Interviewer: Thank-you so much for taking the time out and doing this, sir. Shall we proceed to the questions?

Kunal: Yes, we can. I’m very nervous for this right now.

Interviewer: So, to start with, will you be going for the “Bangalore Pride March” this year?

Kunal: My mother is landing in Bangalore on that day. So, I’ll have to go to the airport to pick her up. But I think I will be there at the beginning at least. I should be there when it starts off and then I’ll go to the airport.

I: Given this year’s judgement on Sec.377, do you think this year’s pride will be different for you or in general as such?

K: Well….Pride means different things for different people. For a lot of people, it is a method of protest for making your presence felt. For a lot of other people, it is a source of affirmation of their presence or of their identities. A lot of them come to just enjoy and express solidarity. So, a lot of these things may be different for different people. But, irrespective of legality, the need to conduct Pride and walk the Pride remains the same. So, in that sense, I would say that for me, the judgement itself does not make that big a difference but of course, I’m hoping that many more people will come now that there’s the decriminalisation judgement.

I: What was your 1^st Pride like?

K: My 1^st Pride was several years ago and it was a lot of fun! Going for your first Pride is obviously a different experience because it is all so new. You’ve only seen Pride in a movie or on TV. It’s also putting yourself out there. You are making a statement, not just to anyone else but to yourself as well. Once you see that happening to yourself, you see yourself transforming. It’s in a sense, owning of your own queer identity in public. That is important. That is, to use the term very out of context, transformative. And once you go for Pride, you realise that there are a lot of people who are just like you. So, yes. It is an experience.

I: Have you observed any change with respect to the way the Bangalore Pride has looked/felt over the years?

K: Pride has become huge in Bangalore. Thousands of people walk it now. When it started off several years ago, it was not happening on such a large scale. Very few people actually started it off. But it was a very good start. Bangalore Pride has also been very conscious of how it has to be managed and how it has to be acceptable to all sections of the queer community. The Bangalore Pride is one of the only Prides that does a disability access survey of the Pride route to see as if the disabled allies and members of the community can walk. The Bangalore Pride has also stopped accepting corporate funding and sponsorship. In fact, corporate markers are not allowed at Bangalore Pride. This was done to stand in solidarity with people who might be exploited by such corporate giants. And personally speaking, I think it is a good move. But of course, I am not the best person to talk about this. The Pride Planning Committee in Bangalore is a better authority.

I: You completed your LLM at the University of California, Berkeley. Did you observe any differences with respect to the feel and execution of the queer rights movement or Pride in Berkley /the United States and NLS/ Bangalore?

K: Yeah! There’s a HUGE difference. Well, Berkeley is in the Bay area which is a liberal enclave of a liberal state which is California. It is also very close to San Francisco and Castro, which are considered to be meccas of the gay world in the Western Hemisphere. Pride over there is preceded by a lot of other events. In Castro, you have the Folsom street fair, for example. It’s much bigger and has a lot of planning done in a very corporate sense. There are floats, choreographed dances and other performances. There’s also a critique of this Pride from within the community saying that Pride has lost its radical edge and that it is no longer the angry protest that it originated as. And there is some truth to this critique. It is not like all sections of the queer community have achieved their rights, especially in a country like the United States which still does discriminate against the trans community in a very severe fashion. A very colourful and happy Pride does not showcase the protest of the transgenders against the discrimination they face. But having said that, you can also say that for a lot of people, this is their moment to affirm their identities. But a response to that is that as long as the “gay boyz” and lesbian women get their rights, they don’t care about anyone else. They have won their rights for marriage and civil partnership. But what about the rest of the queer community? So, you’ll have to see that…*chuckles* …. I’m sorry I don’t remember your question

I: Sir, the 2^nd part of the question was about the difference in the feel and execution of the queer rights movement in NLS and Berkeley. Did you see any difference?

K: Yes, of course.  UC Berkeley takes a much more positive stance with respect to the rights of the queer community. The students as well as the staff aren’t allowed to gaslight queer identities by asking them questions like “what if, this is actually unnatural?”. In NLS, you don’t see that. Of course, the students of NLS have been extremely supportive of each other and of other students who might be queer. But institutionally, we have zero mechanisms to ensure that there is no discrimination on campus. As far as I know, we do not have an openly transgender student or staff member. So, inclusivity and diversity over here is not that great. Not to say that Berkeley is heaven and that there are no problems over there. Of course, there are. But yes. We have a long way to go.

I: How has the viewpoint on the queer movement changed over the course of years at NLS? And if you do you feel the change; do you think it is because of the fact that you are no longer a student and rather a teacher on campus?

K: When I joined NLS, what I felt, and I might be completely wrong, was that the heyday of the queer movement at NLS was over. I joined in 2007 and back then, there were very few openly queer seniors to look up to and to talk to. Priya (Thangaraja) was one of them. I must mention her because Priya, for me, was the first person who ever publicly owned her sexuality as being queer in a classroom. I was just sitting there and listening and it has a very different effect. But with regard to say, organising talks and conferences, a lot of that did not happen when I was a student over here. There was also a lot of homophobia when I was a student at NLS. But you also constantly realise that this is not the worst that you can get. That you could do much worse in another college. Of course, I’m not saying that you should compare yourself to that.

When I joined back in 2013, there was that incident with the slur on the door and the thing is, as a faculty member, I still have that amount of privilege to choose to ignore such incidents. Which was also what I did. I told myself that this was obviously done to elicit a reaction and that I will not give it a reaction. So, I will not take it (the slur) down nor will I say anything about it. I told myself that I will not let it get to me. This displays some privilege because I don’t have to stay here. I don’t have to live in a hostel twenty 24/7. I don’t have to deal with students at a professionally equal footing. There is a power relation there and I am in the more powerful position. So, to not react is also a privilege. As a student, I don’t have the privilege of not reacting. That’s because a reaction would have been forced out of me. And if you don’t react it is not like it is going to go away. But here, of course, with respect to me, I had that. But what was heartening to know was that after the slur incident, the students rallied in large measures. So, the whole thing with the19(1)(a) board happened. However, what was more important was that a conversation around this issue started. This does not usually happen in hostels. I was never interested in catching the kid who did it and ensuring that the kid got punished. What was the more valuable and important takeaway was the fact that it sparked off this discussion and this conversation around the issues of gender and sexuality and that the students took the lead in that. It wasn’t as if it was forced by the college admin or by the teachers. I think the Queer Alliance also came up after that.

I: So, in the context of the aforementioned incidents, do you think NLS is a “safe bubble” to discuss and take action with respect to such issues? Is it harder in the outside world?

K: Things can get pretty bad outside and for a lot of people being in college, irrespective of whichever college it might be in, is liberating in terms of the autonomy it gives you, your decision-making skills, your inter-personal relationships without having adults to constantly look out for you. But in terms of NLS, I think, universally, NLS students have to acknowledge the fact that a lot of things that happened with respect to the queer movement in India happened from NLS. This also includes people from NLS participating in the movement. So, in that sense, we come from a very, very rich history of activism on this issue. There are other issues as well of course. Like the Narmada Bachao Andolan in which a lot of NLS alums cut their teeth with civil rights activism, including people like Prof. Sarasu. But to answer your question, I would say that yes, NLS is slightly safer as compared to other institutions in the sense that you can always harp back and look up to that history. A lot of other places do not have the role models that NLS does. And this does help. See, as queer people, you tend to look for roots. Institutionally, these roots don’t usually exist in a lot of spaces. But in NLS, they do. So even if there is nothing right now, you know that things have happened or that you can make things happen over here. In that sense, I think that students at NLS are also more sensitised than in other colleges. However, this is changing as well. Other universities and colleges are also changing very quickly. IIT’s have queer support groups now. It has changed from what it was 10 years ago.

