Super Lawyer

Category: Entrepreneur and Alternative careerists

  • Rwitwika Bhattacharya on work at the World Bank, authoring books and founding Swaniti

    Rwitwika Bhattacharya on work at the World Bank, authoring books and founding Swaniti

    rwitwika-bhattacharya-1Ms. Rwitwika Bhattacharya graduated from Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government. She has previously worked as an Associate at the World Bank and is the founder and currently the CEO of the Swaniti Initiative, a non-profit that delivers development solutions to elected officials in India.

    In this interview, we asked her about:

    • working with the World Bank;
    • authoring two books;
    • her work through the Swaniti Initiative; and
    • the involvement of lawyers in her start-up organization.

     

    Could you please introduce yourself, professionally and academically, to our readers?

    I am the Founder and CEO of Swaniti Initiative, a non profit that delivers development solutions to Members of Parliament in India. Our goal is to provide them with either knowledge insight or implementation support on development issues. Prior to Swaniti, I was working at the World Bank and UNFPA. I have a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard and Bachelor’s in political science and economics from Wake Forest University.

     

    You have considerable exposure when it comes to working at the World Bank. How was your experience of working at the World Bank? What was your area of work there? Was there any particular reason for your deciding to leave?

    The World Bank is a phenomenal place to work and I was very fortunate to have gotten this opportunity. The reason that the World Bank is so great because you are surrounded by problem solvers who are academics and practitioners, working on complex issues. To be a part of an environment where you find such driven people, you begin to also focus on understanding potential ways to solve problem. My area of work was labor economics and I ended up doing a lot of research work on job creation. I was lucky enough to co-author two books during my time at the Bank. The reason I left the Bank was because I was passionate about working on governance and polity in India. When I saw there were no such organizations within the World Bank, or even in India, I started one.

     

    You have co-authored two books during your stint at the World Bank. Can you elaborate on the two books written by you?

    Sure. My first book was on Frontiers in Development Policy where I had written a chapter on political economy and development. Basically the chapter focuses on seeing how politics can be a catalyst in bringing development. We looked in to the Mauritius case study where we saw how a focused political leadership was keen on revamping the economic system and how this completely transformed the economy. My second book was ‘A Primer on Labor Policies’ and this looks in to the complexity of job creation. You see, job creation is not the result of one thing going the right way but of many things working out together: a strong education system, solid infrastructure, access to capital and stable government are few of the many things.

     

    One of your books ‘Frontiers in Development Policy’ looks to foster discussion amongst policy makers on growth and development. Would you say this is possible and if yes, to what extent? How far do you think the insights provided by you in your book have been incorporated?

    Absolutely! Even the smallest decisions by our policy makers have an exponential effect on development and growth. Let me give you a substative example: on Gandhi Jayanti we saw the Prime Minister pick up a broom. It was a phenomenal example because the ripple effect was almost every single one of my friends also picking up a broom and taking the oath to keep their city clean. Now, this is illustrative of how even the smallest step by senior policy makers can transform communities.

     

    You are currently the CEO of the Swaniti Initiative, an initiative of which you are the founding member. How did you come about setting-up this Initiative? Why did you feel the need to do so?

    Back in 2009, when elections were taking place in India, my friends are I started thinking about the electoral process. During our conversation we realized that even though so many of us were keen to contribute to strengthening governance in India, there were too few channels of entry for young Indians to work with elected officials in supporting them in supporting them in governance. This was ironic because independently some of us (including myself) had worked with elected officially, specifically MPs and Ministers, to realize that there was a strong demand to have a demand for knowledge and human capital from the side of the elected official. Then it was only natural realizing that there is a demand and there is a supply so why not connect them. Thus Swaniti was founded. We launched our first pilot in 2009 and since then we have continued to grow.

     

    Could you elaborate on the kind of work you are involved in through this Initiative?

    We are focused on providing two kinds of support to Parliamentarians and elected officials:

    a) knowledge insights on key developmental programs and/or

    b) on the ground implementation support.

    On Knowledge Insight we distribute a series of knowledge products like briefs on government schemes, insights on innovative projects and updates on developmental progress.Additionally we also connect with MPs through one-on-one meetings to provide them with insights on specific knowledge queries they might have (for example we have MPs who are keen to know about specific government programs). ‘On the ground implementation’ consists of programs where we travel to the constituency to study a problem and provide solutions to them. Our goal here is to not just provide solutions but also help implement them.

     

    Keeping in mind the administrator : people ratio, do you think that the high difference in the ratio is the main problem leading to all the developmental problems or are they other factors that contribute to the problems India is facing?

    If we were to solve any problem we would see if the bottleneck is in terms of financial resources, human capital or lack of ideas. In India’s case, it’s not that we are a poor country (look at the size of India’s budget and the amount provided in grants and aid by international and domestic agencies) and we certainly don’t have a dearth of innovative ideas. The issue comes in implementing these ideas and programs and this is primarily because we have lack of implementors. There are very few government officials and those who are there are overburdened. How do we strengthen the system in this case? We see MPs and elected officials are a rung of government who are keen to bring ground level change, however they lack either the knowledge or the human capital support. Thus, we work on providing both.

     

    In what manner are the education levels, of elected representatives and people, and poverty factoring in the development process?

    India is in a state of flux. Are citizens are getting more educated and exposed to development, their expectations from elected officials are also increasing. Subsequently the delivery of goods and services from MPs and MLAs is also needing to increase. I think the Modi-wave in the last election is indicative of how people’s voting behavior is changing: very few people would have predicted so many people voting for a focused policy change.

     

    The Swaniti Initiative provides opportunities to work with MPs and MLAs. Have the people, who have applied, been from a diverse array of vocations or there is some concentration from a few particular fields?

    Yes, we have had people ranging from architecture to business to law work with us. We are particularly excited when we see lawyers because they have a keen understanding of policy issues and a linear way of thinking. Some of our stellars Fellows have been lawyers.

     

    In your opinion, what is the kind of experience lawyers would be exposed to if associated with the Swaniti Initiative?

    We are currently looking for Fellows and research associates within Swaniti. For lawyers working with us we can assure you an opportunity to work not just from a policy research perspective but also to interact with policy makers and explore how programs get implemented on a ground level. For those looking to work at the nexus of research and program implementation, Swaniti is the place to be!

     

    What are the different ways in which lawyers can contribute to the Swaniti Initiative? Can the opportunities provided be said to be challenging for lawyers?

    Yes. We have an incredible team and we are proud of our team members. We feel like that the work and the company will be rewarding for incoming lawyers.

     

    Lastly, what would be your message to law students and young lawyers who want to pursue a career in the entrepreneurship or their own start-up?

    I would say that the hardest decision for any individual seeking to be an entrepreneur is to take the ‘plunge’ and begin something. We are often nervous about prospective failures and therefore vulnerable to steering away from entrepreneurship. However, I can tell you from personal experience that starting something by yourself is one of the most rewarding things you could do! So just take the dive, head first.

  • Deepu Krishna on starting up with DK Studs, cracking CLAT and authoring a book

    Deepu Krishna on starting up with DK Studs, cracking CLAT and authoring a book

    deepu-krishnan-1Deepu Krishna graduated from NLIU, Bhopal in 2006. Currently, he is the Director of DK Studs, a law entrance preparation coaching. He set up this institution after working with a law firm. We asked him about:

    • Starting up with and building DK Studs
    • Advice to law students who could’t make it to top NLUs
    • Skills to crack CLAT
    • Authoring ‘Lexis-Nexis/DK STuDs CLAT’

     

    The career of a lawyer in India is still just a backup option for most students. What motivated you to choose law as a career? Did your family and friends not suggest you to go for Engineering or Medical Studies?

    As a child hailing from a middle-class family, I was often commended by my parents for my ability to come up with prompt and witty conversational replies and reactions. This was indicative, according to them, that it was the black and white that was the uniform most apt for me. When I was in the 10th standard, I made one of the most rebellious decisions of my life, by opting for Commerce even though I had obtained good marks in Maths & Science.

    I remember being called by my cousins, who are from the IT sector and live abroad, threatening to disown me if I took up commerce. My decision was perhaps considered this rebellious since I belong to a traditional South Indian family which believes that “Engee’nears” are the most gifted creations of god on earth. However, being the stubborn lad that I am, I opted for Commerce because I knew I wanted to do Law and prove each of my disbelievers wrong. I researched extensively and a cousin of mine from Bangalore helped me prepare for the National Law School entrance exams. I remember now that the one thing that motivated me to study was the fact that one day I would to be my own boss and work in an office where I set the work culture and not be just a part of the crowd. I dreamt of owning an SUV before I turned 26.

    I planned to relieve my Father from all burdens after his retirement, which included not taking any financial aid form him for my higher studies. I even vowed to marry the girl that I had liked right from my childhood. My Friends called me too mature for my age of 17, but I had to just that after I lost my brother in an accident and. I knew that being an average student, I could achieve my goals only by pursuing Law. Today, I am proud to say that I accomplished all of them. I appeared for NLSIU and NLIU, and I was successful in getting admission in both. However, I opted for NLIU as I had lost my Brother the previous year, and my Mum wanted me to stay back in Bhopal, rather than go to Bangalore – the city where my adventurous personality had resulted in me breaking my limbs. This was the one time that I finally listened to them, unlike in the past.

     

    Tell us about your life at NLIU-Bhopal?

    In the first class I attended at NLIU Bhopal, our then Director, the legendary Professor V.S. Rieki bellowed in the class, his words of advice : Law is for smart students and those who feel they can handle pressure, however remember that you have to live the life of a hermit and work like a Horse”. Within months after understanding the curriculum and the set conventions inside the law school, I did decide that Prof. Reiki was right, however I would also enjoy my life like a law student. I take pride in saying that I have been taught by one of the best faculties in the history of NLIU Bhopal. Prof. V.S. Reiki, Prof. Moolchand Sharma, Dr. Ghayur Alam, Prof. Surya Deva, Prof. Rajiv Khare. Prof. Uday Pratap Singh, Raj Shekhar Sir to name a few who have not only shaped me as a law student, but also been a law mentor. I am nothing but an amalgamation of all these legends.

    I have no shame in saying that I do copy their style of teaching and I suppose that makes me whatever my students call me. If I have to sum it up in one word, I’ll call it “Renaissance”. It was a completely new “Me”. I came from an all-boys school and was totally shy, lacking both confidence and public speaking skills. My world started with Bhopal and had Bangalore in its dreams. My reasoning was confined to the then MTV and Zee classic shows. The Constitution and the Rights I had known till then was confined to what my Civics classes had taught me. In just 6 months, my Dad observed that there was this “Class” in me. From peer to parents, everyone recognised that I had transformed into someone everyone could now look upto.

    A remarkable incident was when my friend, a commerce graduate, called me to train him for his IIM GD-PI interview mock drill and asked me to train him. He was a graduate back then, and I was still an undergraduate but he was of the belief that my interpersonal skills had graduated much above him, and that I could train him to be like “Me”. This was the one moment when I got a hint that training was an alternate career I could consider. As a student, I was average student who used to score average marks in subjects I disliked, like CPC and exceptional marks in subjects I loved, like Constitutional Law, IPR, etc. Another major positive I gathered from my law school life was the politics and backstabbing in Law School, since it made me ready for the life ahead. I used to lament on my decision to take up law, since I had good friends in school, and here everyone was mean and selfish. But once out of law school, I faced bigger betrayals, not once, but thrice in my career. Things got ugly to the point where a cartel published a malicious, defamatory and paid article in a yellow paper, to shake the monopoly I held. They did achieve their objective, but they couldn’t break my spirit. My students used to ask me, “Sir, how do you handle these things and still work with all your might?”I would reply, “In Law school they trained me for these things as well, and even if I do get affected, I know how to bounce back.”

     

    Law school can be monotonous at times. What did you do to keep yourself busy? What activities did you participate in and how did they shape up your career decision?

    Well, I don’t agree with the statement that it can be monotonous. It may be true for those who want to remain only with books and spend the majority of their time in the library. My law school life was completely different, as I said, thanks to my mentors who told me that studying law is beyond books, and is more practical. I did most of my projects using the empirical method, which was fun and educative. I remember going to a red light area for one of my projects and coming back crying on achieved through the legal system. I realised how women in our country, though worshipped and idolised, still struggle to achieve equality, be it inside a house or a Multi-million corporate office. As I was fascinated by Corporate law. I remember taking assignments on Transnational validity of laws on Bankruptcy, Insolvency, Formation etc. I made a few friends from Harvard Law School and Yale through a conference on the same.

    Today, when I hear the Law ministry contemplating on these issues I do feel proud to have learnt and researched on those issues, which truly shaped my thinking. I never felt bored throughout the five years. Yes, I must not lie: when my friends from other courses were graduating when I was in the third year, there was surely this unnerving feeling that my graduation was so far away. Yet, I kept myself busy with many extra-curricular activities to subdue this agony. I am currently pursuing my L.L.M from JLU, and many ask me the reason behind this long break. Well, after getting placed and starting my own venture, I just felt that I needed to learn more and update myself. Thankfully, right now, I am working under very good patrons like Prof. Dr. C. Gurudutt, Prof. Dr. Yogendra Shrivastava and Dr. Shobha Bharadwaj Madam who have been rejuvenating my thinking. After graduation, I missed my law school and had decided to invest one year to upgrade myself and even now, I am involved with researching, and I plan to be a part of some seminars. This is almost an addiction for me now.

     

    What kind of internships did you do while you were a student? Are there remarkable experiences during your internships that shaped your career choices later?

    Well, they were largely Corporate in nature, barring a few that I did as a first year student with a few NGOs. I loved researching and advising, and in one of my Internships, I remember a senior advocate telling me that my interpretation skills are good. You can either be a good Judge or a Teacher. I used to observe a lot of things as a student and study their societal impacts. I had written an article on the Jessica Lal murder case, and one day, as an intern, I happened to meet Mr. D.P. Yadav, since the advocate whom I was interning with was counselling him. I still remember the interactions between both of them, since I witnessed how Law can make the powerful kneel before it.

    If you ask me about the most remarkable internship I had, it has to be the Judicial clerkship I did with Justice B. N. Shrikrishna. Sir is a legend. He is a Sanskrit scholar and each evening after work I remember sitting with him and discussing Constitution of India , the principles of Law, comparing and analysing them in the light of Upanishads, Bhagwad Gita etc. He had written an article on Maxwell v Mimansa, and I still use it in my constitutional law classes to give students the insight on the spirit of law. I had a deep interest in Hindu religious philosophy and Sir, being the scholar that he is, enhanced my curiosity. He used to teach us how a point of law is deliberated, discussed and decided.

