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The National Law School of India University (NLSIU or NLS) is an institution for under-graduate and graduate legal education. Based in Nagarbhavi, a quiet[citation needed] suburb in the western extremities of the city of Bangalore, the NLSIU was established in 1987 after a statute was enacted for that purpose by the Legislative Assembly of the State of Karnataka, and officially exists since August 29 1987. It has been known to be the best law school in the country.
[edit] Experiment in legal educationHistorically legal education in India was open only to graduates and seen merely as professional training. Dismayed at the quality of legal education in conventional universities, several members of the legal fraternity debated a new system of legal education through the 1970s and 1980s. NLSIU has been rated as the best law school in India for 8 out of past 10 years by India Today. It admits 80 students for its 5-year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) programme every year. Students are chosen on the basis of an all-India entrance exam held on the first Sunday in May each year. Foreign nationals are encouraged, with five seats being reserved for foreign nationals (preference is given to students from SAARC countries). In Post-Graduate Degree Course (LL.M.) as of now NLS offers two specializations, one in Business Laws and other in Human Rights Laws. This course aims at producing scholars/legal experts in the field of Law. Therefore, students of this Course are called as "Research Scholars". NLS has a distinctly designed Post-Graduate Course. different from all other Post-Graduate Courses offered by any other Indian University. At present there are 25 seats for Human Rights Laws and 25 for Business Laws. Two seats are reserved for Foreign Nationals. Admissions are done through CLAT (Common Law Admission Test) conducted by all the Law Schools in India. Prospectus can be obtained from NLSIU on payment of requisite fee. The Bar Council of India decided to make the NLSIU law programme a five-year course (in contrast with the American post-graduate system), with courses in the liberal arts included in the first two years. NLSIU has exchange programs with Georgetown University in the United States, the National University of Singapore, Canada's Osgoode Hall Law School and Germany's Hamburg University and University of Munich There are also distance learning programmes in NLS, including Masters Degree in Business Law and Postgraduate Diploma programs in Human Rights Law, Medical Law, Environmental Law and IP Law, However, these are part time programs. [edit] Early historyNLSIU was started in 1987 under the stewardship of its Founder-Director, Dr. N.R. Madhava Menon and has since had four other directors, including the present Vice-Chancellor , Dr. R. Venkata Rao who took over the institution in April 2009. The first batch of students joined on July 1, 1988 in the integrated five-year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) course. The first courses commenced even before the college buildings had been built, and thus the NLSIU started functioning from the premises of the Central College, Bangalore University and remained there until 1991 November, when it eventually moved to its present location in Nagarbhavi. The previous directors of the NLSIU were Dr. N.R. Madhava Menon, Dr. N.L. Mitra, Dr. A Jayagovind and Dr. G. Mohan Gopal. [edit] Legal research and student activities
The student body enjoys a great degree of autonomy and coordinates a wide range of activities. The Student Bar Association (SBA) is the umbrella body that coordinates all student activities, and all students are members of the SBA. The SBA has created various Activity-Based Committees (ABCs) which are in charge of specific student activities. The high level of student autonomy also runs to the various hostels, which are run by various hostel committees. Co- and extracurricular activities promoted at NLSIU include debating, quizzing, music, dance, theatre and other literary and cultural activities. Students from the National Law School publish an informal literary magazine called Quirk since January 2005. NLSIU has played a role in actively promoting Parliamentary Debate in India, and regularly participates in many international competitions. including the World Universities Debating Championship [1], where it reached the ESL Finals in 2002 and in 2007. NLSIU is currently ranked as the highest Indian team in the World rankings. NLSIU also has the distinction of having the 12th best institutional performance in the last two years at the WUDC. NLSIU recently won the 15th All Asian Debating Championships held in Dhaka and had 3 out of the 4 teams in the semifinals and 6 of the top 10 speakers were from NLSIU.Another feather in the cap for the Parliamentary Debate movement in NLSIU came in the form of the Cambridge University Debate Competition 2009 where the NLSIU team became the first South Asian team to reach the second round of the competition. NLSIU has also performed extremely well in the inaugural Asians BP Tournament held in Chulalongkorn University, with all 3 of it's teams reaching the semi finals of the tournament, and 2 out of the top ten speakers (and 4 in the top 20). NLSIU also boasts of having the best Moot Court team in South Asia,a point substantiated by the fact that it remains the only team from the region to have ever won the prestigious Jessup Cup and reached the semi finals of the event in 2008 and the quarter finals in 2009.[2]. Reaffirming its supremacy, NLSIU won the Manfred Lachs Moot 2009 held at Daejeon defeating Georgetown University (United States) in the final as adjudicated by their Excellencies Judges Koroma, Tomka and Skotnikov. Raeesa Vakil of the NLSIU was awarded the Sterns and Tennen Best Oralist Award and outdid team mate Abhimanyu George Jain who had won the best oralist at the Asia-Pacific level.