I: I’m pretty sure you must have seen a bunch of students at Pride over the past few years. What is your reaction upon seeing them?

K: *laughs* Well they usually ask me to pose for a picture! But it is heartening to know that Pride has become such an annual and happy event for NLS students and that you guys come for it in such large numbers. It’s a good thing. I’m guessing a pub pool happens……and this interview is happening! So yes. It is a very good way of engaging with the outside world. That is important for students. Especially students of law. You get to see as to what is being demanded historically as rights. And the fact that you have students from NLS come to Pride and make it their space to find a sense of belonging and have a good time is something that even Pride organisers should take “pride” in.  Because, the ultimate message of pride is inclusivity. Everyone is welcome at Pride, irrespective of whether you are straight, gay or anything else on the spectrum.

I: After you put up your flag on your door on the day of the Sec. 377 judgement, there was a huge influx of WhatsApp statuses with a picture of your door with the Pride flag on it……

K: I heard it became “viral”.

I: Yes!! It was all over everyone’s feed. Many law schoolites are dying to know as to what you think about this incident. Given how you basically became a celebrity on campus.

K: Wait. So, am I not already a celebrity on campus? Do I need to put up a flag out to become one?

I: Well of course you are a celebrity. People ask you for “celebrity style” pictures on pride. However, this particular act of yours got you “trending” on campus…

K: The idea of putting up this flag was not to elicit a bunch of WhatsApp statuses, of course. A lot of us had been anticipating that judgement and it was quite clear as to which way the judgement would go. But you can never be too certain. But we were ninety-nine percent sure about what was going to happen. I thought I would put up the flag on the door to “queer” up this place a bit and to make sure that NLS and its staff do not pretend as though nothing has happened on a very historic day. I did put up the flag there before the judgement came out. So, one idea was also that irrespective of what happens in the Supreme Court, the flag should be there. Whether it is something like 2013, like Koushal, or something in the opposite direction, the flag should be there as a symbol of the fact that life must go on. We might mark legality or illegality as points in our lives. However, we are much more than that.

I: Either as a celebration or as a protest…..

K: Yes, of course. That was the idea! You know that there are queer students on campus and if they see it and they feel good about it then that’s good.

I: I think that’s what got it trending. It was nice to see that a professor cared about this issue. Given how such issues with respect to the Queer movement are rarely spoken about in most of our day to day classes. Unless you have a few “woke” teachers sensitising us about it. There are also several seminars and talks which are organised on this issue. However, the general trend is that queer rights are always spoken about in an academic sense. People don’t talk about what it is like to be queer on campus.

K: Sensitisation is one part. And it is very important. This is because at the age that kids come to NLS, a lot of them maybe questioning, repressing their different identities. And sensitisation needs to happen because of this. A lot of Queer people long for this moment. To see someone like themselves talking about the things they wonder about and from a position where it seems like this someone has figured it out. You see a successful person talking about things; you see that they are happy and are leading fulfilling lives. This successful person is telling you to do something. So, you are willing to take a chance. You figure you will turn out okay as well. This is very important.

Alongside this of course, there are a lot of legal issues which we study that intersect with the issues of the queer community. I understand and I agree completely that Law School ignores those intersections to a very large extent. I still remember my Family Law-I midterm question as one of the few times when queerness was fore-fronted. It was a question with a lot of sexuality and gender issues. It involved a same-sex marriage, a gender confirmation surgery, a divorce and bigamy… To see a question like that, I mean, you have to engage with it. It was interesting

I: I think Nicky (Collins) and I had a conversation about this once. The founding members of the NLSQA like Padmini, Sakhi etc. did really well in law school and they built up this really good image around being queer and the NLSQA given the fact that they were considered to be “studs”. And then these people have left this legacy to us. We have to live up to this benchmark of having to balance out “being the faces of the queer movement on campus” and “being confident studs”…..

K: That is a very important point you are making. Because even I had a very similar burden during my stint as a student in Law School. After accepting myself in Law School, I had put upon myself an additional burden to think that I must do extremely well academically and that I must be a role model for other people so that even when people realise that I am queer, they are forced to give respect to me. Nobody should dismiss me in a trivial fashion. I should be a shining example of my community. However, when you grow up, you realise over time that that is a very unfair position to put yourself in. Because I was entitled to make all the wrong choices and mistakes that anyone else was entitled to make. I was entitled to letting myself go once in a while. I did not owe it to anyone to do well. Nor does anyone owe it anyone to do well or be an example.

I: I personally feel like a lot of people on campus are afraid to be open with respect to their sexuality mainly because of the fact that they feel like they aren’t academically “strong enough” to come out yet. These people don’t want to be brand tagged and only be known for the fact that they are queer…

K: That is essentialism, right? We all live such complicated lives. I am gay and so many other things.

I: Our last question is a bit related to the PnP we need to do for pride. Why do you think the students of NLS should go for Pride this year?

K: Do you want a quote of some sort for this?

I: Yes!! A quote which acts as a source of encouragement to our readers to participate in Pride….

K: Oh. You guys have “readers”?

I: I guess Quirk does have a decent reader base. But why do you think they should go for Pride?

K: I’m sorry Ma’am. I haven’t done the reading for this class.

I: I am going to take that as your quote.

Hi Spadika, tell us a little bit about your time in Law School. What committees were you a part of, what kind of activities were you interested in, and what did you prioritise?

Law School, in hindsight, was a period of big transformation. I suppose it’s the same for all of us. In my first year, I tried my hand at debating, and was part of the Literary and Debating society. From my second year onwards, I became actively involved with LSC and IDIA- I also headed the IDIA chapter in my final 2 years. ‘Social work’ therefore ended up becoming a big part of my five years in law school. I became almost obsessed with the ideas of diversity and inclusion. One of the best uses of my time in fifth year was being part of the team that worked on the NLS Diversity Census. Apart from social impact related work, I was also interested in Intellectual Property law, so I ended up writing for SpicyIP and helped Professor Shamnad Basheer as a research assistant for a couple of his books and articles. I was also a part of Quirk in my final year, in the time it moved from the print edition to online. Shout out to your team – Quirk today continues to be my strongest link to law school! 🙂 I also dabbled with mooting, did a couple of moots and participated in the Jean Pictet competition that took place in France during my year.

As a consequence of juggling all these activities, maintaining a decent CGPA and not giving up on afternoon naps (EVER), I’d say the one thing I missed out on was involving myself more in the law school fests. I saw my friends form some of their strongest bonds and have some of their most memorable experiences over SF, Spiritus, etc. If I could go back and do law school all over again, that’s the one thing I would change.

It’s now been 2 years since you graduated law school. What have you been doing since then? 

I was a Business Analyst at McKinsey and Company for 2 years, before the startup bug bit me- I now work at an early stage startup called Kaleidofin, that focuses on financial inclusion in the informal economy.