    He told us why study of law is a power, a power to determine what is right and wrong in the society. He is such a good human being, He was so compassionate. He knew that we were living away from our parents, so he used to make us have lunch and dinner with him so that we didn’t spoil our health through junk food. I learnt a lot from him. I suppose that the mentor that students adore in me is because of the skill of being compassionate, considerate and warm hearted to a student’s curiosity, which is something that I learnt from Srikrishna Sir.

     

    What are the skills you have learnt at internships and you could not have learnt otherwise? Do they still feel relevant to you?

    Well, Internships do teach you a lot. Outside the office: Firstly, if you are in a cosmopolitan city like Mumbai, you learn how to be street smart. If you are in a Metro like Delhi, you learn how to handle pressure and power from people possessing it. Inside the office: well it depends what on the kind of associate you are assigned. One of the primary lessons that I learnt was that, in a firm, there is a reporting time, but the time out depends a lot not just on your boss’s mood but also upon the nature of work you have been assigned proportionate to the deadline given to you. Internships tell you specifically that law is more than what the book reads. Internships are your gateway to a job placement if you do them correctly and with diligence.

     

    You worked with a law firm before starting DK Studs. What made you make the jump?

    Well, in short- The creator of Law entrance prep in India- Sachin Malhan. I remember him convincing me over a coffee why it was his belief that I was not just a good teacher but also had good managerial skills. He told me how what we do is not just teaching but changing lives and giving children an option to explore the growing field of study.

    I would be lying if I said that I didn’t enjoy corporate litigation. Justice Ruma Pal had once praised me openly in the court room for my eloquence and clarity. I remember giving a tea party at the Supreme Court canteen to celebrate the feat. But if you speak about job satisfaction, I did that feel teaching pulled me towards it more. The decision to jump came after a case I won for my firm. Quite contradictory, but yes, because by winning the case, I rendered a female aged 60 homeless. The same day CLAT results came and the All India rank 2 holder was my student. The joy these students shared won me over and I decided that I always wanted to be on the winning side and never wanted people losing.

     

    Why did you decide upon opening a law test prep coaching? What motivated you to start DK Studs? What is the story of your start-up?

    I always resist the notion of people calling me an entrepreneur- I would rather call myself an Acadprenuer {I have coined it myself}. You can’t be a business man if you are a teacher, a mentor. Business is not what you do with students. I would rather treat each of my student as a family. This trend of start-up has started in this pious field because more and more businessmen are venturing into it. They do treat it as business. I somehow can’t agree with that. Flipkart could be a start-up; Alma Mater could be a start-up.

    When Sachin Malhan started law entrance prep, business was secondary for him. He quit Amarchand Mangaldas and was not a jobless person or from a family which owned a fortune. He quit it and started this entire industry because he felt for it. I remember him telling me that he likes teaching and each class gives him a different high. He knew his skills and the call from inside. I belong to that school of thought. I don’t have sales target, even a sales team to assist me. I don’t maintain relationships with the media or press and you won’t even see any of my ads screaming things which I can’t prove. Coming back to why I started “teaching and mentoring students at DK-Studs”, when I left LST, I remember it was because I had to attend to my dad’s health and a competitor was placing me as a National head with more jump in all forms in my home town. It was again Mr. Malhan who said “I would love to see you as a competitor rather than join one, you are like a brother, and joining the competitors goes against ethics and what I have taught you.”

    When I came down to Bhopal, a school friend of mine proposed that we both start a partnership. With the confidence I had, we opened up a venture and in a single year managed to give Madhya Pradesh its first NLSIU selection and a ratio of 89% selection. We even made Hindi medium students successful in CLAT. The high it gave me cannot be explained. Today, I am associated with CLAT possible for our CLAT training, and DK STuDs is basically now a major educational services unit which caters to different needs of law graduates.

    I am starting a programme “Lex Academia” specifically for those students who don’t get through CLAT; I feel they are similarly talented and just could not do justice to those 2 hours. This is my way of contributing to those who couldn’t clear CLAT directly or indirectly. I do hold myself responsible if they don’t, and this way, I can help them in becoming what they once dreamt of becoming-a good legal professional, even if not from a National Law School. If they decide to follow law as a career option, we have planned a course which shall train them in all the skills which make them a perfect law student, i.e. we shall train them on those skills which are required to survive in the profession. We shall also help them in placements and internships.

    I have a dedicated team who are graduates from Harvard, London School of Economics, Cambridge, University Of Edinburgh etc., helping me out in this programme. I have started a small mediation cell called “Proxy-Path”, which is basically a venture by me, along with my students who have passed out of Law schools-some of them who are in fact still pursuing their graduation, but keep doing the clerical work. And, believe me, I am not doing this as a start-up. These are all dreams and we are just making them real. A dream I once saw sitting at the last bench of my classroom in NLIU – of leading similar minded people.

     

    With so much of competition existing in the coaching and teaching field, what makes DK Studs different from its peers?

    From my viewpoint I don’t have competition because I belong to the genre which created this market. As one of my student put it – you are the market, they devise separate plans of marketing against you and that itself is evidence of your stature. Today we are in a position at DK-STuDs that we select our students -you can’t get into this academy just because you want to. We don’t fill in large chunks of no-hopes who are doing Law just because their friend is doing it, or they love the parties in law school. We have an interview system, a Psycho metric test and a two week trial class and the student has to undergo our trials and only then we allow admission to them. This command we have is because we have already undergone the stage they are in, and currently we are in a position where we can afford to be this choosy. I told you that we don’t have a marketing personnel or department. There are no calls made by us or schemes that we come out with, like they do in a business enterprise. We don’t give discounts, (the term surprises me because one cannot give a discount on education!) we have scholarships which we give to academically proficient students and students who are from weaker financial backgrounds.

    The scholarship is named after my late brother and so it is close to my heart. We are costly not because we want to be, but because I pay my faculties well and keep them content. There are institutes who are taking in large chunks of students and charging not even 50% of what we charge, and students do understand the difference when it comes to national ranking of CLAT possible in every mock test. Faculties with more than 9 years of experience with pan India fame teach them. Now the reason why DK-STuDs is different from its peers could be an unlimited number of things that I can boast about. However, I would just want you to deduce it from the fact that, when we started this firm, it was not as a business but as a craze, and a dream, something you will feeling every student and alumni of DK STuDs. Even the students that I have taught through my Youtube video are close to me.

    Our Alumni is the strongest in any National law School and the camaraderie they share can even be seen there. Today, my students call all Bhopal is irrespective of any coaching, a Dk-Stud by default, which is in itself the evidence of how we are placed. As I was giving you this interview, I just received this information that an Alumni of DK-STuDs has been chosen as Miss India-New Zealand. We are everywhere and all we do is appreciate what good others do, get shocked on their mistakes and boasts and just smile on the way they compete with each other. I feel it’s not about being different. It’s just about delivering what you promise and we do that each year. On a personal level too, I am the happiest amongst my competitors. I have a family, and I give time to them.

    I have a loving wife who helps me with my academy. When I return home, I have a 2 ½ year old son who welcomes me with selfless love. I am pursuing my Post Graduation with my own earned money. I do not belong to a business family and did not have a financial backing, but still made an academy out of my own hardwork, without anyone’s help. I never followed a trend, rather created trends in the market, which others follow, like we launched CLAT & Commerce under the same roof and people are trying to ape it already. I do everything I once dreamt of as a child, like owning portable gaming device, etc. Well, happiness and peace of the heart have been my biggest earning.

     

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    What are your plans regarding DK Studs for the upcoming years? What are the top three things you would require to keep the growth sustained?

    As I have already told you, the name of DK-STuDs itself means “My Students and I”. There are plans which I have with my students when they graduate, and the ones who have graduated are already working on that area. We have collaboration with CLAT possible and that is now really working well with the pan India connect we have. I contribute to their growth with my goodwill and they do appreciate it. Together we have become very strong. The other two projects I have on my mind right now are on task list. Again – I am starting a new field, so I am so pepped up about it. It is me helping the students who saw failure in CLAT realise that irrespective of any law school you are in, you can work magic with acquiring these skills that we shall teach. In Proxy Path we handled 3 cases and managed to get 2 of them reconciled. By the age of 40, I plan to enter freelance teaching, giving these projects to the able students I have. I already have offers from University of Wellington; they made the offer after watching my YouTube videos. I would want to teach Jurisprudence and subject of law at University levels on a freelance basis. I am designing few lectures for the same and my research, too, is on the same field. I have a deep interest in philosophy and would want to come out with my own theories in Political science and Global Justice. As I said, when I chose teaching, it was not that I did not have anything to do. I knew what I was doing. I had already planned my dream ahead.

     

    Do you think CLAT scores are truly indicative of a student’s potential? What kind of aptitude do you think is necessary to crack CLAT?

    No. Some of my real good students have not managed to crack it and some of my very average students have got through the best. I feel it isthose2 hours and the temperament you keep that counts at the end of the day. I read a lot of metaphysics and think that if you train yourself in the manner required to give you your best in those two hours, it is one of the easiest exams. But then, it is very difficult to be that sharp, and sometimes you just realise that in one go. Inside the campus, I have met students who don’t understand how they got in and don’t know how to survive. They just performed better in those two hours and got through, that’s the reality. My Endeavour with my new course “Lex Academia” is banking upon this feature, as I already told you. To me, any student who wants to create a strong career is more important than the horde which opts for it just as an option or backup

     

    For GK and Legal Reasoning sections, how important is it to read the newspaper regularly? What sections should one focus on?

    General knowledge requires interest, you cannot just cram and go. They ask you questions which are basic in nature yet they have some questions which require you to have a good deep knowledge. Cramming up current affairs won’t help, or even merely reading the newspaper or appearing in some quiz. If you are reading the news, you should have the ability to research and critically analyse it. You can do this only when you know the history, the backdrop from the viewpoint of science in some respects. Your geography has to be good to understand world polity. All in all, as I said, it’s about interest. If you don’t have interest, generate it through discussions and writing essays on the same. Debate on the issues concerning world polity and do not just read from the newspaper, read it in a very diverse manner. I recommend my studs to read “India after Gandhi”, and then read history. We discuss the Spartacus struggle against Rome and then how Rome is still alive and we link it to the Israel –Palestine issue. There is a lot we learn, and not just cram.

    Legal Aptitude requires just a strong sense of power of application of logic, given to you in the form of principle. An ability to stick to the question at hand, and not getting deviated and answering it in the spirit of the question asked.

     

    Students who top CLAT often claim that they never studied a lot; however many students who have, miss out on a good rank. Do you believe CLAT is all about innate skills, then? Or that a particular approach should be applied to clearing it? If yes, what should it be?

    I already answered that it’s about those two hours and how you handle pressure. Students who read more than 8 hours tend to disturb their own inner peace- they have conflicts going on inside them and that takes a toll on them. Aspirited student is smart and he/she knows how to manage time, and not drain his/her energy in a futile manner. As I said- “Meta-physics”, you see. I don’t allow my students to sleep between 3-5pm (the timing of the CLAT exam) because I feel that they should be at their intellectual best during this time. It does work for the majority of time.

     

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    Have you had students who were brilliant but still couldn’t make it to a National Law University? If yes, what is your message to those students?

    I did have. My only suggestion: Law is a profession. If you acquire good skills, you shall always succeed, no matter which law school you belong to. Coming from a National Law School, you do get an easy start but if you are good with your legal knowledge and your skills are apt, you won’t ever be let down by this profession.

     

    CLAT 2015 is probably going to be online; how do you think students should get themselves prepared for an online exam?

    It maybe a farce. I don’t think it’s possible for it to go online. They weren’t even able to enforce a proper online registration, now if the exam is done online, it’s going to be a much bigger issue. Undergraduate examinations, especially exams like CLAT, are better managed offline. However, even if it is online, we are well equipped, at CLAT possible, to handle it. So that won’t be an issue, with students accustomed to online testing.

     

    Do you provide any work opportunities for law students? Do you recruit undergraduate law students as part time faculty?

    Undergraduates in my academy only teach students how to crack CLAT and how to attempt questions like they did. They don’t take full length classes. These sessions help students interact with those who have been there, done that. Work opportunities for law students and graduates – yes, as I said, I have already recruited some of my graduated students and with time, we shall have an army of them. And that’s an additional advantage of being a DK stud -I trust them blindly.

     

    You came out with a standout compilation of study materials for students, which was one of the most sold books last year. How did you conceive the idea of the book?

    Yes, the book is called Lexis-Nexis/DKSTUDs CLAT study kit. The idea was conceived back in 2006. I was unable to find anyone who could understand what I had visualised. Lexis Nexis, with its young management team they, realised what I was hinting at. We wanted to tap into the unexplored area and give students something to learn from even while at home, without having to join any coaching institution. The book is different in many different ways, one of them being the “FAQ section”, where the student can actually obtain answers to questions he/she usually has problems with, related to some subjects. In the Maths module, we have answered questions like “When should I attempt Maths?” amongst others. This year we are releasing the 2nd edition and once again, there will be surprise for the students once they buy the pack. For confidential reasons, I can’t comment on the same, however the new addition is very productive for students of CLAT.

     

    What does it take to be an entrepreneur? What are the three great skills of an entrepreneur according to you?

    I already told you I am not an entrepreneur. I am an academician who knows how to create core value systems, mentor students and work out an academy with these values. I am alien to terms like Baniya, Gujju, Sindhi style, etc., which people usually use to define business in India. For me it has to a lot do with the mantra that if you love something – work for it, and achieve it. I read a lot of Richard Branson and Robin Sharma, and have learnt a lot from them. I cannot enumerate any three – I just feel that anyone in my profession should follow some simple things like, maintain ethics, and be a slave to them. Set principles and standards, and always stand by them. In this profession students tend to become like you. They follow you. You are effecting change, so it means a lot. Become a visionary to them, rather than making them business-minded. Give back something to the society in any form that you can, in a pro bono manner.

     

    Lastly, what would be your message to law students and young lawyers who want to pursue alternative legal careers or entrepreneurship?

    Law is an endless field. Once you take up law, you shall always remain a student. So if you seriously have this urge to learn things and always remain updated, you have chosen the right profession. If you think that it’s just a way to earn money and live your life easily, that is not true. Your real life will start post law school. Law school shall make you ready for it, but only if you are willing to learn. For alternate careers, Law shall surely increase your capacity to think, comprehend and create. It shall stimulate your communication skills and shall surely make a better manager out of you {managing grades, moots, project submission, series completion, etc. is tough, so you need to manage them}. Venture into anything only if you feel like doing it. You shall always succeed. Don’t do it because someone else is doing and he has found success in it. We all have our core specialities – it could be teaching, it could be music, it could be just about anything. Pursue it, and you shall always succeed.

