Career

5 Q&A from my law student mentoring session #2

law student mentoring

Continuing my series on law student mentoring sessions, here is the second part where I spoke to R, a student of the graduating batch of an NLU with an offer to join a tier 1 law firm. But before we proceed, please read the part 1 of this series here. Ever since I wrote about my initiative to mentor law students on Linkedin on my profile, I have been flooded with DMs asking me to get on a call with them to clear their doubts. To be honest, I was taken aback at the sense of entitlement of these students. […]

Career

5 Q&A from my law student mentoring session #1

law student mentoring

I recently realised that I have gained a considerable number of law student connections on my Linkedin profile due to this blog. It gave me the idea to start what I have always wanted to do – mentoring law students and young lawyers. It’s no secret that every young professional needs a bit of guiding and hand-holding to reach their full potential, However, legal profession is notorious for being quite the unfriendly workplace. Unless you discover a great senior who is willing to help you, it’s “learn on your own” at every sphere – be it litigation, law firm job […]

Career

5 tips for the perfect law student CV so that you always get shortlisted for job interviews

law student CV

In this article, I write on the main things a law student should focus on, while building his CV for placement. As a bonus, I will also tell you what are those things which are usually found in a CV but they don’t matter much to a recruiter. At the end of it, you will know how to create that perfect CV as a law student so that you are guaranteed an interview. I first prepared my resume in 4th year, when we were to apply for internships with law firms for the first time. Earlier internships were all based […]

Contract

5 things about Term Sheet, Memorandum of Understanding & Letter of Intent

term sheet MOU Letter of Intent

In this article, let’s understand the concepts of three types of pre-contractual instruments – Term Sheet, Memorandum of Understanding and Letter of Intent and learn how to draft them. Pre-contractual instruments are as vital as the main contracts because they herald the beginning of a long and fruitful business association. Imagine you are meeting up a person to do business, discuss the key terms and then want to record them so that you are clear about the mutual understanding and can prepare the main contract basis the same. But the document that is drawn up is vague, unclear and totally […]

Career

5 skills of a successful lawyer and how to hone them

successful lawyer skills

We all want to be successful lawyers and work hard towards it. But we may not be aware of the skills required to be a successful lawyer. Even if we are aware, we may not know how to inculcate those skills. This post is an attempt to bring to you easy, practical and doable steps to hone the skills required to be a successful lawyer, or for that matter, any professional. Of course, we all define success in different ways. Are you considered a successful lawyer if you have a job at one of the top tier law firms?Or if […]

Contract

5 things to consider while drafting a Force Majeure clause

force majeure clause

Before I delved right into the how’s of the many clauses of a contract, I thought of starting with the one which is on everybody’s mind these days – Force Majeure. Force Majeure, which is usually a boilerplate clause inserted without much thought as to its language and import, has emerged as the pivot on which all the contracts are standing today during the unprecedented outbreak of Covid-19. The havoc it has wreaked through a medley of death, lock down and curfew has put tremendous pressure on performance of contracts worldwide. From the looks of it, we are at the precipice […]

Contract

5 components of a Contract Style Guide

contract style guide

In our earlier articles, we have seen 5 points to note before drafting a contract and 5 signs of a well-drafted contract, Continuing therefrom, in today’s article I discuss components of a contract style guide. If you have worked in a law firm, you would have noticed how all documents that are generated there, follow a certain look and feel. The typeface and point size is standard – usually Calibri 11 or Times New Roman 12. So are line spacing, clause arrangement, margin and para justification. Even the language follows a certain flow and structure. This is called a style […]

Litigation

5 ways to handle voluminous legal files

lot of papers

I thought of taking a short detour from my series on Contract Drafting and write a post on how to handle voluminous legal files, especially by a litigation lawyer. As a lawyer, you will have no choice but to befriend piles and piles of paper, whether you work on transactions or litigation. You will have to learn how to organise them, file them, have them handy and be able to find out information out of them when needed urgently. As an intern in the Capital Markets team in L&L Partners (then known as Luthra and Luthra), I used to be […]

Contract

5 points to note before drafting a contract

draft a contract

Whenever you are given a task to draft a contract, ditch the standard templates available the first time. Create one yourself and compare it with the available template to see how you fared. Yes, it’s extra work, but if you don’t do this exercise right at the beginning, chances are that you never will. Once you work on a standard template, you will be predisposed towards that language. You will end up using the same flowery and long sentences full of legal jargon, without ever thinking the ‘why’ behind it. You will always believe that this is how a contract […]

Contract

5 signs of a well-drafted contract

well drafted contract

Let us spend some time deciphering what makes a contract well-drafted so that you know which skills to learn, unlearn and relearn. Many articles have been written on what makes a contract well-drafted, eg. here and here (the first point in the second article goes sorely against what The Five Things Checklist stands for, but there you go – contrary views), but I did not come across a comprehensive discussion on this topic. You may know one or more or may be all of the pointers given here. If so, I would love it if you attempt the exercise given […]