Was choosing an alternative career a difficult choice to make, given the importance of corp jobs especially around 4th year in Law School? 

I was always conflicted about whether I wanted a corporate law career, or even a career in law at all. While I had loved my time in Law School, I didn’t catch a fancy for any legal career. In 4th year, I managed to escape the corp law peer pressure by doing an exchange program in Sweden. However, when I came back, I bit the bullet and did a corporate law internship. I also interviewed for the PPO, and when I did not receive one, I sat down and seriously thought about why I was half-heartedly pursuing something I knew I would not enjoy. I realised that while I loved Law School, I was a lot more passionate about social impact than about the law itself.

I then decided not to sit for Day 0 at all, because I knew that if I did sit, it would be too difficult to later turn down such a cushy, ‘prestigious’, well paying job. I think the best thing the NLS degree gives you is a safety net- I knew that if nothing else works out, I could go back and get a job at a smaller corporate law firm, or a litigation chamber. This gave me the freedom to hold out and soul search. When I heard that McKinsey was going to recruit, I spoke to a couple of seniors who worked there, and did a bit of research. McKinsey sounded perfect- two years of doing a variety of work to figure out what you really like. It’s also a great brand to be associated with, to transition out of law. I decided to apply, and was elated when I got the offer.

How do you feel about not working with the law per se, which is a concern many people in law school have about alternative careers? 

An ‘alternate career’, especially consulting, especially at McKinsey, throws the field wide open. Over the past 2 years, I have learnt of career options that I had no idea existed back in Law School. You could say that as far as alternate careers go, I have it pretty easy thanks to having worked in consulting. But even if you don’t, if you have a bit of hustle, it can be really rewarding! One thing I’ve noticed about the typical law schoolite (who goes into litigation or a law firm) is that they are unlikely to make a single non-lawyer friend after entering law school. That’s quite limiting, if you think about it. An alternate career, even if just for a couple of years, can (re)open your eyes to the rest of the world. And thanks to the great Law School network- if you don’t like the non-law world, remember that you can always go back to law. 2 years in, I see vacancies in law firms pop up almost every week on the batch Whatsapp group.

Therefore, I do think that trying out a non-law job right out of law school is one of the least risky, and most rewarding things you can do.

That said, continuing on in a non-law path is not always easy, for one main reason. The NLS network is extremely powerful, but its influence is largely limited to the legal world. When you compare yourself to, say, someone from a top IIT, whose alumni occupy top spots in pretty much all spheres of business, it can feel a bit lonely to be off the legal track as a Law Schoolite. Most of your typical ‘studly’ role models from college lose relevance to your goals (or to help figure out your goals), and it can be difficult to find mentors who share the same background as you.  You may find that you do not have as much of a safety net outside law school. This is why I think choosing a reputed firm like McKinsey will help a lot, as the McK-network has the potential to really take you places.

What are the demands of a job in McKinsey? Do you think your education at law school has helped you with the job? 

As a Business Analyst in McKinsey, you will work on different projects (called ‘studies’), each typically lasting 3-4 months. On each study, you will be part of a team working out of the client site, solving a business challenge they are facing. The challenges could be operational, like how to increase supply chain efficiency; or strategic, like what should be the 5 year plan of the company. Over my 2 years, I have worked out of an automotive plant, out of a government Ministry, spent a few months on the road in Tamil Nadu auditing loan applications, and out of a swanky corporate head office. Despite my atypical journey (I ended up spending >75% of my time in the financial services sector), I have tried my hand at a pretty crazy variety of work- something pretty much no other career than consulting can give you.

Work aside, McKinsey also pampers its new hires with a lot of opportunities for foreign travel. Even if you (like me) are not lucky enough to actually land a study abroad, you will have the chance to attend trainings and conferences in exotic locations, and people encourage you to take a few days off before/after to travel! The most interesting country that I did a work-sponsored trip to was Colombia. I am pretty sure that’s a corner of the world I would have never had a chance to visit otherwise. What’s more fantastic than the travel itself is the culture that enables it- the firm truly believes that happy people are the most productive.

My Law School knowledge did not help me in my job per se, other than enabling me to sound more knowledgeable about some topics (like Aadhaar, for example). However, the skill sets do come in use. Speed reading, critical analysis, structuring are things that we have been practicing for years. I think a big difference between law school training and engineering training is that Law School focuses on critical thinking, while engineering focuses on problem solving. I found it slightly challenging to shift to a problem-solving mindset initially, but in the long run, I think it’s a great combination to be comfortable with both– and consulting enables that.

What is the best / worst part of your job? 

Consulting as a profession is structured in a way that true work/life balance is nearly impossible to achieve. Long work hours are the norm (although I would say it’s better than a Law Firm). The back and forth travel is exciting initially, but can wear you down over time. All that said, it’s a really exciting job- I have had multiple people tell me that my Instagram handle is super annoying thanks to all the travel- isn’t that the true sign of a life well-lived?

What would be your piece of advice to someone looking to explore a career in consultancy? 

A lot of Law Schoolites are hesitant about consulting because it’s unknown and everything about it seems alien. My advice is to embrace it. Nobody goes into consulting knowing what to expect- that’s part of the journey! The core skill you pick up is the ability to land in any situation and figure out what to do at lightning speed. There are enough examples of law schoolites who spent 2 years at Mckinsey, picked up these cool skills and went back to law (Arun Srikumar, founding partner at the law firm Keystone; Harini Vishwanathan, currently at Allen & Overy; Viraj Parikh and Vinodini Srinivasan, Associates at Keystone); there are also some great examples of people who charted interesting non-law career paths for themselves (Adithya Banavar, who does strategy at Spotify in New York, and Sarayu Natarajan who worked at an Impact Investing fund after McKinsey).A couple of people have also decided to stay on and climb the ladder at McKinsey itself- like Uttara and Divya Shenoy. The Business Analyst program used to be a 2 year program until a couple of years ago- now it’s a regular track, and everyone can choose to stay on after 2 years if they wish.

Do not fear that you will be left with no choices if you take up consulting after Law School- in fact, your problem will be that you will have too many choices. I had interviewed with venture capital funds, impact investing funds, and a philanthropic foundation before narrowing down on what I want to do.

Over the course of two years, I had found an area of interest in financial inclusion. This is something I would never have been exposed to had I taken up a legal job. I began scouring the space for opportunities, and once something clicked, I decided it was time to leave McKinsey. I now work closely with the founding team at Kaleidofin, helping underserved, low income communities gain access to financial services. I love being here, and am excited about what the future holds.

Law School, like much else, is a place of endless loops and cyclic events. Or, to put it more simply, it is another place where the same shit keeps happening over and over again for most parts. One of these cycles is the thought that we get either in Fifth year, if our grades are respectable enough, or later, if too many of our friends have done, is to go abroad and get a second degree. This most often is the LLM (Or the BCL if you prefer). I fall in the latter category of persons who went after too many friends had done it. As I write this, I am sitting in my slightly-bigger-than-Cauvery 207-left cube-single room at the NLS of the West, wondering what to do with my life next. For the time being, I thought the best thing would be to write an article for Quirk that fits not one, but two whole categories in that mandate (to make sure that I get my piece in, obviously). So here, in this slightly long-winded piece, I thought I’ll give some food for thought on the idea and allure of doing an LLM from abroad.

