Large law firms created the NLU boom by hiring extensively from a few campuses.
They would pick up many talented kids as A0 and hope some of them would get trained enough to do legal work in a year or so.
Most of these firms did not or could not retain even 50% of this cohort after a year though.
While it was great in theory, and it allowed them to tell the clients that they are hiring the top talent in the country, campus placement often did not work very well for these law firms.
What worked much better was hiring long term interns from traditional colleges that allowed their students to intern through the year. These long term interns were far more well adjusted, developed better skills, built good relationships within the firm and worked better in a firm setting when they graduated.
Still, making offers in top campuses every year remained a matter of prestige.
However, the number of campus placement offers is not growing, and even dwindling in some cases although the economy is booming, FDI is growing, capital market is at its hectic best, new practice areas are emerging and corporate India’s legal spending is steadily growing.
What is the reason?
Are the law firms hiring less?
No. Law firms are hiring a lot. They are just hiring less from campus.
The fact is that the number of tier 2 and tier 3 firms, along with highly specialised boutique firms have grown in numbers very rapidly in the last 5 years. They are better at spotting undervalued talent, and train the talent over a few years.
Large law firms can hire from those who worked in such firms for 2-4 years and find better talent at the same or even lesser cost compared to hiring from campus placement.
The pandemic disrupted hiring practices. It made law firms rethink what works and what doesn’t. While this change was slowly underway for many years, 2025 is the year when we are seeing a very obvious shift.
It has become harder to justify hiring people with no experience for 1.5 lakhs per month when you can get trained and experienced lawyers at a lower cost.
NLUs are of course oblivious to this shifting reality, they would continue to be the rent seeking organisations they are. They can afford to do so after all. They will get their fees, the professors will get their salary on time, nothing will change for the admin people.
But can the students afford to ignore the trend?
What should law students do then? What is the way forward?
- rely less on law school brand
- focus more on skills
- learn how to build your own law practice/firm through client education and ethical marketing practices – there was never a better time to do that
If you need a job, do not obsess over large law firms, pick up a job at a smaller firm if needed, knowing that you could switch to a larger firm easily in 2-3 years if you do a good job.