A CLEAR VERDICT

THE PREMIER LAW COLLEGE HAS DOUBLED ITS STUDENT INTAKE IN THREE YEARS AND ALSO INTRODUCED NEW, CUTTING-EDGE COURSES. NEXT UP IS CRACKING THE GLOBAL RANKINGS

- AJAY SUKUMARAN

Expansion has been the watchword at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) this past year. The institute will begin its new academic year in July with 1,200 students, twice the headcount it had in 2019 when it embarked on a roadmap of growth. That, inevitably, has called for a proportional increase in every other sphere—faculty strength, for instance, is now 68, compared to 45 a year ago.

But for India’s premier law institute, this is still just the halfway mark. “Our projected growth plan is that, by 2028, we will reach the maximum number of students, between 2,200 and 2,400. It will be double what we are in July 2023,” says vice-chancellor Prof. Sudhir Krishnaswamy. This pace of growth is radically different from what NLSIU has been used to. Yet, it was the need of the hour. The institute has been a leader in legal education since its inception in 1988. But through these past three decades, it was a relatively “small, organic enterprise”, though a pioneer. “What is important is that we have managed to scale up while maintaining our excellence,” says the V-C. It’s not just about the increase in students and faculty but equally the wide social diversity and backgrounds they represent, he points out. One of the key components of NLSIU’s performance in the recent National Institutional Ranking Frame work (NIRF) rankings was its research output which, Krishnaswamy says, is “very closely linked to the kind of faculty we have been recruiting”.

Academics saw two significant initiatives last year—the university brought in structured externships in which students get to work in law firms or civil society organisations during the course of the term; and it started 5-8 courses relating to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence regulation and ethics, blockchain and crypto.