The unwilling lawyer

The proliferation and brand dilution of National Law Universities

2011-12-15T09:54:00.001+05:30

The National Law University (NLU) experiment started in 1987 with an aim to add new vigour to legal education, which in 70s and 80s seemed to have resigned itself to institutional mediocrity. Except for few institutions in presidency towns, the legal education was in a downward spiral. The stage was set for something new and Prof. Menon (though some say he was inspired by Prof. Bakshi) decided to experiment with the novel idea of a 5 year law education right after secondary school. This model was completely different from the then contemporary legal education models followed in the common law countries. In US students could enter law school only after completion of an undergraduate degree, while in UK students could enter legal studies directly after school and the period of study was 3 years followed by a one or two year period of 'apprenticeship' to apply for Bar (through BPTC formerly known as BVC and pupilage) or law firms (via LPC).

The 5 year integrated law school model strived hard on its own for a number of years before the stakeholders deemed it to be successful but once this verdict was reached there was no holding back. First off the blocks were NALSAR, NLIU and NUJS. After that the flood gates were open. Within a decade the number of NLUs jumped from one to fifteen.

If we look at the comparative growth of other institutions of national importance like IITs or IIMs, we find that these institutions had a long gestation period with slow growth before they moved into the expansion phase. However for law schools the growth has been exponential (as borne out by the graph above).

Many reasons can be attributed to this explosive growth of National Law Universities across India, one of the main cause is the little or no initial investment to be made by the state yet the enviable tag of a state with National Law University. Most of the new NLUs run from makeshift buildings which have little or no infrastructure to run a corporation school much less a NLU. Secondly all the NLUs are based on self financed model, which secures a steady flow of capital in form of fees, thus all it needs from state is a legislative Act and voila there is a new National Law University. If one looks at the newest law schools like NUSRL and NLS&JAA they hardly have any of their own infrastructure. The trend seems to have reached such alarming proportion that new law schools start off without faculty yet invite applications from students for admission. CLAT though path breaking in reducing cost and anxiety among law school aspirants, unwittingly end up providing students for these new institutions. If these institutions fail in long term then it would do immense harm to the law school brand and reputation. Thus it is in the interest of the collective NLU brand that older more established NLUs provide active mentorship to the fledgling institutions.

It would also be opportune at this moment to look at the recruitment statistics of NLUs. Arguably AMSS, AZB, Khaitan & Co., Luthra & Luthra and Trilegal are the biggest five domestic recruiters. If we look at the collective recruitment pattern in 2011 of these Big Five we would find that they tend to favour old NLUs over the rest of the law schools.

The recruitment graph shows a classic case of inverse triangle, where few law schools have disproportionately large share of the top end of the job market. If we believe that private sector is the best judge of quality then the trend is extremely worrisome as it tends to point out that there are serious faultlines somewhere in the system and a diminishing brand value of NLUs outside the few top institutions. The situation is quite similar for the new IITs where the graduating batches are offered a 'pittance' compared to 'more established' IITs.

Though recruitment stats alone should not constitute the measuring rod for quality of any institution or its students, however it seems that the time has come to reinvent the NLU brand. The only way forward for NLUs to revive itself is to have strong inter NLU exchanges of both faculty as well as students, strong and active mentor groups for new NLUs and an unambiguous moratorium on opening of new NLUs unless there is an existing infrastructure in terms of library, academic buildings and faculty. To end on a happy note NLUD seems to be have discovered the proper path on how best to open a new NLU - with a world class infrastructure, a 'charismatic' VC and an able faculty.

Ranking Law Schools on CLAT preference

2011-07-05T01:29:00.000+05:30

I debated a lot as to whether I should write on CLAT preference based law school ranking for this year. For past two years (2010 & 2009) I have tried to analyse the CLAT results and flesh out the ranking preference of the law school aspirant (who are/ought to be the intended beneficiary of all law school rankings), however this year the reasons for my doubt (about compiling a report on 2011 CLAT results) are the abundance of well written and well analysed articles in online legal news media like ‘Law becoming a primarychoice now’ and ‘CLAT 2011 Results’ by Rajneesh Singh, ‘Old-school CLAT prefswobble’ by Kian Ganz etc. These articles analyse every inch of the field and have provided a clear preference ranking among law schools: NLS, NALSAR, NUJS, (NLIU/NLUJ), GNLU, RMNLU, NUALS, RGNUL and CNLU.

So instead of providing my usual statistical analysis with average rank, rank width/dispersal, standard deviation etc. (but if you are interested in statistics check the articles by Kian or Rajneesh) I have decided to provide a visual representation of the CLAT preference in form of a heatmap. The 20x25 table represents the preference of the top 500 students who cleared CLAT in 2011 under the general category. Each university which have students in the top 500 have been provided with a particular shade to show how preferences vary in the set.

Click on the image for larger size

As is clear from the visual evidence NLS is still on top, NALSAR is second choice but has a serious dent with about a quarter who could be at NALSAR opting for NUJS, NUJS is undisputed third, there is tough tussle between NLIU and NLUJ (look at the intertwining of green and red in the middle half of the diagram), the bottom 1/3^rd is dominated by GNLU which is followed by scattered presence of HNLU, RMNLU and NUALS (in that order).

Whose picture is it anyway: The contagion spreads to Assam

2011-05-25T02:11:00.001+05:30

It seems that newborn NLS&JAA (NLU of Assam) website copies the toddler NUSRL, Ranchi in freely borrowing inspiration from the internet.

A quick glance at the website of NLU, Assam would show that directly below the masthead are three images: a cafeteria, stack of law books and an impressive dorian stairway.

All the images are followed by a stamp which reads ‘National Law School & Judicial Academy, Assam’ and to any lay observer would signify that these images are a representation of NLU, Assam. However they are definitely not, NLS&JAA doesn’t yet have a campus and its only existence is in the legislative Act and the website.

The book stack picture has been borrowed from the University of Pennsylvania library website.

The image of the cafeteria is actually of Walsh College, Ohiom USA and has been taken from Aultman College website.

I could not find the staircase photo, I suspect it is the shot of UCL portico (or the generic photo of any of those US universities with tuscan columns and broad stairways)

But this trend of new law schools in India showing liberally borrowed pictures is quite disturbing as it not only tries to ride the bandwagon on others achievement but also shows that the university itself may not have a vision for future. Apart from such philosophical ramblings, on a more practical note, it shows that the universities do not have any noteworthy (or photograph worthy) infrastructure or achievement. It thus calls into question the mushrooming of National Law Schools across India and the eventual dilution of NLS/NLU brand.

Whose picture is it anyway?

2011-04-20T19:48:00.001+05:30

Newest cub at the NLU stable the National University of Study and Research in Law (NUSRL), Ranchi has quite an interesting website. Just below the masthead it carries a series of changing images. The following are the images used in the flash sequence (though not in this layout).

Click on the image for a larger size (opens in the same window)

While the first two are stock photos used in several law related website the last three photos in the series caught my attention. A bit of trawling around the net and it seems that the photos were borrowed from different websites around the world.

The snapshot of the library (which with its furniture and copiers seems quite impressive) is ‘borrowed’ from the website of Law Library of Wichita County, Texas. Further the next picture of students in post convocation celebration is most certainly of NUJS, as evidenced from the distinctive arch entranceway. Further as NUSRL is yet to have a graduating batch it is improbable to have a convocation ceremony.

Click on the image for a larger size (opens in the same window)

The borrowing of ‘inspiration’ does not stop the last picture is taken from the flickr page of a student of Griffith University, Australia.

Click on the image for a larger size (opens in the same window)

While many may argue that being a toddler law school NUSRL website carries these pictures as inspirational or aspirational however that cannot condone the use of popup which marks the images as ‘NUSRL Ranchi’.

As per news from media NUSRL is ‘facing the problem of inadequate infrastructures at its temporary campus near BIT-Mesra.’

PS: The title of the post is inspired from the title of the comedy TV show ‘Whose line is it anyway?’

The problems of plenty and scarcity: An analysis of the BCI list of law colleges in India

2011-03-30T20:39:00.003+05:30

After a mammoth and laudable data collection on the law colleges by the BCI (to comply with the Legal Education Rules of 2008), recently BCI has published a comprehensive list of law colleges in India (however there are some glaring omission like NLUD etc., there is also a tendency to add newly approved applicants who do not have any infrastructure at present). As per this new list dated 10.04.2010 the total number of law colleges in India is 900. As per the list the distribution in number of law colleges per state in India is as below:

Unfortunately BCI website no longer has the earlier list (at least not in the same domain location) which in July 2009 formed the basis of a post on the explosion of law colleges in India. According to the earlier list there were 1136 law colleges in India in 2008, thus it is surprising that in a period of couple of years the number went down by 236 colleges. The number of law colleges per state also shows that states in North-East except for Assam have very few law colleges. In Karnataka for example there is one law college for every 5 lakhs 93 thousand people, in NE including Sikkim (except for Assam) there is one law college for every 11 lakhs 10 thousand people (source of population data is wiki article on List of states and union territories of India by population). A quick comparison of population, HDI and number of law school per state would further bolster this argument.

Thus the need of the hour is for BCI to encourage setting up of law school in the NE of India (another interesting nugget of information, this is also the region of India which is farthest from any kind of National Law University).

Apart from this regional imbalance another approximation garnered from the data is the chronic overproduction of lawyers in India. As of March 2007 the total number of lawyers enrolled with BCI through various state Bar Councils were around 9,55,000. The total number of law colleges according to the latest tally is 900, thus if every law college on an average enrols 100 students every year (please note that 100 is on the lower scale of the spectrum, all National law universities except for NLS Bangalore takes in more than 100 students, most Government law colleges, even the most famous one, like CLC Delhi, GLC Mumbai etc. take in around 300-500 students p.a.), the total number of law graduates produced every year in India is 90,000. Thus every year 9.42% of the total number of lawyers is added to the Bar. Obviously there is a mortality rate which on an average for the last 10 years stood at 7% in India. Thus the effective rate of growth in number of lawyers is 2.42%. Strangely the rate of population growth in India is 1.3%. Therefore the rate of growth in number of lawyers in almost double the rate of population growth in India, which is bound to create a decreasing rate of opportunity for lawyers in future.

The obvious solution to this twin problem of geographical imbalance and overproduction of lawyers is to first curtail the number of existing law colleges (this can be done through periodic checks on the infrastructure and faculty quality of the law colleges against the agreed minimum standard), raise the entry barrier for aspiring/new law colleges (which should be more than the minimum standard for existing law colleges, BCI may argue that the scope of improvement for existing colleges is a slow process, but for new entrants the standard is that of ideal standard), give sops for private colleges which wants to open law colleges in NE (given Indian Govt. recent NE Development Policy, it wouldn’t be financially difficult to set up a NLU in NE) and finally to derecognise colleges which have a 3 year/part time/night shift law programme.

Before we part another chart to show the privatisation/commercialisation of legal education in India.