  • Ashish Arun on being the founder of Offshore Research Partners, leading Expert Witness Profiler and entrepreneurship

    Ashish Arun on being the founder of Offshore Research Partners, leading Expert Witness Profiler and entrepreneurship

    Ashish Arun graduated from NUJS, Kolkata in 2010. As a student he started working on his entrepreneurial skills while starting up with Offshore Research Partners. He didn’t have to sit for placements as ORP had already taken off. Currently he is a Partner, Principal and Director at Expert Witness Profiling.

    In this interview we ask him about:

    • Starting up and managing multiple ventures
    • Journey of being an entrepreneur
    • Importance of a co-founder

     

    How would you like to introduce yourself to our readers? Please share your academic and professional background.

    I graduated from NUJS in 2010 and currently run Offshore Research Partners, a legal research and outsourcing firm based in Calcutta. I am also a partner in Expert Witness Profiler, LLC, which is a legal research product oriented company, based in the United States. Originally from Patna, I am based out of Kolkata at the moment.

     

    Tell us a bit about your childhood, your hometown and your pre-graduate life as well.

    The first few years of my life were spent in a small town of Bihar. When I was 5, my father moved to Patna, primarily to get me a better education. Many who know me from NUJS wouldn’t believe this, but I was actually pretty good at studies as a kid.

     

    The career of a lawyer in India is still just a backup option for most students. What motivated you to choose law as a career? Did your family and friends not suggest you to go for Engineering or Medical Studies?

    As a kid, I never wanted to be a lawyer. My father is a practicing lawyer at the Patna High Court and I had seen the struggles that a lawyer has to go through during the first few years and law as a career became a strict no. After getting a decent score in boards, the natural choice was either medical or engineering and I picked medical because I didn’t want to study math.

    As fate would have it, I couldn’t clear the medical entrance exams and ended up wasting a few years after my 12th. I still wasn’t thinking of law till my cousin (a successful practicing lawyer at the Supreme Court) convinced me that I should consider studying law. If not for him and the easy competition back in 2005, I wouldn’t have studied law.

     

    Kindly acquaint us with your college life and your aspirations in college. What activities were you involved in apart from the regular academic curriculum?

    College life was the best thing that ever happened to me. I made some of my best friends, right in the first few weeks of college and the next five years were beyond imagination! I was involved in student activities right from the first year and tried my hand at almost everything; even singing – something my friends still make fun of. I used to actively participate in organizing Outlawed, the NUJS cultural fest and would also volunteer for almost every other event that took place. Student representation was something that I really enjoyed and eventually served as the President of the SJA (the NUJS student body) in my fourth year. That was a great experience as it taught me many organizational and leadership skills which still help me in running my businesses.

     

    What kind of internships did you do while you were a student? Are there remarkable experiences during your internships that shaped your career choices later?

    Like most law students, I was clueless about what I wanted to do after law school. So I tried all kinds of internships. Some of the memorable ones were from the first year when we actually spent days sitting on Jantar Mantar with the team of Justice for Bhopal, helping them with research and whatever little legal help we could offer as first year law students. Another great stint was at the offices of Siddharth Luthra, who personally taught us the basics of legal research. That internship made me understand how the right approach to research can save a lot of time and help you develop a clear understanding of the existing legal position on any issue; something that helps me today as well in serving our clients.

     

    How did you fare in your academics at NUJS? How was the academic pressure? Do you believe that excellent CGPA is the key to all success?

    If you make CGPA the benchmark, I didn’t do very well at NUJS. A good CGPA shows you are hardworking and dedicated to what is needed even if you don’t really like it. A not-so-good CGPA, on the other hand, doesn’t establish that you are good for nothing. I don’t think most of us felt any academic pressure. I may be wrong but the semesters used to be pretty easy going and everyone studied just a few days before the exams. Obviously, there were exceptions but not many.

     

    ashish-arun-2

    You started a business while you were at NUJS related to the LPO industry. Tell us the background story a bit.

    Quite a few of us used to do research for Daubert Tracker, an American legal database, to earn some extra pocket money. I had managed a few third party research projects for them in my third year and realized that there was potential in academic and commercial legal research outsourcing. In March 2009, I was helping them conceptualize a new research product and that is when I realized that I wanted to work in the area of legal research and publication. It was a good opportunity as they were willing to outsource all their research operations to me if I could set up a team of lawyers in India. One thing led to another and by the time we started the Calcutta office in December 2009; we already had 3 clients sending us work on a regular basis.

     

    A big stumbling block for student entrepreneurs is arranging capital for the business. How did you handle this? How did you find your initial team for the business?

    Capital requirements are different for product and services related companies. Since mine was the latter, we needed very little capital to get started – just enough to rent a space with 2-3 computers, a working internet connection and some basic furniture.

    The initial team came from friends and their references. That is something I would change if I had to do it again, as friends seldom make great co-workers.

     

    Did you look for a co-founder? Is this important to start a business?

    Since I started ORP after working as a researcher for Daubert Tracker for a few years, Myles Levin (Daubert Tracker’s owner) was an automatic choice for a co-founder. He funded the start-up expenses and I had been working with him for several years to feel comfortable about it.

    Having said that, I am not a huge believer in the “must-find-a-co-founder” theory. Many people start businesses with friends without truly understanding what the other person is really bringing to the table. No matter who your co-founder is, it is really important to decide the expectations and responsibilities of each person before you decide to sail together.

     

    What did you do after your graduation? Were you looking for placements at all?

    One big reason to go ahead with ORP with six months of law school left was placement options. I wanted to give six months to ORP which would have given me a fair idea if it was going to work or not. If not, sitting for placements was always an option. Thankfully, it worked fine and I didn’t have to go look for a job.

     

    Can you tell us something about the Expert Witness Profiler and Offshore Research Partners as your businesses and how did you conceive the idea for these business ventures?

    Expert Witness Profiler (EWP) was a company that was our (ORP’s) client. When one of the founders of EWP decided to leave to focus on his original business, I was presented with an opportunity to co-own the company. We were already handling their operations, from research to delivery and even post-delivery customer support – so it seemed like a good option to pick a stake and co-own the company and I went for it. It was one of the best decisions I made as the business has been growing and it is always more rewarding to be a co-owner than a vendor.

     

    You won the Star Youth Achiever Award for the Year 2010-11. Tell us something about this. How does it feel to reach these heights at such an early stage in career? And how has your journey as an entrepreneur been so far?

    Yes, the recognition and the awards came knocking very soon – but they are a mere reaffirmation of the fact that you are moving in the right direction and doing the right things. If anything, it motivated me to work harder and make sure that the growth momentum is maintained and the companies keep outperforming themselves on a regular basis.

    My journey as an entrepreneur has been like most others, I believe – I have seen good times as well as bad. Business slowdowns and a sudden upsurge in the order books have both happened and we have learned as a team, every day, how to tackle problems better and keep moving forward.

     

    How difficult would you say the first few years were of your own business? Tell us about the highs and lows.

    ORP has been profitable since the very first month – so, thankfully, we never had any financial issues. Most of the problems that we have had are what I would call a “good-quality-problem”. For example, we found ourselves overwhelmed with work and several of us would spend more than 24 hours in the office on certain days. This may sound normal to someone working in a law firm but it doesn’t really happen in the outsourcing. We have seen slowdowns and plateaued growth for a few months here and there – something that very few businesses can avoid, but other than that, it has been a pretty smooth ride till now.

     

    Did you at any point of time doubt your career choice of being an entrepreneur? If yes, how did you cope up with that?

    Never. I know it is easier to say this now with 20-20 hindsight, but I am thankful that I never really doubted it as a career choice.

     

    How do you think knowing law benefits an entrepreneur? What are the prime hurdles that a non-lawyer entrepreneur is likely to come across?

    Everyone needs to know the law – it has its own benefits and entrepreneurs are no different. However, there is a huge difference in knowing the law and being a lawyer. Because of being a lawyer, I could draft my own Agreements and I understood the legal as well as the commercial aspects of it. Or, I could incorporate a company without using another lawyer to draft my AoAs and MoAs. But then, an entrepreneur can always seek legal advice for these issues. I do not believe that a non-lawyer entrepreneur would face any specific difficulties or hurdles just because he is not a lawyer.

     

    You are a businessman more than a lawyer now. Do you feel that doing a business related course like MBA would have been better than studying law?

    Most of the projects and businesses that I have undertaken till now and plan to take up in the future are related to law. And I would not have been able to do any of this if I didn’t study law. An MBA may have helped but not as much as studying law did.

     

    Would you like to pursue higher study some day? Why or why not?

    Absolutely – but just to be able to go back to campus as a student! There is nothing better than that.

     

    Do you take interns? If yes, what qualifies one for an internship at Offshore Research Partners and how should one apply for the same?

    We do take interns and the only real qualification is that you need to be a law student. We have an internship application form on our Careers page (www.orp-india.com/careers) and one can apply using that.

    Interns are selected based on the cover letter, the accuracy and attention to detail in their CVs and a little weight is given to the year in which the student is – the higher, the better.

     

    Many law students consider working at an LPO to be an inferior choice. Why is this? What are your thoughts on the same?

    The industry is still new and the general perception is that you do not get to do any cutting edge work – the work can be mundane and repetitive. However, nothing can be farther than the truth. Yes, a lot of work that LPOs do is repetitive but if you are bright, you can move up the chain quickly and participate in the decision making process – develop new solutions, work with clients directly and do things in a few years that would take you decades in a law firm. Expert Witness Profiler prepares background reports for attorneys not only because it is cheaper to use us (ORP does all the research), but also because many attorneys do not have the same resources or the research skills that our lawyers have developed through the years.

     

    Lastly, what would be your message to law students and young lawyers who want to pursue entrepreneurship?

    Just because one thinks that an idea is great and has a lot of potential should not be the only factor in deciding whether you want to go ahead with something. Most startups fail because there is no demand for the products or services they create. Therefore, it is really important to assess the market and make sure that you are either fulfilling a need that already exists or you would be able to educate your target market and create a need for your product or service.

     

  • Shweta Bansal on work at AMSS, leaving firm job for Civil Services and acing it

    Shweta Bansal on work at AMSS, leaving firm job for Civil Services and acing it

    shweta-bansal-2Shweta Bansal a graduate from NUJS, Kolkata, After a successful career with AMSS, she went for the Civil Services. With utmost diligence and determination, she successfully cleared the Civil Services exam. She gives an insight into her childhood, the hurdles in life which she overcame and how she has been able to mould her life into a real success story.

    In this interview she talks about:

    • Her life and journey as a law student
    • Preparing for the Civil Services
    • Books and other knowledge sources helpful in preparation
    • An insight into the interview process

     

    Please introduce yourself to the readers? Please tell us a little bit about your childhood and your background?

    I was born and raised in Lucknow and pursued my schooling from the prestigious La Martiniere Girls College Lucknow. My life took a drastic turn at the age of 6 due to a major spinal injury, after which for many years I had to push myself immensely to grapple with a disability. Gradually, with the support of family, friends, and teachers, I continued with my studies. My grandmother has been thoroughly instrumental in my life and is the reason behind my little success story. At the Intermediate level, I studied humanities with Economics and secured a top spot in my class 12th boards. My good performance at school and at extra-curricular activities can be attributed to my teachers, more specifically to Mrs. Bhavna Kalra who taught me the importance of standing up on my own two feet. Thereafter I pursued my law from NUJS and spent few of my most crucial and definitive years there, shaping and building my career in Law.

     

    How was your experience at NUJS? What activities were you involved in apart from the regular academic curriculum?

    [sociallocker]
    I look back at my experience at NUJS as a great learning experience and despite the struggles I encountered, it provided a strong base to my career in Law. I am a person with a keen interest in a variety of non academic activities and NUJS gave me a brilliant platform to explore various such opportunities to help groom me as a well rounded personality. I fared well academically despite several health challenges and had an opportunity to perform with my college band, participate in fine arts and sketching competitions both at NUJS and at other Fests and Cultural events. I was even fortunate to present my paper at Hong Kong on legal valuation of patents as a solution to farmer suicide due to crop failure.

     

    You secured a job with AMSS. What worked for you in securing the placement?

    My journey with AMSS has been the best experience of my life. In 2006 after completing a two and a half month internship with AMSS, New Delhi and I was offered a pre placement at the Firm by Ms. Anuradha RV who has been a constant guide and support throughout my career at AMSS and even after. The work experience and firm culture at AMSS is unmatched and goes a long way in understanding and dealing with different areas of law. My experience at AMSS was exceptionally good and Mr. Shardul Shroff has been like a father figure in my life, Ms. Gunjan Shah and Ms. Purva Chadha played an instrumental role in shaping my legal skills and mentoring me.

     

    When and what inspired you to appear for Civil Services after having a career at AMSS?

    Truly speaking I was always keen to take the civil services exam but wanted to establish myself professionally before taking the plunge. I personally feel having an option to fall back upon provides you with the required security to give your best at the preparation level and if one has law as a career, civil services would tremendously compliment it as a career.

     

    How did you manage preparing for the Civil Service exam with your law firm job and other commitments?

    I was fortunate to be granted a sabbatical by Mr. Shardul Shroff to help me prepare for the exam.

     

    When did you start preparing for the exams? When should a person ideally start preparation for the Civil Services exam?

    Civil Service preparation requires absolute dedication and thus in November, 2010, I took a two year sabbatical leave from my work at AMSS and pursued my preparation. I gave my prelims with 5 months of preparation and cleared it however I couldn’t clear the mains due to my Hindi language paper. In my second attempt I cleared all three legs paving my way for the services.

     

    How many hours did you put in for your preparations every day? Is having a fixed schedule or weekly targets important according to you?

    The key to Civil Service preparation is consistency and diligence. I would plan my preparation targets on a daily basis and made it a point to achieve them so that there is no backlog created as the material to be read and study is extremely vast. My targeted study period was nothing less than 8 hours daily. Reading of The Hindu daily is a must for any civil services aspirant.

     

    Which were the easiest and the toughest part of your preparation?

