Know this law school: GNLU

In our chain of posts on “Know this law school”, next in line is GNLU, written by Nishant Sharma who is a student out there.

Over to Nishant.

GNLU, Gandhinagar is one of the premier law institutes of the Country established in 2003 and has achieved considerably keeping in mind its nascent existence. Its popularity among the CLAT aspirants is noticeable. More on that - here.

Let us take a look at how GNLU fares on the basic criterion laid down:

Quality of Education

The GNLU faculty consists of the good, the bad and sometimes the downright ugly. Some of the Professors are inspiring and cause you to develop a deep interest in the subjects while other seem to be the run of the mill professors. The quality overall is pretty good. The good thing about the faculty is their readiness to interact and nurture the student. You can access the faculty page from here.

GNLU follow a two semester system and the exams consist of the internals having a weightage of 40 marks (including projects, presentation, tests etc.) and an end term paper of 60 marks. In the 5 years integrated course, the University offers B(B.A)/LL.B (Hons.), (B.Com)/ LL.B (Hons.), (B.B.A), LL.B (Hons.), (BSW)/LL.B (Hons.) or Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.), LL.B (Hons.) along with LL.M. Also, for First Years, it is compulsory to learn at least one foreign language (though the rules do keep changing).

One good thing is that along with the academic work, the students get a lot of free time to pursue other non-academic activities and publish papers. This is in part due to the fact that every Saturday and Sunday is non-working.

Recruitment

GNLU is not the type of University where one are guaranteed placement even if one does not do anything noteworthy in the 5yrs of Law School. This is one harsh reality.

GNLU’s batch of 06-11 did exceptionally well at recruitment and had 15 students placed at Amarchand Mangaldas, one of the leading law firms in India. One of the qualms for students has always been that there has been slight lack of interest from a few of the other top law firms. More on the recruitment of the 06’ Batch here and here.

A few of the toppers also opted to not sit for requirements and instead are pursuing LL.M. abroad. Thus, if you are reasonably hardworking, life in GNLU shouldn’t be too bad.

College Environment

GNLU has a student friendly environment where a lot of work including organizing the Annual GIMC and other competitions is handled by students under the able guidance of the Faculty Convenors.

It also organizes its annual Intra-Fest ‘Pentagram’ every even semester (around Feb-Mar.) which sees wide participation from the student community. Due to infrastructure limitations (before the New Campus was inaugurated this January), the University had not organized a National Fest, but plans are on-going to have the same next semester.

The curfew time is 9:30 P.M., which is strictly applied for the girls at least. Amicable and friendly relations between seniors and juniors are the norm and ragging is strictly prohibited.

Infrastructure:

Yes, that is the Preamble to the Constitution!

If the above photograph is something to go by, the 50 acre campus is monumental in its own way. Though the hostel are not fully constructed yet and the students have to take a half hour commute by bus from Sector 24 to Koba, Gandhinagar; they are slated to be constructed sometime this semester.

Thus the new batch would get their residential hostels at the New Campus only. The reading room, library, Administrative Building are all State of the Art. More information on the campus can be accessed from here and here. Plans of constructing a gymnasium and a swimming pool etc. are also in the offing.

The hostel rooms, situated in Sector 24, Gandhinagar, are spacious and are given on dual occupancy basis. The hostel is in the centre of the city and civic amenities are easily available. However, Gandhinagar is the place for the peace loving, so often students have to go to Ahmedabad, which is close to an hour away for recreation.

The new campus however, is slightly closer to Ahmedabad and buses and jeeps are easily available, so commuting is not an issue. The Boys and the Girls hostel have minor issues from time to time but otherwise it is smooth sailing.

The City:

As mentioned before, Gandhinagar is more for the peace loving individual.

There are a lot of cheap places to eat and the city itself is relatively clean, though sometimes it’s hard differentiating between the roads!

Gandhinagar has decent weather, with the extremes not being usually touched. However, it gets very hot around the month of May, which is luckily the time when the summer vacations begin.

PS. One of the worst things in case you are a Non-Vegetarian is that the Mess does not serve chicken, fish etc. at all. Thus, everyone has to instead shell out occasionally to eat outside.

So, here ends the dossier on GNLU, if anyone has any questions regarding the same, please feel free to ask!