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7 Red Hot Career Opportunities For Law Professionals in India PDF
7 Red Hot Career Opportunities For Law Professionals in India PDF
REDHOT
HOTCAREER
CAREER
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OPPORTUNITIES FOR
OPPORTUNITIES FORLAW
LAW
PROFESSIONALS IN INDIA
STUDENTS IN INDIA
- Chancellor
Sage University
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MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR
- Ramanuj Mukherjee
CEO, iPleaders & LawSikho.com
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TABLE OF CONTENT
ularly, while the traditional work for lawyers have also stayed
strong and only increased in demand. Everyone is well aware
of the trend, but not quite about the details of where those op-
portunities are arising and how to capitalize on them.
As Indian economy continue to grow strongly, the demand
for skilled lawyers is only going up. However, at the same time,
it is a paradox that a large number of law graduates remain
unemployed or struggle to find work.
This can happen for two reasons. One is that these law
graduates are not adequately trained. Many of them have the-
oretical knowledge of law, but are not employable and cannot
serve real clients as they do not have practical skills.
This is why, choosing the right law school where the ad-
ministration has a vision and understanding of where the le-
gal market is headed is very important. Always check before
joining, does your preferred law school have a method in place
to provide practical training to the students? Are the students
graduating with jobs or are they able to find well paid work on
their own?
That is the critical question to ask and then it is even more
important find the right answer.
Most law schools will claim that they give practical training.
Most even have some name sake courses and classes where they
supposedly teach skills like contract drafting, petition drafting
etc. However, usually these classes are ineffective. They do not
have any proper faculty or material to teach such skills.
This is why, at iPleaders and LawSikho.com, we have been
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7 RED HOT CAREER OPPORTUNITIES FOR LAW STUDENTS IN INDIA
Read this book, learn about the career opportunities that are
arising in new areas of legal work, such as media law, technol-
ogy and cyber law, transfer pricing, corporate litigation, energy
law, regulatory litigation and so on. See which ones appeal to
you. Then decide which one you want to focus on, and what
skills are necessary to succeed in that job.
Then you have to go ahead and actually build those skills.
That is hard work. There is no shortcut for that.
However, if you college also helps you in that, that is won-
derful. Otherwise, it is counter-productive to struggle on your
own as your valuable resources, time and money, goes into the
wrong direction as far as college in concerned.
To sum up, there are ample opportunities after studying
law to have a fantastic career. However, one has to be careful.
This is an applied area of work, not of theoretical knowledge.
You must develop your skills in practical legal work one way
or another.
Let us look at a few things about what makes law an excel-
lent career choice next.
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7 RED HOT CAREER OPPORTUNITIES FOR LAW STUDENTS IN INDIA
• Litigator
A lawyer who engages in litigation is called a litigator. They
are the typical lawyers you see on TV and movies. They go to
court, argue cases before judges or tribunals.
Do not let the black and white fool you, this is an excit-
ing and thrilling profession. You have to work a lot, preparing
for cases late into every night, and spend the day travelling
from courtroom to courtroom, but litigators can make insane
amount of money. It is not unheard of litigators who earn hun-
dreds of crores in a single year if they are one of the famous
senior advocates.
To reach that stage, however, it takes decades. Nonethe-
less, younger lawyers can also earn a lot within a few years
of practice if they know their work well. I know many of my
batchmates who earn several lakhs a month by doing litigation,
and they reached such a stage within 3-4 years of beginning
practice. I know of lawyers who live in small districts but are
well known in their area of work and tend to earn several lakhs
per month.
The downside is that when you begin litigation by appren-
ticing with a lawyer, they will pay very less. Maybe 10-15,000
per month despite back breaking work. Only when you learn
enough to work on your own independently and manage to
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7 RED HOT CAREER OPPORTUNITIES FOR LAW STUDENTS IN INDIA
• In-house counsel
These days companies have a lot of legal work. Hiring out-
side counsels all the time for all the work is too expensive.
Hence, all companies which are sufficiently big, employ an in
house legal team. The size of such a team can be anywhere be-
tween just one lawyer to hundreds of lawyers.
The lawyers who work in these in-house teams typically
have to spend a lot of time everyday advising their business
teams, draft contracts, manage the litigations or legal proceed-
ings of the company.
Those with previous litigation experience often get into in-
house positions in order to get a better work life balance, as
well as secure salary as opposed to uncertainty of litigation and
the hardship faced until one becomes a well known lawyer.
Many corporate lawyers working in law firms also do the
same. It is rather rare for companies to hire freshers. Remem-
ber that majority of companies hire only experienced lawyers.
However, many of them hire freshers too.
