ST: The Manipal Law School is a fledgling institute and there are two parts to what we are going to do in the next few years. One is to grow fairly quickly to take an equal place with the established institutions that are already well-known. So, unlike some institutions which may focus on increasing numbers to show growth, we have not increased so much. We are increasing based on our capabilities. Before admissions are done, there's a long meeting to decide what should we offer. We have teachers who have studied from good institutions abroad like Harvard. So, getting faculty is not the challenge that I thought it would be. It is quite easy to increase admission numbers, but there are many other factors to bear in mind.

We need a good library, because the campus is still new. We also want to ensure that there is a link between the number of people we can take in and a robust placement process. We don't want a large number of students or even a few students who don't get a job at the end of their degree. We want to consolidate and have quality over quantity.

The undergraduate BA. LL.B. and BBA. LL.B. programs are revised very frequently to introduce new facets to the program. We live in a multi-disciplinary campus, so there are already strong links to the industry. We also want to increase the foreign exposure that students would get. Introducing global semesters where students can go out as a group accompanied by a teacher, to ensure true comparative law teaching. We want to develop exchange programs. A lot of national law schools have exchange programs, but with fewer students. MAHE has over 200 MoUs with different universities, and many of them have law schools as well. Also, being an institution of eminence, we can have foreign faculty which other institutions, including NLUs, cannot.

Our LL.M. programs are very small, but we offer niche subject areas. We offer subjects that are not available anywhere else in the country, like Construction Law.

We also want to develop better links with stakeholders, with Bar Council members for instance. I had a great time working with them when I was the Registrar at NLSIU, and would seek their continued support for this new institution.

The theme for MAHE this year is research. So we don't want to be just a good law school for students, but we also want to be recognised for our research. I am keen to broadening areas for access to justice, for instance, to questions particularly relating to incarceration and my own area, of course, is gender, and I certainly want to start something on that. We will soon start writing proposals and seek funds from both government and other funders for this.

We have just started PhD admissions, and have some good candidates. We hope to broaden that as well. We want to have a more diverse student body. Our campus is completely accessible - washrooms, hostels and everything is accessible. We have students from all over the country and a few students from abroad as well.

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