Campus Recruitment Committee (CRC) of National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), Kolkata has completed their placement process. Out of a batch of 97 students, only 75 students sat for placements.  All the 75 students have been placed; 57 students will be joining law firms, 16 students will be joining various companies and 2 students will be joining LPOs.  22 were pre-placement offers (PPOs).

5 students have opted for LLM and 8 students are being considered for the judicial clerkship programme offered by the Supreme Court. 5 students are exclusively preparing for civil service exams and 2 students; will go for working on rights based issues in Nagaland and for working on policy research in Delhi. Another 2 students have opted to become entrepreneurs; one in the legal and the other in non legal sector.

Amarchand & Mangaldas was the highest recruiter; hiring 12. Luthra & Luthra hired 11 students and Khaitan & Co. hired 9 students. International law firms Ashurst, Allen & Overy and Linklaters each offered one training contract. Trilegal, J. Sagar Associates, Lakshmi Kumaran & Sridharan, AZB & Partners, ICICI, Vendanta, Pangea3 were the other prominent recruiters.

NUJS students received offers from around 25 Universities (in some cases, multiple offers by same University), including New York University and National University of Singapore. Other prominent universities from where offers came are George Washington University; Notre Dame Law School; Kings College London; Chicago-Kent College of Law; DePaul University, Chicago; Dickinson School of Law, Penn State; Loyola University Chicago School of Law; Queen Mary University, London; Sturm College of Law; University of Colorado Law School; University of Iowa; University of Kent; University of Newcastle; University of Nottingham; University of Sussex; University School of Law, Indianapolis.

One NUJS student had been involved in the founding of NUJS-graduate Rohit Das’ law firm RDA Legal (or PXV Law Partners as it is now called) and would now be joining the firm and in the non legal sector one student is the Founder & Partner of a travel services company (Walk With Nine Lives) with predominant focus on North East India; and an attachment (Vacation Scheme) with MTV, Singapore.

Recruitment statistics for NUJS are as follows:

The NUJS Campus Recruitment Committee consisted of the following students; Pranav Mittal, Mathews George, Davis Kanjamala, Gitanjali Shankar, Anirudh Srinivas, Mrinal Kanwar, Tarunima Vijra, Abhisaar Bairagi, Sneha J., Apoorva Ankur Misra, Abhipsa Nayak, Souvik Roy, Pratyush Saha, Varun Kedia, Vivek Chowdhary.

Bar & Bench spoke to Pranav Mittal, Member of Campus Recruitment Committee (CRC), 2011. 

On Recruitment in General: We had most of the well established law firms show an interest in recruiting students from our campus and express a desire to visit our campus earlier in the year than usual. The feedback that we received was that these firms had worked with our alumni in the past and were extremely pleased with their work.

At the same time, we caught the attention of many promising start-ups including some founded by our alumni.  Many students had interned with these in the past and liked the sort of work that was being handled, and were extended offers after their internships.

We had an overwhelming proportion of students in the class opt for positions at law firms and as in-house counsels at corporate houses. Despite such a huge number of applicants, there were a record number of offers made. We were extremely pleased with the profiles of our recruiters and the average packages which were offered.

Recruitment Process: The process kicked off with the class electing a recruitment committee which consisted of 15 members. This committee functioned as the link between the recruiters and the students. We facilitated the applications and the exchange of information, negotiated offer details with the recruiters on behalf of the students and assisted the recruiters conduct the recruitment process. Prior to recruiters making offers, we encouraged and organized Pre-Placement Talks (PPTs) for recruiters to come and freely interact with the students. At the same time, we enforced a ‘No Hold-On’ policy whereby students were allowed to accept only one offer through campus placement.

Since we were an elected body, we tried to be as inclusive and democratic in our process as we could be. Wherever possible, all our policies were discussed and voted on by the entire class. Even the choice of recruiters who were contacted was influenced by the students. We often relied on the advice that we received from our alumni who were immensely helpful wherever we hit a roadblock.

Challenges faced: On the organizational front, I think our biggest challenge was our experiment of hosting 4 recruiters simultaneously on ‘Day One’ of our recruitment which we spread out over 2 days. In the previous few years we had not implemented the Recruitment Week process and had instead adopted the Rolling Recruitment process which is a continuous process throughout the year. Hosting 4 firms simultaneously required for us to formulate extensive policies and rules and to negotiate effectively with all the recruiters over a couple of weeks prior to their visit. In the end, it proved to be a very successful experiment.

Comparisons with other law schools: Over the past so many years, NUJS has done exceedingly well when it comes to placements. I think it's safe to say that we've reached a point where the students have all the opportunities to put in the right effort and to branch out into whichever field they are interested in.

Students preferring other options: This year, lesser number of students applied to foreign universities for courses immediately after graduation. I think this was partly because the overall recruitment this year took place unusually early with a majority of the class securing placements within the first few weeks of their final year.