New Delhi: For years, courtrooms and judgements have been the focus of research in the legal world. But lawyers and the legal profession itself have received little attention.
Now, India’s premier legal education institute, Bengaluru-based National Law School of India University (NLSIU), is hoping to plug that gap with its new research centre dedicated to studying the profession—including issues such as career progression, women’s declining representation in leadership positions and barriers faced by first-generation lawyers.
Launched on 11 June, NLSIU’s Centre for the Study of the Legal Profession is set to examine the profession’s structures, norms, and practices through rigorous empirical research, sustained policy engagement, and interdisciplinary scholarship.
In addition, it also aims to contribute to informed debates and reforms that strengthen the legal profession and its role in advancing justice and social development.
Its first major initiative, the Women’s Inclusion and Leadership in Law (WILL) Initiative, is a five-year programme focused on making litigation practice more gender-inclusive by supporting early-career women lawyers from diverse socio-economic backgrounds through research, fellowships, mentorship and professional development.
Dr. Aparna Chandra, Professor of Law at NLSIU and one of the architects of the initiative, told ThePrint that NLSIU decided to create the centre as legal scholarship has traditionally focused heavily on courts, judgments and legal doctrines, rather than the profession itself.
According to Chandra, studying the profession can reveal dimensions of the justice system that cannot be understood only through court decisions.
The centre, she added, is intended to bring together conversations that often happen separately across legal education, gender studies, professional regulation and access to justice.
Dr. Ashrita Prasad Kotha, Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Centre, said the initiative also reflects the original vision behind the National Law School model: to use legal education as a tool to rethink the legal system.
“What courts can sometimes deal with would be issues that are presented before them. But we also need to have this larger conversation on future issues — say with technology, or other critical challenges that are emerging — where a policy dialogue itself needs to be initiated before someone goes to court for a remedy,” she said.
“A centre with this kind of mandate would help push the conversation further,” she said.
Why women disappear from leadership pathways
The first project under the centre, WILL, emerges from a longstanding concern: women’s declining representation in the profession itself as they move from law school into senior positions in litigation and legal institutions.
Established research shows that while women form a significant proportion of law graduates, their representation drops sharply in advocacy leadership, senior designations and judicial roles.
The project will study these transitions through empirical research and develop interventions aimed at supporting women lawyers.
Kotha’s own professional journey shaped her interest in understanding these barriers.
“I come from a tier-two city; I am a first-generation lawyer, a first-generation academic, and I worked at a law firm in India,” she said.
Having interned with litigation chambers across the country, she said she saw how difficult it could be for young lawyers to understand and enter litigation practice.
“The safer choice that a lot of us ended up making was to start at a firm because it gave a sense of clarity on the progression of career within law for first-generation students entering the profession,” she said.
The centre, she added, hopes to use research to move beyond individual experiences and identify systemic barriers. “With empirical-backed research, we would have better questions to ask, better answers to give.”
The centre describes its approach as “action-oriented research” producing evidence not only for academic discussion but also for institutional reform.
Chandra said the aim is to create research that can influence stakeholders including regulators, courts, bar associations and lawyers’ organisations.
“The profession is the gateway to our system of legal justice, so ultimately everyone is a stakeholder,” Chandra said.
She added that the research findings will be shared not only with academic audiences but also with judges, lawyers, regulators, the Bar Council, lawyers’ associations and bar associations across the country.
Fellowships, courses, professional support for women lawyers
Beyond research, WILL will provide practical support through fellowships, mentorship programmes and certificate courses for early-career women litigators.
These fellowships provide financial support to women litigators for a couple of years as well as mentorship, training and a range of in-person as well as online workshops. Plus, the centre also plans certificate programmes focused on both legal knowledge and practical skills needed to build sustainable careers.
“These will be about different new emerging areas of law, but will also be about the skills required to be a successful litigator—how do you argue, how do you draft,” Chandra explained.
“This is about how you set up a practice, what specific issues lawyers generally or women lawyers face in different parts of the country, and how others have navigated those challenges,” she added.
Kotha added that the centre also wants to create an accessible repository of resources for lawyers who may not be able to participate in formal programmes, including courses that will help early career litigators with skills, but also with more practical challenges to becoming self-employed.
The WILL Initiative does not treat women as an undifferentiated category, Kotha and Chandra explained.
As part of the initiative, the centre will collect data on women advocates through an intersectional lens, looking at how class, caste and even geography affect their legal careers.
Both Kotha and Chandra said that a person’s gender identity is one of many identities, including caste, class and social location.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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