By Tanuj Kalia

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 (and do running internships/attend conferences) than be in these colleges.

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

The placements at ALL lower ranked NLUs have been dismal throughout the years. (Check the stats on LegallyIndia and BarandBench). Faculty is pathetic across the colleges.

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.

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

Sorry for being pessimistic here. But do read the starred sentence for hope.

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

PS- I have been watching these developments closely since 2008 and this is what my advice for my cousins and young friends would be.

PPS- About me: I graduated from NUJS in 2013. I run Lawctopus.com, a popular website for law students (you are here). My book ‘Law as a Career’ was recently published by LexisNexis.

PPPS- If you are enamored by the NLU tag, here are two NLUs which are doing relatively better: NLU Odisha and NUALS Kochi. (I’d still go to a good college in Delhi or Mumbai but you may choose differently).

This piece was originally published on Lawctopus HERE