This article is written by Ramanuj Mukherjee, CEO, LawSikho.

Do you discover important insights about yourself, your life and what you want to achieve once in a while? I do. I have a process in place for that, which I discussed here a bit.

But how powerful are these insights? Incredibly powerful. They can change your life if pursued and implemented.

I realised something very important somewhere in the first quarter of 2018, and it took me one whole quarter to implement.

I perhaps already knew it. If you asked me a question about it, I would have given you the correct answers, all the while failing to see the potential it held for me and for LawSikho.

This very important distinction can change your life, because it changed mine. It also changed the fortunes of LawSikho.

What is the difference between getting hired from college as a fresher and being hired as an experienced employee?

Understanding the difference was a key reason for our success at LawSikho.com as a course provider and why we are able to get our students placed with top organisations despite being a small internet company doing things in a very new and different way than what is accepted in the mainstream education system.

A fresher can be hired for his or her potential. If you demonstrate potential during your internship, interview etc, you will get hired.

This does not work if you are getting hired as an experienced employee. Then you have to demonstrate that you can actually do the work. You are hired for the ability, capacity or work you have already demonstrated, not just for the potential or promises you show.

In fact, many a times, the potential doesn’t matter. What matters far, far more is someone can come in and take care of things because the role is that urgent. These are also the kind of jobs where you get paid more.

People pay more for a solution for a pain in the neck today, compared to a promise of better tomorrow.

Getting a job for a demonstrable ability is far easier than getting a job by showing potential. For obvious reasons. The person with a potential has to be gradually, slowly trained. Does my organization have the bandwidth for doing this right now? Most people will answer this in negative and go for an experienced person who already know how to do the work.

In February 2018, I had a brainwave.

When we started iPleaders, we wanted to help people like ourselves (Abhyuday and I) – the ambitious law students who wanted to quickly become proficient in business law. We kept targeting these people primarily till 2018.

Yes for marketing and sales we targeted everyone else who may benefit too, but our real standards were stuck at the senior student level. We had a large number of lawyers and business executives too, but we understood the law students crowd best.

So the entire context of our thinking was focussed on this market. We ‘also’ tried to include others. The core audience was law students. A shift required a conscious and systematic shift. Instead of studying law students and their needs (on which we worked for 8 years and can claim some special expertise) we had to start studying the problems of law firms, law departments of companies and other business executives in depth!

It was new. It was difficult. It was scary.

But the goal inspired us. Why not take our game a notch higher? What about taking up a more difficult challenge?

What if we could take experienced lawyers and give them access to even higher knowledge? Or even high quality knowledge in other areas of law they are not yet do conversant with and shorten the learning process?

That will be harder to achieve yes, but also more rewarding in every way.

Also, the law students will immensely benefit from such courses, because if they can demonstrate real ability to do legal work rather than just their potential, it will take them much further!

So that’s what we did.

We said enough with insights and lessons, how about we help people to create demonstrable ability to do high quality legal work?

We had to change many things. We had to introduce weekly exercises. We had to start giving detailed personal feedback to every student. We had to substantially change our syllabus in most of the courses.

We had to even discard some courses we were happy to run earlier because they were great for students but not up to the mark if we had to sell to the experienced lawyer. We plan on upgrading them and launch them later again in new avatar.

But yes, the new focus inspired the entire company to up our game, and it made a huge difference to the way our courses are delivered.

Since then, the number of qualified and practicing lawyers as well as executives have gone up many fold. We also started attracting the attention of companies and law firms, all organically, and they started approaching us!

It was a turning point.

What is best is that this move has not only benefited the practicing lawyers alone. It has benefited the law students the most.

They can network with practicing lawyers inside the course. They can find mentors, jobs and guidance from people who are mostly otherwise inaccessible. It is also nice for working lawyers, because they don’t have to go far to find juniors or mentees.

But mostly, the most awesome benefit is this. Now the law students are learning high quality legal work, and are able to demonstrate these valuable skills to their potential employers rather than only demonstrating potential.

This means that they are preferred over all others when it comes to hiring.

We have seen this happening, and still find it amazing and incredulous, so I will not be surprised if you find it hard to digest.

But here is what, you can try out our upcoming courses absolutely risk free. Experience how you can learn to demonstrate your skills. To know how it is risk free, read this refund policy over here.

In 2018, we upgraded our ambition and climbed up the value chain. And this benefited everyone across the board, and put us in a better position than ever before. You bet our 2019 looks bright at the moment!

What was your break through insight of 2018 that is making your 2019 amazing? Tell me. Comment below. 

Here are the courses for which enrollment closes by 31st January:

Diploma

• Diploma in Advanced Contract Drafting, Negotiation and Dispute Resolution 
• Diploma in M&A, Institutional Finance and Investment Laws (PE and VC transactions) 
• Diploma in Entrepreneurship, Administration and Business Laws 

Executive Certificate Courses

• Certificate course in Advanced Corporate Taxation
• Certificate course in Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code