June 2, 2006

LST’s Official Response to the India Today Rankings 2006

The purpose of this article is to discuss the recently released India Today – AC Nielsen – ORG-Marg Survey of Colleges for 2006. It is LST’s official position on the rankings.

We sincerely wish we could ignore the rankings, but unfortunately, this otherwise excellent magazine’s circulation is huge, and a lot of people take it seriously. Consequently, every year there is wave of confusion, and often despair, when the rankings are released.

This year’s rankings look a lot better than last year’s, except for some gaping flaws. Finally India Today has come around to recognising the club of colleges we have been listing for almost 3 years. If it weren’t for the flaws, the ranking would bear some semblance to reality, but unfortunately, this is expecting too much from the troika responsible for the ranking. Barring BHU and Chandigarh University (Is there such a University?) the rest deserve to be in the top 10 or 12 though not in the provided order. Instead of BHU and CU (?) we should have seen NUJS Kolkata and NLU Jodhpur on the list. The exclusion of these colleges pulls the rug out from under the rankings.

Let’s consider NUJS Kolkata and NLU Jodhpur in light of the criteria used by the Survey in question:

Reputation: One can consider reputation amongst 3 different circles – law students, legal corporate world or practicing advocates / judges. In the latter category you have to be careful to consult across a wide spectrum of practitioners and professionals, and not just senior lawyers and judges, since the new law schools may not be considered fairly. For instance, if you consult the really senior judges and lawyers, they may have only vaguely heard of the new national law schools, while ILS, GLC and Delhi Faculty would be familiar names for them. Now you could reason that it is the senior judges’ / lawyers’ opinion that is most relevant, but that doesn’t make sense because, firstly, they are not the peak recruiters; secondly, they are not representative of the community as a whole and thirdly, they are hardly present in the corporate legal world. In our opinion, NUJS Kolkata and NLU Jodhpur have already built an excellent reputation across the country in corporate legal circles, amongst foreign universities and practicing advocates. NUJS in particular has an awe-inspiring reputation amongst the law schools themselves. The placements at the college match those at NLSIU Bangalore.

Curriculum: This is no-brainer. The curriculum at NUJS and NLU is almost the same as that at NLSIU and NALSAR. By default these colleges should be right up there and so should other national law schools such as GNLU and HNLU.

Quality of Academic Input: Quality of law faculty is a problem everywhere in the country. It is widely recognised even in the law school circle that the best faculty is at Faculty of Law Delhi. Everywhere else there is a struggle to attract and retain good faculty. How does one compare faculty quality? Do you poll students? Nothing like this was done at the law schools. Do you sit and compare CVs? Sounds far-fetched and highly subjective. If you do indeed compare faculty profiles, then that begs the question: who is doing it – has he / she sat in a class conducted by this faculty? All we can say here is that it takes months of experiential research to come to this conclusion, and by our own interaction with students and faculty of several law schools, we can confidently say that NUJS and NLU deserve a place in this list.

Student Care: Another controversial criterion. NLU has arguably the best infrastructure amongst the law schools, including the best hostels. We see colleges on that list that don’t even have proper hostels! What care are we talking about? Free Pepsi during lunch break? If student care is measured objectively, a comparison of quality of student care infrastructure should be done. Polling student happiness levels with an institution while weeding out the bias is the challenge. Why are NUJS and NLU not on this list?

Admission Procedure: Once again, the procedure for NLU and NUJS is identical to other national law schools, and, what is more, far better than a procedure based on board exam marks. After all, the world’s best law schools admit on an assessment of legal aptitude. NLU has close to 4,000 applicants every year and NUJS the same.

Infrastructure: We would invite each one of you to visit NLU and NUJS, or for that matter, GNLU and HNLU, and compare the infrastructure at the national law schools with other law schools mentioned in the top 20.

Job Prospects: Another no-brainer. NUJS and NLU attract the top law firms and corporates in the country. If you know someone at Amarchand or AZB (best law firms) or someone at Levers or ITC (top corporates), then do ask them. They may not have even heard of half the law schools in the ‘top 20’ but they have recruited from the mentioned colleges.

To sum up: There is no criterion on the basis of which NLU and NUJS are not on this list, near the top. It might be that these colleges turned away the ORG-MARG ‘researcher’ at the gate, but then the Survey should have mentioned that X and Y colleges declined the survey. In a country where most people have a strong bias against law, legal education and the system, to not mention colleges that are leading a revolution is a serious failure. GNLU and HNLU may not be on this list because they haven’t got a graduating batch under their belt but NUJS and NLU’s omission is a gaffer. Furthermore, even if GNLU and HNLU don’t have a graduating batch, if they are providing legal education of a higher quality then other colleges, shouldn’t they be mentioned? Or is it that they will suddenly find mention when a batch graduates. That is nonsensical; after all, what is the purpose of these rankings? If not guidance towards better education what is it? A macho display?

Nobody who provides a ranking can end up keeping everyone happy. However, we find it necessary to rank so that our students are able to confidently select colleges. In our opinion, a list of top colleges for 2006 should include the following in the given tier slabs (no rankings within the tier):

Tier 1:
NLSIU Bangalore
NALSAR Hyderabad
NUJS Kolkata

Tier 2:
NLIU Bhopal
NLU Jodhpur
Delhi Faculty of Law

Tier 3:
ILS Pune
Symbiosis Pune
GNLU Gandhinagar
GLC Mumbai
HNLU Raipur
NUALS Cochin
Amity Law School (IP-University affiliate)

Tier 4:
Faculty of Law, BHU
ULC Bangalore
Army Institute of Law, Mohali
Kerala Law Academy

Note:

Why we are competent to release this list?

a) Our interaction every year with several law schools, especially students and alumni.
b) Understanding / assessment of the admission procedures.
c) Knowledge of placement / recruitment statistics.
d) Familiarity with industry opinion of the colleges.