From what I have seen over the last few years, international law schools have a fairly predictable schedule when it comes to visiting India for student recruitments. Fly in to either Delhi or Mumbai, and visit the schools in and around these two cities.
And I can understand why – Delhi or rather the National Capital Region has a number of (very) large law schools, and possibly might have the highest concentration of lawyers. It also has Jindal Global Law School, an institution which is miles ahead of any other Indian law school when it comes to international collaborations.
Mumbai, the country’s financial capital, also holds a certain level of appeal – a big “catchment” area for lawyers and law students.
Prima facie, this makes a lot of sense, especially for graduate admissions teams who are increasingly being pushed for time. Yet, I do think that if institutional partnerships are to be made, there are a number of law schools, and regions, that ought to be given more attention. More so if the recruiting school is not a legacy law school with an established brand value and name recognition.
Here are five such Indian law schools:
While the Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani (BITS) is widely recognised for its engineering school, it recently entered into the teaching of law with BITS Law School. With a relatively young dean who moved from Jindal Law School, (Dr. Ashish Bhardwaj) at the helm, I can see this law school becoming quite the aspirational option for students in the Mumbai region, and beyond.
Other schools in the region: Pravin Gandhi School of Law, Kirit P Mehta School of Law, Maharashtra National Law University Mumbai
Like BITS Law, the VMLS is also a new addition to an existing university, this one to the Vinayaka Mission which has a “Deemed University” status. The founding Dean, Dr. Ananth Padmanabhan, was also the driving force behind the fairly unique Daksha Fellowship and is no stranger to international legal education with degrees from Penn Law as well as Stanford’s B-School.
Other schools in the region: Saveetha School of Law, SASTRA School of Law
The eastern part of the country is, in my opinion, rarely gets the attention it deserves, and this is particularly true when it comes to student recruitments. Which is just one of the reasons why I recommend international law schools to take a look at KIIT School of Law. The law school is currently led by Professor Bhavani P Panda, who incidentally was the founding Vice Chancellor at MNLU Mumbai.
Other schools in the region: The National Law University and Judicial Academy in Assam, the newly launched NLU Tripura
The Symbiosis Law School (SLS) in Pune is the “OG” of this chain of law schools with students more or less familiar with international law schools. Instead of focusing here, and competing with a larger set of schools, I would instead direct schools to the younger but fairly impressive set up in Hyderabad.
With a large student body, and some interesting initiatives like an “International Cell” for academic partnerships, SLS Hyderabad is worth a visit.
Other schools in the region: ICFAI Law School, Mahindra University’s School of Law
This is probably the oddball in the list – a State University (the other four are all private), and one of the oldest law faculties in the country. Yet, for reasons that I am yet to ascertain, CLC does not attract as much attention from international law schools as it deserves.
After all, the students are often of a high quality, are ambitious and do see value in obtaining a legal education from outside the country. If I was to shortlist schools to visit in Delhi or the National Capital Region, CLC would feature quite high on that list.
Other schools in region: VIPS School of Law, BML Munjal University
International law schools can check out our latest tool to simplify LL.M. recruitments, The Amicus Project.
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