Law remains to be one of the most popular career choices for students around the world. Some choose to do it after school, others start pursuing it after getting their graduation degrees. Either way, the possibilities on the road are endless.
Today on the show, we'll be exploring the world of legal profession. Also on the show, we'll bring you face to face with some of country's top lawyers. But first up, the story of my law.
Anyone who wants to know anything about a certain aspect of law, well, it's possible and convenient and it's just a click away. Do you want to understand sports law or intellectual property and don't know who to turn to? Help is at hand and in fact is just a click away. MyLaw.net opens up the world of law to everybody.
All our programs are designed in a way that can be easily consumed. You don't need to, for example, sign up at the law school or what have you. All you need is to sign up for that program that you're looking for, where you need more information on. It's as simple as that.
The website provides you with reading material, video lectures and law quizzes. All you need to do is sign up for a law course of your choice and pay a fee depending on the course. The cost ranges from Rs. 2,500 to almost Rs. 8,000 depending on what you opt for. Once you clear an exam at the end of your course, you get a certificate from the parent body of MyLaw.net, Rainmaker, a company that not only conceptualised the first All India Bar examination, but that has been focused on creating legal content and learning.
The company was founded by Nikhil Chandra, a graduate of National Law School, Bangalore, with an aim to increase access to legal knowledge in the country. I think there's a huge gap in this market and that gap has existed for a really long time and the intent with mylaw.net was to create a platform that could provide both education as well as access to people who just need access to Indian law. The team is comprised of law graduates and lawyers who gained experience in the field for over seven or eight years in law firms before choosing to focus full-time on MyLaw.net. Working at MyLaw.net is also a bit like being a part of academia.
without any of the red tape. I get to be on the cutting edge of the creation of a lot of legal thinking without having to go to senior academics. And if you're a law student, then there are tailored programs for you too.
So students can match what they study every year in law school with courses available on the portal to enhance their skills. The best part about the course is that you don't get to know all this in law school. They just don't teach you all this in law school. The USP of mylaw.net is simply the fact that almost every Indian citizen wants to know more about the laws in India and there is simply nothing out there that tells you authoritatively that these are your rights, these are the laws that govern you as a citizen and these are what you can do.
And where does the limits of the state end and where do your rights begin? So if you missed out on law school, it isn't the end of your dream. This could help you in whatever field you're already in. In New Delhi, with camera person Alfred Monzang, Kriti Mathur for NDTV.
The first law field that... we'll be focusing on is corporate law. All law students at some point in time have thought about pursuing corporate law as there is a belief that there is a lot of money in the field. But what is the truth? Let's find out.
Corporate law is about Every field of law dealing with a company, starting within cooperation of the company, what business they want to do, where do they set up their offices, do they set up factories, who are their customers, who are their vendors. Everywhere there are documents involved, so contracts involved. So all this put together is called corporate law. Basically everything to deal with a company is called corporate law. Corporate law is a vast field of law.
One that includes labour law, as much as it includes environmental law. All aspects and divisions of big companies need corporate lawyers to not only draft a contract that will help them in the time of need, but also guide the company's policies, actions and behaviours. To be a successful corporate lawyer, one that influences the economy and nature of corporations in the country, one needs to be... More than an academically bright student, you also need to be a very solid... solid in your IQ, in your ability to think, ability to think beyond what normal people can think.
The best thing I like about this profession is that there is enormous scope for learning. There is a type of law which helps govern the rules of infrastructure and project finance and holds great promise for future. India is a fast developing country, racing ahead on all fronts. A crucial player in development projects is a project finance and infrastructure lawyer. A project finance and infrastructure lawyer works on the development, acquisition, and financing of infrastructure projects.
What this means is that whenever there is a project concerning the building of roads, airports, power projects and metro station projects to name a few, a project finance and infrastructure lawyer is called in. His job is to ensure that the legal documentation concerning bidding of a project or financing a project is intact. He works with financial institutions, project sponsors, investors, contractors, developers and governments through the course of the project.
Since these projects are large transactions that almost always are larger than 500 crore the lawyer's job is to ensure that the risk is minimized. He must make sure that the legal documentation ensures that the project funds itself and if a project is delayed or gets interrupted for some unforeseen reason, everyone's rights are protected. The fun thing is probably you see yourself being part of development because all of these sectors are where you see development happening or where India needs development.
