This article is written by Ramanuj Mukherjee, CEO, LawSikho.
Today I was counselling a student. She said she was overlooked at an internship because she wasn’t from an NLU although she worked harder, was far more dedicated and gave it her all while an NLU student who didn’t work half as hard as her, got a call back for another internship.
What is the solution, I asked her.
I will do an LLM abroad, she said.
The race for tags. I have seen it so many times. People think that they will get a good tag and that will solve all problems.
Do you think it was possible that the boy who got picked was more presentable, or that he had some other skills that you didn’t have?
She thought for a while and came up with several answers. However, she was more dedicated while this boy wasn’t as focussed, she said.
This morning I was reading a piece of news about how Hindi medium students protested the UPSC results saying that students of English medium schools got picked while Hindi medium students didn’t do well in UPSC. Is that fair?
That’s a question you should not worry about. Maybe it is, maybe it is not.
I know that as a thumb rule the world prefers well spoken, articulated, suave people. That gives an inherent advantage to people who are brought up with that kind of training. Hence the demand for convent educated brides in our country!
I went to a government school in vernacular medium till I went to NUJS. I learnt to speak broken English when I was in college. I was forced to get better so that I wasn’t overlooked for opportunities.
I wasn’t sociable or suave. I am not any of those things even today. I was an extreme introvert. But I learnt how to hold an audience spellbound. I learnt how to connect with people. I learnt how to crack an interview. I learnt how to get what I want. I had to. I wanted success, not the solace of being able to complain about how unfair the world is.
I don’t care how unfair the world is, the only question is how you are still going to win.
At the core of it is humility. At the core of success is knowing that I am not entitled to it. I am the underdog who is going to fight and it’s not over until I win it.
When it comes to success, I do not take anything for granted. Success is not an entitlement. I expect the world to be unfair and prepare to still win.
How would you prepare?
Get another tag? It may or may not work. The shortcut to success is to focus on generating value for others.
Don’t worry about tags. They will come along the way. There will be a bunch of them in your cupboard if you are a value generation machine.
Worry about how you are going to generate real-life value for others. How will you win cases for your clients? How will you get an FIR registered when police refuses to do so? How will you get the police to investigate when after registration of FIR they decide to do nothing? What will you do when the other side lies in the court, produces false evidence, makes dubious statements?
How will you negotiate deals on behalf of your clients? How will you get out your client’s dues that are stuck for ages due to some babu sitting on a file? How will you get justice to people who are unable to get it?
There are enough people in this country who are suffering injustice. You can make a difference to them. If you do that, you can take a small percentage of the value you generate as your fees or salary.
The rule is that, be ready to generate 10x value if you want x money for yourself. Then ask for your x. Unhesitatingly. Unapologetically.
Here is how I apply it to LawSikho. Let’s say you take our contract drafting course. You are going to learn how to draft over 100 commercial contracts. You can easily charge anything between INR 10,000 – 50,000 for drafting a single contract. After doing the course, you could easily draft dozens of contracts in the years to come, earning many times over the fees you paid to us. In fact, I expect you to be able to pay for the course many times over even before you finish the course if you start taking freelance work on the side. So we have some tutorials for that also within the course itself.
Till 15th April, the contract drafting course is available at INR 23,600. It will be INR 30,000 after that (we are raising prices of all our courses from 15th April). It is worth it, and I will not hesitate to charge what it is worth.
And then I have to deliver the value I promised! If we can’t deliver that value, we will have hundreds of unhappy customers who would complain about us and ruin our reputation. Then everyone will stop buying our courses.
If we do our job well, then the news of good results generated by our students will spread and we will continue to grow. Hundreds of happy students will bring thousands of new students through word of mouth.
That is how success works. It is not going to be any different for you. Not even if you get a degree from Harvard, or the tag of any prestigious organization.
You need happy clients. Who will be your clients and why are they going to be happy? Whether you do a job or own your own practice, this is a question you must answer as a lawyer.
What value are you going to generate for people? How much will you charge for that? How are you going to learn to generate that value?
All our courses are geared towards teaching lawyers, law students and business executives to generate tremendous value for their clients. Here are the upcoming courses. Enrol before 15th so that you don’t have to pay increased prices.
Here are the courses:
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Diploma in Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment laws
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Diploma in Cyber Law, Fintech Regulations and Technology contracts
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Diploma in Advanced Contract Drafting, Negotiation and Dispute Resolution
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Diploma in M&A, Institutional Finance and Investment Laws (PE and VC transactions)
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Diploma in Entrepreneurship, Administration and Business Laws
Executive Certificate Courses
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Certificate in Labour, Employment and Industrial Laws for HR Managers
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Certificate Course in Advanced Criminal Litigation & Trial Advocacy
- Certificate Course in Advanced Corporate Taxation
Test Preparation