Calling out the BullS**T

The LLM, as one of my seniors told me at the time, gave her more in a year’s education than what she got in five at NLS. After having spent that year studying myself, and having spoken to a decently large group of others who have done so as well, I am confident that she was making a fool of me. I know I’m not saying this for everyone, but in my case, the five years at NLS were frankly not atrociously bad. In fact, some of it was surprisingly good even *shudders*. Given that this sales-pitch often comes at the start and is very effective to someone at the end of five years at NLS, I thought it best to start with debunking this particular myth about doing an LLM. In fact, “you will find” (brownie points for getting the reference) that all educational institutions share some similarities. One of these is that everywhere, there is good faculty, there is not-so-good faculty, and there is the kinds that we do not speak of. The same goes for your peers. Avoiding the last category in both is down to a mixture of smart choices and dumb luck. Much like at NLS, you will find that your returns from doing the LLM will be closely linked to the amount of time and effort you invest in doing your bit studying etc. Again, this is one of those fundamental laws (like the faculty / student rule) that stays the same everywhere. It was funny to see how many people here “bragged about” barely studying and then “complained” about not really learning much through the program. I remember the same sentiment prevailing at NLS, when there used to be that one person bragging about how much s/he has left the night before the exam, expecting a mixture of adulation and reverence at her ability to not be freaking out. If you ask, s/he often didn’t give the exam #NotReallyFirstAttempts.

Which brings me to the parts that are true. First, you might hear that the LLM is necessary for career advancement. This is true if you are thinking of pursuing a career in law outside of India either as a practicing advocate or as an academic (although the UK Bar would not need you to have a foreign LLM degree). But if you plan on sticking around in the motherland, the LLM in all likelihood will make you overqualified: like the proverbial plumber with a Ph.D. You’d rather save that money and time to get better at your job. The other thing you might hear is that the LLM offers an upgrade in the content of what you learn. Here I don’t claim to speak about the BCL experience, but in most of the U.S. based universities, the focus on context while teaching the law is amazing to help place things in perspective. The idea of law and society being intertwined was at the heart of the idea of NLS. But in my five years at least, I can hardly recall professors contextualising the law to help make students better understand what might have led to certain legal rules coming in. For instance, we spent all of constitutional law without touching either of Granville Austin’s two books. Today, I’d go so far as to call that a crime. Learning about the law in this manner for the past year was great. But honestly, it convinced me that the gap in what we study at NLS and what we can learn in the LLM is far from insurmountable.

The “Experience”

Together with the academics, a lot of the allure about studying abroad comes from what I’ll call the argument about “experience”. I know people who did an LLM only because of the “experience” of studying at one of the elite universities. Undoubtedly, being in Oxford or Cambridge (either the real or fake one) is fantastic. These are University towns brimming with ideas and amazing people. In one way, this was a massive upgrade from NLS. I remember the first weeks at Nagarbhavi went in me just appreciating the national diversity of my class. That now becomes an international diversity, and only makes the experience more fulfilling. The upgrade analogy works in another sense as well. A problem with the typical National Law School / University model is that it creates islands, rather than have the law school as part of a vibrant academic culture. Being part of a real university (and not a School University) you really see that matter besides the coffee-table conversations you might have. For instance, at Harvard, you get the opportunity to cross-register for courses at MIT, HKS etc. that really help to broaden your perspective on how you think about issues. Having an economist in a class full of lawyers on global anti-corruption makes you see problems in a whole new light. Or, you might see entirely new issues – take a class in coding, or introduction to literature, or racial consciousness in America. Not having made good use of this cross-registration process is one regret that I will leave Harvard with.

Focusing now on the LLM program more specifically, I must say a bit about being an LLM. I found it was quite like a case of what goes around comes around. The LLMs at most of these places in the U.S. are treated just like how we treated LLMs back at NLS – as the “Other”, excluding them from most college activities and harbouring a culture that viewed them as inferior. On multiple occasions the LLM Class discussion groups here would whip up a frenzy over the unfairly exclusive behaviour of the J.D. students or teachers, (the American equivalent of the LLB) towards the LLMs. Usually, LLMs are part of the same classes as JDs, and several episodes where my LLM classmates would complain about feeling discriminated against because their names were difficult, or because they weren’t getting the inside jokes based on American pop culture. I remember a particular episode when we found out that LLMs could not apply for editorial positions in the Harvard Law Review owing to their policies. For me, each of those conversations had a past parallel at how the LLM classes were treated by the LLBs (including me) in my time at NLS. And looking back, I found it even more absurd than the treatment here. In the U.S. the LLMs were part of the same classes and they could validly point to our foreign-ness and lack of American legal training to justify a measure of difference. But what made us so superior to the LLMs back home? Having a degree from NLS, a place which we bitched about to no end?

This piece by Abhinav Sekhri (Batch of  2014) captures some of his experiences of pursuing an LLM from Harvard and provides some food for thought. We, at Quirk, wish best of luck to those applying for an LLM and hope to hear about your experiences too!

I spent my last six months of law school on exchange in the Netherlands and this post is sort of an unsolicited recommendation letter for it i.e. for exchange in general, I wouldn’t want to take responsibility for Dutch weather. While I realise that not everyone can go on exchange not only because of the limited choices available but also as there are systemic issues that prevent students from availing of this opportunity but for those for whom the stars align – GO! 

Exchange programmes are quite the norm in Europe with the Erasmus programme funding intra-continental exchanges of European students. In fact Erasmus is so integral to their college education that European students refer to ‘exchange’ as the ‘Erasmus experience’. Some universities even mandate that students spend at least one semester abroad. The importance that is attached to exchanges as not only a form of cultural exchange but also a part of personality development is seen in other countries too. For obvious reasons this is not the case in India. The idea of ‘finding yourself’ is laughable. As you all know, activities that do not have a direct instrumental effect on ‘CVs’ and ‘job prospects’ are not universally encouraged by parents and university authorities. It is perhaps connected to the notion that travel is a break or a vacation and not an exercise to be pursued in itself because of the value it can add to your life. It doesn’t help that it can be prohibitively expensive without scholarship. But I digress, in this post I want to talk about how this fits into law school life.  

Essentially, exchange kicks you out of the law school rhythm you’ve formed after four years and drops you into a new environment. This results in exposure to new things- think of your first year in law school, where constantly being exposed to different things led to it being perhaps the year with the most being learnt in law school (See Spadika’s description of first year-http://www.nlsquirks.in/reflections-of-a-soon-to-be-alumnus/). On exchange you’ll be figuring out a new system of education, travelling, meeting people from different countries, living more independently, adapting to different cultural norms and learning about a new region of the world. The intensity of the change in environment and the freedom to navigate it on one’s own terms, makes you incredibly self-aware. While any new experience will give you a steep learning curve, I think having this experience in college is significant as the number of months you will have will be the maximum possible, the demands on your time few and the consequences of experimenting and messing up will be minimal. 

Moreover, it also gives you that over used concept in law school – perspective. After four years in law school, you would generally have been exposed to most of the major things law school has to offer and by the time you actually go on exchange you could have a fair idea of what you would like to do immediately after college and for the lucky ones, for a longer period of time. If you’re still unclear, being exposed to new and different areas of law, methods of teaching, legal issues and opportunities will help more in the process of deciding than staying in law school. And for those who are clear on how they want to shape their careers- the thought process you applied in law school might not necessarily apply in the world in large- stepping out of law school to test your reasons will make you surer of them and I think you’ll be better for it. 