    The easiest part for me during the Civil Service preparation was to tackle and remember the material provided by the coaching institutes, which hardly constitutes 30% of the entire bulk of study material one has to go through. Moreover I was extremely fortunate to get great guidance and support from Cyril Darlong Diengdoh and Ashutosh Salil who constantly mentored me. The tough part is primarily to figure out the remaining 70% of the study material and syllabus and this makes all the difference. I also faced the mammoth ‘Maths’ dilemma in CSAT since I had primarily been a student with a humanities background. I consider prelims and General studies papers for the Mains the toughest leg of the entire exercise. Prelims requires a thorough reading of  the fundamental concepts of different subjects and mains requires more focus on the current affairs.Prelims is the first scanning ground so the competition is really tough and negative marking only adds to the competition. Mains in contrast gives you an opportunity to get creative with your answers of course without derailing from the subject. GS paper I and II of Mains require very thorough reading of the editorials and various reports published by the government.

     

    What are the aspects that a Civil Service aspirant must focus on and start preparing for in advance?

    I would begin by stressing on the basics, they are the cardinal point of the entire preparation for Civil Services and if one is well prepared with the basics, one can tackle most of the questions. It is also important not to get lost in the sea of knowledge. Instead, focus on a few basic books so that revisions are possible. Since Prelims focuses more on the basic concepts, NCERTS can be quite handy, the Main examination is a combination of basic and current affairs, so your focus should be on newspapers, government reports and government websites.

     

    What were the attributes of your legal education and background which helped you in succeeding in the Civil Service Exams?

    A legal education and background definitely helps in the civil service preparation especially in Polity and General Studies Paper I and II of the Mains. Certain topics are common between the Law paper and Public Administration so that makes life easier. Also having studied law equips you with analysis and digging of most concepts and thereby providing an added advantage in writing answers. My background as a lawyer went a long way especially in my interview as most of my interview questions were based on law.

     

    What is the importance of CGPA for law students especially for Civil Service exam aspirant? Does it make any difference during the interview?

    CGPA is important and it is a reflection on the attitude and seriousness of a student but it does not per se reflect upon the merit of the person. Thus it makes a good impression to have a good CGPA but it is not the only factor that determines the merit of a student.

     

    Tell us about your interview? What kinds of questions were asked by the interview board?

    My interview was conducted by a 5 member panel headed by Mr. P.K. Mishra. The panel is always well read and grills you on the basis of your mains form. The major thrust of the questions was about my take on various socio-legal issues like Khap Panchayat, live-in relationship, decriminalization of S. 309 of the Indian Penal Code which criminalises attempt to commit suicide, the Aruna Shanbaug case. My legal background and extensive work experience also helped me tackle questions about good governance and withdrawal of subsidies. The panel also intended to assess my perspective on various problems and my ability to provide a solution for the same, for instance, crimes against women and measures to curb and tackle it. During the interview the objective of the panel is multifaceted since they assess your overall personality and knowledge. In fact the panel asked me to sketch one of the panel members within 30 seconds, since they read about my interest in sketching. The interview is both grueling and unpredictable.  It is very important to maintain your calm and be absolutely honest with the panel. Mr. P.K. Mishra was a great help in my interview once he realized I knew my stuff. He discouraged excessive grueling by other members.

     

    For the meantime, before your training period starts, you are holding the position of a Consultant with AMSS. What is the nature of your consultancy with AMSS and has your role in the firm changed?

    I came back to AMSS after my mains in 2012 to work with my mentor, Mr. Shardul Shroff on a unique role which has absolute administrative bearings and nothing to do with the transactional work of the firm. At the moment, I aid the firm with regards to firm development and handle the administrative concerns and issues.

     

    What would be your message for law students who are preparing or planning to prepare to appear for the Civil Service exams?

    The thumb rule should be firstly to focus on your education as a law student, studying and working towards making one’s basics strong. It is exceptionally useful in Civil Service to hold a law degree but before plunging into Civil Service preparation one should secure themselves a career to fall back upon as civil services can be a gamble. Education, work and then Civil Service has been my strategy as I believe that one should never put all their eggs in one basket.

     

    Lastly, what would be your message for the readers who want to pursue career in Civil Services?

    There is no substitute for hard work and diligence. Consistency and dedication goes a long way in achieving the desired result. One should regard coaching institutions as a very small part of the Civil Service preparation and should rather focus more on self preparation and self study. Be honest in your preparation and give your best. The outcome is never in your hands but the effort is. Civil services requires focused study so its important to isolate yourself socially till you are done with the Mains.[/sociallocker]

  • Surabhi Modi on Clat Possible, CLAT 2015 and the mantra to successful entrepreneurship

    Surabhi Modi on Clat Possible, CLAT 2015 and the mantra to successful entrepreneurship

    Surabhi Modi is an outstanding Fulbright scholar from Delhi University. She is an ardent reader; research scholar in films and literature and a successful entrepreneur in the field of legal education. She is the managing director of Team Satyam, Clat Possible tutorials, which was conceived in Lucknow but is now a leading name in legal education and amongst tutorials nationwide.

    Surabhi talks about:

    • Her interests and journey as a scholar.
    • Her entrepreneurship in the field of law and the success of Clat Possible.
    • She discusses the viability of CLAT and her take on CLAT 2015.
    • Her mantra to law students in the area of entrepreneurship

     

    Please introduce yourself to the readers? Please tell us a little bit about your childhood and your background?

    Introductions are most difficult I must admit. I’m an educational entrepreneur and erudite. I’m currently the managing director at Clat Possible, which I must proudly admit is India’s fastest growing law test prep brand, currently at number 2 in terms of volume in its very young existence of just 4 1/2 years. I love studying which explains the fact that I’m doing that still, I’m a research scholar in films and literature. I’ve graduated from Hindu College, DU and received a Fulbright Scholarship from UC Davis in 2009. I’m an avid reader and promote reading through a small Reading Café. I’m also a movie buff and screen films for my students. I’m planning to start small film appreciation courses at various colleges as well.

     

    You have an exceptional background in English literature and have also been a recipient of the prestigious Fulbright scholarship. Tell us something about it.

    The funny thing is that I started out as a science student. I was a very curious case of misplaced love towards subjects and wrong career counselling; which is why I make a good career counsellor as well!! But eventually I had the good sense of pursuing this subject professionally and taking it forward now that I’m doing my PhD on it. Because I have always been a reader right from my school days, I always got 90 + in high school and intermediate I was comfortably able to switch to English. I loved classics and gender studies even when I did not understand the terms; so I had introduced myself to Doris Lessing, Mahasweta Devi and these helped me in getting my scholarship.

     

    Without much background, you decided to pursue your entrepreneurship in the field of law? What gravitated you towards law?

    Frankly, we were earlier only into PG entrances like CAT etc, when my friend from NLSIU brought to us his venture for law entrances. I agreed to take it up just because he was my very good friend and then I did not read much into basic details like what is market size of this product etc. We started extremely small with 8 students. all wards of lawyers or judges. Then there was no CLAT, all law schools held their own exam and we only looked at NLS, NALSAR and NUJS and also NLIU. We sent at least 7 to the NLUs from the 8 that we taught. It didn’t make business sense but the kids were very bright and it was a happy change. Next year we enrolled 17 students and that year 2005 I was even getting married so my family imposed a curfew on me for 2 months and you won’t believe these kids started coming instead to be taught by me. Now that really endeared us to this product and here we are today 4000 students plus and yet all very dear to us.

    Our passion is only fuelled further with the love these kids give us, for example this interview was requested by my very dear student Gargi. So each of us at CP would go the extra mile for these students, who in turn reciprocate our love and care. We are not perceived as coaching wala but as friends and mentors  and that’s my most prominent achievement. I’ve successfully broken the traditional ‘coaching’ mould.

     

    You are a founding member of Clat Possible. Please tell us about ClatPossible and its verticals. With so much of competition existing in the coaching and teaching field, tell us about your journey with Clat Possible so far.

    So I think I got carried away in the last question and really did answer it there, now that I see it had asked me only about how I started. Sadly, brevity surely is not my talent.

     

    In your opinion, what makes Clat Possible different from its peers?

    As I had mentioned earlier, which I reiterate; CP is not just a coaching centre. It has become (thanks to my supremely talented and highly qualified team) a mentorship program. The real reason being that each one of us has voluntarily opted for this career leaving behind great careers if I may say so or rather acceptable careers in mainstream education (which is me), FMCG sector (Satyam Sahai, Founder after his MBA) and my other colleagues who have come from Amarchand, Luthra etc. So our job doesn’t end at teaching reasoning, we help the children grow and gain confidence.

    We screen movies, hold talks on books, engage them in a parliamentary debate, hold mock parliaments, summits, policy summits. Now how these exercises one might ask are relevant to CLAT? Well, they are. The research involved would eventually help them in GK. A film might help them with language and their EQ and everything is relevant for learning which should be liberal and not skewed. Most of my colleagues are very well read and are national level debaters, researchers and mooters. Now that team can just not sit and teach a syllabus in a pedantic mould. Honestly most of us will die if we do not innovate and you see our results which are living examples of how are innovation and maverick style has helped do many students successfully join law schools and with such aplomb they are carrying themselves there. So we don’t just give the NLUs we provide them with confident students.

     

    Do you provide any work opportunities for law students? Do you recruit undergraduate law students as part time faculty?

    Not just part time- we are regular on the place com and recruit NLU talent for various roles where teaching is only one!! There is R & D, operations, franchise management, HR and even opportunities at business partnership. We are a regular firm with a proper hierarchy and roles.

     

    What are your views on CLAT and its viability and standard as an entrance exam for premier law schools in India?

    CLAT is a decent exam but has a lot of underutilized potential. Its undoing if ever there will be would be the fact that it is fraught with errors and ad hocism. It still needs a structure which needs to be followed sanctimoniously. There are also many question types to it that are obsolete and need revision. I really loved the question papers that came when there was no CLAT. Each law school had good questions and really did test aptitude in the true sense of the word. If CLAT could revert to that kind of questioning the exam would get into an international league.

     

    CLAT 2015 is most likely going to be Online; how do you think students should get themselves prepared for an online exam?

    The basic fundamental learning would not change. The only difference would come in in the platform where the paper would be supplanted by the screen. A much easier option I tell you. A computer based test is a very convenient thing for both the organisers as well as the students (if they are comfortable with on screen reading). Anyway nothing is sure now but it will happen one day for sure. As it removes a lot of hassle of printing and exam leakage and even costs.

    The students just have to practice a lot of taking exams from screens. They need a good interface and a great test engine to give them real time experience. But as I said the fundamental prep remains the same. We are now giving all handouts also on the student account of CP and the students have an option of writing both the mocks and other practice tests online. So there has to be loads of practice of sitting on the computer for more than two hours and continual reading with unwavering attention. Maybe aside from test taking students read their newspapers and magazines online to help them get into the momentum. Even books, good time to go Kindle.

     

    Being a law and CLAT mentor, any advice to students preparing themselves to give the CLAT exam and entering into law schools.

    The single most relevant advice to all CLAT aspirants and even otherwise is; start reading newspapers. Most of your career woes will end there. All issues regarding learning good English, GK, reading, concentration and even reading speed will enhance. So I’m not asking for the moon. It is just a small life style change from not reading the newspaper to reading one. After you’re done just come to CP and you’ll be mentored so thoroughly that an NLU would just be one of the benefits.

     

    What are the prime hurdles that a non-lawyer entrepreneur has to come across?

    In the lawyer world? None. Infact you are trusted more for the fact that you are not a liar….. sorry lawyer. Ha ha. But really none. And maybe that can be attributed to the fact that lawyers are a discerning people and when they see talent they respect it. I’m friends with so many lawyers and judges now, even VCs who appreciate my work, who want to work with me or who entrust me with the career of their wards.

     

    What does it take to be an entrepreneur? What are the three great skills of an entrepreneur according to you? What differentiates the best and the rest?

    Entrepreneurship is a big word and is even taught as a subject in B Schools. And I have no formal training in it which is just as well. Whatever I know today, I know from experience and more so from the whip learning from my husband who as the word goes is most intolerant of any shoddy work on my part. But yes, I’ve learnt a lot, had my share of struggles and now I can say each entrepreneurship experience is as unique as your DNA. Nonetheless it has some essential ingredients which from my experience I believe are:

    • Leading from example
    • Eye for detail
    • Knowing when to delegate

    And they are in their order of priority. Till date I have no qualms about doing ground sales, waiting for meeting principals and clients for hours each time we open our centre in a new city, eventually to be turned down or getting no audience with that principal. I have to do these things still because I know I do them best, I have resilience and also I’m the best sales pitch in the company. Now no one on my sales team can err or give up because they see me. I do not sit on a high chair saying it’s below me to meet individual clients and schools. As an MD and mentor most VCs welcome me and/or invite me and I have respect in my circles but the moment I become the business woman I get my share of ‘please come another day, the principal is busy.’ The beauty lies in this irony. I’m invited a judge or chairperson for a debate by the same institutes who would later reject my proposal.  Yes, there is a marketing team and a sales team but we all work together. Every new city sees me as the first face and we move on.

     

    Lastly, what would be your message to law students and young lawyers who want to pursue entrepreneurship?

    Please do so by all means, contact me at surabhi@clatpossible.com and let’s become entrepreneurs. It definitely has its shares of lows but then what doesn’t. but the sense of achievement the first 1000/- bucks you earn gives you may not come from the 1 lakh salary. Abstract as it may seem in thought it is just as tangible in experience. The joys of entrepreneurship are cathartic, however one should be ready to sweep one’s own room, shine the plate that says MD and then sit with aplomb in the room and play MD.

  • Sanchit Aggarwal, Masters Candidate, ISB, on marrying law with management

    Sanchit Aggarwal, Masters Candidate, ISB, on marrying law with management

    sanchit-aggarwal-1Sanchit Aggarwal is a graduate of Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Patiala, batch of 2014. He has recently qualified for the MBA Programme at the Indian School of Business which is one of the most prestigious institutions for pursuing MBA. Currently he’s an Associate at APJ-SLJ Law Offices and will soon be joining ISB.

    We spoke to him about:

    • Selection process at ISB
    • Balancing studies in law school and MBA prep
    • Prospects of BALLB + MBA

     

    When did you decide to pursue an MBA?

    Even before I joined Law School, I dreamt of doing an MBA post Law. I have always been fascinated by Business and the art of minting money.

    I have always been of the school of thought that being a student of a National Law University, the major take away after five years should not merely be the knowledge of law, but the legal skills that one acquires in the process of the study and interpretation of law, mooting, interning, debating, writing research papers and other activities that a law student takes up. I have never supported the conventional view of practising law after studying law. There are a plethora of avenues out there, awaiting to be exploited. I always wanted to use my acquired legal skills in a business environment, my long term aim being to become an entrepreneur. I think law gives you the edge of knowing the regulatory framework well enough, understanding the compliances and understanding the statutory and other measures required and applying them to run a business. I believe people working in organizations in the top positions ought to have a decent understanding of the law, in order to manage business in their top capacity. Discovering a new avenue was my primary motivation in this journey.

