An afternoon with Nozick

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

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. 

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

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.

Reservation and religion

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:

To be or not to be: Foreign firms in India

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’.

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

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.

Help Wikipedia, help yourself

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.