Telling a true story few Indians know

2011-03-17T00:17:00.002+05:30

One of the major advantages of pursuing LLM in a foreign university is that you come to meet with students with varied cultures and traditions from around the world, unlike Indian NLUs with generally monochromatic student population (hailing from educated middle class or upper middle class, English speaking, fancy schooled, city dwelling families). While pursuing LLM at a somewhat reputed UK university I met a Bangladeshi student from the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), my knowledge about Chittagong was quite limited, though I knew that it was a port of some significance, there was blockade in 1971 Indo-Pak war and that it had a medium capacity good cricket stadium (atleast that is what I gathered from the televised matches). I also vaguely remembered that some time ago there was a talk among the diplomatic community in India that Bangladesh Government might let Chittagong be used as an alternate gateway/port for NE India. But what this Bangladeshi-Chakma student told me greatly altered my understanding of ethnohistoriography of Eastern India during the perilous times of Independence and the irrelevance of partition by a colonial master.

We all know something or other about the partition and its fallout every Indian would have heard of the Kashmir story (irrespective of what view he/she may hold on the issue), most know about the partition of Bengal and Punjab (and the enormous emotional-economic hardship borne by the displaced people), many would know about integration of Hyderabad, Junagad and Goa by force to Union of India, some may know that North-West Frontier Province of British India (presently the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and FATA in Pakistan) which decided to join Pakistan in a referendum would have joined India if Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan (also known as the Frontier Gandhi) and his volunteer/political faction/followers (the Red Shirts) had not abstained from voting (during consultations on the future map of India and Pakistan, Patel/Gandhi is thought to have conceded that NWFP should be part of Pakistan, hearing this Khan is said to have famously lamented that ‘You have thrown us to the wolves’), few Indians may know that in Sylhet (today a province of Bangladesh) only a majority of 43.8 per cent voted in favour of being part of Pakistan.

But almost none of the Indians today know that in the last days of British Raj, the Boundary Commission which divided British India (which worked on the principle that a region should be awarded on the basis of its religious demographics, simply put Muslim majority area would goto Pakistan and no-Muslim majority area would be awarded to India) by a mere pen stroke had given to Pakistan a land area of over fifteen thousand square kilometres (to put in perspective about half the size of Kerala or larger than any NE Indian state except for Assam) which were populated by 97% tribal non-Muslims in 1947. This area is today known as the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) and the demographics have completely altered with the native tribal non-Muslim population trimmed to 52% in 1991.

Let us dive back into history into the fateful year of partition and independence, India and Pakistan gained independence on 15^th and 14^th August, the boundary was not defined and there were religious riots but people celebrated throughout the subcontinent, in CHT people raised the Indian flag on 15^th August quite confident that a region with 98.5% non-Muslim population would definitely be part of India.

The award of the Boundary Commission was declared on 16^th August 1947 at around 5 PM at the Government House in New Delhi where Mountbatten represented British Govt., Pandit Nehru, Sardar Patel along with other delegates represented India and on the Pakistan side there were Liaquat Ali Khan, Fazlur Rahaman among others. Radcliffe had taken charge of the commission on July 8 and had completed the task of dividing India and Pakistan on map by August 9, a superhuman effort but which was bound to contain some ill judged decisions. According to, the sanitized, minutes of the award commission meeting, available at the British Library Online Archives, Pandit Nehru said that the Radcliffe Boundary Commission could not award CHT to Pakistan as it was overwhelmingly non-Muslim in character and that the terms of reference of the Boundary Commission did not include the area of CHT. However the Pakistan delegation and the British countered these points by saying that CHT is economically tied with Pakistan and Mountbatten commented that ‘whole economy of the Chittagong Hill Tract would be upset if they were not left with Pakistan’, also Pakistan wanted to gain control of the Karnaphuli River which flowed through the CHT, Mountbatten proposed a compromise formula whereby Pakistan would be allocated a strip of land on both side of the river, however both the parties rejected this formula Nehru said that India should have the complete control of CHT while Liaquat Ali Khan said that CHT would be the only source of hydro-electric power in East Pakistan. Thus CHT was awarded to Pakistan.

The leaders of CHT were stunned when they heard over radio on 17^th August that they were part of Pakistan, they ran from pillar to post in the hope of joining India, they sought military help from Pandit Nehru who turned them down reportedly by saying ‘Do you propose to bring India again under foreign rule?’. Thus ended all hopes of indigenous population of Chakma, Marma, Tripuri, Tenchungya, Chak, Pankho, Mru, Murung, Bawm, Lushai, Khyang, Gurkha, Assamese, Santal and Khumi tribes (collectively called Jumma) to join India. The next 50 years saw recurring cycles of cultural genocide, ethnic cleansing and inexorable demographic shift. The Pakistan government saw these Jumma people as completely alien to their culture (in fact the entire East Pakistan was thought be a lesser partner) with the added fact that bulk of the population in CHT was non-Muslim and the incidence of raising the Indian flag branded them forever as ‘pro India’. CHT initially had a special administrative status in the Pakistan federation as an ‘excluded area’ which meant that the CHT Act of 1900 would to some extent protect the native culture of the region, uphold the British administrative structure and restricted unsupervised/indiscriminate settlement by non-native population. However by 1964 the CHT Act of 1900 was abolished/repealed and CHT became an ordinary tribal province with no special constitutional guarantee; thousands were made homeless by hydroelectric projects and communal violence, close to 1,00,000 (more than quarter of the native CHT population) Chakma people from CHT fled to India where they were settled in Arunachal Pradesh.

With the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, there were hopes among Jumma people that a country which newly got independence on the notion of ethnic/cultural/linguistic difference from the ‘Punjabi’ Pakistan would address the legitimate cultural/ethnic issues of Jummas of CHT. However under the fervour of Bengali Nationalism Sheikh Mujibar Rahaman, the champion of Bangladesh Liberation Movement did not want to give any special status to CHT, if sources are to be believed he threatened to settle ethnic Bengali people in CHT to reduce Jummas to minority. There were political movement to gain regional autonomy and preserve the indigenous culture, United People's Party of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (UPPCHT) was formed in 1973. However the cycle of repression and a strive to skew the ethnic balance (which increased the non native population in CHT in 1974 to 8 times to the size in 1947) led to an armed insurgency. After the assassination of Mujibar Rahaman in 1975 Bangladesh was taken over by Ziaur Rahaman who followed a policy of alignment with Pakistan and China (traditionally the rivals of India) and at the same time distancing from India. Indira Gandhi perceived policy of Rahaman as anti-India and ordered R&AW, India’s external intelligence agency, to intervene and arm the militia wing of UPPCHT named Shanti Bahini or peace force. With defeat of Indira Gandhi in 1977 elections, the R&AW backing was withdrawn and Shanti Bahini started targeting soft targets like ethnic Bengali settlers, the retaliation by Bangladesh state organ was massive, there were alleged cases of systematic rape, arson, religious persecution and methodical killings. Much like the cultural genocide perpetrated by the Chinese in occupied Tibet, Bangladesh (which ironically was itself the victim of cultural repression under Pakistan) sought to destroy/dilute the cultural identity of Jumma people.

By 1991 the percentage population of Jumma people fell to 51.5% of the total population of CHT from 98.5% in 1947. The population census data of 2001 in Bangladesh does not contain elaborate religion demographics data however it notes that 12.65% of population in Chittagong Division are Buddhists (this data needs to be seen in the perspective of the whole Chittagong Division which also has two other large districts which has large Muslim population). However even then the situation is quite alarming as the demographic graph shows below.

If the rate of reduction of native population continued at the pace between 1974 and 1991 then by 2015 the non-Muslim population of CHT would be less than 1% of the population of CHT (trend line A in the graph). Unfortunately there is no reliable up to date data for confirming or rejecting this frightening scenario.

The situation is thought to have improved after the signing of Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord in 1997 which led to demobilisation of the militia wing Shanti Bahini and led to formation of tiered tribal administrative councils which would have elected representatives from various tribes. The council would have high degree of autonomy in domestic and internal affairs like law and order, social justice, general administration, it was an indirect and partial throwback to British era CHT Act of 1900. However there has been allegations that the flow of non-native population to CHT has not diminished. It is also alleged that Bangladesh government maintains one security personnel for every six Jumma person in CHT even after the peace accord.

At this point let us come back to my colleague the Bangladeshi-Chakma student, he comes from an affluent family, his father is a high ranking administrative officer in city of Chittagong. My student friend, though a Buddhist, goes by an Islamised name and tries hard to look ‘Bangladeshi’. After I researched on CHT and enquired of him as to what he thought of the peace accord he summarised it as ‘too little too late’ to have any meaningful impact on turning the irreversible demographic shift towards extinction of indigenous culture. He succinctly reviewed the current situation as where most young people of CHT speak in Bengali and have slowly forgotten their tribal roots and customs, they dress and eat like Bengali and adopt Islamic name to reduce chances of discrimination and willingly adopts other Bengali cultural traits to gain better employment and living opportunities. He lamented that while Pakistan successfully used irregular tribesmen to capture about parts of Kashmir (which had 25% non-Muslim population), India refused to help tribesmen who wanted to accede to India a province which had 98.5% non-Muslim population. His last observation was even more damning ‘population percentage of Muslims in conflict zone of Kashmir Valley increased from 93% in 1947 to 95% in 2003, the non-Muslim population has shrunk in CHT from 98.5% in 1947 to around 15% in 2010.’ I guess like Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan many unsung leaders of CHT and my young Chakma friend might have rightly lamented that India had betrayed them in their darkest moments.

In hindsight if India did press for CHT as non-negotiable in Boundary Commission or did give a go ahead for armed rebellion, there could have been a sea-port in NE India which would have theoretically solved many of the public services inequities and infrastructural bottlenecks plaguing NE India through rapid transport of raw materials and other commodities. And we could have possibly saved half a million people from certain cultural genocide. Given the spectre of China encircling India, signing of the CHT Peace Accord and the relatively friendly relation between India and Bangladesh, today there seems to be no chance of India supporting the CHT cause in any form or forum. Indeed generations of native population of CHT had to repay in blood and wanton cultural destruction to the diffident attitude of the Indian leadership as they ‘made a tryst with destiny’ and pledged to ‘larger cause of the humanity’ only later to refuse assistance to people who overwhelmingly wanted to be part of India as she ‘discovers herself again’.

The curious case of ‘missing’ 70,000 law students

2011-03-07T23:19:00.000+05:30

As per the latest data available at the Bar Council of India website on the number of law colleges in India, there are at present around 900 educational institution offering LLB course. BCI notes in that this data is correct as of March 2010. Thus if every institution has around 100 students then the total number of graduating law students by August-September 2010 should have been around 90,000. Its a quantum leap to average out the number of law students around 900 institutions at 100 each, however if we consider that all NLUs have more than 100 students (except for NLS Bangalore) and that most Government law colleges have intake of 200-300 students and that most private colleges would not break without 100-150 students per batch. Thus arguably 100 students on an average per batch per institution seems to be at the lower end of the scale. So let us agree that at least 90,000 students passed LLB in 2010 in India.

