Q. When can you feel good about being a law student in India?
Ans. When you see that the world is so eager to interact with you that they are coming down to your college.
This has been happening in the top law schools in India for a while. NUJS had a senior partner from Herbert Smith come down to teach Corporate law last year. Now it was the turn of NLS, and this was the first time an Indian firm was collaborating with an UK firm to offer a course in commercial law. Preeta Dhar from Bangalore shares her experience.
What connection do Allen and Overy and Trilegal have with National Law School, Bangalore? Yes, Trilegal was cofounded by NLS alumni, but not that. Neither am I writing about internships or placement offers. A course on International Finance was offered at the NLSIU by a collaboration of Allen and Overy and Trilegal recently (23-27 November).
The course was originally scheduled to be conducted in August, but had to be postponed because the whole place closed down due to a swine flu alert. As planned originally, many students from NLU Jodhpur, NUJS and NALSAR were supposed to participate. Due to the unforeseen change in dates, only a couple of NALSAR students could attend it.
For the uninitiated, Allen and Overy (A&O, in this world which loves abbreviations) is a ‘magic circle’ firm from the UK and Trilegal is a leading Indian firm. They have put together their act in generating synergies. For this course, they put together their expertise to offer a course that gave a comprehensive view of the international and domestic angles to various aspects of international finance. Over the course of the week, we had a very hectic schedule, but personally speaking, I loved the exposure. Well, for the most part, at least!
Right at the beginning we were handed out pretty red folders containing materials that would be covered in the course. It would be an understatement to say that the size of each folder was intimidating!
The regular classes were suspended for the week, and the IFC classes, starting from the morning, went on till evening, with intermittent breaks. The general trend of the course was to have the theoretical background of a matter in the morning, while the practical aspects were covered in the afternoon sessions, often including class exercises.
As you may probably realize, that the curriculum in most colleges does not prepare one for issues in international finance. It takes an extremely competent team to instruct a class successfully on that volume of material on a completely new subject matter.
Firstly, ‘International Finance’ is a vast and vague concept. On thinking back, I would relate it all to a slide on the presentation by Philip Wood where he told us about a raft with some survivors of a shipwreck. The significance of the raft was that there were only limited food resources to keep them alive till the raft reached the shore, and the position of law was much akin to how these scarce resources get distributed among the people on the raft. Much of the insolvency laws, we realized, was aimed directly at addressing situations akin to this.
Predictably, human ingenuity has tried to work its way around to secure one’s position to whatever extent possible given their position, should they find themselves on the figurative raft, for example, of guarantees and securitization, risk allocation measures, fixing terms and conditions in the syndicated loan market and credit agreements.
The law, on the other hand, through insolvency laws tries to allocate the scarce resources on the raft by arranging the claims and the rights of the stakeholders. It becomes fairly simple, then, to understand the rationale behind the development of capital markets, risk allocation through, inter alia, hedging and derivatives, regulatory regimes like foreign exchange controls. In addition, we were also introduced to a flavour of other arrangements under which credit is requires to finance enterprise, like leveraged buyouts and project financing.
What set apart the course from the classes we are used to in our regular curriculum was that it brought us in touch with the people who are actually involved in how the law works. This was crucial in getting an insight into how the law actually operates, and what are the determinative factors in choosing a particular course of action among other options available under law. We realize that the process involves a number of stakeholders, with interests which are interlinked, and a very fine balance has to be drawn. And that the importance of the ‘fine print’ and ‘due diligence’ cannot be overemphasized!
The course was taught by a team of people. Philip Wood, a visiting professor in reputed universities in the UK, including Cambridge and the London School of Economics, covered the theoretical aspects of most parts of the course, drawing the comparative positions in different jurisdictions, and their implications. The most admirable aspect about his sessions was the sheer simplicity and clarity of what he taught, which made the course effective and interesting, and an excellent base on which practicing lawyers at A&O and Trilegal gave their insights on.
Most sessions other than those by Philip Wood was conducted by teams of practicing lawyers, typically to provide the international and Indian aspects of the areas covered. The dynamics of the instructors were interesting, and kept the class interested, and more interactive. (My personal favourites were Emannhuel Hadjidakis and Ameya Khandge). We also enjoyed the class exercises immensely in which the class was divided into groups, and the winning group got a coveted box of extremely good chocolates! In a nutshell, we not only learnt but enjoyed the course throughly.
Ans. When you see that the world is so eager to interact with you that they are coming down to your college.
This has been happening in the top law schools in India for a while. NUJS had a senior partner from Herbert Smith come down to teach Corporate law last year. Now it was the turn of NLS, and this was the first time an Indian firm was collaborating with an UK firm to offer a course in commercial law. Preeta Dhar from Bangalore shares her experience.