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7 RED HOT CAREER OPPORTUNITIES FOR LAW STUDENTS IN INDIA
• Compliance Jobs
Did someone tell you to do CS, and that it has a lot of
scope? They were talking about a compliance job. Lawyers are
preferred in compliance jobs, doing CS is not really necessary
for that either. However, having CS qualification on top law
LLB degree can help.
Compliance jobs are different from In-House Counsel jobs,
although in both cases you work for a company. In compliance,
you are more concerned about complying with certain laws,
and not with the entire spectrum of legal work.
Just like in LPOs, you make less money in compliance jobs,
and promotions are harder to come by. This is not the most
lucrative, but there are a lot of such jobs available in the mar-
ket, and you could get paid upwards of INR 50,000 right at the
beginning.
• Judge
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7 RED HOT CAREER OPPORTUNITIES FOR LAW STUDENTS IN INDIA
• Arbitrator or mediator
As you become more senior in profession, one option is to
work as arbitrator or mediator. Working as an arbitrator is a
great job, where parties or arbitration institutes appoint you to
hear their cases. In case you are a mediator, you help parties
in dispute to set aside their differences and come to a mutually
agreeable solution.
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7 RED HOT CAREER OPPORTUNITIES FOR LAW STUDENTS IN INDIA
• Armed forces
Army, navy and air force, all of them hire lawyers. Salary is
quite attractive. Many law students are attracted to the idea of
working for an uniformed service. Army officers are well taken
care of, and it is definitely a good job option.
• Civil Services
Many lawyers crack civil services exams and prefer to work
in the civil services such as IAS, IPS, IFS etc. Every year several
lawyers make the cut into this prestigious and highly sought
after career.
• Legal Academia
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7 RED HOT CAREER OPPORTUNITIES FOR LAW STUDENTS IN INDIA
While the skill set for specialised lawyers may vary based on
their industry, there remain certain essentials which cannot be
amiss in a technology lawyer.
For the employers, it is cost-efficient to hire a technology
lawyer who is already competent in technology, rather than
training them on the job.
The specialised skill sets are much easier to acquire than it
seems. If you are aiming for a good package and role, it is far
better to acquire these skills before you start working and in
the 2nd best case, you must work on them while you are work-
ing as a tech lawyer to progress faster in career.
You need the practical skills like technology related contract
drafting, risk assessment, risk management, strategising, poli-
cy-making and implementation, negotiation and last but not
the least, ability to speak in the language of your clients i.e.
techies!
If you can’t explain complex laws to them simply in their
language, you will find it difficult to progress in tech law.
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issues and disputes arise. Legal and policy issues are arising in
India right now in domains such as drone licensing and civilian
use of drones, cryptocurrency, big data collection and stor-
age, space and defence technology, cloud computing, emerging
e-commerce practices, payment gateway debacles, cyber secu-
rity, net neutrality, biotechnology etc.
If you do not understand the underlying technology, how
things are being done and where it is all headed, practicing
technology law is very difficult only by knowing legal provi-
sions.
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7 RED HOT CAREER OPPORTUNITIES FOR LAW STUDENTS IN INDIA
Oil and gas contracts lawyers will have to draft and assist
their clients in negotiating exploration and Production Sharing
Agreements, Gas Transmission Agreements, Farm-in/ farm-out
Agreements, LNG Supply Agreement, Pipeline Transportation
Contracts, Power Purchase Contracts, Fuel Supply Agreements,
Shipping and Bulk Carriage Contracts, Contracts for the Pur-
chase and Leasing of Rigs and other drilling equipments, Nat-
ural Gas Gathering and Processing Agreements, Leasing agree-
ments for mines etc. They advise their clients routinely on
development, transfer and termination of agreements, taxation,
and private participation in government contracts.
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7 RED HOT CAREER OPPORTUNITIES FOR LAW STUDENTS IN INDIA
• Renewable Energy
There is no doubt that the maximum growth is definitely
happening in this sector. Although the famous cleantech bubble
has popped, taking down a host of renewable energy compa-
nies with it, it has survived and gained momentum since then.
In any case, the work of lawyers have drastically increased
over the years and there are really few who can claim any
expertise in this field. As usual, most of the work in this sec-
tor involve either finance and compliances related to projects,
ranging from solar to offshore wind energy units, or contracts.
Currently, electricity lawyers handle a big chunk of renewable
energy matters, especially due to lack of trained lawyers in this
area, but clearly in times to come specialized lawyers will be
preferred if they are available.