     

    Why did you choose ISB over IIMs?

    I preferred ISB over IIM’s and hence aspired for ISB only. The major reason behind this decision was the ideology of ISB compared to that of IIMs. If you compare the level of diversity in both these colleges, you are bound to see a remarkable difference. While more than 90% of the students at any of the IIMs are engineers and mostly boys, the case at ISB is drastically dissimilar. ISB promotes and supports diversity in its students’ backgrounds, similar to the top B-schools in the world. The Class of ISB is a mix of engineers, doctors, CA’s, Army Officers, Government Servants, Social Workers, Economists, Architects, Sportsmen and several other professionals from diverse background. Without denying the fact that majority of students are engineers, the fact that every student regardless of his background is at par and carries with himself the power to do equally good is also true. The curriculum, the activities and other co-curricular activities at ISB are designed to cater to the needs of all individuals and not just one category of students. Thus being a lawyer, I thought it to be a saner decision to join ISB as I would get a more nurturing environment where I could develop myself to my potential, exploit my strengths and not merely follow a fixed path. Many might disagree with my opinion.

     

    Please tell us about the admission process.

    ISB accepts only GMAT scores. Getting into ISB is a three stage admission process.

    First Stage: You are required to submit a video essay (ISB gives you a topic to speak on, in limited time) and list all your achievements and activities till date.

    Second Stage: You have to submit your GMAT score. Further three essays, generally on topics describing your goals, achievements, moments that have changed you etc. Then two online evaluations (recommendations) by your employer or professor or any person under whom you have worked. I submitted one from the VC of my University and second one from Senior General Manager, ICICI Bank.

    Third Stage: In the Final Stage you are given a complex case study to solve, generally based on market study and business. Then is the interview by a panel of three consisting of one from the faculty, one alumni of ISB and one from the admissions committee.

    These stages are elimination stages.

     

    What was your score for GMAT? Did you take any other MBA entrance exams?

    I managed to secure 700/800 on GMAT. Since I primarily aimed at ISB, I did not give any other MBA entrance exams.

     

    What was your preparation strategy for GMAT and how did it change over the time?

    I prepared for GMAT for just two months in my semester break. I made it a point to be consistent with my preparation as I had limited time at my disposal. My strategy was fairly simple, i.e. to be consistent, in spite of all the lows and try to commit the least fundamental errors as I couldn’t afford them, due to paucity of time. I also decided to cancel my confirmed internships, to avoid falling flat on my face in my quest for a B-School entry pass. So I dedicated all my time preparing for the second stage of ISB, of which GMAT was an essential element. I focused most on essays and evaluations, rather than blindly focusing on the GMAT. This in my opinion is the biggest mistake that many students make, i.e. by channelizing all their time and energy on GMAT, ignoring other important aspects of the application. B-Schools view a candidate’s application holistically and never pick a candidate for just one star in his application. An Application with good academics, good essays, good profile and a good GMAT score has a higher probability of selection compared to an application with excellent academics and excellent GMAT, but average essays and an average profile.

    My suggestion to all B-School aspirants as far as an Admission Application is concerned is that you must try and focus on all aspects of your application, especially on your weakest areas, as your weaknesses would be highlighted before your strengths.

     

    What was your preparation strategy for the Quantitative Ability & Data Interpretation and Verbal Ability & Logical Reasoning?

    As I mentioned earlier, I faced scarcity of time. There was a lot to be done and time was limited. Thus time management was the key. I tried spending at least some time on every part of my Application on a daily basis. Being a lawyer I had become a little distant from quant, but I always loved mathematics in school. It took a little time to get adjusted to solving math problems, contrasting to searching for case laws, but ultimately it was fun. I found the Verbal section in the GMAT a little tough. It is very important to have good basics in grammar, fast reading and interpretation skills (a breeze for lawyers) and most importantly good time management to master this section. I started giving mock tests at an early stage in my preparation, just to fast track my preparation and focus primarily on my weak areas.

     

    What kinds of questions were asked by the interview board?

    The interview board comprised of an ISB Faculty, an ISB Alumni and a person from the admissions committee. Each wanted to test me on a different ground. My job was to get a unanimous nod from all three.

    The ISB Faculty primarily asked me basic questions like ‘Why MBA after Law?’, ‘Where do you see yourself after ISB?’, ‘How will your Legal Background help you with MBA?’ ‘How will you cope up with Accounts and Economics?’

    The person from the admissions committee was more concerned in screening my Application. He asked me even minute details from my essays and evaluations. He grilled me on my essays to primarily see whether I had actually written them and how well I could actually explain them.

    The most interesting questions were posed by the ISB alumni. I was even asked to do a spontaneous market analysis for law firms in India. Further he primarily wanted to know my aspirations and how I could meet them by studying at ISB. He tested my Business and Management skills to a certain extent.

    The interview lasted for around 45 minutes and had me sweating. It was very different from what I had expected, but at the end of it, I actually felt good about myself. My advice to all aspirants would be to keep it as real as possible and not try to fake. Being a lawyer helped a lot, as they definitely see the candidate’s confidence and composure.

     

    What advantages does the combination of Law + MBA entail in the current as well as future market?

    The majority of the sectors like Telecom, Banking, Real Estate, Infrastructure, Pharmacy, Trading, Aviation and several other sectors are highly regulated. A person managing these businesses and at a decision making position needs to understand the law, in order to take saner decisions and understand the advice given by the Legal Department. It is important to understand the reasons of the regulations and compliances as well as the consequences of non-adherence. I believe a businessman/ top management individual would greatly benefit from knowing the law and similarly a Law firm Partner level individual would benefit from a formal background in management. Law + MBA combination is gaining popularity in the USA and European Union. JD + MBA is one of the most sought after courses on offer by Harvard. I feel that the future market holds a lot of water for individuals with a Law + MBA background and the demand for them will accrue in the time to come.

     

    Please tell us about the difficulties you faced.

    Coming from background where doing an MBA is not even considered as an option, it was never easy to explain my decision to people around me (“ye law ke baad MBA kaun karta hai” being the question I answered more than 10 times daily). Moreover I did not know anybody who could actually help me with my GMAT, essays and other related aspects. I took no coaching as well, thus my biggest source of information were articles and opinions written by people who had cleared MBA entrances. Taking the decision of not doing an internship after the end of my Fourth Year, was very tough and seemed very risky to me at that point of time. But apart from this, I really did not face any other major difficulties.

     

    Do you plan on returning to the legal industry?

    I have specialized in Business Laws from law college and plan to pursue the same for the next couple of years. I want to understand the legal aspect of Business transactions and practice relevant Business Laws. Further I also want to gauge the functioning of a corporate law firm in India from a management perspective. I believe being a lawyer I have the privilege of working at a law firm and understanding the operations of the same. So I see no point of directly taking up a marketing or finance job at this stage, without exploring the legal industry.

    Answering your second question, I am absolutely open to returning to the corporate legal industry if I feel I can contribute my bit in improving the management and functioning of law firms in India. I believe my experience in the legal industry coupled with my management education from ISB shall put me in a position to improve the operations and management of Law firms in India. But alas I am too young to actually comment on that.

     

    Do you think an MBA has rendered your five years of law education redundant?

    Not at all. In fact I feel that MBA will immensely enhance the value of my legal education and enable me to utilize my legal background in a rather non-conventional manner.

    As of now I plan to get into strategy consulting post ISB and in the further future, I want to become an entrepreneur.

     

    What would be your advice to the current lot of law students wanting to go to a business school later on?

    It is never easy to swim against the tide. But if your dream is different, you ought to think differently. I advise all law students who aspire to go to B-School, to pursue their aspirations to the extent they possibly can and not half heartedly. I say this because it is very difficult to think beyond getting a job when you see your batch mates getting them. It is up to you whether you choose to pursue MBA in India or abroad, or give CAT or GMAT, just be consistent. There might not be many successful examples in front of you, as many lawyers haven’t pursued an MBA, but let this not deter you from doing it, if you believe that it would benefit you.

  • Bishen Jeswant, Sub-editor, ESPNcricinfo, on experience at Trilegal and sports journalism

    Bishen Jeswant, Sub-editor, ESPNcricinfo, on experience at Trilegal and sports journalism

    Bishen Jeswant graduated from National Law Institute University, Bhopal in 2011 and is currently working as sub-editor with ESPNCricinfo. He decided to leave his lucrative career with Trilegal to pursue his passion for cricket. He is also qualified to be a coach at Karnataka State Cricket Academy.

    In this interview, we speak to him about:

    • Balancing academics and extra-curricular activities
    • His experience with Trilegal
    • A typical workday at ESPNcricinfo

    What got you into legal studies?

    The reason I picked law was because I was attracted to public speaking, but you realise soom enough after entering law school that public speaking is but a minor aspect of good lawyering. So, while I may not have decided to pursue law for the right reasons, it was a happy accident because I thoroughly enough the critical reasoning and logical thinking aspects of law over the course of my five years.

    I was part of the last non-CLAT batch and we wrote a whole gamut of exams in the hope of securing admission to at least one of the top law schools. The NLIU-Bhopal entrance paper was leaked that year (2007) and we had to take it twice.

     

    How would you describe your fresher year at NLIU?

    The term fresher is often associated with ‘ragging’ and I will admit that I was slightly apprehensive when I joined college. However, I strongly feel that the ‘Personality Development Program’, as our seniors called it, was an integral part of settling in, making friends and being able to call NLIU home. There was nothing so untoward that it could not be dealt with by a positive attitude and an open mind.

    Once settled in, the first year is the time to explore and make use of every opportunity that law school provides, and it does provide you with a whole lot. Whether mooting, debating, client counselling, research paper writing or MUNs, the time in the first year was spent in turning every possible stone to assess and determine the type of activities that I wanted to pursue during the five years, and to understand the bigger picture of what I wanted to achieve.

     

    What is your advice to budding mooters?

    (Bishen has participated in various moot court competitions like Pro Bono Enviro Moot Court Competition, National Corporate Moot Court Competition and NUJS Herbert Smith Moot Court Competition. He has also won Best Speaker awards in few of these competitions.)

    Apart from having strong research, I think the most important aspect of mooting, and even arguing in a real courtroom, is reading the judge. Whether the decision goes your way or not is dependent on whether the adjudicator is adequately satisfied. Within the first few minutes of the oral rounds, it is important to gauge whether the judge is the kind of person who likes to be bombarded with law, or whether he prefers crisp logical arguments, whether he appreciates lawyers being deferential etc. I’ve also felt that a good argument is one that is not only legally and logically sound, but one that is well presented, clearly structured and easily comprehensible. It is very important to modulate your voice, change your pitch, adapt your tone, and vary the pace of speech depending on the significance of the point that you are arguing and the emphasis that you would like to lay.

     

    Tell us about the 1st All India Moot Court Conveners Conference at NLIU, Bhopal, that you were instrumental in organising as Convener of Moot Court Association.

    During my stint as MCA Convener, I felt that it was imperative to utilize my position for the betterment of mooting, and the growth my University. I became Convenor in my fifth year, and had come across various shortfalls in the country’s mooting structure through the course of my first four years. Issues ranging from the scale of marking, moot formats, fairness in matchups, seeding of teams, etc. I felt that the only way to correct these issues was to bring all those people who matter into one room and pass resolutions to standardize mooting across the board, and this is how the Guidelines for Uniform Moot Practices (GUMP) were formed, with the help of Moot Conveners from around twenty law schools, as well as Surana & Surana, a law firm that organizes around ten moots in a year, including Stetson, Jessup and the like.

    We conducted the 1st NLIU Intra University Client Counselling Competition as well that year, with the intention that this would become a national event in subsequent years, making NLIU the first national law school to have its own client counselling competition.

     

    bishen-jeswant-2How did you manage the academic pressure along with your extracurricular interests?

    There is plenty of time in college to focus on academics while doing other activities side-by-side, all one needs is the drive. For me, it was important that I undertook as many extra-curricular activities as possible during my five years. I acknowledged that this attitude would not allow me to be at the top my class academically, but I set myself a target to maintain an ‘A’ Grade (or 70%) throughout the five years. I eventually finished with about 71%, with the batch topper scoring about 75%. It is therefore a question of simply setting targets, and having the discipline and focus to achieve them.

    There is so much time that despite devoting the required amounts towards academics and extra-curricular, there is still enough left to play sports, watch movies, TV shows and spend time with friends. This may seem harsh, but those who claim that one cannot excel in extra-curricular activities without compromising on their academics, are simply looking for an easy excuse.

     

    What skills have you acquired from these internships and how helpful have they been in your legal career?

    Internships serve the limited purpose of exposing you to the professional world. No internship can prepare you for what a corporate lawyer or litigating advocate will have to deal with on a daily basis, but it can certainly provide you with the exposure required to soften your landing. Students in law school spend too much time fretting about internships. While having good internships on your CV will probably help you in landing a job, it is not worth agonizing over. The important thing is to set out your goals and ambitions and focus on carrying out the right processes, the internships and everything else will follow.

     

    How did you secure your appointment with Trilegal?

    I thoroughly enjoyed working with Trilegal, a big firm with a young culture, professional outlook and some great people. My two year stint with Trilegal taught me a lot about the need for discipline in the professional sphere, the need to pay attention to detail and the need to communicate efficiently with your peers, superiors and subordinates. I worked in the field of employment law and one of challenges was deciding whether I should specialize so early in life. I eventually decided that I would be an expert in one field right from the start rather than be a jack of all trades. It helped that the subject matter itself was quite interesting. Other challenges of the job are around meeting tight deadlines, putting yourself in the client’s shoes, being able to analyze issues from the other party’s standpoint etc., all of which you learn to deal with on the job.

     

    What prompted you to leave a lucrative legal career and join ESPN?

    The answer to this question is very simple. I have always been extremely passionate about cricket and have dreamt of working in the sporting sphere. I had spent two years working with a firm, and realized that if I would not be able to attempt a career switch few years down the line – for various reasons, beginning with the fact that most organizations would not be willing to hire a 30 year old at an entry-level job and further that I would have become too comfortable in my legal job to experiment too much or make too many compromises. The bottom line is that I would have regretted not giving my passion a chance, and it was therefore a very simple decision to make.

     

    How did you approach the ESPN for this job?

