Alternative Thinking: Law and Other Things Blog

Here is an interesting article posted on the blog law and other things by Shamnad Basheer:

Many of us have lamented the fact that although the "national law schools" have churned out very gifted lawyers, we've lost many of them to law firms. It is but natural that many of them are attracted to financially rewarding jobs that law firms typically guarantee. However, given that these law schools were established to induce alternative forms of lawyering aimed at improving society, we have to admit that there has been a failure of sorts...and a massive one at that.


It pains me to see so many of our students devastated during the campus recruitment phase when they fail to land jobs with prestigious firms. And the one question I always ask is: are you sure this is what you want to do? Or are you merely following in the illustrious footsteps of your seniors? Surely, there are a million different ways of putting legal skills to use? Thinking "out of the box" and doing something different than being a mere cog in the wheel of corporate transactional lawyering is certainly more appealing?

More importantly, if you expand out the "base" of potential legal career opportunities, you don't need to depend so heavily on firms that come to recruit? And surely, this will help future generations of law students that take inspiration from you... and relieve themselves of the herd mentality to think differently?

Why don't you try something different, I ask in all earnestness?

I see a blank face...a blank stare...and often times, a smirk...

So what ails? Why don't many of our students consider alternative legal careers and look beyond law firms? Or perhaps join firms, but move beyond the typical corporate transactional work to do more pro-bono stuff?

I hope to engage with these maladies another day. In the meantime, I'm delighted to report on a fabulous alternative lawyering initiative sparked up by a bunch of bright lawyers who recently graduated.

Styling themselves as the Pre Legislative Briefing Service (PLBS), these young turks have begun engaging with the Indian law making process in a fairly intense way. They pick up drafts of recent bills that are before Parliament, study it extensively and come up with nuanced reports on the various legal/policy implications of the bill.

Most recently, they've done an in-depth study of the nuclear liability bill and raised points that stalwarts who've been shouting in the media have simply failed to appreciate. If you wish to read their analysis of this bill, please see this report posted on SSRN.

Engaging with legal policy at this level will no doubt improve the quality of our laws in the long run. And we will have to much to thank this bright bunch for.

I list out details of their service and the team below:

The Pre-Legislative Briefing Service (PLBS)

i) To provide rigorous, independent and non-partisan legal and policy analysis of Bills introduced in Parliament

ii) To suggest appropriate legal reform to enable bills to pass tests of constitutionality if challenged

iii) To suggest appropriate policy reform if the legislative policy is to be sound in principle and efficacious in practice

Members:

1. Arghya Sengupta, B.A.LL.B. (Hons.), National Law School of India University, Bangalore (2008), Rhodes Scholar (2008), B.C.L., University of Oxford (2009) Current Status: M.Phil. Candidate in Law, University of Oxford.

2. Prashant Reddy T., B.A.LL.B. (Hons.), National Law School of India University, Bangalore (2008) Current Status: Research Associate, Ministry of HRD Chair on Intellectual Property Rights, West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata.

3. Sanhita Ambast, B.A.LL.B. (Hons.), National Law School of India University, Bangalore (2009) Current Status: Candidate for the Masters in Law and Diplomacy and LL.M. joint degree, at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University and Harvard University.

4. Shivprasad Swaminathan, B.S.L; LL.B., Indian Law Society, Pune (2004), B.C.L., University of Oxford (2006), Clarendon Scholar (2008) Current Status: D.Phil. Candidate in Law, University of Oxford

Contact: prelegislativebriefingservice@gmail.com

For those of you who've engaged with law making in this country and are privy to the legal illiteracy widely prevalent amongst Parliamentarians, you'll appreciate how valuable this offering really is.

More importantly, from the perspective of inspiring younger law students to think of alternative careers, the PBLS team couldn't have done better. Rather than playing around with the nitty-gritty of the law in badly drafted statutes, these recent graduates have decided to influence the very formation of the law itself. Certainly a much higher and more valuable terrain to play on. Perhaps law schools need to take a cue from this and focus more on the art and science of law making, rather than merely interpreting statutes and cases.