However as per the data made available by BCI in the latest press release on AIBE, it has noted that around 22,000 students have applied/appeared for the first AIBE. If we do simple arithmetic it seems that close to 70,000 LLB passouts of 2010 have not sat for the AIBE, it seems pretty weird that no one bothers to investigate why around 77.78% of 2010 law graduates did not opt for the exam or what happened to them.

How to choose your law university in UK?

2010-12-09T01:55:00.000+05:30

This is Part I of the series on ‘Doing LLM in UK’ aimed mostly at students from the various National Law Schools in India who aspire to study LLM in UK. In this part I try to discuss the finer and (mostly) broader nuances of choosing the right university in UK to pursue LLM. We must understand that just like no single sizes fits everyone, so too no single uni would satisfy the demand of every student and thus the choice of a uni would depend on various factors like the size of the pocket (both of the prospective student and his/her parent), career plan, merit, previous work experiences (real work not internships!!!), personal choices of the student etc.

The first step of any student who aims to pursue LLM in UK would be to draw up a list of top 20 tentative law unis, how do we do it? Just like in India there are lot of UK law uni rankings available, but we must remember that most of them talk about LLB and NOT LLM, having said that the rankings of Guardian and Times (requires login) may serve as a good indicator for LLM rank too. Another government sponsored ranking for law unis in UK is the RAE (Research Assessment Exercise) rankings, some tend to discount this ranking as dubious, but my personal opinion is that RAE rankings reflect LLM rankings better than say Guardian or Complete University LLB rankings. But lets be objective and collect all the top 10 unis from the three lists Guardian, Times/Complete University Guide and RAE – obviously there are going to be repetitions, and there would be some unique ones (unis which are mentioned in one list but nowhere near top 10 in other list). So finally you would get somewhere between 20 unis in your list. This is the master list. My list looked something like this Cambridge, Oxford, LSE, UCL, KCL, QMUL, SOAS, Nottingham, Warwick, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Bristol, Kent, Reading, Strathclyde, Exeter, Dundee (this list is not of any ranking but merely collection of unis that I culled out from longer lists for more in-depth examination).

Let us look at the usual marks which a student needs to gain an offer of admission into these unis (please do remember that these are just ball park representative figure and may be different from the official minimum), to get into Oxbridge and LSE one needs at least 65% marks, for UCL, KCL and Edinburg its 60%, for QMUL, Nottingham and other red brick and plate glass unis its 55% and some other unis like Cardiff and SOAS even take student having a bare pass. Having said this I must remind readers that to get into the top 5 unis one needs to have some extra curricular achievements (not just marks) and must be duly embellished in the statement of purpose.

So now depending on the marks you have scored you can shorten the list to say 15 (towards either the higher end or the lower depending on which end of the spectrum you fit in – this means that if you are a 70% holder only apply to the top 15, if you are 50% holder don’t waste your money by applying to Oxbridge)

However there is a small twist, an average LLM in UK including tuition and living cost would cost around 15-18 lakhs INR, thats a lot of money and many students want a scholarship, most of the unis have scholarships for masters students but the competition is fierce (I would in a later post write on how best to apply for a scholarship). So if you are a scholarship aspirant the list makes no sense as it is going to pit you against the best students in the top 20 unis, so spread the net wide and check on every uni website if they have scholarship and apply to all of them (they say beggars cant be choosers, but there’s no limit for number of attempts).

So the post in nutshell if you have unlimited budget, outstanding marks and influential reco then only apply to the first three on my list - Cambridge, Oxford, LSE and maybe UCL as an insurance. If you have unlimited budget, average marks then apply for KCL and QMUL (basically stay in London). If you require scholarship (which means you must have outstanding marks and influential reco) then apply to any uni which has a scholarship for masters and then select the topmost uni in your list which offers you a scholarship.

My first week in UK

2010-10-14T19:17:00.000+05:30

From the sultry heat of late Indian monsoon (36 C) to windy, rainy, foggy and cold British countryside autumn (17 C), the transition is not something to charm the heart of any tropical person, but thanks to free broadband internet and some strong heating the transition can be far less painful. However this post is not just about weather or my adaptation to it, but is a preview to a series which I seek to write on steps to secure admission and a scholarship at a British university to pursue LLM. So to test the water (hot and cold), this are my observations from my first week in UK.

The journey starts in Mumbai, where past the immigration officer the economy class passengers are herded to the jumbo Boeing 777 of Jet Airways. After walking though the aisle (in what seems like a long walk) I get settled into a quite cushy seat (with neck pillows), the food is bad (but then you are not there to eat), the entertainment system is fabulous (they got loads of the latest flicks), the overhead luggage cabins gets filled up quickly. So starts the journey with an East European captain at the helm. After 9 hours and quite a few circles over south England the plane finally lands at Heathrow. After almost an hour I reach the immigration counter, few basic questions about where I am travelling to etc. and I get the entry seal.

Few buses and 3 hours later I reach my hostel, the lady at the reception seems to have a strange accent (and so begins my encounter with the Brit accent) but after few ‘pardon’ and ‘sorry’ I collect my key and move to my rooms. I am sharing a flat with 5 other students, all PG and from 5 different countries a third generation British-Greek-Cypriot, a lanky Nigerian a French-Scottish, an Ugandan and a Chinese. So after I get settled into this multicultural, multilingual (for many it was just monolingual – hope you get the drift), multiverse, I explore out the campus which is quite different from the standard law school campus in India. First it is quite big (not every campus is as big as HNLU), its bit far from the city (not every campus is NUJS), it has got the most stupendous multimedia and IT support (not every campus is NALSAR), it has got lakes, a hillock and a mid sized forest within the campus (well as you know those Pune law colleges have got those). Thus on my first and second day while trawling through the campus I realized that given the investments made by the Brit Government in these universities, it is no wonder that they seem to have the best of all law schools in India. And this is a plate glass university not even the Oxbridge material, so if I get so much here I wonder what my colleagues in the ‘higher’ places getting.

So I am settling fast, with faculties who are the very best (unlike the Nationals where some are good, some are average and some are bad), I am sure this is also a huge difference the other thing is the approach of the university on PG studies, it is more on self learning and critical analysis rather than the exam in the end of semester kind of rigour (which unfortunately most of the Law schools in India follow even at the LLM stage, though with projects this may be no longer fully true, but with the regressive stand in some univs on projects and experimentation thereon, I do fear that this gap would only widen).

I am getting a camera soon and hopefully I would let you all know about my travails in a pictographic manner. Hope you would be around when I next start on the series. As always feel free to spam the comments tool.

Reforming CLAT counselling process

2010-08-31T19:06:00.001+05:30

Drawbacks in previous CLAT counseling:

· Numerous categories like SC/ST/OBC/State quota/NRI/Foreign national were all counseled together and the lists were made freely migrable i.e. a student who has applied for NRI quota can move into foreign national seat if the seat remains vacant.

· If a seat remains empty at a higher ranking college after the first round of counseling then the process to fill up that seat becomes cumbersome as the candidate who would to be allotted that seat may have already taken up his second choice and secured admission.

· A central counseling as mooted in CLAT-2009 is impossible as students have to come from all over India and would create needless logistical and financial problems for the students and their families.

· Two step process as followed in CLAT-2010 is fraught with confusion and uncertainty as a candidate who has submitted the initial amount for one college may get admitted into the higher rank college at a later date, thus it creates needless perplexity and anxiety among the candidates.

Recommendation for changes in CLAT-2011:

· Have four distinct seat types which are sacrosanct and no one can migrate from one group to another after the submission of form. The groups may be 1. General 2. Statutory reservation (SC/ST/OBC etc.) 3. State quota 4. Management seat (no further division like NRI or foreign national)

· No preference is sought at the time of filing up of form, results are declared and four distinct merit lists with further subdivisions as applicable are published.

· Instead of all the candidates to be called to a central location they are asked to report to their state capital where there would be a CLAT counseling centre linked up to a central office. Thus using a robust and secure IT network (if finances permit a temporary leased line from private operators like Reliance/BSNL/Airtel, if finances do not permit then Internet) all the candidates would be asked to submit their preferences.

· All the counseling centers would ask the candidates from Rank 1-100 to come to the centre and fill up the college choice form which would allow the students to choose 3 colleges in preference list (there would also be a board alongside which would show the number of realtime vacancies in colleges in that category)

· After the forms have been submitted with the requisite money, they would be collated and according to the ranks seats would be allotted and the list where each student has been selected would be published. A draft timetable could be like as below:

Time period	Comment
00.00-0.20	Reporting for x to 100+x
0.20-0.30	Distribution of choice forms
0.30-0.50	Filling up of choice forms
0.35-1.00	Submission of choice forms and DD
1.00-1.15	Creation of admission list
1.15-1.30	Publication of list and update of vacancy

· State quota seats would be counseled by respective law school as per their own process.

· Any vacant seat would be put up for counseling under management counseling which would be held after all the counseling process is over.

Advantages of the proposed counseling process:

· A single tier process which would eliminate need to modify list at a later stage and would also do away with the needless anxiety suffered by candidates.

· Entire admission process would be completed in 7 days instead of the present 20-25 days, thus classes can begin earlier and semesters wouldn't be affected.

Disadvantages of the proposed counseling process:

· Every candidate has to travel to the counseling centre and that would entail some travelling and accommodation cost.

· CLAT has to invest both human resource as well as capital in setting up at least 15-20 temporary counseling centers allover India.

The origin of Absolute Liability

2010-07-30T19:37:00.002+05:30

Liability is another side of the rights accorded to citizens. Evolution of liability went hand in hand with evolution of law and society, vicarious liability evolved when the concept of delegation came about thus possibly in cave man society when a child destroyed property his/her parents would be held liable, later in the civilized societies of Sumer and Indus this would be slave or servant. Romans refined the system of liability and also added the codes of law and liability the vanquished would face, but the real impetus to provide a fault based liability came in the Islamic era when the Islamic canon laws derived independently or under the influence of Roman laws. Post renaissance laws regarding liability evolved at a fast pace in the common law system of Britain where the concept of Damnum sine injuria (damages without injury) was given precedence. Thus any damage would not necessarily give rise to injury and according to scholars of that era injury wan necessary to provide relief. Thus English courts dealt with two broad heads of cases:

Where individual harm may lead to societal benefit at large eg, stopping adjoining landowner from doing something detrimental to neighbouring proprietors.
Where legal remedy would be costlier than loss accrued.

In 1860 there arose the case of Ryland v Fletcher in England where a mine was damaged by water from overhead lake and when the miner sued the owner of lake the judge found that the laws of the time relating to the damage caused did not occasion an injury. Prosecution could be done on lines of tort of cattle trespass or negligence, the lower court allowed compensation based on negligence and trespass but on appeal in the Court of exchequer where Justice Colin Blackburn laid the principle of strict liability in order to break the impasse. He spoke on behalf of all the judges and said,

"We think that the true rule of law is, that the person who for his own purposes brings on his lands and collects and keeps there anything likely to do mischief if it escapes, must keep it at his peril, and, if he does not do so, is prima facie answerable for all the damage which is the natural consequence of its escape. He can excuse himself by showing that the escape was owing to the Plaintiff’s default; or perhaps, that the escape was the consequence of vis major, or the act of God; but as nothing of this sort exits here, it is unnecessary to inquire what excuse would be sufficient."

