final round of the competition in the other categories.

After you have read the winning posts here, please read and vote for the funniest, most useful and best written blogs in three further categories. Voting is now open here.

Best blog on life as a student - john2010: When things go wrong

Best blog on life as a qualified lawyer - nandiireywal: The Pursuit of Happiness

The Judges and their views

Sanjay Bhatia

Sanjay Bhatia is the Mysore-based head of operations at legal process outsourcing (LPO) company SDD Global Solutions. Bhatia says he rated blogs on the basis of: quality of content; theme; grammar, sentence structure, and flow of language; “whether the blog captured my attention wanting me to read on”; and “whether the blog achieved its ostensible purpose” - i.e., if it was meant to be funny/informative/thought provoking, was it actually that thing?

Bhatia thought the following posts also deserved a special mention in the student category, namely LegalPoet’s INTERNSHIP: Hidden Camera, LegalPoet’s 17 THINGS that HIT you in an NLU and folly_nariman’s Due Diligence and Dreaming Beyond It.

folly_nariman’s Mooting as the Professionals Do It was well written and hilarious. The blog captures the reader’s attention from the very first sentence itself and retains it to the very end. The style of humor is similar to that used by Sidin Vadukut in his hugely popular debut novel Dork: The Incredible Adventures of Robin ‘Einstein’ Varghese.

john2010’s When things go wrong is excellently written. The words seem to come straight from the writer’s soul. The blog describes the sad reality of the lives of several students, not just studying in the top national law schools, but also in institutions worldwide, where the academic demands are high and difficult to cope with.

LegalPoet’s ABCs (Ragging) was also very well written. The blog is a reassuring post for all law students about to start their legal career. It allays the fear of ragging, while in the same breath preparing the student for “interaction” in such a way that the new-comers actually look forward to it. The blog also reflects the caring attitude of the writer.

Under the qualified lawyer category, honestly, the best three were arrived by the process of elimination. Anirban’s blogs were moderately good, but riddled with grammatical errors and really did not deserve a place in the top three. By eliminating one more, I arrived at the top three.

Aniket Sengupta

Aniket Sengupta is a Mumbai-based finance partner at Luthra & Luthra and a 2000 graduate from NLSIU Bangalore.

When I was reading the entries I was considering writing skill, choice of words, content, humour, presentation and others in the drawing up of a shortlist.

Kian Ganz

Kian Ganz is the Mumbai-based editor of Legally India.

This judging was clearly tougher than comparing apples with apples as every blogger has his or her own style. So I went by my subjective enjoyment of posts to pick my favourites. I personally like to be enchanted by a blogger’s voice, with which they tell me stories that captivate me and along the way make me learn or understand something better. I preferred the ones that subtly made their points or arguments rather than being too overt. And the ultimate criteria of blogging excellence should be for a blogger gets you hooked: i.e. to get his or her hooks deeply into you, making you want to devour more and more of their future writing.”

My favourite student post - folly_nariman’s Mooting as the Professionals Do It - was one of those posts that really managed to transport you into a law school. It was brilliantly written and observed and brought back memories from my own (not very successful) mooting days. Thoroughly enjoyable and crucially I desperately wanted to know what would happen next - blogging and storytelling at its best. Ultimately folly_nariman’s tight prose just clinched it for me in the top spot.

But john2010’s When things go wrong was a very close contender for first place for me [and the ultimate winner]. The post about mental health in law school is really powerful and gave me goosebumps when I first read it - and again whenever I re-read it. Its courage and honesty really disarms the reader and lodges its message deep. It is the best post on the dark side that can be associated with law school. And more so, it is a very important subject that deserves far more attention, although it is too often just swept under the carpet. LegalPoet’s INTERNSHIP: Hidden Camera really captured mood and personality well. And despite generally being a bigger fan of prose than poetry, I couldn’t help but be charmed by this poem. It had a plot that made you want to know more and captured the essence of many students’ law firm internship treadmill better than any other post on the site (closely followed by folly_nariman’s post Due Diligence and Dreaming Beyond It., which was slightly narrower in it ambitions although equally deserving a spot in the top four).

sss’ Law School ki Kahaani, Sutte ki Zubaani - or life in law school from the perspective of a cigarette - was an innovative satire on law school life in a refreshing format, which did the hardest of things, being both entertaining and touching on important law student concerns. The writing in the introduction could have been slightly tighter and more economical but the dialogue sparkled.

Many of nandiireywal’s posts could have topped the category for best qualified lawyer post but my favourite and the most polished was his Pursuit of Happiness. Although nandii chooses to look mostly at the negatives of his fictional London career at Colby, Hewitt and Richards LLP, that does often make for the most compelling reading. And meanwhile, in the post he does manage to point out some elementary truths about transactional lawyering. Great stuff, as is his Nostalgia by Modern Bob post.

I found anirban1’s Curious case of the secret salary an innovative and well-argued take on a topic that plays very highly on the minds of many law firm lawyers, although it could have benefitted from slightly better structuring.

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Why don’t you now read and vote for the funniest, most useful and best written blogs in three further categories? Voting is now open here.