Conversation with Murali Neelakantan on teaching at NUJS Will more law firm partners venture into teaching

Law firm partners teaching at law schools is a common practise in the western countries but a rare occurrence in India. Khaitan and Co Partner, Murali Neelakantan recently offered a clinical course titled “Cross Border Outsourcing: Law in the Real World” at the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), Kolkata. The three credit course consisted of twenty two-hour classes..Law firm partners teaching at law schools is a common practise in the western countries but a rare occurrence in India. Khaitan and Co Partner, Murali Neelakantan recently offered a clinical course titled “Cross Border Outsourcing: Law in the Real World” at the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), Kolkata. The three credit course consisted of twenty two-hour classes..Bar & Bench spoke to V. Umakanth, former Amarchand Mangaldas Partner and Associate Professor at National University of Singapore. He said, “the phenomenon of law firm partners teaching at law schools is certainly welcome. However, it is not an entirely new development in India. There have been certain law firm partners who have been teaching specific segments of courses, although perhaps less so in terms of teaching entire courses. Also, this idea has not developed to the extent it has in other jurisdictions not only in the West but also in Asian countries like Singapore.”.He added, “The advantage of teaching undertaken by practitioners is that they are able to introduce students to cutting-edge issues that may have acquired significance in practice. This is particularly relevant in fast-developing areas of the law in India such as competition law, M&A, securities regulation, international arbitration, and the like. Practitioner involvement will also be eminently beneficial in skill-based courses, such as negotiation, drafting commercial contracts, and other transaction-based approaches. Students will be benefited by such an approach.”.Umakanth also mentioned that it is necessary to exercise some caution as well. He said, “In my view, students will be benefited the most in courses that are taught jointly by law professors and practitioners through a dialogue based approach where there is equal emphasis on both the academic/theoretical aspects of the law as well as the practical issues.”.During the course, the students were evaluated on their knowledge of the legal principles demonstrated in class room discussion, application of appropriate legal principles to the issues discussed, drafting skills and negotiation skills. The students were alloted marks for the tasks undertaken by them and for class participation..The course has received wide support from students and the academia equally. We can expect more law firm partners to teach at various law schools across the country in the coming days. .Bar & Bench spoke to Murali Neelakantan about his teaching experience: .Bar & Bench: How did this begin? What prompted you to take this up?.Murali Neelakantan: I have been a strong believer in law schools remaining focused on basic courses at the undergraduate level and I often hear from my peers that students don’t seem to have a good grounding in the basics of law. However, rather than just complaining about what was not being done at law schools, I tried to make a contribution..Many years ago, I taught a one credit course at NLSIU, which was very well received. In January this year during a discussion with Prof. Shamnad Basheer at NUJS about his pioneering IDIA project, he remembered attending my class at NLSIU and asked if I would like to teach a course at NUJS. Having worked on several cross border outsourcing transactions for more than a decade now, I had been putting together material on cross border outsourcing for some time now. Outsourcing as a sector is topical for India and a complex outsourcing transaction has almost all the elements of law. I thought therefore that a course on outsourcing would be an opportunity for students to refresh their learning of virtually all the different subjects they should have studied in law school – a kind of final preparation for life in the real world, which is what is expected of a clinical course..Bar & Bench: How was the overall teaching experience at NUJS?.Murali Neelakantan: I expected students to be keen, enthusiastic and even demanding in class, as I remembered how full of energy my classes at NLSIU were..Having worked for a few hundred hours on preparing the reading materials, summarizing the issues to be discussed in class in teaching notes and preparing bespoke assignments, I realized in the first week at NUJS that I was a complete outsider to the academic world, which in most parts seemed to be detached from the profession. Students and faculty these days have much better facilities and access to world class resources than we could ever have imagined but it did not seem to me that there was an ecosystem that encouraged scholarly pursuits, created a fascination for the law and a desire to achieve excellence. It seemed, for most part, that being a student or faculty in one of the leading law schools in India was seen an achievement in itself and it required little effort to tread a well laid out path to a guaranteed future. I did not see NUJS trying to develop personality and character in its students and preparing them to face the world outside, which is what I always thought university education is meant to