I think one element of exchange that enables the above two things is flexibility. In law school, while theoretically there is enough time to pursue non-NLS mandated interests or activities; we all know that it’s not how it plays out. 4 hours of class, 6 days a week, a set-in-stone project and exam schedule; add to it the very human inclination to procrastinate and a trimester just whooshed past. On exchange, while you may not necessarily have more time (your choice in university will influence how much time you have to devote to curricular work); in general you will definitely have more flexibility to shape those months in line with your priorities and interests.

For me, my desire to go on exchange stemmed from a wish I had since school to backpack across Europe for a few months. So going into the exchange, most of my ideas of how it was going to play out were shaped by the desire to see the maximum possible; I didn’t really have any expectations of it being of any other value. As the months went by though, I was struck by how true all the platitudes about exchange and travel being a transformative experience was. I can’t offer one particular instance because they were so many- the rambling conversations with flatmates, studying courses you actually enjoyed, biking in all kinds of weather (be it snow, hail or something in between), the relentless mundanity of cooking for yourself daily, traveling on a shoestring budget in unfamiliar places, making friends (even if only for a day) in hostels around the world and countless others. All of this cumulatively was not only tonnes of fun but also led to many firsts while at the same time enabling me to look at my own life with fresh eyes.  

So why give up your last few months in law school? Potentially miss your last univ week? Voluntarily increase your interaction with the exam department? Turn up in July to give exams that you missed? To quote Jhumpa Lahiri, “Before it’s too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it.”

]]> http://www.nlsquirks.in/exchange-offer-best-deals/feed/ 0 http://www.nlsquirks.in/taking-projects-seriously-how-our-incentive-structures-are-broken-and-how-to-fix-them/ http://www.nlsquirks.in/taking-projects-seriously-how-our-incentive-structures-are-broken-and-how-to-fix-them/#comments Sat, 18 Jun 2016 10:16:05 +0000 http://www.nlsquirks.in/?p=1323 Continue readingTaking Projects Seriously: How our Incentive Structures are Broken, and How to Fix Them]]> This article was written by Aradhya Sethia (Batch of 2017).

This article is not about how to write a good project, nor is it about how to scam it well. Instead, this article is about how to make sure that project writing becomes an ‘activity’ in law school, beyond a mere ‘course component’. 68 exams, 37 projects, 4 internships, and a few conventional law school competitions later, I have realised that the best way to learn and understand law is to write about it. Though a lot of ink has been spent on why academic writing is important, this analysis can be left to some other piece on some other day. However, this article proceeds with the assumptions that project writing per se (not necessarily in the current format) is an important activity, so much so that we need to actively promote it. In the first part of the piece, I explore the seemingly obvious reasons for the failure of the current incentive structure. In the second part, I argue for generating some incentives (and subsequently, culture) from within the student community, instead of waiting for systemic reforms (apologies for sounding like a research methodology at this point). Obviously, many things can be done from the side of the administration and faculty to make project writing more meaningful. However, in this piece, I am only concerned with what we (the students) can do.

Project Writing as a Course Component: Why our Incentive Structures are Broken

Arguably, project writing lies at the heart of academics at NLS. Projects, by design, are actually meant to be the part of our coursework that allows us at least a modicum of autonomy and an opportunity to be creative. One can make innovative arguments, and use projects as a means to getting a grasp on some interesting ideas. In some cases, one can even choose their own project topic for a given course. Then why are projects that should ideally be the most exciting part of our coursework still such a burden for most? I believe, the reason lies in broken incentive structures, and consequently, a lost culture of academic writing.

Better Projects, Better Marks?

First, perhaps, is the absent correlation between quality of projects and the marks awarded, the most tangible of all benefits to us. Most of the teachers mark us within a defined band – so, the difference between an excellent project and a below-average project only translates into a difference of a few marks. For many of us, getting those extra marks is not worth the effort required to make an excellent projects. Even if those marks are relevant for some, they are often fooled by the randomness in marking of projects. Many teachers mark projects without even glancing through them, judging you based on your ability to sound impressive for five minutes. Sometimes it’s plain favoritism. Therefore, the most obvious of the incentives, i.e., ‘more marks’ has clearly failed to be a good incentive.

So why should we still think projects are worth sweating over? Because, there may be other incentives beyond your course. Let’s explore the other incentives that may motivate some of us to write good projects.

Personal Satisfaction

One such incentive can be personal satisfaction. Writing good projects improves your research and writing skills. These skills may be relevant to you in the long-term. In the short term, it only gives you personal satisfaction. What does ‘personal satisfaction’ mean here?

For many of us, there is a loss of confidence in our intelligence over time, if we don’t satisfy ourselves of our capacity to produce good work. Sustained progression of courses where project making is a painful, uninspiring process and coursework which is sub-par often blot out inspiration to produce something we can be proud of. And without it, we have limited avenues to enhance our legal thinking, research and writing skills (our soon to be bread and butter). This mixture of growth, actual learning, and confidence is what I mean by personal satisfaction.

So, can the sinking boat of legal writing survive on this incentive? I believe not. Incentives like this are very personal, and may not work with a majority of students. If we believe that project-writing has to sustain successfully at an institutional level, it is probably not a good idea to rely on this essentially personal incentive.

A Pat on the Back

For many of us, there is another very important incentive – honest appreciation by the professor. Let’s call it ‘appreciation incentive’. However, central to generating these opinions/appreciation, lies a basic requirement – for appreciating a paper, one has to read it. Unfortunately, 45 compulsory courses and 37 projects later, I won’t even exhaust ten fingers to count the number of teachers who actually read my projects. For the subjects where we are aware that teachers actually read and care about the projects, this ‘appreciation’ incentive clearly worked for me, as well as a significant number of my batchmates. Several of them outdid themselves, put in honest hours at the library, and made projects they were excited to present and defend before these handful of teachers who read them and engaged with them.

For some other subjects, I relied on a mixture of ‘personal satisfaction’ incentive and ‘more marks’ incentive. For the ones left, I couldn’t care much. This is the story of another broken incentive.

Getting Published

There can be another important incentive – that of getting published. It is not only one of the most coveted things you can have on your CV, but will also be something which will permanently contribute to the literature on that issue. Ideally, at least this incentive should work with a large number of students, but it doesn’t. There are, again, obvious reasons for the failure of this incentive. In an environment where every second day the Lawctopus feed gives you a list of 10 scam journals, publishing per se doesn’t seem to be a difficult task. But, publishing worth achievement requires much more than writing a good project. There are very few good journals at national level. Most of these journals are either annual or bi-annual, so they automatically limit the number of slots. Further, the effort required for an international journal is way more than what is required even for an excellent project. Finally, the selection of an article for publishing is also hurdled by a bunch of random factors like the relevance of topic, your position, etc. Due to sheer lack of opportunities and due to the amount of hard work that is required, publishing does not work as a strong enough incentive for a large section of students.

Therefore, my conclusion at this point is that though the aforementioned incentives at play may work with certain individuals, they are not sufficient to promote project writing at the institutional level.