• Nuclear Energy
Just like renewable energy, atomic energy or nuclear en-
ergy is also a growing sector. Interestingly, the lawyers who
practice in this area are a distinct bunch from other energy
sector lawyers. Again, a highly specialized practice area that is
expected to grow rapidly. Apart from the usual finance, com-
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7 RED HOT CAREER OPPORTUNITIES FOR LAW STUDENTS IN INDIA
Well, indeed this has opportunity for fewer lawyers and big
law firms do not get into this. However, increasingly, this is
being handed over to professional organizations who take care
of the project displaced people and rehabilitate them according
to government policies. This space is very good for lawyers
or those with adequate understand of law. As these projects
involves both big sums and good karma, those with a bend of
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7 RED HOT CAREER OPPORTUNITIES FOR LAW STUDENTS IN INDIA
• Drafting Contracts
• Litigation
• Filing and registering trademark, copyright or patent
• Detecting and prosecuting IPR infringement
• Managing an IP portfolio
• Teaching, training and spreading awareness
• Analytics and Strategy
• Research, policy, philosophy and advocacy
The list is not exhaustive. The idea is to make clear that a
single individual takes more than one of these roles up in the
Indian paradigm because role specialization is rare, unlike the
western countries. These roles might narrow down if you end
up in an IPR specializing firm, where only specific roles are
provided, but if you step into litigation, you clearly have a dy-
namic and broad field of practice, which I think is more fun.
Who succeeds in Intellectual Property Law?
• Knowledge and understanding of law and procedure is
most important. You need to learn to draft specialized
agreements, understand IP registration process at the
minimum. You need to eventually master IP related liti-
gation too.
• Good communication skill is necessary as IPR is widely
interdisciplinary. Research skill and the ability to quick-
ly learn new things would be critical for success as well.
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7 RED HOT CAREER OPPORTUNITIES FOR LAW STUDENTS IN INDIA
Technology phobia
No doubt that in patent law those with a technical degree
may have some advantage but it does not disqualify the rest,
except for doing filing work as a patent attorney. If you are
doing IP law, knowledge of technology is relevant in patent
law, but not necessarily so much in copyright or trademark or
other areas.
The consensus is that you just need to have a scientific pas-
sion to thrive based on knowledge and understanding of the
client’s business and technological space they work in even if
you want to work on patent law beyond drafting patent appli-
cations.
(This chapter is contributed by Qamar Ali Jafri)
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CAREER OPPORTUNITIES IN
TRANSFER PRICING AND INTERNA-
TIONAL TAX LAWS
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CAREER OPPORTUNITIES IN
COMPETITION LAW
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7 RED HOT CAREER OPPORTUNITIES FOR LAW STUDENTS IN INDIA
to enter the business. They all seem to have the same question:
Why do you want to work in-house as a fresher?
Let us try to get the logic straight however biased it might
sound. Given, the specialization of the industry and the huge
public image these organizations have, along with the limited
resources, nobody really has the time to train new entrants,
and it just becomes more convenient to have somebody who is
thorough with the law and is capable of taking quick decisions.
While universities avoid having a course, not catering to an en-
tire sector, gaining knowledge in media laws becomes a tough
nut to crack.
“So, am I suggesting that you cannot make a career in media
law if you are a fresher?”
No. I started off law school with a dream to make it big in
the media sector. It of course came from the fact that I wanted
to be a journalist, and ended up thinking law would be a step-
ping stone towards this journey. At that point in time, when
everyone wanted to either become a successful criminal law-
yer or prove their mettle as a corporate lawyer, it was a chal-
lenge to dream of making a career in media laws, specifically
in-house. It was more problematic, especially because my law
school did not have it in the course curriculum.
This fuelled my troubles further to make it into the media
industry. Neither did I have a mentor, not a subject on my
mark sheets to prove that I have learnt the law. I was left on
my own. I would rather express my immense gratitude to this
course and the mentors. I owe it big time to them because of
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7 RED HOT CAREER OPPORTUNITIES FOR LAW STUDENTS IN INDIA
You are dealing with clients from the creative field, their issues
are slightly different from the regular. You need to be tactful
while dealing with them. With over US $ 6.58 billion worth of
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flowing in, Indian media in-
dustry – be it print, radio, television, films or the digital media,
presently bank only on majorly on contracts and regulations.
You need to beautifully learn the art of vetting, negotiating and
drafting. You need to understand different business models and
deliver so that they can be used by the outsourcing vendors.
One needs to understand the nuances of the field before
making the choice.
(Contributed by: Aditya Shrivastava)
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7 RED HOT CAREER OPPORTUNITIES FOR LAW STUDENTS IN INDIA
a day extra, you can actually opt to not work for an extra hour
the next day. In addition to this, the number of casual and sick
leaves, work-from-home facility, medical insurance, home rent
allowance, traveling allowances are all a part of the package
that you are offered, which can be quite comforting.
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your hands.
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