do..Like many other professionals who teach at leading institutions, I came away with very mixed feelings about the experience. All the research and the time spent designing the course and preparing the materials for a course that had never been conducted in India before was deeply satisfying but it would have been a rewarding experience if all the students had used the materials. I expected them to be keen and enthusiastic about the opportunity to learn something useful that has not been available before and making the most of it. The course was therefore structured as a series of workshops rather than lectures encouraging students to read the materials before class and use the time in class to discuss case studies similar to what they are likely to encounter in their professional lives. Their assignments were all team based and deadlines were real, as it would be for a lawyer. Perhaps attending lectures for too many years, first in school and then at NUJS, meant that they had become too entrenched in the system unable to adapt to the Socratic Method. As a result, students seem to be unable to identify the basic legal principles and even when they did, they found it a challenge to articulate and discuss various aspects in class. This perhaps explains why they take a significant amount of time to transition from law graduates to lawyers..Having discussed my experiences with some of the faculty at NUJS, there was consensus that there is a lot that needs to be done for academics and professionals to work in an integrated manner so that law schools can deliver what the legal profession needs. I understand that it is difficult to teach law, especially when teachers are not taught about the learning process and have very little formal training in teaching techniques. It is also understandable that law teachers have very little understanding of the various career options that law graduates have and the skills that are needed to be successful in each of them. Academics, being isolated from the practice of the law, need lawyers and other law professionals to work with them so that they can design courses that will prepare and equip students for the challenges that will be presented to them once they graduate. Unless academics reach out to professionals, make them feel welcome on campus and show an openness to learn, they will undermine legal education..Unless law schools inspire students to explore the law, understand the “legal method” and instill discipline, hard work and commitment as essential traits quickly enough, I am afraid that history will repeat itself – the number of law graduates will keep increasing but so will the number of unemployable law graduates – the very malady that the Bar Council sought to remedy with the creation of the national law school. The national law school experiment will be a failure and the “hole in the wall” law colleges will have won..Bar & Bench: How did you juggle the roles of a law firm partner and a teacher?.Murali Neelakantan: During my time in London there was tremendous emphasis by the international law firms on frequent training to keep up the quality of lawyering. I was a frequent speaker at international conferences and have conducted workshops for lawyers and clients on various issues. When I joined Khaitan & Co, we established a fortnightly Continuing Legal Education (CLE) programme which helps lawyers be better equipped to deal with legal issues that they face and refresh what they learnt in law school. In addition to this, each of the specialist teams has regular training programmes to share knowledge and learning from the work they have done so that we are all updated on all topical issues and are able to present comprehensive solutions to clients in an efficient manner..I did not think of training or teaching outside of my role as a lawyer. In fact, I treated the NUJS teaching assignment just as I would treat a key client. One always seems to find time for a key client and for me; NUJS was an interesting client with a pioneering project about which I was extremely enthusiastic..Bar & Bench: How did Khaitan and Co respond to this venture?.Murali Neelakantan: Khaitan & Co was fully supportive of this pioneering experiment in legal education in India. We expect that many law students will benefit from this and perhaps many other lawyers will consider teaching as a way of making a contribution. Not many people know that partners at Khaitan & Co were instrumental in the founding of NLS, NALSAR and NUJS and have been supporting various law schools in a variety of ways. For example, it was due to the efforts of one of our partners that NLS has the Subroto Roy Chowdhury International Law Library and to this day, there have been more gold medals instituted by partners at Khaitan & Co at the national law schools than any other organization or institution. My colleagues have been teaching for some years now at Government Law College, Mumbai and ILS, Pune. I evaluated the memorials for the international rounds of the Philip C Jessup International Law Moot Court last year and my colleagues and I have been judges at various moot courts..Bar & Bench: Will you go in future also to teach at other law schools?.Murali Neelakantan: It was an extremely interesting experience for me to spend so much time at law school with future lawyers. I would love to take this course to other law schools where there is sufficient interest from both the faculty and students..Image Courtesy – NUJS Campus: NUJS Website