    I didn’t have any contacts at ESPN, so I had to go about this the hard way. I penned a few articles to create a portfolio of sorts and decided to use this to apply to a few places. I had applied to CricBuzz, ESPNCricinfo and had even written to Anil Kumble, who was the then President of the Karnataka State Cricket Association. I had made these applications in the hope that I would hear back from at least one of them, but somehow, I heard back from all three, and ended up being in a position to choose where I wanted to work. I chose ESPNCricinfo because, apart from being a market leader, this is a site that I have been using for years and was therefore close to my heart. There was an opening in the stats team here, and I was to write some stats based articles to demonstrate my aptitude and statistical bent of mind, all of which thankfully worked out well. The rest is history.

     

    Tell us about your workplace and what a typical workday in your life looks like?

    A typical workday could be broken up into two types – match days and non-match days. On a match day, I will usually provide continuous live stats for viewers based on the current trends in that particular game. At the end of a game (or a day, in case of a Test match), I will usually publish a statistical report assessing the day’s play. Not everyone in the office will be covering the same match, so all of us have a personal TV as well as a laptop at each of our workstations to enable to us carry out our individual duties. On a non-match day, the nature of the articles that I write will usually be more analytical and not related to a particular match, such as on whether ‘Dhoni is statistically India’s best captain’, or whether ‘Hashim Amla is statistically the best ODI batsman’. Perks of the job include being able to meet the Dravids, Chappells and Laxmans of the world on a regular basis and being able to interact with them.

     

    You have been an active cricket player and also work as a coach? How did you manage to find time for pursuing these activities?

    I had coached at Jawahar Sports Club in Bangalore and cleared the KSCA State Panel Umpires exam as well as the KSCA Level “O” Coaches Exam. The answer to how I found time is a continuation of a previous answer – the time is there, it was only a question of whether I have the drive and discipline to make use of it. In this case, I was doing something that I love, and therefore, making time did not feel like a chore. I’ve always believed that most things in life are about showing initiative and taking that first step, and once that is done, the rest falls into place slightly easier. To make the effort sweeter, all of these activities that I undertook eventually helped in bagging the ESPN job.

     

    What would you be your suggestion to law students keen on pursuing a career in sports?

    Whether my decision was right or wrong will depend on how a reader views it, but here are my two cents anyway. At any stage in our life, when we choose to do or not do something, we must ask ourselves whether we are likely to later regret our actions. If the answer is yes, we need to take steps to ensure that there is no regret later.

    Writing a blog is a good way to start building your portfolio while in college. This is something that I didn’t do, and had to therefore write articles at a later point, under a time crunch and significantly more pressure, in order to set out on my mission. Also, students are sometimes under pressure to take up a legal job because they have invested five years and a lot of money on education. However, if you find that you true calling is not law, it is only smart that you don’t waste more time in a legal job. However, if you are not absolutely certain about your career, I would suggest that you undertake a legal job for at least a couple of years so that it becomes that much easier to return to the profession at a later point, should you choose to do so.

  • Gopalakrishnan R, Co-founder, Ekalavyas, on basketball, sports journalism, and founding his startup

    Gopalakrishnan R, Co-founder, Ekalavyas, on basketball, sports journalism, and founding his startup

    Gopalakrishnan R. graduated from NLU, Jodhpur in 2011. He was always keen on journalism, and worked as an Associate Commissioner Editor at LexisNexis for close to two years from May 2011 to February 2013. He later quit it in March 2013 to pursue freelance journalism on a full time basis.

    Gopal’s interest in Basketball led him to work on positive media presence for basketball. That is when he started up with Ekalavyas.com, India’s only website for Basketball news. Ekalavyas’ idea is to use their legal acumen to represent the interests of Indian players, to aid in assisting Indian children in getting athletic scholarships in foreign universities and to work on many other avenues where sports, law and journalism meet. They also plan to work on finding out apathetic government policies in sports and curing them through litigation.

    In this interview we speak to him about:

    • His interest in sports journalism
    • Ekalavyas’ vision and goals
    • His plans for the future

    Tell us about your years in high school.

    I did my high schooling from the Little Rock Indian School which is situated within the district of Udipi, the popular temple town in coastal Karnataka. The decision to study law was made after the 10th standard. Right upto 12th I was a hardcore science student (Physics, Chemistry, Maths and Biology) because even though my school was under the CBSE syllabus, we didn’t have the option of studying humanities after 10th. Anyway, my dad was of the firm view that at least till 12th standard science is a must.

    Even though I liked science, I never seriously considered pursuing the standard options of Engineering or Medicine. I did give the state Common Entrance Test and All India Pre-medical tests, but by then my mind had already been made up that I would study law.

    The decision to study law came about because I had enjoyed taking part in debates in my final few years of school. Also, like most others, I wanted to do meaningful work that can contribute to society as a whole. [Obviously, once you join law school, all these charitable fundas usually get thrown out the window.]

    Plus, being equally interested in multiple areas of knowledge, I felt law was the perfect multi-disciplinary course that demands a fundamentally sound understanding of various streams of knowledge. But even while I was keen on studying law, at the back of my mind I knew that I would eventually club journalism and law. The reason I did law was simple curiosity in the sense that law is something that affects each one of us and which we should all have a basic understanding of. Also, I knew that an integrated BA.LLB incorporates many of the arts courses that a journalism course has. So legal journalism was the intent I had when I started applying to law schools. Also, I am a first generation lawyer.

     

    Tell us about your time in NLUJ.

    To be honest, this is something I’m still figuring out. I kind of have mixed feelings about it.

    Positives:

    NLUJ degree & internships

    On the positive side, a degree in law was a basic prerequisite for a job as an editor at the legal publishing house LexisNexis Wadhwa. So I wouldn’t have got a job at a leading legal publishing house had I not studied law. Also, what really helped are the internships that one must do in between college semesters. Each internship made me realise what I liked or disliked and helped me eliminate options. From my second year onwards, after interning at litigation and desk type law firms, I realised that my initial hunch that I was meant to be more into journalism was correct and I began doing multiple internships at Bar&Bench, and in an effort to move more from reportage into substantive legal journalism, I interned at LexisNexis during my final year and was offered a job there. I really tried to make every internship count and preferred a quality over quantity approach. Many of my batchmates preferred a quantity over quality approach where they did as many as fifteen to sixteen internships some of which were only two to three weeks long. I found that such a hectic schedule did not work for me as I needed more of a work- non-work balance.

    The residential college experience

    Also, any residential college experience is something you will always cherish. It really exposes you and opens you up to different kinds of people each with their own quirks. You realise soon enough that all those little personality traits back in school which you considered really important don’t really matter. Just to cite an example: when I joined an NLU at the age of sixteen, I thought that people who smoke were bad people. By the time I graduated at the age of 21, I was vociferously arguing that marijuana should be legalised! So that’s quite a maturity leap, all thanks to the wholly unfamiliar college environment (i.e. moving to a different city, different people, cuisine and different academic courses).

    The travel bug

    Also, one unique advantage of studying in a historic city like Jodhpur, Rajasthan was that my friends and I traveled constantly every other weekend to places like Mt Abu, Pushkar, Osian or Jaipur. So my travel bug is all thanks to college. All this travelling is coming very handy now that I’m into sports tournament coverage at different locations. It has taught me the value of packing light and to go with the flow.

    Dealing with failure

    Also, NLU most importantly taught me to deal with failure. I mean this in the most literal sense. Many of us used to easily average above 80 to 85% in school and had never failed at anything before. But in college I had my first experience of flunking two subjects in my third semester. So that way, studying at an elite college in India, where most of your peers are of top quality, naturally helps you deal with repeated failure, grow and adapt.

     

    Negatives

    Not a multi-disciplinary environment

    On the negative side I found that when I joined NLUJ, it didn’t possess the multi-disciplinary environment that I hoped an elite university in India would have, like most universities in the west do. What I mean by multi-disciplinary is having systems in place where students can also pursue parallel extra-curricular interests outside law. Of course, in due course I realised that when I joined NLUJ, it was still only five years old, unlike western universities that have hundreds of years of heritage behind them. I painfully appreciated that for every institution, it takes time to create diverse extra-curricular environments, which in any case have to be largely student run initiatives. So once I got over all the self-pity and whining and understood that the buck stops with us students, then I took the initiative to bring about a cultural change in the field I was most attached to i.e. sports.

    Not fully equipped to handle first generation learners

    I felt that the current system of legal education presupposes previous legal knowledge. It isn’t fully equipped to handle first generation law students, who approach law not as “lawyers” but mostly as science students who need things to be black and white. For people like us 2+2=4, but in law school, a lawyer is told beforehand that 2+2 can equal four, five, or six, depending on which client you are representing! In other words, there is no right or wrong answer when it comes to law and that really threw me off initially.

    Coming from a non-lawyer, science background family, and especially being from a small town, I naively went into law school fully dependent on the faculty. But I immediately realised that college professors aren’t the same as school teachers. I was very dissatisfied with the classroom atmosphere and the way majority of the faculty handled student queries during their lectures. I firmly believe that learning can only happen in an environment where teachers and students alike are invested in getting to the root of the issue at hand. Unfortunately, I found that many of the questions that were put forward by me or some of my friends in the initial few months were either laughed at, ignored or considered “unrelated to the syllabus”.

    With faculty not really helping, the next option obviously is to turn to books, but I found that even existing Indian legal literature is meant more for practitioners than first or second year law students. So by the end of second year, some of us stopped contributing to classrooms debates altogether and just did the minimum required to get a degree.

    Questionable academic policies (mandatory minimum attendance, marks for attendance and too many project submissions) 

    Apart from the classroom atmosphere, certain academic policies absolutely irritated me, and still do:

    • the minimum attendance requirement;
    • marks for attendance;
    • the mandatory need to submit as many as six projects every semester, for a total of 60 projects over five years!

    I think attendance requirements need to be done away with completely. I’m fully aware that the Bar Council of India Rules mandate a minimum 60% attendance. But if you look at many other elite universities, there is no such requirement to attend classes. If you do away with this rule barely 10% of the students will turn up to class on a regular basis. I think that is a real indicator of the quality of the faculty in some of our law schools. Some of my friends barely scraped past minimum attendance requirements but are happily working in leading law firms. So that obviously shows that students don’t really consider their classroom education to be of any great value. A very close friend of mine even carried a pillow to class and happily snored away and he is now working in a tier I law firm! Secondly, the marks for attendance rule is a clear case of trying to coerce a student into attending class. If the faculty really were qualified then such underhand tactics don’t ever need to be used. Simply giving tests and assignments without any attendance requirements should be more than enough.

    Another practice that I abhorred was how padding was encouraged for all projects, tests and assignments. It was generally accepted that the longer your answers/projects were, the more marks you would get. So what usually happened was that tons of paper were wasted just rewriting the same points over and over again, and written exams became a race on who can fill up more supplementary sheets. Specifically when it came to projects, instead of six lengthy projects every semester (which leads to rampant plagiarism), it makes better sense to just have two projects each semester (one law and one non-law in the first three years), and also have page length and footnoting limits (not more than six pages and not more than two footnotes per page). This will help in cutting down copying, facilitate original research, make writing concise and improve the overall quality of Indian legal research papers.

    Teaches the “what” but not the “why”

    I guess my fundamental issue with my college education is that it did a great job with the “what” but did nothing to explain the more important “why”. They tried to teach too many things shoddily rather than a few things well. All of this is a result of learning to be too compartmentalised and the administration trying to pack a six year programme into a five year ‘integrated’ course. While on paper, the 60 odd courses that are taught across five years are great as they all directly or indirectly relate to the field of law, our faculty and legal literature needs to become more mature in becoming cross-disciplinary within each course.

    For example, in many tests or classroom lectures the teacher would go through the entire semester starting from section 1 of Indian Penal Code, narrate the section in class, follow it up with a bunch of case laws under that point and then repeat the same exercise for two and a half months with the remaining sections/other related legislation. Ideally in a course on Indian Penal Code, a part of the time needs to be spent on understanding criminal psychology/deviant behaviour, forensic tools (on how evidence is gathered) and then the select oft cited sections and caselaw should be incorporated. This will make for much more engaged learning.

    Another example is the course on Company Law, where the first few weeks ideally should be spent on understanding how entrepreneurial or disruptive business ideas develop in the first place. Only with such an understanding (where law students put themselves into the shoes of businessmen) will lawyers be able to advise their corporate clients in a simple, effective and cost saving manner.

    I think all the above issues I have with my legal education stem from a major difference in orientation towards how I viewed law and how it was viewed by some of my peers and most of my faculty. For those who taught me law, they did so as if law is a standalone subject. For me law is usually an ancillary ‘effect’ and never a root ‘cause’; it is ‘procedure’ to the ‘substance’ that is life. Simply put, law is usually always the ‘sidekick’ and never the lead hero (except maybe when it comes to fundamental rights issues).

     

     

    Tell us about your relationship with basketball.

    I wasn’t remotely great. In fact, if guys from my team in college read this they will laugh their ass off! But considering that lawyers aren’t really known for their ball handling skills, it was very easy to get onto the university team. So it was definitely a case of being a big fish in a very small pond.

    In fact in my second year, I remember how most other seniors backed out from the team before the NLS sports fest and I happily appointed myself as the captain and took a bunch of guys, many of whom were new to the game, simply because I wanted to play!

    But yes, more than my limited playing abilities, I definitely pride myself on being able to convince many of my batchmates to drop everything else and travel days on end to tournaments across India to places like Bangalore, Kolkata and Lucknow. I felt that if I could convince my fellow lawyers with my arguments to play basketball than it is an incredible achievement! Some of the guys on the team still curse me even today for either being too hard or else too talkative.

    But despite all our problems (low attendance, cash crunch and not enough practise), we did manage to win a few tournaments and shared great camaraderie. My favourite memory will be captaining our NLU team to its first ever basketball tournament win at the RMNLU, Lucknow sports fest in 2010.

    In one particular two to three month phase, I got so much into creating a “basketball culture” at my university, that I used to spend an unhealthy amount of time on the basketball court- as many as ten hours: three hours in the morning coaching the girls team, then seven hours in the evening and night with the boys team and watching countless YouTube training videos! I think I’ve learnt more from Kobe Bryant than I have from Hofeld!

     

    ekalavyas

    Tell us about Ekalavyas’ unique blend of journalism, law and basketball.

    You are correct, Ekalavyas stands at the intersection of diverse streams of knowledge- not just journalism, law and sports (i.e. basketball), but in fact even management (considering that we provide media management and PR services to tournament organisors).