So, what do we do?

What do we talk about when we talk about legal writing as an ‘activity’

Simply put, an activity, as opposed to course component, is something that does not form part of curriculum. Hence, the primary incentives that make students involve themselves in activities are external to curriculum. Barring a few exceptions, we have largely excelled at such activities at NLS. According to me, at least in part, these successes can be attributed to them being activities, that is, their incentives are beyond curriculum.

Moot courts can prove to be a good comparison.They are also academic in nature, most of the major moots requiring as much or probably more hard work than a good project would require. What can be the reason that students at law school are continuously striving towards producing high quality moot memorials (without their exemption marks really dependent on the quality of arguments in the memorial), and not projects?

Arguably, it may be because some may find researching for moot courts more intellectually stimulating than projects. But that is not universally true. Unlike in moot courts, where the issues are already identified for you in most cases, a good academic argument requires you to also identify the issues yourself. This act of problematising a seemingly simple legal provision or principle is often more challenging and interesting for some individuals than working on a given set of problems. Therefore, the importance given to moot court as an activity over legal writing in law school is not merely due to characteristics inherent to mooting, but because of an institutional predisposition to consider and promote it as a highly valuable activity.

What makes it a highly valuable activity? Apart from the fact that you learn a new area of law and the CV value (which the humble academic paper can also deliver), other factors such as immediate peer appreciation, travelling, etc truly make it a valued activity. This immediate peer appreciation goes a long way in creating a culture where moot memorials are not seen as mere replacement of projects. Therefore, though there is a curricular incentive with moot courts, i.e., project marks, our attitude towards moot courts is not that of ‘course component’, but that of an ‘activity’.

The challenge that lies ahead of us, as students, is – can we, as a student body, make academic writing a thriving activity at NLS?

The erstwhile Student Advocate

Before we explore what we can do, it’s important to know what used to exist. What we know now as ‘NLSIR’ was earlier known as Student Advocate. In its early days, it did not comprise of articles by area experts, but articles by students at NLS. Therefore, getting your article selected for Student Advocate and subsequent publication used to be a ‘thing’. It not only got you published but also got you some immediate peer appreciation. However, Student Advocate later became a leading law review of the country. It was no longer restricted to students at NLS. With its transformation into a law review, it ceased to provide a viable avenue of publishing to current students at NLS.

SBA Working Paper Series

Therefore, while we are no longer have Student Advocate, there is probably a need to fill that void. Starting an SBA Working Paper Series, either under the SBA or by relevant committees/research centers, that provides students with an avenue to publish their projects can be one such solution. It may also incentivize students to write better projects, so that they can get published in the next series of Student Working Papers. In fact, after every trimester, it should be one thing that students look out for. Apart from the purpose of promoting project writing, it can also serve another purpose beneficial to our institution – that of contribution of knowledge to outside world.

Students produce knowledge by writing good projects, but once those projects are marked, they often turn into paper waste. Some of these projects contain very valuable research that may be relevant for people looking for such knowledge, may it be for research, for policy or for something else. The SBA Working Paper series is a good way of ensuring that the knowledge that is produced within the confines of project writing is also managed properly. As compared to IIMs and IITs, the studies by whom are continuously reported about and published publicly, NLS as an institution produces little knowledge for the public. We have the benefit of being the best law school of the country (isn’t that what the rankings say?). Good research work by the students on any area of law has to be taken seriously by outsiders. SBA Working Paper Series can be one such way where the knowledge produced within the boundaries of NLS is thrown out in public. This further incentivizes the students to work on their projects with the incentive of being published in mind.

Culture of Academic Writing

While the incentives definitely play an important role in promoting an activity, we need to generate a culture of academic writing. Generating such a culture will require us to take multiple steps – such as seniors organizing legal writing sessions for juniors (like we have debate training sessions) and having paper discussion groups, wherein one can discuss her paper with her peers (part of what PLDG currently seeks to do). Above all, it is important for younger batches to not treat project writing just as a course component that has to completed for those 35 marks, but start taking them as lessons for learning legal writing.
Perhaps, we all agree that glass house libraries and classes in law school do not equip us with everything that a professional lawyer requires, may it be in litigation, corporate job, teaching or policy work. To be fair, we don’t even expect such training from law schools. However, the bare minimum that law school environment successfully does, or at least is supposed to do, is to teach us to research and write well. Through the system of written project assignments, law schools aim at achieving that purpose.

The author would like to thank Sharwari Pandit and Akshat Agarwal for their inputs and discussions without which this article would not be possible. 

What do you think of the expectations students have from college now that is has become famous and very well known?

You all have a better Family Law course, I can tell you that. (laughs) But it’s true. Now there are higher expectations of the students, that’s right. And the thing is that the teachers now are teaching fewer courses. Earlier, some of them would teach two courses, or a group of three would teach two or three courses. That must have been hard for them. So definitely the expectations are different.

Do you see a difference in how students generally conduct themselves?

The student body is not a body anymore. In the sense that you all don’t really come together to do anything. It’s all either delegated to your representatives or most people don’t care. Earlier, people did. If anyone needed some fundraiser done, everyone would come together. There was no question of not having quorum at GBMs. Now you can’t have quorums at GBMs. There will be no political participation by students at any level. And also in terms of personal interaction. If somebody’s sick, hardly anyone goes to the hospital to see them.

DISCLAIMER: In light of accounts of multiple instances of sexual abuse by Prem Ayyathurai (see here) having been revealed recently, we at Quirk would like to urge our readers to be mindful of the content they’re consuming. We would like to clarify that having published him does not amount to an endorsement of his actions. Our support, as always, lies with the survivors. We condemn his actions wholeheartedly.

In a bus and on my way to Pune to meet friends at FTII on the 100th day of their strike, I was reading the English translation of Govind Pansare’s ‘Shivaji Kon Hota‘ (‘Who was Shivaji?’). The book was written in an easy, conversational style, where Pansare weaved from his admiring analysis of Chhatrapati Shivaji to taking potshots at latter day goons from 96-caste Marathas who stake their claim at his legacy. But, what I was entirely unprepared for, was the excerpt from a letter written in 1669 by Shivaji to Aurangzeb on the matter of the Jaziya tax. Shivaji, the man in whose name the worst violence has been inflicted upon minorities in Maharashtra, reminded Aurangzeb that the Quran called Allah ‘Rabb ul alamin‘ [The Lord of All Men], and not ‘Rabb ul musalmeen’ [The Lord of Muslims], and went on to say that to show bigotry (by Aurangzeb) for any man’s own creed and practices was equivalent to altering the words of the Holy Book.[1]

To be honest, I was angered by my own ignorance of the language of this letter until I came across it yesterday, given, particularly, that I was a student of the Maharashtra Board until I joined law school. That the memory of Shivaji, a ruler who employed numerous Muslims in his army and administration, and who fiercely maintained respect for the followers of Islam, should have be trampled over by Sanghi political outfits is not surprising. Indeed, it is easy to falsely portray the legacy of a man who was, simply put, a Hindu king surrounded by many Muslim rulers. What really begins to fuck with you is how easily these lathi-carrying, chaddi-donning, garden-variety fascists are usurping the legacy of radicals like Bhimrao Ambedkar and Bhagat Singh.