Here we find a classic example of use of pragmatic use of tort regime to attain just and fair result. The law of the land at the time was incapable of providing equitable remedy so Blackburn J invented the concept of Strict liability to provide remedy. On further appeal Lord Cairns, in speaking for the House of Lords, stated their agreement of the rule stated above by Justice Blackburn, but added a further limitation on liability, which is that the land from which the escape occurs must have been modified in a way which would be considered non-natural, unusual or inappropriate. Thus the rule of strict liability had following exception:

1. The use of land has to be non natural

2. Plaintiff’s own fault

3. Act of God

4. Consent of the plaintiff

5. Act of third party

6. Statutory authority

The position remained constant and thought to be saturated in common law countries until 1980s when pursuant to the biggest industrial disaster in world in Bhopal Indian Supreme court in an unrelated gas leak case (Oleum gas leak case of Delhi) laid down a liability principle without any exceptions.

Bhagwati CJ pointed that there is a need to find out ‘as to what is the measure of liability of an enterprise which is engaged in a hazardous or inherently dangerous industry, if by reason of an accident occurring in such industry, persons die or are injured.’ The question was does the rule in Rylands v. Fletcher apply or is there any other principle on which the liability can be determined? The court held that, ‘the rule in Rylands v. Fletcher was evolved in the year 1866 and it provides that a person who for his own purposes being on to his land and collects and keeps there anything likely to do mischief if it escapes must keep it at his peril and, if he fails to do so, is prima facie liable for the damage which is the natural consequence of its escape’. But the court rued that ‘this rule evolved in the 19th Century at a time when all these developments of science and technology had not taken place cannot afford any guidance in evolving any standard of liability consistent with the constitutional norms and the needs of the present day economy and social structure. We need not feel inhibited by this rule which was evolved in this context of a totally different kind of economy. Law has to grow in order to satisfy the needs of the fast changing society and keep abreast with the economic developments taking place in the country’.

So Bhagwati CJ went on to formulate his own test to fix liability:

“We are of the view that an enterprise which is engaged in a hazardous or inherently dangerous industry which poses a potential threat to the health and safety of the persons working in the factory and residing in the surrounding areas owes an absolute and non-delegable duty to the community to ensure that no harm results to anyone on account of hazardous or inherently dangerous nature of the activity which it has undertaken and if any harm results on account of such activity, the enterprise must be absolutely liable to compensate for such harm and it should be no answer to the enterprise to say that it had taken all reasonable care and that the harm occurred without any negligence on its part. We would therefore hold that where an enterprise is engaged in a hazardous or inherently dangerous activity and harm results to anyone on account of an accident in the operation of such hazardous or inherently dangerous activity resulting, for example, in escape of toxic gas the enterprise is strictly and absolutely liable to compensate all those who are affected by the accident and such liability is not subject to any of the exceptions which operate vis-à-vis the tortious principle of strict liability under the rule in Rylands v. Fletcher. We would also like to point out that the measure of compensation in the kind of cases referred to in the preceding paragraph must be co-related to the magnitude and capacity of the enterprise because such compensation must have a deterrent effect. The larger and more prosperous the enterprise, the greater must be the amount of compensation payable by it for the harm caused on account of an accident in the carrying on of the hazardous or inherently dangerous activity by the enterprise.”

Ranking of law schools based on CLAT student preference 2010

2010-06-25T09:33:00.000+05:30

Last year after several periodicals published their law school rankings, I devised my own method of ranking Law schools, that takes in students through CLAT, based on student preference, this year I am back at the game.

So first the methodology – take average weighed rank of the general candidates who were offered seats in the first round of counseling. We only take the general quota and state general quota and first list as otherwise numerous distortions creep in and the preference data gets diluted by other factors. After taking the mean rank we look at standard deviation and look at diffraction quotient, in simpler terms we see how close to the mean the students opt for the same college, this way the number of seats would become immaterial. The only difference from last year is that this time around we would look at standard deviation rather than median (to find out the swing or the diffraction).

Getting the data from CLAT website fed into an excel sheet as shown in the image alongside, we get the mean rank of various colleges as follows: NLS 30.2728, NALSAR 131.077, NUJS 146.295, NLU-B 270.857, NLU-J 263.514, GNLU 597.138, NUALS 526.191, RMNLU 491.663, RGNUL 624.364, CNLU 630.5, HNLU 1054.593 (unprocessed data, containing the ranks is given in the table to the right).

Thus the colleges would be ranked in the following order NLS, NALSAR, NUJS, NLU-J, NLU-B, RMNLU, NUALS, GNLU, RGNUL, CNLU and HNLU.

If we see last year’s preference analysis we would find that the only change this year is that NLU-J edges past NLU-B, RMLNU moves ahead of NUALS and RGNUL pips CNLU. Below please find a comparison of this year's CLAT preference ranking and the ranking given by the commercial press, highlighted schools take students through CLAT.

From the minor changes in student preference we conclude that there hasn’t been a major upheaval in the law schools which would create a radical shift, unfortunately we can’t compare this data with that of NLU D, personally I hope that NLU D and ONLU would soon join the CLAT fold. Thus from a cumulative analysis of this year and last year’s students preference we find that as far as perception of students sitting for CLAT is concerned NLS is in the league of its own (Category I), catching it is NALSAR and NUJS (Category II), behind them is NLU J and NLU B (Category III), the rest of the law schools are in Category IV.

An afternoon with Nozick

2010-05-29T21:31:00.007+05:30

While many bloggers have posted on the CLAT LLB paper, unfortunately there has been almost nothing on CLAT LLM paper. In this post I seek to analyze the paper and try to find out how India’s next generation of law teachers (I know CLAT is for NLUs only and that law teachers can come from myriads of other law colleges, but ‘next generation’ has a nice ring to it:) were chosen.

First let us start by looking at the syllabus, as per the CLAT 2010 Brochure page 3 column 2 last para the subject areas were Law of Contracts, Law of Torts, Criminal Law, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory. The pattern of paper as per Brochure was Objective type 50 questions of one mark each, short answers 100-150 words 10 questions 5 marks each and finally 2 essay type questions of 50 marks each approximately 500-600 words.

On the appointed day I trudge to the examination centre which falls at an old school in a posh locality. And behold my wonder, 5 years ago when I went for the entrance test there were hardly 300 odd candidates at my centre which was the law school. Here a rough guess put the number to around 2000 and there were 3 more centers around the city. My heart swelled with pride at the large number of LLB aspirants (who says law is for engineering rejects?). Armed with my knowledge :(sat for 5 medical entrance about 5 years ago, didn’t crack a single) to avoid the rush to the halls, I lounged at the gate and when the crowd thinned I made my entrance. When I found my seat I was disappointed a bit only around 40 odd people in the PG aspirant room (but some of them were great lookers). From the college gossip I knew I was only one for the CLAT LLM test but still I looked around to see a known face, none. So I settled down.

Preparing for my final semesters I was confident that I would be able to beat any questions that NLU-B might have come up with, also the night before the test I had gone over Bangia on Contract, Bangia on Torts and Baxi on Constitution (little did I know what was in store for me). Finally the papers were given and after scanning through the MCQs I wondered if I got the right paper (what the @#$%) 30% of the MCQs were from Jurisprudence/legal theory, around 20% from Contracts around 25% from criminal law and the rest from torts ohh… sorry one MCQ from constitutional law. For the medium essay type again most emphasis was given on legal theory, one question from Constitutional Law (a ridiculously easy one: who form the electoral college for presidential election, these questions made me to question again as to whether I am sitting for the correct exam) few good questions on contracts. Finally the long essay type questions (3 choices for each question) I chose one on minor’s ability to contract and the other question seems to elude my mind.

What was startling was the examiners persistence with Fuller’s inner morality. First a MCQ on what did not constitute Fuller’s inner morality, then a 5 marks short note on the same topic and finally a long essay on the same topic. It seemed as though the NLU-B professor could not move beyond Fuller. Invariably when Fuller comes in he brings with him Rawls, Dworkin, Duguit and the surprise entrant Nozick. They collectively made me sweat (and it was also very hot). Around me people were marking the MCQs at furious pace and I cursed myself for not paying attention in Jurisprudence class (Duguit on sovereignty?) oho.. Rawls I heard about, Dworkin I know from the cover of his book “Taking Rights Seriously” reprinted by Universal for a low price edition in India, the cover looked like the face of a girl on fire and I had avoided it, now I just thought why didn’t I turn few pages like few others did. After the collective beating and knowing that my chances at CLAT LLM is over, I went to the next set of questions the contract MCQs were straight out of illustrations from the Contract Act, nothing fancy, torts were similar. So ended the MCQ for me battered by legal theory, soothed a little by contract and tort, indifference from criminal and disappointed by constitution.

Now the short notes Duguit again drew blank from me, Fuller got the MCQ options written in good measure with lot of cement in between (experience in paraphrasing for 50 projects came handy). Absolute liability was a smash hit so were the questions on liability and a puny question on constitution. I wrapped the last two big essay questions in double quick time and was done with one hour to spare but could not get out of the exam hall so I wasted my time by going over the same questions knowing fully well that I could hardly discover my power of teleportation at such advanced age (who knows).

Overall the paper was of varying quality while the jurisprudence side was quite heavy and lifted few questions straight out of UPSC the questions on tort and contract were ludicrously easy and criminal law questions were a microcosm of the entire paper (meaning some were superbly nutty while others were a walk in the park). All the questions tried to examine the cramming capacity of a candidate rather than critical analytical powers of the candidates. LLM as I had said in the beginning is a higher educational degree which generally is chosen by those who want to opt for academics. So the very foundation of tomorrow’s law teachers is based on how much he/she can cram. A question on absolute liability could well have been disguised in a form of illustration and could have become a short answer rather it became a MCQ. Thus yet again the gates of post graduate education at India’s finest institution would be on the basis of those who can cram best not those who imbibe them. No wonder Prof. Madhav Menon, the founder of National Law School movement in India, recently said that LLM studies in India is far behind the global standards, at this rate I doubt if we can ever catch up.

How to get a job at a PSU

2010-04-24T08:32:00.000+05:30

Job at a PSU is the ultimate dream of someone with little ambition, one who is satisfied with little work, no competition and foolproof job security. However given that the median age of the Indian population is in the early 20s so the competition for every post every seat is very stringent. Thus it helps if you can piggyback on a good college or university. PSUs recruit people through either a written test (open the employment newspaper and you would find myriad of jobs with their examination schedules) OR through direct recruitment from campus. Given that law school people lose steam after CLAT, to pass the entrance exam for PSU would be impossible for most (many complaint that National law school people do not want to become judges, I suspect partially the reason would be that they are not confident of passing the exam or those who sit for it never pass). However coming to the point at hand, in this post I would give you a step by step method of how to crack a PSU job at the law school:

Step 1: Have more than 60% marks (or the CGPA equivalent of first class), PSUs being PSUs would have to follow certain rules so the first is that the candidates must have 60% marks, certain PSUs like CIL, NHPC, NTPC reduces the cutoff by 5% for reserved seats but certain others like ONGC, GAIL, SAIL are strict on this criteria. Thus if you do not have 60% there is no point sitting for PSUs.