What connection do Allen and Overy and Trilegal have with National Law School, Bangalore? Yes, Trilegal was cofounded by NLS alumni, but not that. Neither am I writing about internships or placement offers. A course on International Finance was offered at the NLSIU by a collaboration of Allen and Overy and Trilegal recently (23-27 November).
The course was originally scheduled to be conducted in August, but had to be postponed because the whole place closed down due to a swine flu alert. As planned originally, many students from NLU Jodhpur, NUJS and NALSAR were supposed to participate. Due to the unforeseen change in dates, only a couple of NALSAR students could attend it.
For the uninitiated, Allen and Overy (A&O, in this world which loves abbreviations) is a ‘magic circle’ firm from the UK and Trilegal is a leading Indian firm. They have put together their act in generating synergies. For this course, they put together their expertise to offer a course that gave a comprehensive view of the international and domestic angles to various aspects of international finance. Over the course of the week, we had a very hectic schedule, but personally speaking, I loved the exposure. Well, for the most part, at least!
Right at the beginning we were handed out pretty red folders containing materials that would be covered in the course. It would be an understatement to say that the size of each folder was intimidating!
The regular classes were suspended for the week, and the IFC classes, starting from the morning, went on till evening, with intermittent breaks. The general trend of the course was to have the theoretical background of a matter in the morning, while the practical aspects were covered in the afternoon sessions, often including class exercises.
As you may probably realize, that the curriculum in most colleges does not prepare one for issues in international finance. It takes an extremely competent team to instruct a class successfully on that volume of material on a completely new subject matter.
Firstly, ‘International Finance’ is a vast and vague concept. On thinking back, I would relate it all to a slide on the presentation by Philip Wood where he told us about a raft with some survivors of a shipwreck. The significance of the raft was that there were only limited food resources to keep them alive till the raft reached the shore, and the position of law was much akin to how these scarce resources get distributed among the people on the raft. Much of the insolvency laws, we realized, was aimed directly at addressing situations akin to this.
Predictably, human ingenuity has tried to work its way around to secure one’s position to whatever extent possible given their position, should they find themselves on the figurative raft, for example, of guarantees and securitization, risk allocation measures, fixing terms and conditions in the syndicated loan market and credit agreements.
The law, on the other hand, through insolvency laws tries to allocate the scarce resources on the raft by arranging the claims and the rights of the stakeholders. It becomes fairly simple, then, to understand the rationale behind the development of capital markets, risk allocation through, inter alia, hedging and derivatives, regulatory regimes like foreign exchange controls. In addition, we were also introduced to a flavour of other arrangements under which credit is requires to finance enterprise, like leveraged buyouts and project financing.
What set apart the course from the classes we are used to in our regular curriculum was that it brought us in touch with the people who are actually involved in how the law works. This was crucial in getting an insight into how the law actually operates, and what are the determinative factors in choosing a particular course of action among other options available under law. We realize that the process involves a number of stakeholders, with interests which are interlinked, and a very fine balance has to be drawn. And that the importance of the ‘fine print’ and ‘due diligence’ cannot be overemphasized!
The course was taught by a team of people. Philip Wood, a visiting professor in reputed universities in the UK, including Cambridge and the London School of Economics, covered the theoretical aspects of most parts of the course, drawing the comparative positions in different jurisdictions, and their implications. The most admirable aspect about his sessions was the sheer simplicity and clarity of what he taught, which made the course effective and interesting, and an excellent base on which practicing lawyers at A&O and Trilegal gave their insights on.
Most sessions other than those by Philip Wood was conducted by teams of practicing lawyers, typically to provide the international and Indian aspects of the areas covered. The dynamics of the instructors were interesting, and kept the class interested, and more interactive. (My personal favourites were Emannhuel Hadjidakis and Ameya Khandge). We also enjoyed the class exercises immensely in which the class was divided into groups, and the winning group got a coveted box of extremely good chocolates! In a nutshell, we not only learnt but enjoyed the course throughly.
all i can say is that the students who took this IF course,r really fortunate.an undergraduate student in india being taught by a professor from LSE makes me a bit jealous.a really good move by both the law firms and NLSIU.
ReplyDeleteGood work! Keep writing!! Posted it on our Facebook page.
ReplyDeleteThanks John!
ReplyDeleteAvin I completely agree with you.
Emmannuel and Ameya's classes were the best... easily. I wish we'd have more of these courses.
ReplyDeleteThey plan to come back next year.
AND phillip wood... of course
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dear sasha, unfortunately we are talking about a different overy over here :)
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