For years, now, Hindutva platforms in India have portrayed these two men on their pantheon of luminaries during religious events. I will try to be as trite as possible here – after decades of political work in which he engaged with other leaders in the Hindu community as a part of the struggle to unshackle the Untouchables of India, Ambedkar converted, and led the conversion on October 15, 1956, of lakhs of Dalits, out of Hinduism. “I renounce Hinduism, which is harmful humanity and impedes the advancement and development of humanity because it is based on inequality, and adopt Buddhism as my religion”, declared Ambedkar.

It is actually easier to make a point about Bhagat Singh when it comes to religion, generally. On being chided that it was his arrogance that blinded him from the existence of God, Singh wrote an essay famously titled Why I am an Atheist, where he declared calmly,  “I know, in the present circumstances, my faith in god would have made my life easier… But I do not want the help of any intoxication to meet my fate. I am a realist.”

Even so, chaddi-wallahs think they can get away with usurping the memories of these two men and using them to further their communal agenda.

We Need to Know

This brings me to why I felt I had to write this note. I would have prefaced this with ‘We need to remember‘, but that would presume we knew certain things to begin with. Let’s not even go into whether Sanatani Hinduism sold by the Sanghis is legitimate or not. What I do want to talk about is the terrifying fact that most people like you and I are not aware of – Hindu, the Sangh may or may not have been from its inception. Patriotic, it surely was not.

I remember that in my second year at law school, I came across some ICHR publications titled ‘Towards Freedom’ –  a collection of meticulously researched books where news clippings and excerpts from reports of the British police over the years of the freedom struggle had been collated. Leafing through them, I came across the story of how the publishing of this series had been stopped during the years of the Vajpayee government; a lot has been written about why the publications were halted, the most obvious being that these books revealed the ‘role’ of the RSS during the struggle for India’s independence – the organisation’s most conspicuous contribution was its sheer absence from the struggle.

A report of the British Intelligence Bureau, dated June, 1946, quotes a senior RSS leader Dada Bhai declaring that the Sangh‘s struggle was not against the British but against the Muslims. RSS founder Golwalkar’s speech during the 1945 Dussehra celebrations at Nagpur quotes him as defining India’s independence as ‘Hindu rule and the protection of Hinduism and Hindu rights‘.

If we are surprised by the fact that today, the Union Minister for Culture declares that Indian education system shall be purified of its English influences and that it is not in our culture for women to step out in the dark, it is only because we are shamefully ignorant of how complex our history is, as a country. But I write this, because I feel we crossed that point in time long ago, when we could afford to be this ignorant. Today, it is desperately important for us to acknowledge that India, for the chaddi-wallah, was never the nation that was won on August 15, 1947, and will never be the republic that was founded on January 26, 1950.

We need to know, and acknowledge, that we are being ruled today by a confederation of loosely co-ordinated organisations centred around the RSS and these are people who have proven themselves capable of a most single minded, vicious campaign of defining what it is to be an Indian. Worryingly, they have become very competent at it.

Not too long ago, I was having a chat with a friend of mine, who refuses to be as unsettled as I am by the pace at which the political circumstances around us are being transformed. I am not talking simply about the fact that Modi has come into power a year ago and numerous churches and mosques have been defaced, Muslims wapasi-ed to ghar, and Heads of institutions like FTII and Nehru Museum changed and Subramaniam Swamy is suggested as the Vice-Chancellor for the Jawaharlal Nehru University. We must understand that the Sangh has been at it patiently for over seventy years, and what we’ve seen in the last twelve months is their coming of age. Are you and I going to remain naive and behave like the three-day meetings of Union Cabinet ministers with Sangh leaders does not constitute a brazen threat to the Constitutional directive that the Government answers solely to the People of India?

Last week, then, I met some friends in FTII on the 100th day of their strike. The media, as is its wont, mischaracterised their struggle as a challenge solely to the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan, when in fact their battle addresses something more terrifying. As you would know, along with Chauhan, four other paragons of sangh mediocrity were also appointed, included one Mr. Narendra Pathak. What you may not know is that Mr. Pathak was the State President of the ABVP, whose goons beat up the students of FTII in 2013 for screening a documentary named Jai Bhim, Comrade.

We Need to React

This is the message of the Sangh government. They will appoint as your college administrator the man who presides over the organisation that beats you up for screening documentaries. They will write out of textbooks the advise that Ambedkar gave to his followers, that of rejecting Hinduism – his 19th vow amongst the 22 he demanded during the historic conversion to Buddhism. They will thrash a Muslim man for travelling with a Hindu woman.[2] They will publicly accuse a woman of prostitution, who dares to question the many inane ideas of Narendra Modi.[3] They will shut down NGOs and try and jail the women and men who struggle for justice.[4] They shall deny the fact that even Hindus eat meat, they shall tell us what Hindus eat.[5] They shall project Bhagat Singh as one of their own- Bhagat Singh, who said to the Hindus, that their ancestors were ‘shrewd, who tried to find out theories strong enough to hammer down all the efforts of reason and disbelief‘. They are testing us, student community in India, we who are young and constitute the future of this nation, trying to find out if we have the spine to say ‘Enough!‘ as they ride rough-shod over our fundamental rights.

The danger in the confidence engendered by the lie that our nation is 3 millenia old is pressing – our nation does most definitely lay a claim to a history that is centuries old, but India is only 69 years old. And 69 years is a very small period of time in the evolution of a nation-state like India – the United States was on the verge of its own existential questions, leading to the Civil War, by the seventieth year after the drafting of its  Constitution. The Sangh understands this – the numerous reported and innumerable unreported instances of the societal violence unleashed by it since 2014  is the first time a government from Delhi has proclaimed a naked attack on the Idea of India. “We are not saffronising India, the people have given us the mandate”, they say.[6] Thirty one percent of the electorate of India, 17 crore individuals, do not even constitute thirty percent of the population of India. A mandate from 17 crore Indians, out of 125 crore, can never mean the mandate to throw out the Constitution and establish a police state hell bent on denying the values enshrined in our Constitution. As of today, the few students of FTII are, if not the sole, definitely the most defiant response to this violence. Ours are extremely political times, we would be too naive to believe that we can remain apolitical and distant from these happenings. For you and I, it shall not be long before we are compelled to choose where we stand in the long march of history.

[1]M.J. Akbar, A Mirror to Power  (2015); R. Gandhi, Revenge and Reconciliation: Understanding South Asian History (1999).

[2] Mangalore Moral Police at it Again: Muslim Man Beaten Up for Talking to Hindu Woman (Firstpost, August 25, 2015.)

[3] Shruti Seth’s Plea… (Indian Express, July 5, 2015).

[4]Greenpeace India’s Registration Cancelled (The Hindu, September 4, 2015); FCRA Violation Case: CBI Moves Supreme Court for Teesta Setalvad’s custody (DNA, September 25, 2015).

[5] Meat Ban in Mumbai… (Hindustan Times, September 13, 2015)

[6] It pains me when the West encroaches upon our Culture… (Indian Express, September 11, 2015).

Abdal Akhtar mentions on Lawctopus of how he thinks that the current format of UPSC is most suited to law students. What is your opinion?

