INTRODUCTION
The existence of business in the education sector will be a boon to the rich class and a toxin to the impoverished class.
ARE WE HEADING BACK TO THE SAME PAGE NOW?
For our new generation, we forgot that our parents spend considerable amounts of money on ensuring that we can admission to large and well-known institutions. We then have to adhere to that ratio and don’t waste our privileges on the fraud course or incentives offered by new ventures that are springing up nowadays because they are here to swindle young law candidates and fill their own pockets.
A LUCRATIVE EXHIBIT OF EDUCATION
As a soon-to-be lawyer, we are surprised to discern few potential lawyers supporting or establishing these ventures in order to supplement their professional income. We are not against corporations that genuinely provide courses, but we are against those who dupe and bamboozled the law students in the name of internships and placements. These scandalous practices are only implemented in India and are not incorporated in other nations.
Demonstrating before you a precise business arrangement in which they offer internships and placements on a sheer contemplation of few thousands paid by you. The irony entangled in the steps given below is that intellectuals in the legal industry are pondering the law student’s career as a profit-earning business model for the coming three/five years.
Step1. Join a paid course offered by an online legal education company to learn the intricacies of the legal industry.
Step2. Attend live classes, webinars and mentoring sessions from an online legal education company to revitalize your knowledge.
Step 3. The courses for which you are enrolled, you will be allotted assignments and test series. You have to perform well in these tests in order to be considered for an internship in the “offices of the course instructors” who will be teaching you these courses and acting as your mentor.
Step4. Congratulations! You successfully completed an internship (possibly with a stipend in the form of melody) at an office that was affiliated with the online legal education company, which will also certify you with a “certificate course”. For all of these incentives, you only have to pay Rs. 5,000-Rs. 10,000, and sometimes even Rs. 30K-40K.
These courses are affordable for upper-middle-class and middle-class families, but the students from low-income families who attend state universities don’t have such privileges.
Are we infringing on the right to equality of those students who are unable to participate in this rich process?
These organizations are absolutely not going to give them these courses for free because the ideology they uphold is only money-making. We are forgetting, that many great men have explained to us, that the presence of business in the education sector will only disregard and disgrace the importance of education and learned experience in our legal construct. These ventures are just conscious of trumpeting the qualifications and certifications and suppressing those who cannot afford them in order to uplift their revenue and brand value.
Therefore, we are not criticizing any particular institution; rather, we are questioning India’s entire education system, which has devolved into a money-making system.
We need to avoid getting fascinated by the prospect of spoon-feeding ourselves.
All the proficiency and knowledge that these online legal education companies provide can be procured if a law student operates on his profiles and tries to apply for an internship, works to their full efficiency and caliber, obtains a recommendation letter for his excellent work from that office, which will help him gain another internship, and work with their full determination and shall work hard until the end of the year if one has a good amount of experience, they will get a job without spending any money.
THE FANTASY OF WEBINARS
There are pointless webinars that are just here for some meaningless promotions as there has been an incident when we were listening to one of it and it was almost two hours and you would be stunned that they strived to sell their courses for approximately one and half hour and came up with a scholarship for only 20 people, open for only 5 min and asked to pay 5k there and then as a booking amount and the total course is for more than 50k which you have to pay later.
Platforms that provide such services are depicting problematic phenomenon as if you really want to train students and equip them with relevant skill sets, you should be doing this either free/nominal cost that students can easily manage out of their pocket money. Otherwise, you are just widening the ever-existing gap that NLUs and tier 1 firms have already created. We are not claiming that they are doing anything wrong, but we are also not claiming that they are doing everything adequately.
THE ‘REVERED’ COURSES
Sometimes these ‘acclaimed courses’ themselves go through a competition like if one person sells 20 modules at 500, the other will try to sell 30 modules at the same price, and the irony is that the people over there won’t even see that whether that course will add value/hone their skills, but will simply buy it because their peers are doing so. This seriously needs to stop, the legal industry is worth billions, but shouldn’t be exploited in the said ‘wrong’ manner, as it’ll do nothing but degrade the standards.
Lately, we deduced that education scams are a big thing and more so in the process of promising a better life. Regardless, where is the humanistic approach of helping people who merely make their ends meet and join a law school so that they can earn something from their deplorable condition.
AN ILLUSTRATION
Amazon, for example, is entering the ed-tech market and establishing a brand in the virtual education sector. So, if they ask for promotions we would gladly do so because, first and foremost, they are a brand that can appoint brand ambassadors, and secondly, they have satisfied their customers or consumers, so people will believe us when we speak for them rather than an organization that is not a brand in and of itself. Finally, if they fail to deliver on what they promised through us, we will be held accountable because we spoke up for them and there have been numerous instances of this happening. If a company wants to build a brand, marketing agencies are ready to help. They can invest and advertise for consumers to use their services.
There is a widespread practice in the legal community in which law students are hired to promote the initiatives of others, which is extremely pre-mature. We have evaluated students and individuals who have been appointed as campus ambassadors or representatives, and how their connections are inadvertently used by these organizations to build a brand image.
CONCLUSIVE ANALYSIS
A lawyer’s or a law student’s word-of-mouth carries a lot of power and significant influence, just think twice before you say or act. It is critical to understand that in the real world, there are people who follow you, and it will be unethical on your part if you choose to deceive your followers to gain meaningless incentives. The incentives promised by such organizations are meaningless because they add no value to your skillset.
Unless and until the profile in which you are working adds value to your career or skills, it is meaningless because there are a plethora of organizations that have nothing to offer but rely on the connections of others to generate revenue or a brand name. We support new initiatives with bonafide intentions, but when it comes to misusing the power of an individual’s word-of-mouth from a legal background, we will be on the other side of the door condemning such exercises.