Posts from an Indian law school
- February 18, 2009
“Friday saw me head up to the brand-new National Law University of Delhi (and a long way it was!) where I met with Vice-Chancellor Rambir Singh and Registrar Ghansyham Singh. Who knew that you could get legislative approval for a law school in March and be underway with faculty, students, and a building by August?”
Scott Pryor’s blog, Pryor Posts India, is full of similar gems about his experiences travelling and teaching law in India . A professor at Regent Law School since 1998, he is currently visiting the National Law University, Jodhpur on a Fulbright scholarship. Meanwhile, he regularly updates his blog with thoughts on a range of topics – from travelling in India , to legal education, to Hebrew conceptions of justice and the world of NLU Jodhpur. On everyday life at NLU, he wrote on 13 January: “It’s great. In fact, my colleague Jim Duane would be particularly pleased to know that we’re following several of his prescriptions for healthy living: no TV and virtually no meat.” During the 12 th Annual M V Singhvi International Moot Court Competition, he noted that “the scurrying of NLU’s Moot Court Committee (our Moot Court Board) made me feel right at home (and happy not to be the faculty advisor at either place).” His accounts of his interaction with “Indian folks on a personal basis” only add to that sense of an outsider blending with insiders and looking out.
While clearly aimed at readers who have little idea of the Indian legal community and education, Indian readers get a rare opportunity to interact with a professor trained and experienced in the American tradition, living and working in one of the younger law schools - one that is being hailed as a quiet model of success. “Continuous assessment seems particularly useful to the undergraduate experience”, Pryor wrote on January 15. “An answer-from-memory, answer-from-research, and critique approach is particularly helpful in making the test a learning as well as an assessment exercise.”
Even before teaching contracts to undergraduate students, commercial transactions to postgraduate students and lecturing on American law of Property and Civil Procedure, he had some interaction with Indian legal education. At the NLU Jodhpur Teacher Training Programme, he spoke on panels about American law school approaches to academic scholarship and teaching methods. He is also coaching a team of NLU-Jodhpur students who will be competing in the ICC International ADR Moot in Paris , and regularly meets with faculty to discuss a wide variety of matters. His experiences have convinced him that “the days of the dominance of the American bar and the insularity of American legal education are numbered.” On January 4, he blogged about the increasing worldwide competition for legal jobs. “I can’t help but wonder how the highly analytic but unfocused nature of American legal education will stand up as its graduates are increasingly competing against those whose education and training permits value to be added to a firm’s practice much more quickly.”
His advice to American law students who worry about the recession is very simple. Talking to The Rainmaker, he said that “any law-related job - even if it’s not your dream job - is better than any non-law job”. Economic downturns do not last forever and it is important to be in the legal market in some capacity while waiting for things to pick up. “Working for low pay at a public service position or for an NGO can be useful.”
He also had his bit to say about the differences between teacher-student relationships in India and the United States . “The contrast is notable but primarily due, I believe, to the younger ages of law students at NLU in comparison to law schools in America .” He notes that while Indian law students might express formal deference to their teachers, “there is a difference in maturity of 17-18 year olds in comparison with students whose average age is in their mid-20s that comes to expression in the classroom behaviour.” So does this age gap make a difference to their respective abilities at the workplace? Pryor believes that while Indian graduates would be at a disadvantage, it can be “overcome in the professional and social context of big-firm practice.” In any case, he observes, “Indian law grads who end up practicing in the U.K. or the U.S. have also earned an LL.M., thus putting them on a par, age-wise, with American law grads.”
I told him that Indian law schools have failed to produce the kind of research and scholarship that is expected of legal scholars in the United States and the U.K. . Treading carefully, he says that though he had discussed the question with faculty at NLU, he would not be able to offer any “meaningful opinion”. Quite unlike the time he hung from a bus, all dressed up, winding its way down NH 65, he is as surefooted as his opinions on the legal outsourcing industry are emphatic.
Scott is quite clear that he would not advise the students of NLU Jodhpur to join the bulging ranks of those employed by the LPO industry. “There is a natural limit to advancement in this field,” he says. “In addition, competition from Israel , South Africa , and eventually other countries will ultimately constrain market growth in India .” At the same time, he is assured about the future of the industry. “LPO is here to stay; the economics of globalization cannot be stopped at manufacturing,” he says.