I do agree that the Mains format is suited to law students but I would qualify that by saying that this exam is not about any single stage or paper. You need to perform consistently well across 3 stages (prelims, mains and interview). So while being from Law school might help with writing answers in the Mains – it could equally boomerang against law students. I know of several people from law school who called me and said they were having difficulty in being concise and informative because our first reaction as law schoolites is to put in some faff, be a little verbose. Habits which could lead to elimination if not checked.

So yes, use your legal knowledge and skills but also remember to tone down the faff, the tendency to be verbose, or to take excessively critical or opinionated stands.

Also remember that during your interview, the standards they will have in terms of how you articulate your stand will be exceptionally high and on a bad day this could actually work against you. I personally know a couple of seniors who got hustled during the interview with the familiar “But you’re from NLS! How do you not know this?”

What values did you pick up at JSA and Luthra? Could you have made it to Rank 14 without spending years at JSA and Luthra?

JSA is a truly wonderful firm and if the kind of work it did (regulatory litigation) was more interesting, I would have totally stayed back there. It is possibly the most democratic and equitable Tier 1 Law firm I have been in. I do have a principled objection to family run  and promoter driven firms but at the end of the day, money talks.

I have not been at Luthra and Luthra long enough to comment, but I am thankful to both firms for not firing me even though there were months when I must have billed 5 rupees.

I honestly do not know if I could- I would not venture into such conjecture but yes without JSA none of the vacations or the BMW would have happened! So for that I am thankful!

There are a lot of Law Schoolites preparing for civil services at the moment. Any specific advice for them?

At the risk of repetition please do this exam only if you are sure you are going to love studying for it.

Do not do it because you think Law firms are boring or you want to be an “IAS.” Carefully weigh the pros and cons of your decision. I am sure I will crib when I get my first Government of India pay cheque in September 2015- But let’s hope the 7th Pay commission redeems my decision!

Always have a good backup- I have no qualms in admitting that on a bad day I could have ended up with Rank 400 and this exam requires as much luck as it does hard work. So give it your best shot- Do what you can do from your side and leave the rest to destiny-

Most importantly do not treat success or failure in this exam as a reference point of your abilities- Be resilient if you fail and move on- Be humble and level headed if you succeed. All the best!

Which course in Law School changed you the most and why?

This is a difficult one! I do not think I can name any one single course which changed me as such. Looking back at my Law School days, I do think the combined effect of the faculty and the peer group did shape the way I thought about a lot of things. But I think the three most memorable courses in no particular order have to be:

History: I do not think Lizzie and I ever got along with each other and I am sure we both had very strong views about each other’s ideologies/personality types, etc. But looking back, I think History was the first course where you realize the power of interpretation – the role of editorial/historical/journalistic bias and how not to take anything you ever read for granted. It really does teach you how to question and critically analyze so many issues which you otherwise wouldn’t have given much thought. I definitely would like to believe that over time I became far less of an entitled prick I was in my first year.

Economics: Somu’s one liners. The trouble he takes to keep students engaged in the course and the kind of rigour with which you need to read just to pass. I think even though I was a science student I developed a keen interest in Economics which helped me later on during my UPSC prep days.

Constitutional Law: Sudhir Krishnaswamy threatened us that if we did not read the actual text of the case law he quoted in class we would sink like stones. He kept his word. It was possibly the first (and last) time I ever read the actual judgments for a law school course!

What is your one regret from your time at Law School?

I think I did not do justice to my college education. I was pretty lazy and laid back and undisciplined. Most extra-curricular activities took place over the weekends and I was usually chilling in Hyderabad at that time. As long as I didn’t get too many repeats and was never in danger of losing a year I didn’t care much for academics. I hope the path I have chosen helps me redeem 5 years of laziness and debauchery!

What is your favourite memory of Law School?

During my first year we were in charge of chaperoning a lot of senior judges and bar council members. I was messing around with my batchmate George’s phone but inadvertently sent a “What’s up asshole” to [an unnamed senior dignitary]. The problem was he had the number stored and was livid with the hospitality committee and started blasting some of my seniors who had no clue what was going on because he thought one of them was George. In the meantime these guys called me to clarify, but by then I had already taken the cab which was supposed to pick him up to the Brigade Road Subway because I was really hungry. The end result was we got show caused by EMC, which banned us from stepping out for a week. This resulted in a turf war with SDGM whose then convenor personally took me out of the campus to prove a point. Needless to say, I was never allowed to pick up any NLS guest ever again and cab usage was strictly monitored.

In an interview elsewhere you spoke of ‘NLS Values’ and experiences opening your eyes to a whole new world and expanding your horizons. Could you elaborate on these values or experiences?

Before I came to NLS, I lived in a pretty rarefied atmosphere and never gave serious social or political issues much thought. I also had this myopic view of merit and thought that I am here in this college because I am the 27th best possible candidate in that year. I had a rather existentialist view on a lot of issues – yes, the world is an unfair place. Too bad. But I think over time I became much more aware of issues like caste/class/religion – their complexity and how difficult it is to actually find solutions. Whether it is discrimination faced by Dalits or women or Muslims or any other marginalized groups – I now realize that there are some serious structural issues that we as a country need to solve if we can even hope to achieve a modicum of inclusive growth.

We keep hearing the phrase “Falling Standards of Law School”? What do you make of this phrase? Do you think the standards are actually falling?

I honestly think no single individual or senior has any aukaad to pass judgment on the standards of law school as they were/are. A lot of idiots just say that to feel better about themselves rather than make a serious point or contribute in any way to the solution.

Having said that, I do believe that academic standards have been relaxed between my time in first year and fifth year. I don’t think it would be proper to comment on what they were in 2004 and what they are now because I honestly have no idea. Some faculty members did tend to resort to very ad hoc marking patterns. I am sure the institution does have several problems but a lot of them are not unique to NLS alone. But I would like to believe that relative to other institutions, law school is still better off, even though we may have a lot of ground to cover and actually realize our full potential.

SDGM has become a controversial committee in Law School in recent years, how did you deal with SDGM in your time here?

SDGM was the bane of my existence in first year and I think I had a record number of show causes, I can’t be sure but around 10 or 11. But to be fair to them, while a lot of us might like absolutely no restrictions on our freedom to smoke or drink or do whatever else, I do strongly believe that someone has to do that thankless job. The problem arises when some of the members go on a power trip and make a special effort to target certain people they don’t like or be assholes in general. I think a fair bit of give and take is involved on both sides. I never got into too much trouble with SDGM after first year, although I do remember having this one birthday party at Nyx where I happily went home but a lot of other guests landed up late and drunk at 1AM at Gate 1. It was dubbed the Keshavananda Bharati show cause with some 30 people getting show caused in one of the classrooms in the Acad. Ah, good times.

There are a lot of first years reading this interview, anything in specific that you would like to say to them?

Law school will probably suck in the first few weeks or month – You are away from home – dumbass seniors will be asking you for your top 5 or trying to engage in needless debate over whether Bengal is better than Bihar or AP is better than Telangana- I kept thinking of going back to NALSAR in my first month. But I have no doubt that the next 5 years are going to be the best 5 years. Don’t waste these years drinking on the terrace or being an over competitive asshole in the library- Find a good balance and I’m sure you guys will kill it.

On a lighter note, Ganga or Cauvery?

I was in Ganga but Cauvery was where the party was at.

What was your standard order at Rohini?

At Rohini, it was dal tadka and kadhai chicken. But I usually ate at Peking.