So be it roads, be it railways, be it highways, be it airports, be it metro projects, power, these are the development areas, this is where development happens. And when you see some of these things happening, you feel that you're part of development. Since infrastructure is so important, While infrastructure projects take a while to complete, a project finance and infrastructure lawyer will most definitely find himself working on a project for a long time, interacting with corporations, banks and financial institutions throughout. But the benefits of this practice area are unparalleled. So the most memorable I would describe in this sector was I was doing the privatization of the Delhi Bombay airports and that was probably the most memorable.
any other reason because you don't get to see a power project financing or an oil and gas project by your own eyes but you can see an airport, you visit an airport you can see it and project financing is something which takes a very long time to fructify unlike an M&A transaction where it happens in six months. A project finance transaction takes usually around two to three years to do and then the project takes time to build etc. So the Delhi Bombay Airport privatization was a very big transaction by its very nature, very complicated.
and you get to see the fruits of that. You see a functioning airport and you feel proud of the fact that you've been involved in something like that. Next up is the world of banking and regulatory law.
We met with a partner who helped us... Understand what it is like to work with the big names of the banking industry. Got money on your mind?
Welcome to the big bad world of banking. Assisting the banks to navigate through the crazy world of money and government compliances is a banking and regulatory lawyer. Banking and regulatory lawyer covers state and federal regulations governing financial institutions.
They handle everything from customer disputes and complaints against a bank to litigation between foreign and domestic banks and financial institutions. institutions. They provide sound and legal advice to banks on loans and the financing of new ventures. They need to ensure that their negotiation skills are good enough to ensure that their client gets a fair deal in the contract. I think it's important to have an interest in and understanding of the financial world.
You need to be able to understand what banks or financial institutions do, what lending of money means. soft skills if you are working in say for example a multinational bank your ability to communicate across geographies becomes very critical and your ability to help people understand the typical Indian regulatory environment while regulating major financial transactions between large companies is one aspect of the job since there are many rules and regulations regarding how banks operate the majority of the work of a banking lawyer is to advise banks on regulatory The laws surrounding common banking products such as loans and accounts are quite complex and the job of the lawyer is to identify the regulations imposed on banks and rank them in order of the risk associated with non-compliance. He also spends a great deal of time negotiating the contract terms of a loan to ensure that his client gets a fair deal. A young lawyer should target that they spend the first initial years...
would say five years or so working in a law firm because I think that's where you get a lot of training and then evaluate whether you love the practice of law and the various challenges right because one of the things you need to be conscious of is that as a service provider which is what you do in a private practice you have less control over your hours right so if a client calls you on a Friday evening and say we need to do a transaction this weekend you know you'll need to change your weekend plans so if you're at a stage of life where that work-life balance is very important for you let's say you know, you've just had a child and you want to spend time with that person, then I think those things become relevant in making that. Competition law is a fairly new field of practice in the country. It helps govern the competition between businesses. So competition law is a fascinating mix of law, economics and policy. It affects not just how businesses conduct themselves, but it affects us as consumers on a day-to-day basis.
Competition Law, the name says it all. It is the law that maintains healthy competition in the economy and society amongst businesses. Competition Law Act was introduced in Parliament in 2002 and is a new form of law.
that studies the processes of rivalries amongst companies, businesses and organizations to attract more customers and maintain stability in the market. As companies compete amongst each other for quality, price and resources, sources, competition law is what governs the rules of the economy. Here is an example of a competition law case. Well, in terms of interesting cases, there are high profile cases such as the abuse of dominance case against Google. Google, of course, being the gateway to the internet, everyone switches on their computers and usually you have a Chrome browser, you access it either on an Android mobile phone or on your desktop.
which is today powered by Google because you have the Android operating systems on tablets, which are replacing laptops. You have Google which integrates everything into their products. So from a consumer perspective, that could actually be very good. Google Maps is excellent.
Other services of Google are fabulous. But the question is, what is happening to Google's competition? Is Google killing competition?
And in the long run, will that be good for consumers? You know, these are the sorts of of issues that come up. So therefore competition law helps prevent activities that might have a negative impact on the way businesses compete in the country.
With increasing globalization, Indian businesses are feeling the heat of competition both from domestic and international players. But since it's a fairly new field of expertise, there are not a lot of opportunities where you can study this option. Given that it's such a new topic and subject, there aren't many law schools who are actually teaching it in India. A lot of the jurisprudence that we rely on is actually European jurisprudence. So I definitely recommend to students who are interested in this law to go and perhaps pursue a master's course in the UK or in the US.
It's time for us to slip into a quick break, but you don't go anywhere as there's a lot more coming up on the other side.