    The broad notion of Ekalavyas came about because as a student of law, basketball and journalism (and to a much lesser extent music), I found that there is a huge gap between what students really need to know to succeed in a professional environment and what they are currently being taught in the classrooms, or during training sessions. This leads to a lot of confusion and self-doubt, not to mention a tremendous loss of time as students have to unlearn the wrong lessons and relearn the right techniques.

    So with this in mind, my co-founder Aravind came up with the Ekalavyas motto “Know Your Game” which is at the core of our attempt to ensure that learning should happen at the right time, in the right way, to the right people and from the right instructors. In the larger sense, just like the mythological Ekalavya figure, we firmly believe that those individuals who learn for the pure joy of learning become successful icons in their chosen field, for others to follow in their footsteps. We want to create a society full of such Ekalavyas, where free thinking individuals rationally choose to live amongst one another for individual and community gain.

     

    How did you find your co-founder?

    It wasn’t really difficult to find my co-founder considering that he stayed in the room diagonally opposite mine in the same hostel! Ekalavyas was co-founded by my college batchmate Aravind Mokkapati. Both of us immediately became friends because of our shared craze for sports. While I was in-charge of the basketball team, he was part of the university football team. We used to talk for countless hours almost every night to discuss strategies on team building for our respective sports. We would then go and apply these strategies to our respective teams with varying degrees of success. In doing so, we naturally began thinking about the larger picture of sports in India and realised that we would like to apply our tiny NLUJ sports management model to a larger pan-India scale if given the opportunity.

    Regarding long term partnership, in our case, we make it very clear that all partners need to be in this for a long haul. Most importantly, all partners need to truly believe in our credo to free up information from the clutches of select elite institutions or organisations for the equal benefit of all. We insist that all Ekalavyas partners should have parallel jobs that take care of their basic financial needs, so that when we do Ekalavyas related work, we do so not with the stress of having to make money, but because we enjoy it. Of course profitability is important, but simply as an indicator of efficiency and because it allows us to reinvest that back into our venture.

     

    gopalakrishnan-1

    What would you say keeps the majority from starting up?

    I actually think the contrary is true. More lawyers today are willing to take calculated risks much sooner in their career. That being said, of course there will always be a sizeable majority from each law school who will choose to join another law firm or company. There is nothing wrong with taking up a job elsewhere. In fact in many of these cases, law students do so to pay off their students loans and to save up enough to quit later on. Also, work experience under other individuals or institutions immediately after college is crucial as it helps you understand a professional work environment. Such experience is also valued when applying for higher studies.

     

    Are you hiring associates?

    Just to be clear, Ekalavyas is not a law firm, we are primarily a sports media/management enterprise, so we don’t hire “associates” as is understood in law firm culture. But considering that we have grown from three people last year to thirteen as of today, we are definitely constantly on the lookout for more associates.

    We are very picky when it comes to getting more people on board. Ekalavyas is quite a unique business model, because we don’t have any full time “employees” as such, but are wholly reliant on freelance reporters, photographers and artists. But once we activate our player representation arm, then we will definitely be keen on getting on board law students or young lawyers who are interested in a career in sports law. For now, among lawyers/law students, we are on the lookout for people who can contribute articles on sports law. Those interested can shoot us a mail on info@ekalavyas.com.

     

    Where do you want to see Ekalavyas five years from now?

    Five years from now, we want Ekalavyas to be the ultimate destination for all Indian basketball related news. We want to percolate our coverage into all school, college and senior basketball events. Simply put we want to be in a position to document each and every time a basketball is bounced anywhere in the country.

    If things go as per plan, we definitely hope to diversify by duplicating our basketball model to other alternate sports in India starting from football; and eventually to other creative professions (like music and arts). We feel that the problems faced by creative persons are common across all fields whether it be sports, music or arts. With our legal background, we would like to be the external support system for talented individuals to freely follow whatever their line of passion is.

     

    How did you approach your clients in the beginning?

    As of today, all our clients are sports tournament organisors. Our major coup is that we are the official media partner for many of the major national and international events organised by the Basketball Federation of India. We either directly place cold calls to potential clients, or else clients themselves reach out to us via our website (http://ekalavyas.com/) or through our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/EkalavyaPosts).

     

    Does Ekalavyas have scope of internships as well?

    As of now, we are fully relying on freelance contributors. So we definitely welcome those who wish to try their hand at sports writing, action photography, live text commentary, player interviews, sports based comic strips, or else contributing articles on sports law. Interested persons can send in samples to info@ekalavyas.com.

     

    You also worked as an Associate Commissioning Editor at LexisNexis, Gurgaon for close to two years. Tell us about your experience.

    Experience in legal publishing worked out great especially for someone like me. The decision to join LexisNexis came about by pure chance. In my penultimate semester, during the course on jurisprudence, I first tried reading Salmon and Pound. Obviously, I found that this was very dry reading. A close friend of mine happened to have a book called Lectures on Jurisprudence by NK Jayakumar, where concepts were explained simply and poignantly from an Indian context. In the typical behaviour of most book lovers, I quickly went to the inside front flap for the publication year and details of the publisher. I found out that the LexisNexis office was in Gurgaon and I applied for an internship that very winter semester break. My internship went great and I was offered the job on their commissioning team.

    A commissioning editor’s job is to study and analyse all the new and revised book projects and then make recommendations to the publishing board comprising the heads of other departments like sales, marketing & editorial. During these meetings, we give the other departments the heads up on the key features of the book that concerns them. For the editorial team, we point out how the content is structured and the various elements of the book (chapter break up, common editorial & grammatical idiosyncrasies to watch out for, possible copyright red flags and content additions needed). For the sales & marketing team we intimate them on the readership segments they need to target, as well as how the book should be packaged (i.e. whether hardback or paperback) and priced. Once the board gives its approval then we co-ordinate with the authors (either by personal visits, email or phone calls) to ensure that they send in their revised scripts on time.

    At LexisNexis, I got the chance to work on a whole gamut of legal literature that was in their publication cycle from mid 2011 to early 2013:  from the latest edition of DD Basu’s multi-volume Constitutional hardback tome to the popular Nani Palkhivala’s Courtroom Genius paperback, or even Q&A based textbooks to help students crack the CLAT or judiciary entrance exams. My time at LexisNexis really helped me understand the different contours and branches of law, not to mention a fairly in-depth awareness of the publication industry and the workings of a typical nine to five company.

    One major plus point was that I was incredibly fortunate to get to interact with many of India’s most distinguished judges, senior advocates and academic scholars. In particular I will always cherish my meetings with Justices AP Shah and Muralidhar (who were on the Delhi HC two judge bench that passed the landmark decriminalising homosexuality verdict), Senior Advocates TR Andhyarujina (of Keshavananda Bharti fame) and Mr. Arvind Datar, and retired judge CK Thakker (the famous Takwani behind the Civil Procedure books we all went through during law school).

     

    Many students after completing law are in the pursuit of entrepreneurship. What is your advice to them?

    It might be premature for us to advise others as we have only just started out. However, that being said, I can only advise that make sure you have a concrete and long term viable plan (at least on paper) before taking the plunge. Do it for the right reasons. Don’t do it to “prove a point to someone” or because it “sounds cool”. Also, I’d advise them to do a lot of varied internships and first try and fit into the existing system. If that “fit” is not possible then go ahead and start something on your own. Entrepreneurship, at least for me and my colleagues, was the last option and not the first.

     

    You have been shuttling between India and Nepal to document all important basketball tournaments. Are there any episodes you would like to share?

    Well, there are a couple of episodes which are standout memories. Some pleasant and others not so much. One huge incidental benefit is that I get to travel on the job.

    At my first tournament in Mumbai in mid 2013, I remember I was doing a post game interview, when suddenly a 6ft 5 inch international player stormed up to me as he was unhappy with the way I had quoted him the previous day. I definitely felt that this dude could kill me for sure. Thankfully, things settled down pretty quickly.

    The second, and perhaps best memory I have is from earlier this year at an international tournament in Nepal. Considering the financial crunch that most new enterprises have, I didn’t have the funds to fly into Kathmandu. So I decided to travel to Nepal from Bengaluru by the traditional route, which is a complicated three day journey by rail, road, bus and car.  While crossing the border from Gorakhpur into Nepal, unfortunately that was the same day that Gorakhpur went into the national polls. So the whole border was blocked for close to fifteen hours and I was stuck in the 40° heat and dust from 6am to 9pm! But once I got to Kathmandu and covered the tournament, the entire Indian men’s team and their Coaches personally came up, shook my hands and thanked me for documenting the event. That is a memory I will take to my grave. It felt like all that back breaking travel was totally worth it in the end.

     

    What is your message for your readers who want to start up on their own?

    Anybody wishing to start on their own will face opposition. But however difficult this may sound, it is important to try not to worry about what the other person is doing. Each one of us has a distinct set of interests and we should stick with it rather than falling prey to the perception of what should or shouldn’t be done. So if you wish to start up on your own don’t expect others around you to truly understand and support you. There will come a point when the only person who sees sense in your idea is yourself. So you need to have the courage to back yourself up when no one else around you does. Luckily, in my case, my immediate family and close friends have been insanely supportive.

     

    Photo credits: Cathy Scholl

  • Harsh Gagrani, Director, LegalEdge, on being author, entrepreneur, and lawyer

    Harsh Gagrani, Director, LegalEdge, on being author, entrepreneur, and lawyer

    Harsh graduated from NLIU, Bhopal, in 2011. He is the director of LegalEdge Tutorial. He also recently authored The Pearson Guide to the CLAT.

    We asked him about:

    • Starting up on his own with LegalEdge
    • His advice to law students who couldn’t make it to top NLUs
    • On CLAT 2015 and writing The Pearson Guide to the CLAT

    Kindly acquaint us with your college life and your aspirations in college.

    Studying in NLIU was one of the most profound experiences of my life so far. It helped me break out of my comfort zone, and hone my basic skills as a person. The students in NLIU are the chosen best from across the country, and my illusion of being at a higher pedestal in a few activities I have always been good at (quizzing, writing) were shattered right in the first trimester. Thankfully, leaving my comfort zone helped me prepare for the bigger battles I face every day now.

    As for other activities, as ironic as it may sound, I was never into anything that involved speaking (moots, debates et al), even though I’m a teacher now! I experimentally wrote an article for a website in the first year, and got seriously hooked to writing. Over the next few years, I wrote and got published close to a dozen articles, winning a couple of essay competitions on the way. Somehow, and this goes against popular wisdom, mooting never gave me the high that a publication did.

     

    Any fond memories which you would want to share with our readers related to your days in law school?

    A couple of them actually. The first was the publication of my first article, on a pretty obscure website. The article, when I read it today, seems like a complete piece of trash. Even a website publication barely added any value to my CV. But more importantly, it got me started and developed my fascination towards writing, which has helped me to this day.

    The second, astonishingly, would be the moment when I decided against going for a job and starting my own venture immediately after graduating. In my final year, I did sit for placements and sadly (read: thankfully), got through none. As the end of college life was approaching, I had casually decided upon starting my own venture, but half-heartedly sat for placements to gain ‘work-ex’ of a few years, as that’s what the conventional wisdom said. Not getting through the placements came as an eye-opener for me, and I re-evaluated my plans. Luckily, my peers and family supported my fanatical plan of starting the venture without any experience. It has worked well for me so far.

     

    What motivated you to start Legal Edge Tutorials?

    As I’ve already stated, I zeroed in on starting my venture sometime in my final year. However, I was entirely clueless as to what I would start. I toyed with a few ideas, all of them requiring some prior experience, which I lacked. This included starting an e-commerce company (with absolutely no tech experience), starting an Indianized version of SSRN (if anyone is interested, I’m still game!), a virtual stock exchange (seemed promising then, seems absurd now) etc. I researched on all these ideas, met people, prepared business plan, spoke to interested parties and conveniently shelved the idea, seeing a lot of pitfalls in all of them.

    The idea of starting a law test prep coaching was given by a good friend. Bhopal had matured well as a go-to destination for law aspirants from all over India, and regretfully, the feigned best in coaching business still yielded highly dissatisfied aspirants. We saw an opportunity and started working towards it. Luckily, we didn’t have much time to ponder over the idea and finalize business plans, as the ideal time to launch batches was already around the corner, or I’m sure I would have shelved this idea also. We set the ball rolling and launched within a month of writing our last examination in NLIU.

     

    What makes Legal Edge Tutorials different from its peers?

    The competition in CLAT prep industry, especially in Bhopal, is very tense. The city already has old guards maintaining their presence, brands spreading their presence and new players establishing their presence. Luckily, we’ve been able to carve a niche for ourselves. Why we’re different? I’ll deviate from clichés like ‘personalised attention’ and ‘best infrastructure’ and get straight to the point:

    • We never compromise on faculty, which in my humble opinion, is the single most important determinant of any student’s success.
    • Extremely high focus on developing great content. The content we give to the classroom students has been regenerated to develop best-selling books, twice.
    • New modes of learning. I take close to 30 internal current affairs quizzes in a session, we regularly take newspaper reading and magazine reading sessions and conduct tons of inter-batch competitions. All these activities play a major role in getting even a disinterested student involved in the learning process, by making the process more fun and exciting.

    Also, while we’re growing rapidly and trying to establish presence in various cities, we try not losing sight of the importance of our job. Students and parents trust us blindly. They swear by us in choosing what exams to take, what colleges to go for, what books to refer to and the like. These decisions potentially make or break careers. The constant realization of this incalculable responsibility, and the delicateness with which we try to deal with the same, truly differentiates us from the peers.

     

    Five years from now, where do you see Legal Edge Tutorials?

    A student I taught in the first year of LegalEdge, who missed securing a seat in National Law Schools by measly three marks, recently came up to me and told me that he is now preparing for UPSC. The habits he had developed while studying at LegalEdge, especially the reading habit, speed reading tricks and fascination towards subjects like GK, has been with him ever since. He says it has vastly helped him in his preparation for other examinations.

    I’d like LegalEdge to replicate this for thousands of students over the next five years. Opening more franchisees and expanding our presence is a given, but I’d like LegalEdge to be an experience of a lifetime for students.

     

    Do you think CLAT scores are truly indicative of a student’s potential?

    We’ve been lucky enough to have hundreds of students every year who work to their full potential and give CLAT their best shot. However, due to the very nature of competitive examinations, not every student, and not even every brilliant student, necessarily cracks a good National Law School.

    Message to those students- I’ve seen most of the non-National Law Schools, especially the newer ones, working even harder than National Law Schools to establish their presence. They get the best competitions organized, liaison with established authorities to deliver lectures in the college and connect with the students, devise a strict curriculum, help the students in getting internships and try hiring great faculties on a regular basis. If you haven’t cracked a National Law School but are lucky enough to be  part of such a college, you’ve got pretty much everything a good college has to offer, National or otherwise. Be proactive. Participate in multifarious activities. Establish a good network. If you waste the fantastic opportunities coming down your way, the blame for failures later on in your life should then be reserved only for yourself and not your college.

