Dear candidate,

A small piece of advice for CLAT aspirants: Please do NOT join the lower ranked NLUs (anything after GNLU/HNLU).

It’s better to join a good law college in Delhi or Mumbai (or even Bangalore and Pune) than study in the lower ranked NLUs.

The reason is simple and two-fold.

One, in a city like Delhi or Mumbai you’d have something good (a conference, workshop, or a talk, etc.) happening nearly every weekend. Attending these would help you improve your knowledge/skills, develop your overall personality/self, and build your contacts.

Also, because you’d have a good number of quality organizations (NGOs, law firms, lawyer offices, etc.) based in these cities, you can easily opt for after-college hours internships which will again build your skills/knowledge and your contacts.

The above will translate into more avenues for all-round development and gaining ’employ-ability mileage’ (skills, experiences, networking, etc.)

The situation at the bottom NLUs is bad on nearly all fronts (except for the fact that your peer group will be smart and hard-working).

The situation is bad specifically on 2 fronts:

1. The placements at ALL lower ranked NLUs have been dismal throughout the years. Please check the stats on LegallyIndia and BarandBench and do your independent research.

2. Faculty (generally speaking) is pathetic across the colleges (including in top NLUs with an exception of NLU Delhi).

A lot of people have argued “Give these colleges time. Even NLSIU took time to build“. However, this argument has been going for way too long with no visible sign of things improving.

Sadly, no new NLU (with the exception of NLU Delhi) has shown even a glimmer of hope.

Sorry for being pessimistic here. But as I’ve said, there’s an alternative.

You might, yet again, assert: “No. NLUx will do well because of the NLU tag“. Well, it might. But if you have to answer “Will it do well?” by analyzing the NLU history and making an educated guess about its future, the answer will be a clear NO.

Hope the answer is helpful.

All the best.