Step 2: Usually there is a small test for the candidates to take, the test is very basic having questions like what is difference between pledge and hypothecation; what is insurable interest etc. A very basic and cursory reading of the Contacts Act etc. would be more than sufficient. This test is just to get cut off non-interested people and in never taken into account when deciding the final list.

Step 3: If you pass the test then comes the interview, some PSU executives do not want to correct papers so they skip the test and directly go for interview. To prepare for the interview it is helpful if one goes through a business newspaper for the last one week and look at what the opinion of the market is on that PSU, most newspapers are critical of PSUs (partly because they do not get advertisement revenues from PSUs), read the reports assimilate them and while answering the questions try to let the interviewer know that you know about the company that you are joining eg. CIL is readying a war chest to enter into Africa, so while interview let the Director who comes for the interview know that you could be an asset to them for cross border transactions and that you have done your projects on regulatory hurdles in Africa (of that matter if they want to goto Mars then you must have done a project on Mars).

Step 4: This in continuation to the above point, after the technical interview there would be an intense round of HR interview and there is one stock question from the interviewer which trips most of the PSU hopefuls, why do you want to join a PSU? There is no right or wrong answer for this, one way of answering it would be to say that the sector has tremendous potential and would allow you to grow with it; another way would be to say that you do not want to work for a private law firm and fill up pockets of someone else but rather work for a PSU where government is the shareholder and general public is the stakeholder and thereby one would be working for oneself (say whatever you want to say but don’t say that you want to join the PSU because you don’t want to work hard and because you want overtime to work outside 10AM – 5 PM).

Tips to land your dream law firm internship in your second year

2010-03-06T12:27:00.008+05:30

There was once a time when law firms were few and law schools were fewer still, good law firms are still rare but number of law schools have exploded exponentially. A direct fallout has been gradual worries in getting an internship opportunity at the top law firms, in this post I would like to share some tips on how to beat the competition and land the dream law firm internship which may well be the first step in getting absorbed by the same firm or even better ones. I have interned at over six law firms in last 5 years including firms in big four, boutique IP firms, old firms where the furniture could well have been used since time of Wellesley, so whatever experience I have gathered I would like to share it with you all. To get best results try to implement these tips in your second/third year unless of course your father owns the firm; in other words this post target audience is second and third years.

Tips 1: Prepare a Good CV – this is going to be the window of opportunity to showcase yourself to the guy sitting on the opposite side of the table/PC, first thing CV should never be more than 2 pages, people often make a mistake of sending long CVs having 5-6 pages!!! Don’t waste your and the other guy’s time, second follow the CRC (or whatever your college calls the committee which tries to get everyone placed at the end of the 5 year course, conditional to the fact, after they get placed first) CV style sheet every college has its own (whatever you do don’t stray beyond Garamond or Times New Roman fonts, remember this is not a calligraphy contest) and the regular HR guys or the recruiting partner would know by the layout which college you are from, in case you want to explore other styles try to stick to any of the other law school styles, don’t take up style sheet provided by the job portals they are not worth the effort. Now lets discuss the substance in the CV, first the marks, if you are from a name-brand college like NLS, NUJS, NALSAR then a 5 pointer in a 7 point scale would classify you as good property anything less than that you have hard sell yourself, as small tips many CV templates have option of ranks, put in rank if you are within the top 20 anything more than that would devalue your CV. If you are not within top 20 neither is your CGPA above 5 in a 7 point scale then mention your last sem GPA if it is above 5 or even 1 grade better than your CGPA it would allow you to later explain that you are improving over your past performance. For a non top 3 law school aspirant you have to be within top 20 to land a good internship but don’t get discouraged try to follow other tips and you may even outscore your snooty top law school colleagues. After CGPA etc. you have to provide your internship experience if you are in the second year then you must have done some NGO internship, try to also do internship at some lawyer in your first year trial court or HC, of your father is a lawyer try to get certificate from some HC lawyers also. If you were associated with any NGO at school also mention that, you can also get involved with LPOs if available at your law school (also get involved with the legal aid society at the college, these things earn dividends like long term deposits). Describe the experience in one or two lines be specific don’t write everything associated with that internship bring out the main points and highlight your responsibilities and interactions with people and peers. It would be great if you could have a firm internship however small in your first year, but if you don’t have any then it is not the end of the world. After previous experience you need to mention achievements which can be divided into three broad areas curricular achievements, co-curricular achievements and extra-curricular achievements, in the first category you may put academics related achievements like say highest marks/grade in any subjects etc. for co-curricular you need to mention winning prizes at any essay writing competitions etc. and for extra-curricular you have achievements in debate, extempore, quizzes etc. If you don’t have any such achievement yet at college mention some school achievements but it should be unambiguous that they are not university experience and try to get such experience at college (what did you do in last 2 years at college) or at least take out the relevant director of such societies on treat and get some fake certs. After achievements write down any publications that you might have got if you have no hard copy publications upload few of your last years projects on SSRN and put them in your CV as ‘Working papers’, register yourself at conferencealerts.com try to present at least 3 papers a year and mention them as ‘Conference Papers’ after all these publications talk about any positions of responsibility held, special abilities like speaking Mandarin (not cooking or driving). Finally if permitted by space then mention one or two lines about hobbies (keep them safe, don’t put something exotic like snorkeling or skiing). Also remember what not to put in CV unless specifically asked for 1) date of birth (they are not going to prepare your horoscope) 2) your fathers name and profession (unless of course he is a MP or MLA or covered by Art. 312) 3) put any achievements which are 5 years old. Also an old trick if your CV is not interesting enough or is not punchy get hold of a faculty and try to convince him/her to write some sort of reference letter praising you etc. and then put that as testimonial, try to get as many copies as possible.

Tips 2: Time the internship – With high competition for internship at top law firms it is important to get your timing of internship absolutely perfect. Usually the law schools vacations are of 8 weeks so you can squeeze two internships of 4 weeks each, preferably the first internship in your second-third year break should be at HC (judge/lawyer) the second should be at the target law firm. Try to find out seniors who might have been associated with the law firm and ask him or her when is the lean period wrt number of interns (a word of caution with the big four there is hardy any lean time), try to see if you could fit yourself at that lean time, if your vacation is not in that period and your target firm is in the same city as your law school then it is not a bad idea to do a ‘Running internship’ which basically means that by the end of the college day (which should be by 2 pm) you should go to the firm and intern and to compensate for the loss of time in the morning stay till say 8-10 in the evening (running internship are very demanding so apply at your own risk). Also sometime in the mid semester breaks (like say Ganesh Chaturthi, Diwali, Durga Puja) the break may be extended to 3-4 weeks squeeze in an internship there, always be at the lookout (much like the facebook newsfeed) about any new developments and plan 4-5 months ahead.

Tips 3: Actual Application – Most applications are by email, some are by hand (some are by reference) while others may be (rarely) by post. Apply at least 2-3 months before the target time as found out by the previous tips. In the application kit will be your CV and a cover letter. This cover letter should be short concise and yet enticing enough that the person wants to go through the CV. A simple sample letter could be like:

To, DATED:

The Manager,

HR Department,

[FIRM NAME]

Sub: Request for grant of permission for internship.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I [YOUR NAME] am [***] year law student from [COLLEGE NAME].

Per the rules of the university, each student is to undergo internships at Law firms, Senior Advocates, Companies, NGOs etc. in order to gain practical experience and be able to understand ‘law in action’.

Therefore I would like to request you to kindly allow us to intern at your reputed Law firm for last three weeks of [MONTH, YEAR].

Yours sincerely

[YOUR NAME]

Enclosed: CV and testimonial

Prepare to apply to at least 10-15 firms, send them emails and if possible also visit them before you do so and talk to the person who usually allots internship, if the person is a partner then chances of getting internship in second year is less, if the person is a new associate then the chances would depend on your persuasion skills (chat up and never take no for no). Try not to take your parents along with you in such internship hunts, it shows lack of confidence. While mailing the applications don’t forget to attach the CV and the scanned testimonials, also try to add personal touch by addressing the receiver by name (if known). If you apply by post then speed post them and if you apply in person then put a date on the cover letter. Also don’t CC the emails at one go, if you are really lazy then at least BCC them. If you are really desperate try CV dropping where you go to an area with high concentration of law firms and then move from one office to another handing out CVs and cover letters (don’t forget to fill up the particulars in the cover letter while waiting at the reception). From personal experience CV dropping is a low risk high value opportunity, chances of success is higher also you get to meet beautiful receptionists throughout the day (who might as well put your CV into shredder as soon as you walk out of the office).

Tips 4: Follow up – There are several strategies to follow up on the application, some call up the person as soon as the email is send thus adding a personal touch to the non personal email communication, others take a long term approach. You may follow a mix of these two call up seniors who may have given you some information about the firm and the wait out for 3 weeks no reply may mean that the application hasn’t been processed, so send in a reminder mail CC to every person you know at the firm and try to get hold of the HR guy at the firm over telephone. If you are hell bent on getting into that firm then you may also pay a visit to the firm. Sometimes the law firm may call you up and try to enquire about timings etc. try to convince the person to send an email also (this would on record also you would get to know the email id of the person which might be different from the address that you had sent your application to).

Tips 5: Irrespective of outcome don’t be stressed out – Don’t get upset if you don’t get internship at the firm of your dream the wide net that you have cast would surely get you a fish, sorry firm or two (you can also land a shark). Always ask for evaluation from firms that rejected you, this would help you to analyze why you didn’t make the cut was it because of inexperience or low marks etc. This way you would be better prepared to apply next time, also there will always be screw-ups as evident from the letter below which was in reply to a written internship application submitted to a mid sized firm when I was in my second year. As you can see I made few mistakes, I forgot to put date (and I was a law student) and I didnt do research on timing my internship and as a result the time I applied for was a holiday at the firm.

So never give up and never say no.