[1] Further, the NLSIU moot team has won India's most prestigious Moot Court Competition the Bar Council of India Moot in 2007, 2008 and 2009, proving that they are still the best in the country. [edit] LibraryThe NLS library is the largest law library in India. The library is the 'heart' of the academic institution and plays an important role in all academic activities. Keeping in view the aims and objectives of the Law School, the library has been planned and is being developed by a team of qualified professional library staff, guided by the Library Council. It has a collection of over 40,000 volumes covering a wide range of general and special subjects consisting of text books, reference books, back volumes of journals and reports etc., apart from current legal periodicals. The Library functions from 8.30 A.M. to midnight . The library has adopted an open access system so as to facilitate readers to have easy access to the library resources. The NLSIU Library has also established links with other important libraries in and around Bangalore in order to provide inter-library access for the benefit of students and teachers of the NLSIU. To assist the Students and Research Scholars in locating literature as well as information in their area of research, general reference, current awareness and computerized catalogues have been introduced. Further, essential reading materials will be supplied to the students in each subject at the beginning of the trimester by the University. An orientation program for new students is also organized to help them acquaint themselves with the library system and services for the maximum utilization of the available resources. The NLSIU has introduced computerized facilities for both housekeeping as well as information retrieval. Since there is a line connection to the internet, it is possible to have easy access to information directly from all available computerized data bases all over the world, not only in the field of law but also in other disciplines. Keeping in mind the vision to create an E-Law School, the University subscribes to many international online databases like Westlaw International, JSTOR, Kluwer Online, Springer Link etc. which contains enormous resources like international case reporters, statutes, and articles from law reviews, an invaluable source for a law school student. Similarly, Indian online data bases like manupatra.com, indlaw.com are also available for students and faculty. NLSIU is among the first legal educational institutions in India to subscribe to these online databases. The library has CD-ROMs search facilities and the library has acquired important CD-ROM databases such as SCC-Online and Grand Jurix. With a computerized library system it is the aim of the library to establish a network of law libraries in India and also to establish a National Legal Information Centre, which will act as a clearing house of information in the field of law. The present library building has all the modern state-of-the-art gadgets with wi-fi internet connection as well as highly modernized Audio-Visual equipments with teleconferencing facility etc. Special arrangements also have been made for the physically handicapped persons to make use of the library. This is a multi (three) storeyed building with ample space of 30,000 sq. ft. built area for storage of books and reading purposes. The building has been planned by well known Architects and with the financial assistance of the UGC and Mrs. Sudha Murthy. [edit] Student life[edit] ABCs[2] NLS has a total of twelve Activity Based Committees (ABCs) which co-ordinate the activities of the Student Bar Association (SBA). These are re-constituted every year. The co-ordination council consists of the student Convenors/Joint Convenors of the ABCs. The council is responsible for ensuring that the various committees function smoothly. A wide range of internal as well as inter-institutional activities throughout the academic year are organized by the ABCs. [edit] CommitteesThe committees are as follows: 1. Academic Support Program (ASP) 2. Campus Development & Mgmt Committee(CDMC) 3. Cultural and Fine Arts Committee('Cul Comm') 4. Event Management Committee(EMC) 5. Finance Committee 6. Law & Society Committee('Law Soc') 7. Law & Technology Committee('EL-teck') 8. Legal Services Clinic(LSC) 9. Literary & Debating Society ('LnD') 10. Moot Court Society(MCS) 11. Sports Committee 12. Student Advocate Committee('Stud Ad') [edit] Student festivalsNLS hosts an inter-collegiate literary and cultural festival called Legala, along with RampArt (fashion show) and Strawberry Fields. Those apart, NLSIU hosts the Annual National Law School International Debate, a parliamentary-style debating championship which gets participation from countries around the SAARC region. It also hosts Spiritus, which is the annual law students sports. All these festivals are completely organized by the students initiative from raising funds to logistics, etc.[citation needed] [edit] Strawberry FieldsStrawberry Fields presents a host of different styles of music ranging from funk to death metal, and Strawberry Fields' promoters credit it for having acted as launching pad for the careers of a few bands such as Pin Drop Violence and Junkyard Groove. [edit] CriticismAs stated by a former director, one of the principal objectives in establishing the NLSIU was to increase the quality of the bar.[citation needed] However, it has been pointed out that most of those who graduate from NLSIU prefer a career in corporate litigation or as legal advisers to companies, instead of joining the bar.[citation needed] While this has been attributed to the increased presence of multinational corporations in India, along with the low salaries paid by advocates, no changes seem to have been made to combat this problem. This was intensified when Clifford Chance and the rest of the Magic Circle, Silver Circle law firms handed training contracts to twelve NLS students in 2006,[citation needed] which led to criticism by the Executive Council, including the Chief Justice, that not enough alumni were going into full-time litigation.[citation needed]In fact it was found that most of the students hardly litigate in courts as its hard to sustain on income during initial years of regular law practice under Indian conditions.[citation needed]. Many reports published by news journals like India Today point out to existence of formidable cartels formed by the alumni of NLSIU which alumni of other recent Law Schools find tough to crack especially among the top law firms and in house legal departments of companies. Its criticised particularly on the point that other Law Schools formed on similar format as the NLSIU but much later in time have been losing out because of the cartelisation by NLSIU alumni of major law firms and Corporate jobs.[citation needed] In any case, NLSIU competes with NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, to be the best law school in the country. [edit] Journals published[edit] References[edit] External links
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