Top 25 Law Colleges for 2009 - India Today

The National Law School of India University (NLSIU) has emerged right on top in the survey this year, conducted and published by the India Today magazine. See the top 25 Law colleges

The National Academy of Legal Studies and Research University (NALSAR) of Hyderabad, which had broken the run of NLSIU in the prime position last year, is in second place this year, followed by the Faculty of Law, University of Delhi, in third place.

Making it into the top 25 this year are also institutes like the

School of Legal Studies of the Cochin,

University of Science and Technology at Kochi,

MS Ramaiah College of Law, Bangalore, and

Faculty of Law, Gujarat University, at Ahmedabad.

As NLSIU shines, it is not surprising why the top 50 rankers of the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) congregate on this sprawling Nagarbhavi campus in Bangalore to partake of five years of comprehensive residential legal training. “The trimester system is unique for any law school in India, which means the students and faculty have to push the bar literally without the luxury of a vacation or long breaks except for studies,” says R. Venkata Rao, who took over as vice-chancellor of NLSIU in May 2009.

For Professor Rao, IT, which is associated with Bangalore, is not just an acronym for information technology. It stands for “Indian talent”, best exemplified in the minimum of two or three scholarships that NLSIU students get to Oxford, Harvard or Yale.

Most of the talent blossoms because the college management has empowered the students to experiment and innovate. They even bring out their own peer-reviewed law journals, most of which are circulated around the globe.

The Student Bar Association has its own constitution and runs a variety of programmes at the law school. It has already helped the school earn a distinction in areas like mooting, legal services, literary and cultural competitions or academic publications. NLSIU was adjudged winner, best speaker at the Asia-Pacific round of the Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition in Sydney, Australia, and the Bar Council of India National Moot Court Competition.

The school’s students also qualified for the quarter final round of the international rounds of the Philip C. Jessup competition in Washington DC.

On the fun side, the school hosts Strawberry Fields, India’s largest student-organised rock show, while the NLS Debate, South Asia’s largest parliamentary style debating tournament, is a big attraction in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka on the serious side.

While the recession hit recruitments even among prestigious business schools, NLSIU remained recession proof with 100 per cent placement. The school’s Rs 2-crore library has 70,000 books and has added a few rooms for visiting moot court teams apart from adding an all-wired computer lab for students. The school is working on networking law libraries in India to set up a National Legal Information Centre.

The school, established in 1987 after a statute was enacted for that purpose by the Karnataka Legislative Assembly, is hoping to expand its infrastructure so it can take more students. Union Minister for Law and Justice M. Veerappa Moily, a lawyer himself, has assured the school help in boosting infrastructure.

Neither will its close rival, the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR) University of Law. The six-year-old NALSAR in the northern suburbs of Hyderabad is setting new standards in legal education.

“We offer courses in frontier areas where specific laws contribute to changes like in the realty, aviation and space, risk and insurance management and environment protection. The graduating students enjoy an outstanding placement rate because the bar, law firms, corporations and government agencies know that our graduates are equipped with problem-solving techniques and practical hands-on skills,” says NALSAR Vice-Chancellor Veer Singh.

Reflective of this rapid growth in a short span of time is NALSAR reaching an understanding with 21 foreign universities for exchange of students, faculty and collaborative research. Microsoft has signed an MoU for providing scholarships for three students every year for undertaking research in Intellectual Property Rights.

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