Elementary?

Yesterday a new Sherlock emerged (albeit in pilot) under the title 'Elementary' at the US TV station of CBS. It puts Sherlock Holmes, the master detective, in a modern day setting. And of course comparison with BBCs acclaimed Sherlock is obvious.

The new Sherlock (let us henceforth call him CBS Sherlock) is a recovering addict and has Dr. Watson as a rehab companion at one of the brownstones in New York. CBS Sherlock is as gritty and moody as all the previous incarnation of the master sleuth, however he seems a bit unsure of himself at certain times (which is completely unHolmesworthy – legions of fans of Mr. Holmes have come to believe in the supreme self-confidence of the man, frustrated at times he might be but unsure naah!!). 

The case as shown in the CBS pilot is pretty straight forward a psychiatric wants to get rid of his wealthy wife (killing the wife part was there as a plot device in The Adventure of the Retired Colourman), what does he do? He uses one of his umm.. neurotic patients (who has a history of violence) to have a murderous go at his wife. To do this the doctor keeps no record of his meeting with the patient, allegedly changes drugs as well as changes his wife’s appearance (fat to thin, mote to no mole and blonde to red head) to allegedly make her fit the victim profile of the neurotic patient.

Well after some good Holmesian deduction CBS Holmes confronts the evil doctor with the theory only to be laughed off. Later from audio recordings in the cell phone of the killer it is proved that the doctor was in fact treating the killer. In between there were canonical moments like Holmes rearing honey bees (His Last Bow) etc.

So far so good, but still one question arose in my mind as a lawyer, how does the evidence tie up the doctor with the murders. The audio recording proves that the doctor has till now mislead the police by stating that he did not know the killer, yes he can be charged with obstruction of justice, but how to prove before the court that he’s the killer, still there are no smoking guns just surmises and theories. Of course people are bound to say that one should look for deductions in detective stories and law (as if there is any) in legal dramedies (Suits, Boston Legal etc.). But still it would have been better script if CBS Holmes could have found a more convincing smoking gun. Background score could also perhaps be a bit more menacing.

But having said that we must wait for the actual series, this is merely the pilot and they can be quite different from the actual product. One can dig up the pilot of BBC Sherlock (available at Youtube) which was never at par with the actual episodes (in the pilot BBC Sherlock actually is drugged by the cabby while in the first episode it is shown that Sherlock went with the cabby on his own volition).

Thus the verdict would be to [wait and watch] if CBS Sherlock can match or excel the BBC Sherlock (third season later this year?). All in all it is going to be a good few next months for Sherlock fans.

How did Sherlock survive?

Being a Sherlock Holmes fan, it was fantastic to discover ‘Sherlock’ series 1 on BBC. It is a re-adaptation of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes placing him in a modern day avatar in 2010 London. It was one of my favourite series while I was pursuing LLM in UK (when I also developed a liking for British classic sitcoms like Fawlty Towers, Blackadder, Yes Minister and Vicar of Dibley). When I returned to India to take up a teaching position at one of the National Law Universities, I waited for series 2 of Sherlock and like many fans around the world, at the end of series 2, have been trying to guess how Sherlock might have survived the five storey fall off the Bartholomew Hospital.

Well here’s my solution (I am sure many have also chanced on similar or same solution):

1. Sherlock is given a chemical which can induce death like symptoms by Penny (to fool Dr. Watson).
2. Sherlock injects it while he’s talking with Moriarty (1:09:15).

This trick of hand was already done once in Series 2 when Sherlock took pulse of Irene as shown below:

3.      3. After that Sherlock jumps onto the garbage truck:

The aerial view is as below:

However there are certain points which go against the theory above, Sherlock just slipped off the building he does not have the required lateral momentum to propel him to the garbage truck which is at least 15-18 feet from the building. Also the sniper assassin must have seen Sherlock jumping onto garbage truck and thus would have logically shot Dr. Watson (unless he is also blindsided by the building like Dr. Watson). Further the shots of hands, which I interpret to be injections, can easily be interpreted to be prelude to the tapping off the dud codes.

Anyway I am eagerly waiting for Series 3 and check how far my theory succeeds. Just a side-note I would have been much happier if S2E3 didn’t show Sherlock alive at the end, there would have been more speculation and then BBC could have suddenly sprung Series 3 in 2012 autumn.

The proliferation and brand dilution of National Law Universities

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

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

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?

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

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.