An independent survey of 100 law students of India was conducted. They were asked 5 simple questions.
1. What college are you in?
2. Are you in the 3 year course of the 5 year course?
3. What year are you in?
4. When you joined law school, what were you planning on doing after it?
5. At this moment, what are your plans after law school?
This was to find out what are the career goals of students when before they join law school and how much do they change.
The results were very interesting.
Students from various colleges like Gujarat National Law University, GLC, UILS, NUJS, NLU Jodhpur, Army Institute of Law, NLU Delhi, Nirma University, NALSAR, NLSIU, LA Shah college and Amity Law School participated in the survey.
Out of the 100 participants, only 3 were from the 3 year course and the rest were from the 5 year course. So the scope of the survey is reduced.
What year students took the survey?
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What were student's choice of career before they joined law school?
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The 'Others' option got responses like, United Nations, Journalism, Software development and No idea.
What were the student's choice of career at this moment?
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The 'Others' option got responses like,Writing, Journalism, Business, Software development, Investment Banking, Policy making.
Analysis:
1. LPO's were given as an option but were not selected by any participant although a lot of students end up joining LPOs.
2. No one wanted to become a faculty.
3. As time progresses, the 'others' option becomes more specific. This is because students keep coming across new options and decide to move away from traditional careers. It can also be interpreted as saying, student choose traditional careers because they are not aware about other options.
4. All the options might seem to have only minor changes but the one thing that unfortunately the survey cannot show is how the options of students have changed over the years.
A staggering 66% of the students changed their career option after joining law school. "Whoa!" That was all I could say when I first saw the survey results.
It's not easy to make a career choice. It becomes even more difficult when there are 15 different choices to choose from. Students need to stop following the herd. It creates meaningless competition and unhappy employees. Follow your dream. Work on something that makes you happy. Don't try to be 'safe', try to be yourself. Money is not everything in this world, personal satisfaction is.
If you have an interesting story about how you decided to change your career option after joining law school then feel free to share. :)
P.S.- This is my first online survey. Sorry for the mistakes that might be there. I will try to improve next time. Leave your constructive suggestions in the comments below.
Interesting indeed. Although I'd like to know how reliable this survey is.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, many of my law friends also wish to join politics after studies.
I am not sure how to prove to you how this survey is reliable.
ReplyDeleteI agree. Politics is also an option considered by many. Unfortunately, it was not the case with the students who took the survey.
Should'nt have left out NLIU Bhopal (!) , CNLU, RGNLU etc. Could have provided a more balanced picture if ALL the CLAT law schools were included.
ReplyDeleteI did not intend to leave out any college. I just circulated it among all the people I knew. Unfortunately I don't know people from the remaining colleges or they have not responded to the survey. This was the reason why I gave the names of all colleges involved.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I believe the survey has covered colleges from most tiers.