This article is written by Ramanuj Mukherjee, CEO, LawSikho.
I get this question frequently.
The truth is that if you are a topper in a top NLU, then it is pretty decent provided you follow a conventional well-trodden path. You can land a job that pays about 1.5 lakh per month in a big law firm. If its a slightly smaller law firm or a company, you can still expect INR 50,000-1,00,000 per month.
And then there are smaller organizations that will pay just INR 20,000 – 30,0000. They may not be your top choice, but even getting those is no mean feat.
There are close to 50,000 lawyers graduating every year. That’s a big number. Organized law jobs are not being created anywhere near that speed.
All corporate law firms taken together probably don’t even create 3,000 jobs for freshers every year.
Companies usually have much smaller teams and usually, do not have the bandwidth to train the freshers in legal skills. Hence the vast majority of in-house legal departments usually give wide berth to fresh graduates. Only those with a sufficiently large team dares to hire fresh graduates.
Let’s assume the company does hire a fresh graduate, who is going to train them to be job ready? If there are a lot of senior lawyers in the company they can take this responsibility. But if there are 3-4 lawyers in a legal department it rarely makes sense for them to hire a rookie. They will much rather hire an experienced lawyer. Very few in-house legal departments are open to hiring fresh graduates.
A lot of well paid legal jobs have been shifting in-house recently. This is also a big challenge for fresh law graduates.
So for most of them, doors of law firms would be closed. Same for jobs in in-house legal departments.
Of course, there are government jobs where you have to crack exams first and then interviews to get a job. This is one reason why judiciary exams are written by lakhs of people every year. This is at least something they can figure out. We Indians definitely know how to prepare for and appear in exams. It’s our true comfort zone. But the competition is very high!
Only a few make the cut anyway.
Where do the rest go?
Most end up interning with some lawyers who pay them peanuts and use them as clerks and manual labourers managing files and following them around in courts. 99% of these lawyers have no systematic way of teaching anything to their juniors although that is the excuse for not paying a subsistence salary.
The situation is so bad that young lawyers opt to driver Uber cabs, do amazon delivery and other menial jobs to make ends meet. A lawyer I know was recently complaining about how the chaiwallah around the corner makes more money than he does.
Learning in the courts and senior lawyers chambers are very slow. Mostly people are left to their own device. They are given bad and outdated advice. Recently I overheard a senior lawyer telling his juniors proudly about how in his times he used to memorise citations and how that made him intelligent. He advised his juniors to spend one hour a day memorising citations with a straight face.
I had pity on those juniors.
So basically the fate of a law student depends on whether he or she can find a good mentor who will be kind enough to teach them. If you are already a lawyer, you can only hope to learn from a kind fellow lawyer who may be open to showing you how he does his things.
However, the most important way to learn remains self-learning. You learn and absorb everything you can and hope for the best. When a client comes with a brief, you accept it no matter how little you know about the same and try to learn on the go.
It’s not only hard, but it’s also dangerous. It compromises your reputation.
This is why everyone says that it takes a long time to build a law practice.
But once you learn it, the world changes. You are in high demand. Recruiters chase you with a lot of job offers. Ask the ones who leave a law firm or a big company after a few months about how easy it is to land another job. They get more pay, better perks, and superior designations.
The key to success in the legal profession is knowledge. The truth is that what you get from your average legal education, even in NLUs or whatever law colleges, is simply inadequate to function as a lawyer. You need to bridge the gap, and you will be ready to take on a real job. And at that point, getting a job is not tough at all.
It need not be that hard if you have a system to learn things fast, and accurately, through proper guidance and regular practice.
Imagine a gym with proper equipment, dietary supplements and coaches where you can go and learn how to grow your legal muscles.
That is exactly what LawSikho is.
So what is your chance of landing a great job or starting your legal career on a high note if you do one or more LawSikho courses? Very high. I would say 100%, because at that level you barely have any competition. Most of your peers will not even imagine learning these things (probably not even know that such things exist forget learning them), that is how advanced our courses are.
Law firms love our students so much that they are ready to give assessment internships and interviews simply on our recommendations. Want to know which firms? Write back to us. I will tell you who all got jobs recently through this process. You can verify if you like!
Of course, I can’t guarantee jobs or anything else if you don’t follow the curriculum, don’t do exercises, fail to attend classes and so on. Just like there is no guarantee that you will lose weight or gain muscles after buying a gym membership unless you actually show up there and hit the equipment.
So yes, 100% chance if you do our LawSikho courses, and if you don’t, far far less. I don’t even want to state a number.
All the best. Below are the courses launching in next 30 days. Enroll now and don’t wait for the last day. After the last day, weekly exercises and classes will begin. I prefer that you enroll earlier and start reading the material and watching videos so that by the time the exercises and classes start, you are already on top of things and perform at the highest levels.
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Diploma in Cyber Law, Fintech Regulations and Technology Contracts
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Diploma in Entrepreneurship Administration and Business Laws
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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)
Executive Certificate Courses
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Certificate Course in Advanced Criminal Litigation & Trial Advocacy
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Certificate Course in Advanced Civil Litigation: Practice, Procedure and Drafting