APPENDIX: Contacts of Law firms (all gathered from public domain, but have been last checked for authenticity in 2007)

Advani & Co. Mr. Hiroo Advani Advani & Co. 10 Thakur Niwas, Level 2 173 J. Tata Road Mumbai - 400 020 Ph- 022 2281 8381	ALG India Law Offices Rakesh Prasad (Partner) 30 Siri Fort Road, New Delhi -110049 (T) 011-26252244 (F) 011-26251585 (E) office@algindia.com rakesh.prasad@algindia.com
ALMT Legal Ms. Statira Ranina ALMT Legal 4th Floor, Express Towers Nariman Point Mumbai - 400 021 Ph# 022 -6636 7044 sranina@almtlegal.com	Amarchand & Mangaldas & Suresh Shroff & Co. Bombay Mr. Cyril Shroff Amarchand & Mangaldas & Suresh A. Shroff & Co. AMSS, Peninsula Chambers Peninsula Corporate Park Ganpat Rao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013 Ph: 022-24964455 Address the email to CC the email to Jijmon Joseph at jijimon.joseph@amarchand.com and Reeba Chacko at reeba.chacko@amarchand.com
Delhi Mr. Shardul Shroff Amarchand & Mangaldas & Suresh A. Shroff & Co. Amarchand Towers, 216 Okhla Industrial Estate, Phase III, New Delhi- 110020. 011-26920500 CC the email to Ms. Bithika Anand at bithika.anand@amarchand.com	Amitabh Sen & Co Ms. Sushma Suite 601 F, 5 Hailey Road, New Delhi- 110001 Ph- 91-11-2335-2365.
Anand and Anand Mr. Pravin Anand Anand & Anand B-41 Nizammudin East, New Delhi –110013, Ph: 011 - 2435 0360, 2435 5076 Send email to Ms. Shivagami at shivagami@anandandanand.com	ARA Law Mr. Rajesh N. Begur/ Ms. Anooshree Sinha ARA Law Agra Building, 1st floor 121 MG Road, Fort Mumbai, 400023 Ph: 022-2281 1700 rajesh@aralaw.com anooshree@aralaw.com rowena@aralaw.com
AZB & Partners Mr. Abhijit Joshi AZB & Partners (Mumbai) 23rd Floor, Express Towers Nariman Point, Mumbai - 400021 Ph: 91-22-66396880 abhijit.joshi@azbpartners.com CC the email to Rinki Ganguli at rinki.ganguli@azbpartners.com	Bangalore Mr. Vivek Chandy Ms. Malini Raju AZB House, 67-4, 4^th Cross Lavelle Road Bangalore 560001 080-22129782 vivek.k.chandy@azbpartners.com malini.raju@azbpartners.com
Delhi Mr. Hardeep Sachdeva AZB & Partners (Delhi) F-40, NDSE, Part I New Delhi-110049 Tel:011 2461 7697 hardeep.sachdeva@azbpartners.com CC the email to Sudha R at sudha.r@azbpartners.com	Bhasin & Co. Ms. Lalit Bhasin Bhasin & Co. 10, Hailey Road, 10 th Floor, New Delhi-110001 Ph- 9111-23322601 / 23315024 lbhasin@vsnl.com
Bhatt & Saldanha Mr. Adil K. Patel Maker Bhavan No.1, First Floor Vithaldas Thackersey Marg Mumbai – 400 020 Ph- 022 2631 4987 e-mail – bhatsald@bhattsaldanha.com	BMR & Associates Mr. Mandeep Singh Great Eastern Centre, 1st floor, 70 Nehru Place, New Delhi-110019, tel - 011 3081 5000 mandeep.singh@bmrtax.com
Crawford Bayley & Co. Mr. Sanjay Asher Crawford Bayley & Co State Bank Buildings Bank Street Mumbai - 400023 Ph – 022- 22663713/22665443/22662660 sanjay.asher@crawfordbayley.com	Dave Girish and Co. Ms. Mona Bhide Dave Girish & Co. 1st Floor, Sithna Building 55 Maharshi Karve Road (Queens Road), Marine Lines Mumbai - 400002 Ph: 91-22-22062192/132 mona@davegirish.com
Desai & Diwanji & Co. Mr. Jai Diwanji Lentin Chambers, Dalal Street, Fort Mumbai- 400 023 s.sinha@desaidiwanji.com j.diwanji@desaidiwanji.com	DH Law Associates Mr. S. Srivastava D.H. Law Associates 502, Prospect Chambers, 5th Floor 317/3210, D.N. Road, Fort, Mumbai-400 001 Ph- 022 2204 2493 dhlaw@vsnl.com
DSK Legal Ms. Bernadette Carvalho DSK Legal Advocates & Solicitors 4th Floor, Express Towers Nariman Point Mumbai - 400 021 Ph: 022 6658 8000 bernadette.carvalho@dsklegal.com jyoti.castelino@dsklegal.com	Dua Associates Mr. V.K. Gogia Tolstoy House, 15, Tolstoy Marg, New Delhi-110001 011 23714408 send email to: Ms. Shilpa Singh at shilpasingh@duaassociates.com
Economic Laws Practice Mr. Rohan Shah Economics Law Practice Advocates and Solicitors 1502, Dalamal Towers, Nariman point, Mumbai – 400 021, Tel: 022 66371979 rohanshah@elp-in.com CC the email to Ms. Priya Sawant(9819251484) at priyasawant@elp-in.com	Fox, Mandal, Little & Co Mr. Trivedi Fox, Mandal, Little & Co Central Bank Building, 2nd Floor M.G. Road, Fort Mumbai 400 023 Tel: 91 22 2265 2739 mumbai@foxmandallittle.com
Bangalore Mr. Shuva Mandal FM House No. 6/12, Primrose Road Gurappa Avenue Bangalore 560065 080-25595911 bangalore@foxmandallittle.com	Mr. Som Mondal Fox, Mandal, Little & Co. FM House A-9, Sector 9 Noida - 201301 Tel: 0120 2444567 som.mandal@foxmandallittle.com CC the email to Ms. Nivedita Dhar at nivedita.dhar@foxmandallittle.com
Gandhi and Associates Mr. V. Gandhi Gandhi & Associates 'A' Wing, Nariman Road, Vile Parle (E) Mumbai- 400 057 Tel: 91 22 2614 2237 vishal@gandhiassociates.com	Seth Associates Ms. Karnika Seth Partner & Head, Corporate Practice B-10, Sector 40, NOIDA-201301, N.C.R, India Tel: +91 (120) 4352846, +91 (120) 2500052, +91 9810155766 Fax: +91 (120) 4331304 E-mail: mail@sethassociates.com www.sethassociates.com
J Sagar Delhi Office Maj. Raana 84-E, C-6 Lane (Off Central Avenue) Sainik Farms New Delhi-110 062 India Tel # (91-11) 2955 2714/715/716 Fax # (91-11) 2955 2717/2980 raana@jsalaw.com Email to Amitabh Sharma- Mobile # (91) 9818477640 Extn: 274 Email: amitabh@jsalaw.com	Bangalore Sajai Singh (Partner) 4121/B, 19^th A Main, 6^th Cross HAL II Stage Extension Bangalore- 560038 sajai@jsalaw.com
Jehangir Gulabbhai & Bilimoria & Daruwalla Mr. Daruwala Rajabahadur Mandion, 20, Ambalal Doshi Marg, Hamam Street, Mumbai - 400023 Tel: 91 22 2263 3132 jgbdadvo@mtnl.net.in	JurisCorp Mr. F. Daruwala Ms. Amokhee Dastidar (09833583208) Juris Corp 1210, Maker Chambers 'V' Nariman Point Mumbai – 400021 Ph- 022 6633 8671/22043575/3576 juriscorp@jclex.com
Kanga and Co. Mr. Ashish Bhakta Kanga & Co. Readymoney Mansion, No. 43 Veer Nariman Road Mumbai 400 001 Tel: 9122 2288 6541 ashish@kangacompany.com CC the email to Ms. Prachi Shah at prachishah@kangacompany.com	Khaitan & Co. Ms. Vandana Singh Khaitan & Co. Meher Chambers, 4^th & 5^th Floors, R.K. Marg Ballard Estate Mumbai 400 038 Ph- 022 6636 5000 hr@khaitanco.com
Kolkata office Mr. R. N. Jhunjhunwala Emerald House 1-B, Old Post Office street Kolkata 700 001 033-22487000 rnj@khaitanco.com	Kochhar & Co. Mumbai Office Mr. Rajarshi Chakrabarty 17^th Floor, Nirmal Building, Nariman Point Mumbai 400021 022-66559701-04 022-66370031-32 legal@mumbai.kochhar.com
KPMG Mr. Sunder Sarma KPMG House Kamala Hills Compound 448 Senapati Bapat Marg Lower Parel, Mumbai – 400013 022-39896000 ssarma@kpmg.com	Krishna & Saurastri Mr. Sunil Krishna Krishna & Saurastri KK Chamber, 1st Floor (Behind ICICI Bank) FPTM Marg, DN Road, Fort Mumbai – 400 001 Ph- 022 6655 0606 krismark@vsnl.net
Lakshmi Kumaran and Sridharan Mr. Lakshmi Kumaran Lakshmi Kumaran & Sridharan B 6/10 Safdarjung Enclave, New Delhi – 110029 011-41299800/ 011-41299819(direct line to HR) Send email to Prachi R Vaidya, Manager HR, at hrd@lakshmisri.com	Lall & Sethi Mr. Upam Singh Lall & Sethi Advocates M - 19A, South Extension II New Delhi – 110049 Ph: 011 - 2625 3906, 2625 7845. usingh@indiaip.info info@indiaip.com
Lex Nexus Ms. Binita Hathi LEX Nexus 24-B, Rajabahadur Compound Office No. 112-D, 2nd Floor Ambalal Doshi Marg, Fort Mumbai 400002 Tel: +91-22-22659969 binita@lexnexus.net	Clairvolex Ms. Aarti Khatri, 709/710 Tolstoy House, 15-17 Tolstoy Marg, New Delhi-110001 011-23716565 hr@lexorbis.com , aarti@lexorbis.com
Luthra & Luthra Law Offices Mr. Rajiv K Luthra Luthra & Luthra Law Offices 103, Ashoka Estate, 24, Barakhamba Estate, New Delhi – 110001 Tel: 91-11-4121 5100 Email: delhi@luthra.com CC the email to Ms. Ruchi Chopra at rchopra@luthra.com and Roydal Simon at rsimon@luthra.com	Majmudar & Co. Mr. Akil Hirani Majmudar & Co. 96 Free Press House, Free Press Journal Marg Nariman Point, Mumbai - 400 021 Ph: 022 6630 7272 careers@majmudarindia.com akil@majmudarindia.com CC the email to Ms. Geetha
Malvi Ranchoddas & Co. Ms. Girija Balakrishnan Malvi Ranchoddas and Company Yusuf Building 3rd Floor M.G. Road Mumbai - 400023 Ph: 022 66331801 girijabalakrishnan@malvirco.com	Mr. Meharia Meharia Reid & Associates 9 Old Post Office Street Second Floor Kolkata – 1 Tel: 22484261/6365 e-mail – kolkata@mra.firm.in
Mulla & Mulla & Craigie Blunt & Caroe Mr. Shardul Thacker Mulla & Mulla & Craigie Blunt & Caroe Mulla House 51 MG Road, Fort Mumbai-400001 Ph: 022 22044960/22875121 shardul.thacker@mullaandmulla.com mullas@vsnl.net	New Delhi Law Offices Ms. Sunita Narhari sunitha@ndlolegal.com New Delhi Law Offices Rajendra Bhawan, 5th Fl., 210 Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg. New Delhi 110 002 Ph# 011-23221416 ndlo@del3.vsnl.net.in send email to rakesh ojha at rko@ndlosouth.com
Nishith Desai Associates Shameela Zaidi Nishith Desai Associates 93-B, Mittal Court Nariman Point Mumbai 400 021 Ph: 022 6669 5000 shameela@nishithdesai.com latha@nishithdesai.com	O. P. Khaitan & Co. Ms. Bela Maheshwari O P Khaitan & Co. Khaitan House, B-1 Defence Colony, New Delhi 110024 Tel: 91 11 2433 7516/7 Ms. Ritika rpal@opkhaitan.com
P & A Law Offices Mr. Anand Pathak P & A Law Offices (Pathak & Associates) 1st Floor, Dr. Gopal Das Bhavan, 28, Barakhamba Road, New Delhi - 110 001 Ph: 011-2373 8793, 2335 7345. Ms. Priyadarshini Dev priyad@palawoffices.com	P.H Parekh & Co. Mr. P.H.Parekh/Mr. Sandeep Parekh/ Mr. Sameer Parekh P.H. Parekh & Co. Parekh Chambers, 30 School Lane, Bengali Market New Delhi 110001 Ph: 011 2331 1553 recruit@phparekh.com
Paras Kuhad & Associates Kolkata Mr. Niloy Pyne 41, Chowringhee, Komal Building, 2^nd Floor, Kolkata 700071 30287607 (direct line to mr pyne) niloy@paraskuhad.com pkakolkata@paraskuhad.com Bombay Office Ms. Sheila Shetty 903 Peninsula Towers Peninsula Corporate Park Ganpatrao Kadam Marg Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013 022-66695959 sheila@paraskuhad.com	Poovayya & Co Mr. Sajan Poovayya Poovayya & Co. 12/2 Haudin Road Bangalore 560 042 sajan@poovayya.net
Rajinder Narain & Co. Mr. Ravinder Nath 14 F, Shivam building, Connaught Place, New Delhi 110 001, Tel: 91 11 23 31 3232 inbox@rnlegal.com	Saha & Ray Mr. Avik Saha, Saha & Ray, 3A/1 Hastings Chambers, 7C Kiran Shankar Roy Road, Kolkata –700001. Ph: 22426439 aviksaha@saharay.com
Singhania & Co. Mr. Ashish Singhal Singhania & Co. 83-C, Mittal Towers Nariman Point Mumbai – 400021 Ph- 022 22049773 mumbai@singhania.com	Kolkata Office Mr. Pulak Bagchi (Partner) Call at 22492759/22295093/22295088 and find out the address and send brochure Email: calcutta@singhania.com
Thakker & Thakker Mr. B.J. Thakker Thakker and Thakker Nirmal, 20^th Floor (Opp. The Oberoi Towers) Nariman Point, Mumbai - 400 021 Tel: 91 22 6630 8000 bjt@ttindia.net	Titus and Co. Mr. Manjeet Titus 4 TITUS HOUSE, R-4 & R-77A, LEVELS 1-4, GREATER KAILASH-1, NEW DELHI - 110 048, Tel: 91 11 2647 0700 titus@titus-india.com
Tottenham India Law Associates Mr.Deepak Bhattacharya Tottenham India Law Associates A-170, Defence Colony, New Delhi 110024 Email to Chaman Lal Kalia clkalia@hotmail.com	Trilegal Mumbai Office Mr. Karan Singh 201, Phoenix House, 462 Senapati Bapat Marg, Lower Parel Mumbai 400013 022 2481 9999 karan.singh@trilegal.com CC the email Ms. Parveen Khodaijishah at parveen.khodaijishah@trilegal.com and Ms. Anjana Mahimkar at anjana.mahimkar@trilegal.com
Delhi Office Mr. Sameer Guha E-514, GK II, New Delhi 110048 Tel: 91 11 5163 9393 sameer.guha@trilegal.com Bangalore Office Mr. Atul Gupta 2, Cassa Grande, 18/3, 3rd Cross Road, Nandidurga Road Extension, Bangalore 560046 080-41515252/5210 bangaloreinternships@trilegal.com bangalore@trilegal.com	Udwadia Udeshi & Co. Ms. Marie Udwadia & Udeshi Thomas Cook Building, 2nd & 3rd Floor, 324 D N Road, Fort Mumbai – 400001 Ph- 022 2288 3345 udwadid@uubindia.com uubom@uubindia.com
Wadia Ghandhy Associates Ms. Bindi Dave Wadia & Ghandy N.M. Wadia Buildings 123 Mahatma Gandhi Road Mumbai 400 023 Tel: 91 22 2267 0669 bindi.dave@wadiaghandy.com CC the email to Nikeeta Kaspale at nikeeta.kaspale@wadiaghandy.com	Zeus Law Associates Ms. Prerna Kohli R - 89, Greater Kailash - I, New Delhi - 110 048 Tel No. : +91 11 4173 3090 Fax No.: +91 11 4173 3094 Mobile No: +91 9810335347 prerna.kohli@zeus.firm.in
SNR ASSOCIATES Mr. Rajat Sethi K 40, Connaught Circus New Delhi – 110 001 Tel: +91-11-4289 8000 Fax: +91-11-4289 8001 rsethi@snrlaw.in CC email to Sudip Mahapatra at smahapatra@snrlaw.in

