What to do if you have NOT made it into any good law school? [CLAT SPECIAL]

CLAT results are out. So are SET results. And you also know of your board exams results.

What to do if you haven’t made it into any good law school? (Whatever your list is).

Here’s something you should NOT do: Drop a year, sit at your home and prepare for CLAT.

You can prepare for college while studying in college and that’s how it should be.

If you want to take a ‘radical sabbatical‘ which could mean travelling the country or the world, starting a business or writing a book or pursuing a passion, by all means, go for it. Prepare for CLAT along the way too (if you want to).

If you are keen on doing law, here are 3 things you can do.

1. Lots of chances to attend conferences etc. and make contacts.

2. A chance to do running internships with good lawyers and mid-sized law firms.

1. Cash (that is resultantly saved) which can be invested elsewhere in your education (courses, internships, summer programs).

2. A chance to do a running internship with a good local lawyer that will make you battle-ready once you graduate.

Get a long-term view of things, though I realise that doing this when you are seventeen is tough.

Be patient. That’s tough again when you are seventeen.

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Since the competition in the first two cases will be ‘less’, you can easily manage to stay at the top of your class (with some effort, of course). And that’s always a good thing.

Also, students who’ve made it to NLSIU or NUJS etc. are not handed tickets to big jobs. There are no such tickets.

If you graduate from an unheard of ‘local’ law school (or the one in Delhi/Mumbai) , here’s what could happen (provided you’ve worked hard throughout your 5 years): You work with a good ‘local’ trial court/HC lawyer the year you graduate and get a job with a small company in your second year.

In your third year, a mid-size law firm makes you an associate.

See, you didn’t lose much? (It’s just a scenario, a very possible scenario).