Legal Jobs: Law graduates say there's need to sync industry, LLB courses to improve prospects, pay

NEW DELHI: Compared to students graduating from most other professional courses, law graduates have a tough time finding employment, especially if they are not from the handful of top law colleges in the country. Garima Sethi, a 2021 graduate from a private law college based in Narela, Delhi, and affiliated to the Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, had to face many hurdles on her way into a law firm.

“Placements are a myth in law colleges,” she complained and was echoed by law graduates of lesser-known law colleges across states. Teachers and placement departments make little effort in organising job drives, they said. Students who emerge from such colleges are either forced to practice independently or have

Several recently graduated students from law colleges are either practising independently or have found jobs in small law firms after much legwork. The pandemic has only worsened the situation.

This year in Government Law College, Mumbai, an august institution held in high regard, around 10% students have been placed through college placements out of a batch of 200 and with an average salary package of Rs 3.5 to Rs 5.5 lakh per annum, said Aditya Lele, an advocate who graduate from the college in 2021. Similarly, no student from Sethi’s college was placed through college placement, she said. The students themselves secured jobs with paltry salaries of Rs 1,20,000- Rs 1,56,000 per annum. “Even after doing a five-year BA LLB programme, we are getting such packages with no job security,” stated Sethi.

However, dismal placements have been a problem for years.

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Akshya an assistant legal aid defence counsel at District Court Dwarka, New Delhi, and graduated from the University School of Law and Legal Studies, IP University, Delhi, in 2018, adds: “Top 20-25% of the batch got a decent job that too by their own efforts. Rest of the students struggled to get a job after pursuing law."

Weak bar council, teaching dynamics

According to the University Grants Commission (UGC) and Bar Council of India regulations, lawyers with only master’s degrees are allowed to teach in colleges. “But every senior counsel or lawyer won’t get a master’s degree. So the system of employing good teachers is taken away due to this aspect. Further, for part-time courses, a meagre salary is paid to part-time teachers. Institutes do not give proper salaries to visiting faculty as well,” says Lele.

Akshya, who doesn’t use his last name, is an assistant legal aid defence counsel at District Court Dwarka, New Delhi, and graduated from the University School of Law and Legal Studies, IP University, Delhi, in 2018. He said: “Top 20-25% of the batch got a decent job that too by their own efforts. Rest of the students struggled to get a job after pursuing law. The main difficulty is the huge gap between what they teach at the law school and how the real world works.”

Sharing his experience from the district court, Akshya added that the basic problem is the quality of education because there are dozens of lawyers who “cannot read a simple act properly but are given a license to practice in courts”. This is due to a lack of a proper test, he argued. The All India Bar Examination, he said, has an opaque system. “The marks of this exam are never declared and anyone appearing is given the license. We have just replicated the bar exam process prevalent in the US and UK without understanding its nuances and relevance. Besides, the exam is quite rigorous in other countries and on the contrary, we have a goofed-up system with no proper way to induct good quality lawyers in courts,” noted Akshya.

Garima Sethi, a 2021 graduate from a private law college based in Narela, Delhi, and affiliated to the Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, had to face many hurdles on her way into a law firm.

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Lack of practical training

The curriculum taught in many law colleges is 18-19 years old, complained some students. “The law we study is different from what we practice in courts. Also, the curriculum is from much before we were born,” said Pulak Gupta, a recent graduate from Law College, Dehradun. Lele noted that only expensive law schools have a dynamic curriculum according to the industry requirements.

Moot courts which simulate court proceedings are critical for practical training but treated superficially. “Moot court competitions place a second or a third-year student in a litigation situation and to present the final argument in the case. [In the real world,] a senior advocate is hired for such situations and cases. A student who has recently graduated will take years to reach that position. Students initially need to learn about cross examination, drafting a brief, how to file a petition or to argue is an admission of a petition, etc. [through moot courts]. But none of the activities or curriculum are synced with industry requirements,” said Lele. Companies look for knowledge of practical things in students like when arbitration is awarded, under which conditions. “High-end companies want your intellectual soil to be ploughed at least to meet the basic requirements of the industry,” states Lele. He feels colleges must have a department that reviews the demands of the market periodically.

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Poor quality, increased competition

Students from smaller institutions have also had to contend with false promises of employment and internships. “During the first day of internship, I was told that it is a paid internship on a contractual basis, and after two months my performance will be judged. However, I wasn’t paid for two months and received no support from the college,” said Sethi.

After looking for a job for two months after leaving college, Sethi finally landed a job as a junior associate in a law firm with a Rs. 10,000 monthly salary. “The competition in the industry is way higher compared to earlier times. Students who are not from big institutes have to go through these problems,” Sethi said.

Akshya maintained that the legal profession is hobbled mainly by poor-quality training and a flawed licensing exam. He pointed out that other than law firms, law graduates are also hired by the law processing outsourcing (LPO) agencies which complete paperwork or provide research assistance to law firms based in the United States and United Kingdom. “But even for that, you have to read and write well. And there are a good number of lawyers who can’t even do that,” he said. “After completing graduation in law, anyone can become a government professional or a judge or law officer in companies, or join banks, assist startups or go towards litigation,” Akshya continued, “However, the question is: is our education system preparing you
for all this?”

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The Bar Council of India had grown concerned about the quality of law colleges as well and has, over the past few years, made attempts to tighten monitoring and regulations. In order to check the “mushrooming growth” of poor-quality law schools, in 2019 the BCI unanimously resolved to impose a three-year moratorium on new institutions. The next year, in 2020, BCI launched a national-wide verification process suspecting many ‘lawyers’ were holding fake degrees and served notices to 30 colleges for flouting faculty-recruitment and other norms. The moratorium on new colleges was lifted in June 2021 and the BCI announced it will conduct surprise checks and directed law schools to fill all vacancies in colleges.