Reservation and religion

2010-02-19T19:33:00.013+05:30

Reservation has been an emotive issue for lot of Indians, since independence there has been reservation in government jobs under article 16(4), (4A) and other facilities under article 15(4) of the Constitution of India. It is interesting to note that while reservation in legislature on basis of caste or ethnicity (Anglo-Indians), under article 243D, was included in the Constitution by the constituent assembly, provision for reservation in education, job and promotion was added by the parliament after a string of adverse decision by the SC like in State of Madras v Champkam Dorairajan AIR 1951 SC 226 (date of judgment 09/04/1951) and various HCs which shot down proposals of reservation for backward classes. Thus to overcome this problem of judicial interference in executive domain, Pandit Nehru, the then PM of India, brought in the First Amendment Act in 1951, merely one year from the adoption of constitution, adding 15(4) which read “Nothing in this article or in clause (2) of article 29 shall prevent the State from making any special provision for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes.” While there has been little controversy about which caste or tribes may be classified in scheduled category (partially because this was done by the British and like many of the colonial relics the Indian government blindly copied the same; it is interesting to note that it was only after Nehru that for the first time this scheduled list was updated and made more inclusionary), there has been lot of controversy about which categories of citizens may be deemed to be ‘socially and educationally backward class’.

In his wildly popular Constitutional Law book Prof. M.P. Singh writes that the most contentious issues in application of 15(4) and 16(4), (4A) are (i) determination of backward classes and (ii) extent or quantum of reservation. However the political class of India solved the problem of determining the backward class again on the basis of caste although in Balaji v State of Mysore AIR 1963 SC 649 the Supreme Court held that caste cannot be the sole criterion for determining whether a person is backward within the meaning of article 15 and 16. This was in fact one of the earliest cases where the rationalization of reservation in terms of taking into account the economic factor was advocated by the Judiciary (we again find this stand in the judgment given by Bhandari, J in Ashok Kumar Thakur case in April, 2008). But given the legislature and executive love the easy way out in post 1990 Mandal Commission era the OBC reservation was again based on caste rather than economic capability.

With this introduction I would like to move to the main issue of this post reservation on basis of religion, under Indian constitution only SCs, STs and ‘socially and educationally backward class’ (in common parlance OBCs) can have reservation, but politicians being politicians wanted to bring reservation for minorities. The first plunge was taken in 1960s in Jammu and Kashmir, given that it is a Muslim majority state there was obvious anger when close to 30% avenues in education and government jobs were reserved for SCs and STs who were Hindus, so the J&K government under a GO reserved 50% vacancies for Muslims of Kashmir, 40% for Jammu Hindus and 10% for Kashmiri Pandits. The Supreme Court struck down this GO in Triloki Nath Tiku v State of J&K AIR 1969 SC 1 as being quota based on religion which is antithetical to the principles enshrined in Constitution. But this opened a bypass to have religion based quota, what if people of certain religion is classed as backward class and thus may enjoy the fruits of reservation. Post Indra Shawney v Union of India (2000) 1 SCC 168 in order to declare any section of society as OBC or SEBC there has to be a full fledged committee report which would ascertain the average backwardness in terms of education, social mobility of that community and if that figure is below what the government thinks is the margin of backwardness then the community would be given reservation. Using this logic states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu has allocated reservation for certain communities within Islam who for the government of the day are backward (all these reservations were upheld by their respective HCs). This way there was a new class created that of OBC Muslims, but for three times in quick succession Andhra Pradesh HC struck down this route of reservation. In February 2010 the court for the third time struck down “The Andhra Pradesh Reservation in favour of Socially and Educationally Backward Classes of Muslims Act, 2007” (A.P. Act 26 of 2007), which allotted 4% govt jobs to SEBC Muslims in AP, in Muralidhar Rao v State of Andhra Pradesh (Writ Petition No.15267 of 2007) (a juicy bit of side news: in all the three rejection AR Dave the CJ of AP HC had important role to play, in February 2010 around the same time of judgment, Dave, J was transferred to Bomay HC). Now what happened that AP HC broke the rule of the day and shut down the backdoor entry to 15 & 16, as per the Krishnan Committee Report based on which the SEBC commission recommended the AP reservation Act gave the following statistics:

	Population (2001) Millions	Muslim Population (2001) %	% of SEBC Muslims and General Muslims among Total Muslim Population
			SEBC Muslim		General Muslim i.e. non-SEBC Muslim
			1999-2000	2004-05	1999-2000	2004-05
India	1028.6	13.4	31.7	40.7	68.3	59.3
AP	76.2	9.2	10.7	19.5	89.3	80.5

However this data was based on Anthropological Survey of India’s projection data of 1994 according to the petitioner the breakdown of literacy rate among different religions based on 2001 Census of Andhra Pradesh would be:

	Literacy rate % among religious groups as per 2001 Census
	All religions		Hindus		Muslims		Christians		Sikhs
	Both	Female	Both	Female	Both	Female	Both	Female	Both	Female
State average of Andhra Pradesh	61.0	53.2	59.4	49.2	68.0	59.1	75.3	69.8	78.7	72.7

The court found that the SEBC commission had not ‘applied any scientific criteria to check’ the backwardness. The court also agitated the question as to how the figure of 4% fixed, Mandal Commission had recommended that reservation should be always proportional to population distribution and this has been established practice in all the states, in this case the total Muslim population is 9.2% of the total population in Andhra Pradesh and the percentage of backward classes among Muslims is 19.5%, thus, the total backward class Muslim population comes to around 2% of the total population in Andhra Pradesh yet 4% of the jobs were reserved, the Court held it to be unjustifiable and illegitimate.