     

    CLAT 2015 is probably going to be online; how do you think students should get themselves prepared for an online exam?

    The whole hullabaloo of CLAT going online has been due to an interview which the Vice-Chancellor of RMLNLU (CLAT 2015’s conducting authority) gave sometime in June, 2014. Since the official notification isn’t yet out, I’d suggest against going for online mocks for now. The notification, clarifying the online conduction of CLAT, should be out by November. Students at any level of their preparation would then have sufficient time to go for online mocks, and acclimatize themselves with this completely different test taking pattern. Till then, I’d say stick with offline mocks.

     

    Do you provide any work opportunities for law students?

    As a matter of practice, we do not hire undergrad law students as faculty. We’ve been fortunate to have some great NLIU, Bhopal alumni as faculty, including Kapil Duggal (’14 Batch), Swapnil Verma (’10 Batch), Shreya Dua (’14 Batch) and Shivendu Joshi (’11 Batch). However, we’ve hired some really good undergrad students in the content development team from five to six National Law Schools, with some of them working with us since the past three years now.

     

    Please tell our readers, when and how you decided to write a book.

    Sometime during the end of our first year, we realized that our Current Affairs section was becoming extremely popular among students, when we received dozens of inquiries for the same in a short span of time. It was then that I decided to compile the questions in the form of a book. Since we had most of the content, it didn’t take us much time to release the book. About 500 copies of the book were printed, which were sold out in a month’s time, about 90% of them only in Bhopal. It was then that I realized this big gap in CLAT preparation guide market.

    I sent a few copies of my first books to about a dozen good publishing houses, of which Pearson and Macmillan replied. After the initial contract was signed, it took close to nine months for our team to deliver the content and come out with this 700-pages long CLAT guide. We’ve been fortunate enough to get rave reviews about the book from students, teachers and the publishers alike. Work on second edition of this book has already begun and it should be released sometime in January.

     

    How is writing a book different from writing a blog?

    Flexibility is what differentiates the blog writing experience from the book writing one. A blog can be written to cater to the needs of different target markets within the same segment. This doesn’t necessarily apply to the book writing experience. Which brings us to the point of aspects to be considered while writing a book. In my humble opinion, they are as follows:

    Define your target market neatly: A book meant for all is a book meant for none. An author should always decide beforehand an ideal reader for whom the book will prove to be a boon, and ignore everyone else. My book is primarily meant for students at the beginning of their preparation journey.

    Giving a strong answer to the ‘why’ question of buying your book: Think about the strongest reason why would you want your potential reader to buy your book over others. While working on the book, stay true to that reason. In our case, it was highly original questions. It sure took us much more time, but the effectiveness of the end product made it worth the efforts.

    On requiring external help: In my opinion, bringing more people on board helps in churning out a much better work than working alone. However, don’t lose sight of the second point (staying true to the reason) while deciding upon the people to include on your work.

     

    What does it take to be an entrepreneur?

    Even more than the guts to start and invest, being an entrepreneur involves guts to carry on when the tides aren’t exactly in your favour. There are times when even your closest ones don’t really believe you can make it big. The self-belief shown during those times can sometimes make all the difference. Other than perseverance, here is a list of three most important skills an entrepreneur must possess:

    Not compromising – Each business has at least one aspect which cannot be compromised, come what may. In coaching industry, this aspect is hiring great faculty. Infrastructure, material, other staff, location et al can all be compromised on and a prep centre can still work like charm, only if the quality of teachers is not compromised, though it is never the other way round. An entrepreneur should start his venture keeping in mind this uncompromisable aspect of his business.

    Seeing the Bigger Picture – This is primarily what differentiates a follower from the one being followed. An entrepreneur should be able to see through the daily clutter the business generates, and broaden his horizons as far as possible. Business book E-Myth Revisited summarizes this aptly, “Work on the business, not in it”.

    Ability (and willingness) to toughen up – Being a new entrant in the industry, we’ve screwed up the way any new venture does. But I’ve always made sure we face even our critics as they help us improve in a way a satisfied customer can never do. Actively solicit reviews to products and services, and have the courage to face the negative ones as well. They’ll help you improve beyond imagination.

     

    Lastly, what would be your message to law students and young lawyers who want to pursue entrepreneurship?

    Legal Entrepreneurship took its time to take off but has now certainly left its nascent stage. We’ve seen some great ventures taken up by law students/graduates in the past half a decade, including iPleaders, Lawctopus, CLATapult and LiveLaw. Here’s the message to budding entrepreneurs of legal sector:

    Start soon, and start with something small. A blog. A YouTube channel (and keep updating it with relevant stuff), a social organization, a website to help CLAT aspirants (Joking! We already have quite a lot of those). You got the point.

    Find a mentor. You’ll find people who have been there, done that, in every field. Connect with them. You’ll learn bucketful of relevant things with every conversation you have with them.

    Do it for profits. There, I said the unspeakable. Take up a venture for the profits. Don’t make it your primary purpose, but don’t ignore it either. Profits are like oxygen for any venture. A venture should not be existing solely for profits, but in absence of profits, it’ll die down soon. The problem is that I see a lot of initiatives coming up with no definite profitability plan even after many years. They start-up for the sake of starting-up. Unless you don’t make profits as one of the purposes of starting-up, your motivation will die down soon and the venture will appear like a liability, serving you and your customers no good.

    Final message- If you’ve been thinking about starting up, do it. Right now. Not after graduating. Not next month or next week. Start anything up right now. It doesn’t have to be big (it cannot be at this stage, anyway). But it’ll kick-start your entrepreneurship journey and prepare you for handling bigger ventures. And let’s connect if you need any help!

  • Suveer Bajaj, Co-founder, FoxyMoron, on Digital Marketing, law, and plans for the future

    Suveer Bajaj, Co-founder, FoxyMoron, on Digital Marketing, law, and plans for the future

    suveer-bajaj-3Suveer Bajaj pursued LL.B. from the University of Mumbai, batch of 2012. Prior to that, he had pursued his BMS in Marketing. He is the founding partner of FoxyMoron, a Digital Marketing Company, which is mainly functioning from New Delhi and Mumbai. The company has eminent clients like The L’Oreal Group, Bacardi India, Castrol, Fosters, The Cadbury Group, Asian Paints, The World Wide Media Group, AXN India, VIP Industries, Rajasthan Royals, Quikr and has nine offices between New Delhi and Mumbai.

    In this interview we speak to him about:

    • The switch from law to marketing
    • Essentials for being a successful marketeer.
    • The mechanism behind the rapid growth of FoxyMoron.

     

    What motivated you to pursue law?

    Law was always the first option for me from an academic perspective right from the time I was old enough to decide what I wanted to study. It definitely wasn’t a virtue of chance. It was a well-educated decision; one I had actually been looking forward to for quite a while before I actually even started studying law.

     

    How would you describe the chronicles of your college life?

    I always kept myself active and busy through my college days. I started working literally one week after I got out of school. I actively participated in a number of college activities including the Rotaract club, represented my college in almost every inter-collegiate festival and went on to creating a Model UN session for my college which at the time, was the largest college level MUN in Mumbai. I interned actively through my summers and eventually started FoxyMoron in the summer of 2008 after I completed my second year of degree college. This required me to pull odd hours and double up on both my academic and social life, but I was more than happy to make the sacrifice while in college.

     

    Tell us about your experience as a Space Intern of the renowned newspaper Indian Express.

    I interned with the Indian Express Group in the summer of 2007, which was my first summer in degree college. I worked under the direct mentorship under the (then) General Manager of Space Marketing, also known as ad sales. I learned the ropes of how ad sales were done and actively worked with all teams to understand how the dynamic of print advertising works with various departments. It was my first formal interaction with sales targets, corporate discounts and the IRS. We whiled away our lunch breaks at the art room watching how tediously the art directors created the lovely print ads we see in newspapers today.

     

    What are the essential ingredients to become a successful marketer?

    There is an age old saying: Sales and Marketing go hand in hand. Neither comes first and neither comes second. In order to understand the ethos of marketing, I think it is important for a good marketer to step out of the grid and start understanding a client’s business objectives as opposed to restricting his horizon to merely a client’s advertising or communication objectives. A good marketer must know how to ad value to his client to extent that he becomes an integral part of the client’s business and thereby becomes indispensable to the business life cycle. Good marketing is always object oriented and resolution led.

     

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    How do you think knowing law benefits an entrepreneur?

    Sound legal knowledge can help any person in any walk of life. Especially whilst doing business. For instance, in the case of FoxyMoron, my legal knowledge assisted me in drafting my initial partnership agreement and leave and license agreement. At a very young age, we were in a position to understand business risk and could therefore account for its protection. An understanding of company law ensured that as an organization, we were compliant with the various different aspects of “business.” By virtue of the industry that we function in, an introduction to Intellectual Property Law helped in ensuring that our creatives were royalty-managed. All in all, from a business structuring and risk assessment perspective, understanding the law has really assist in the speedy growth of our organization. It has ensured that our growth has been rapid and we haven’t been slowed down by heavy law firms. It has ensured that we create an environment in which we are well aware of our rights and responsibilities and can function independently as empowered entrepreneurs.

     

    How did you choose your co-founder?

    The birth of FoxyMoron was a joint decision that we all made collectively. We were all friends well before we started working together.The best advice I can offer people who are looking forward to collaboration with friends is to learn how to keep your personal and professional lives apart. Remember, that by day, you are colleagues, but by night, you are still friends and will still socialize together. Work must never compromise a friendship and neither must a friendship compromise work.

     

    What are the prime hurdles that a non-lawyer entrepreneur has to come across?

    One of the prime hurdles that a non-lawyer entrepreneur may have to overcome is insolence due to naivety. It is common with most people that do not know the law to be intimidated by it. It is even more common for people who do not know the law to be taken advantage of, whether commercially or in spirit. Business houses have large legal departments and are often represented by big firms across the company. This by itself can be intimidating. Legal understanding helps put entrepreneurs at par with larger organizations in terms of negotiation. It enables entrepreneurs to understand the extents of their rights and therefore enables them (us) to empower themselves.

     

    Tell us about your journey with FoxyMoron so far.

    Our journey has been fabulous. We started with just the four of us, with four laptops, with no seed capital, in my bed room. It’s been six long and fun years and we have grown to a family of over 200 with nine offices between Bombay and Delhi. We represent some of the country’s biggest consumer brands and are powered by a young, talented, enthusiastic bunch of twenty-something year olds that are determined to change the digital landscape in India. Our work has gotten us recognition across the world and has received several awards and accolades. Business has grown organically; both in size and scale. It has been a joyous journey, salt and peppered with a lot of ups and downs, a lot of hurdles, sacrifices and compromised.

     

    What kind of internships would be beneficial for law students who want to pursue entrepreneurship?

    For any students who want to pursue entrepreneurship, the best kind of internships are in start-ups. In a start-up, one is made to do literally everything. The exposure that one gains from working in a startup is unmatched. The experience of watching and contributing to the growth, structure and sustainability of a business is what shapes many vocational choices in life. The fact that you will interact personally with top management, the fact that you will do work that isn’t only limited to data entry, the fact that you might have the opportunity to walk into a meeting with a CEO of your client’s company. The journey of a start-up is un-paralleled.

     

    How did you get to work with such big brands in just five years of presence?

    (FoxyMoron has served imminent clients like The L’Oreal Group, Bacardi India, Castrol, Fosters, The Cadbury Group, Asian Paints, The World Wide Media Group, AXN India, VIP Industries, Rajasthan Royals, Quikr.)

    In India, most businesses are relationship based. Two things that we have really managed to do right over the last five years is:
    (1) To retain business that we work with year on year. Most of the clients that we work with are happy to have us back renew contracts annually.
    (2) Penetrate large business houses. You may start working with one brand from an organization, but it is important to be able to expand horizontally and vertically inside organization. Working with multiple brands from the same group often assists in sound understanding of the industry and hence helps offer an acute domain specialty.

    And of course, at the end of the day, your work speaks for itself! Good work manages to get around, get noticed and pick up a few awards along the way.

     

    Do you think Delhi is a better place to start-up in comparison to other metropolitans?

    At present, my work base is still very much Bombay. We have set up shop in Delhi last year and are, in fact, inaugurating our second office in Delhi today, but we are very much head quartered out of Bombay and I very much still operate of Bombay. The capital, however, presents currently, a wonderful diaspora of opportunity. A lot of brands have now shifted head quarters to Gurgoan and hence from a client opportunity stand point, Delhi (Gurgoan) is gold mine from a business perspective.

     

    What are your thoughts about raising capital for FoxyMoron from investors?

    FoxyMoron has always been a business that has grown organically year on year. Our limited business understanding has ensured that our business has been in the green since year one itself. Services businesses are usually not capital heavy and hence do not require sizable capital to scale. It has never been our intention to raise capital from investors or therefore, offer equity in exchange for the same. One of the best decisions we made while scaling the business was to retain the independence of running the business as flexibly as we wanted. Allow it to naturally take the shape that it has and come through its journey to reach a point of stability.

     

    When you hire people under you, what kind of skills and profile do you look for?

    When we hire people, we look for people that have a flair for communication and have a zest to learn. In our line of work, we understand that it is hard to come by people that have relevant work experience and are happy to take on freshers and train them. We have a robust training, learning & development program and have recently appointed a Chief Learning Office (CLO) to help up skill our teams and keep them up to speed. Students can help develop skills by consistently reading good literature, following international advertising and interacting with Digital Media themselves.

     

    Does the knowledge of law help to have any edge in marketing?

    With digital and content marketing, the understanding of Intellectual Property Law is a necessity. The internet is a cess-pool for infringement of IP. The bridge in terms of Law and Digital Marketing definitely lies in understanding IP law and it’s bearings.

     

    Is there scope of legal internships in FoxyMoron?

    Yes, we do take on legal interns through the year. Applicants can write to us at careers@foxymoron.org

     

    What is your message for law students who want to pursue entrepreneurship?

    Don’t over think things! As lawyers, we are taught to over think everything five times – often, that is the biggest mistake an entrepreneur can make or can get slowed down by. Entrepreneurship is a virtue of gut and instinct. While it is important to be a little thoughtful and conservative in our approach, they only way the ball rolls is when we stop thinking and start doing. Entrepreneurship is about checking things off the to-do list. Not adding more things on.