THE SCIENCE OF LAW

TEN QUESTIONS TO ANSWER BEFORE EMBARKING ON A LAW CAREER

In just under three decades since the establishment of the first National Law University (NLU) in Bangalore in 1987, law has become the fastest growing sector. According to an estimate by the Bar Council of India, there are around 1.5 million registered advocates in the country today, in addition to around 950 law schools and five lakh law students. Every year, approximately 70,000 law graduates join the profession. “The number of law school applicants goes up by 25 per cent on an average,” says Shashikala Gurpur, Dean and Principal, Symbiosis Law School, Pune. Last year, more than 45,000 students sat for the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT), which was conducted by Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Delhi. Traditionally, students could only take up litigation by specialising in either criminal or civil law. This, however, has changed with a rapid growth of the corporate legal sector and outsourcing of legal processes. Now, specialisations such as arbitration law, banking law, environmental law, intellectual property and international law are the fields that have opened up a number of career options for students.