Yet the next day WB government came out with a press note declaring a 10% reservation for OBC and SEBC Muslims in WB govt jobs. It is pertinent to note that there is an existing 7% reservation for OBCs in WB, there are 66 Hindu communities and 12 Muslim communities covered under this. In population term under present OBC reservation 16.83 Lakhs Muslims and 1.05 Crore Hindus are covered, under the new scheme 3 new Muslim communities will be brought under Muslim OBC quota and the total population that would be covered will be around 52 Lakhs. Thus for 52 Lakh OBC Muslim there is 10% quota while for 1.05 crore Hindu OBC there is 7% quota. Let us have a demographical analysis of the population of WB:

	Population (in lakhs)	Population in Percentage
Hindus	581.45	72.5
Muslims	202.10	25.2
Others	18.45	2.3
Total	802	100

Now let us have a breakup of OBC population in WB:

	Population (in lakhs)	Population in Percentage		Percentage reservation
	Population (in lakhs)	In the community	In entirety	Percentage reservation
Hindus	105	18.06	13.1	7
Muslims	52	25.73	6.48	10
Total	157		19.58	17

Thus to summarize in one line for 13.1% of population there is 7% reservation while for 6.48% population there is 10% reservation, we have to keep in mind that all SEBC criteria for these two groups are same, the only difference is based on religion.

Thus OBC Muslim quota differentiates on the basis of religion (declared unconstitutional by Supreme Court in Triloki Nath Tiku) and hence it should be suitably amended.

But there has been a welcome move by the WB government which has been imposition of two fold check on the OBC Muslim reservation:

Creamy layer exclusion – Once a person gets the benefit of quota, subsequent generation of the immediate family will not get benefit

Economic basis of exclusion – only those having an income of less than 4.5 lakhs per annum would be brought under the quota.

Both these factors are absent or irrelevant in OBC legislations in other states. Thus if the reservation is as proportionate to the population, is not discriminatory on basis of religion and is determined in a rational, objective and scientific criteria of economic, educational and social backwardness with the creamy layer exclusion then all of us should welcome such reservation, otherwise it would merely remain a vote catching stunt rather than be an affirmative action.

To be or not to be: Foreign firms in India

2010-01-18T11:44:00.007+05:30

There has been lot of attention on the issue of presence of foreign firms in India for the past few weeks owing to the judgment delivered by Bombay High Court in the long pending case of Lawyers Collective v Bar Council of India, WP No. 1526 of 1995. In the early 1990s, just after first phase of liberalization of Indian economy, 3 foreign firms, White & Case, Chadbourne & Parke and Ashurst Morris Crisp applied before Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to open liaison offices in India (not full-fledged law firms), the aims of these liaison offices were to ‘collect information’, ‘establish business contacts’ basically to provide non litigious legal support. It is interesting to note that these law firms applied before the financial authority in the country to enter the market but not the local or the national Bar Council, this was to comply with the then foreign currency regulations (the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1973), RBI granted permission to these three law firms to set up liaison offices putting very tight conditions such that these offices could not enter into contracts with any Indian clients and even the cost of running these offices should come from outside India, thus for all practical purposes these offices were to just facilitate business relationship with Indian clientele who might use the expertise of these firms for work outside India.

Lawyers Collective is a pressure group which opposed opening of liaison offices of foreign law firms in India, it filed a writ petition before Bombay High Court. It claimed that even for non litigious legal issues like ‘drafting documents, reviewing and providing comments on documents, conducting negotiations and advising clients on international standards and customary practice relating to the client’s transaction etc.’ one needs to comply with the Bar Council regulations and the Advocates Act 1961.

The main issue framed by the Court was whether liaison offices in India could carry on the practise in non litigious matters without being enrolled as Advocates under the 1961 Act? To answer this question the Court looked at the width of jurisdiction of Advocates Act and meaning & purpose of ‘non litigious matters’. Section 29 of the Advocates Act which lays down who can practice law in India it is stated that advocates are the only class of persons ‘entitled to practise the profession of law’. Also section 33 of the Advocates Act 1961 lays out the field of practise of advocates which is ‘Except as otherwise provided in this Act or in any other law for the time being in force, no person shall, on or after the appointed day, be entitled to practise in any Court or before any authority or person unless he is enrolled as an advocate under this Act.’ So the case hung on the issue as to whether the expression ‘practise in any Court or before any authority or person’ would include non litigious legal matters or it would fall under the bracket of ‘practise the profession of law’.

The court looked into the statements of Objects & Reasons of the Advocates Act (this is usually done to purposively interpret any section especially when the judge finds that a strict/literal interpretation may not deliver justice), and came to the conclusion that Bar Council should have regulatory authority and primacy on how to ‘practise the profession of law’ and that is the reason that the 1961 Advocates Act was brought about, thus the expressions ‘to practise the profession of law’ in section 29 of the 1961 Act is held to be wide enough to cover the persons practising in litigious matters as well as persons practising in non litigious matters, one illustration provided by the court to bolster its decision was that of ‘an advocate who is debarred for professional misconduct can merrily carry on the practise in non-litigious matters on the ground that the 1961 Act is not applicable to the persons practising the profession of law in non litigious matters.’ The court reasoned that such an argument which defeats the object of the 1961 Act cannot be accepted. Thus the court held that liaison offices of such foreign law firms although practicing only non litigious issues would fall foul to section 29 of the Advocates Act and that RBI should not have granted the permission. The court also asked the Central Government to take decision on issue relating to the foreign law firms practising the profession of law in India as expeditiously as possible.

Before the judgment in October Union Law Minister in an interview to IBLJ had said as above but at many levels such a judgment was not unexpected noted legal writer Jayant Krishnan in ‘Globetrotting Law Firms’ points out that traditionally Indian law fraternity has been less than welcome about ideas on liberalization of law sector. Some were afraid that this judgment would affect the ‘best friend relationships’ that many Indian law firms have with foreign law firms, but these relationships are nothing but an informal process of letting the client know that in such countries you may visit such firms for legal help under that jurisdiction (very much like referral system), such an arrangement would ultra liberal stretch of imagination to fall within purview of practicing profession of law, but then who knows. A set back of some sort would be brakes on proposed LPO JVs between Indian and foreign law firms, most Indian firms would now move ahead alone in such ventures.

9 semesters, 5 exam committees, 4 exam rules, 3 Registrar, 2 VC, 1 university: Next is what?

2009-12-21T20:23:00.012+05:30

Well it is said that university experience is one of the finest in life and I am sure it is true for me but the only hitch is the over-overwhelmingness of such experience especially in the field of constantly changing exam rules. In last 9 semesters I have been evaluated under 4 different exam system, coupled with the ever changing administrative set up, this rolling stone of examination rules have never gathered any constancy, in this post I seek to bring forth the various exam system faced by my batch in last 4.5 years and then try to juxtapose it with the variation in the semester wise GPA of my class to try and find out if such excessive meddling in the examination process had any effect on the marks of the batch.
But before that let us go through the examination pattern followed in the last 9 semesters, at Indian law schools there are two types of subjects, compulsory which are basic law subjects like Contract law, Constitutional law etc. and the optionals which are usually specialization avenues and offer subjects like Comparative law, International contract law etc. Optional subject are offered at my university only from 6th semester.
Compulsory subjects
When I started my university career in 2005, the marks were divided into 6 categories, End Semester, Attendance, Subj. Viva, Project, Rough Draft, Project Viva, such extensive division ensured that there was continuous evaluation and students are focused on the course. In 4th semester the marks component of rough draft and project viva was scrapped. In 7th semester the component of attendance was also scrapped, but the most tremulous change came in 9th semester when the written component was hiked to 100 and to be later scaled down to 65%.

Semester 1		Semester 2	Semester 3
End Semester Attendance Subj. Viva Project Rough Draft Project Viva	60 5 5 20 5 5	Same as Semester 1	Same as Semester 1
Semester 4		Semester 5	Semester 6
End Semester Attendance Subj. Viva Project	60 5 5 30	Same as Semester 4	Same as Semester 4
Semester 7		Semester 8	Semester 9
End Semester Subj. Viva Project	65 5 30	Same as Semester 7	End Semester Subj. Viva Project	100 5 30

Optional subjects
In my 6th semester there were 5 marks component to optional courses viz. End Semester, Attendance, Subj. Viva, Project, Presentation just like in compulsory subjects in 7th semester the component of attendance was scrapped, in 8th semester the subject viva component was scrapped for optional, and like compulsory papers in 9th semester written component was hiked to 100 to be scaled down in final result to 50%.

Semester 1		Semester 2		Semester 3
No optional subjects		No optional subjects		No optional subjects
Semester 4		Semester 5		Semester 6
No optional subjects		No optional subjects		End Semester Attendance Subj. Viva Project Presentation	40 5 5 30 20
Semester 7		Semester 8		Semester 9
End Semester Subj. Viva Project Presentation	45 5 30 20	End Semester Project Presentation	50 30 20	End Semester Project Presentation	100 30 20

Also another important change in the marking pattern was the supposed introduction of bell curve for the first time in India.
Now let us have a look at how my batch on average has fared over last 4 years.
As is clear from the graph, the dips in the GPA are in 4th, 7th and 8th semesters, quite strikingly these are the semesters when the examination pattern has been tinkered with. So does it prove that change is examination pattern adversely affects the marks of batch? Well, there are certainly few drawbacks in the study, grades of only a single batch has been taken out for data interpretation, other batches which were at the university during the changes should also be compared and then we would have a theory beyond reasonable doubt, also the subjects faced by the observed batch in the worse off semesters could have been comparatively difficult.
However let us also analyze whether such frequent change in pattern of examination is required or is even valid/just, firstly when a student enrolls in an institution he is promised a system or pattern of examination and related issues, during the subsistence of course it would be unjust to change the system or pattern if such a change irreversibly goes against the interest of the batch, now who decides what is in interest and what is not, the best option would be to take students into confidence before such sweeping changes are made; secondly change is important but to change a perfectly working system which has been delivering excellence for many years just on issues of perception is not a very good idea.

Help Wikipedia, help yourself

2009-12-16T19:20:00.003+05:30

Hi all, I guess as law students we have frequent deadlines, projects, papers, seminars, debates, moots etc. late night research on net, frantic calls to friends, sending out mails to the whole university if one is in third year or above (the first and second years lack the courage to spam the inboxes of others, though the trend is changing fast); for all such harried souls the first (and often the last) post of resort is Wikipedia, the free, open, community managed encyclopedia. We copy, paste, format into MS word and then as teachers dont like the wiki citation we put in a name of books, law review articles the more industrious ones take links given in the reference of the wiki article and cite the same (this is in-fact accepted by law review boards, though may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction). Such has been the advent of wiki that in an offline conference an English professor of a reputed university confessed that she had taken up editing Wikipedia because most of the students copied from wiki and so it is best if they copy the right stuff. Now my friends, Wikipedia as we all know (if not search for Wikipedia in Wikipedia) is run by a non-profit organization, and Wikipedia is ad-free so it will depend on money donated by us, the users, to run its servers and other operations. A friend of mine who perhaps have never paid a single paisa for any software in life (his argument is that he pays for internet charges, so he should not be asked to pay for any other proprietary programs) has donated few dollars to the Wikimedia foundation. Just on another note, the only thing I remember from my first year economics class (apart from the supply and demand curve) is the concept of tragedy of commons, but year after year people have donated and kept Wikipedia alive so invest in wiki and just remember that investing in Wikipedia is investing on your future projects.