The Intellectual Property Analysis and Advocacy Centre (IPAAC) conducted the Second Edition of the Turncoat Debate Competition on 15th February 2023. The event was organized with the objective to increase awareness about Intellectual Property Rights among the students to familiarize them with the contemporary issues revolving around Intellectual Property Rights. This competition was a platform through which they could engage in such discussions and enhance their public speaking skills.

Individual Participants from the first and second year engaged with different propositions ranging over several topics such as copyright in various social media platforms and AI, plant variety protection, patents and so on. The competition did not require prior specialized knowledge in Intellectual Property Rights and was aimed at serving as the starting point for students’ interest in the law related to Intellectual Property.

The competition concluded with Sidhanth M K Majoo (Batch 2021-2026) bagging the first position and Pratik Biswal (Batch of 2022-2027) coming in as a runner up.

The Centre highly encourages the enthusiasm of the participants and hopes to continue with similar initiatives to increase the awareness of Intellectual Property amongst the students.

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The Constitutional Law Society of National Law University Odisha successfully organized a guest lecture on the topic ‘State of Legal Education in India – Social Relevance, Accessibility and Inclusivity’. The lecture was delivered by Mr. Rahul Bajaj and Mr. Husain Aanis Khan. Mr. Bajaj is an attorney at Ira Law and a Senior Associate Fellow at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. Mr. Khan is a research fellow in the Legal Design and Regulation team at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.

Mr. Rahul Bajaj started the lecture session by focusing on social relevance and accessibility in landscape of legal education. He highlighted the problems faced by students in law schools due to exclusionary facets such as disability. He explained how differently abled people struggle to be a part of the social mainstream through everyday examples.

He asked a few questions to decipher students’ ground reality concerning accessibility. He prompted attendees to share their own real-life experiences involving problems faced by differently people. The problems included but were not limited to not being able to learn things properly due to the teaching pedagogy not being disabled-friendly. Furthermore, through the raise of hands, it was observed that the percentage of people who have either seen disabled people taking part in activities or have themselves taken part with them is quite low.

To address the problem of image accessibility, document accessibility, and physical accessibility, he offered a few solutions. To deal with the problem of image accessibility, he urged the attendees to think about providing an image description so that people with vision disabilities can understand the image through the description. The problem of document accessibility can be solved by merely creating a searchable PDF instead of an image-based PDF. Additionally, he highlighted that the issue of physical accessibility can be solved only through collective action on a large scale as many places are still not disabled-friendly. To substantiate his point, he gave the example of Indian court premises.

After Mr. Bajaj covered the broad pointers under accessibility issues, the lecture was continued by Mr. Husain Aanis Khan, who covered the topic from the perspective of inclusivity. He commenced his lecture session with the purpose of broadening the view on access to legal education.

Mr. Khan introduced three stages to the problem of accessibility in legal education. These are:

1. Pre-Admission Stage: This stage (also understood as the Pre-Action Stage) can be categorised as two parts. The first, where students do not appear for law examinations like CLAT in the first place. The reason for this is two-fold. One, the fees of such examinations is extremely high, especially for a student coming from a low-income background. Two, they do not see a B.A., LL.B. degree as a good enough return on investment. The second part relates to securing a seat in any of the top National Law Universities. There is a deeper understanding to this than just “how meritorious a student is”. Mr. Khan explained how a lot of students who come from disadvantaged sections of the society face challenges socially which translates into their educational journey. It is important to understand that if a student is overcoming social barriers to reach a similar, if not the same, stand as a student who had a comparatively easier journey, should be given the same standing and chance to compete further. This is because that student has not just shown that they are academically meritorious but they also possess the ability to overcome social pressures and differences.
2. Admissions Stage: This stage begins with the question of attending a law school after getting through the examination. Mostly, students are doubtful about the fees and the inclusivity in law schools. A lot of times, students are unable to finance their education which leads to, as Mr. Khan said, the premier law schools becoming “lands of the rich”.
3. Post-Admission Stage: After students from lesser privileged background get through the first two stages, they face Post Admission Exclusion in colleges. This is not just by their peers; it also comes from employers and even non-human aspects like infrastructure! Mr. Khan points out how it becomes difficult for a lot of students to have a healthy social life, given its expenses.

Further, Mr. Khan talked about two schools of thoughts which try to provide courses of action that are explored to improve accessibility to legal education in the country. The first one being, removing merit as a basis of accessibility and focussing on just giving equal representation to all in the legal arena. However, Mr. Khan disagrees with this ideology. The other ideology, which he supports, is to understand and acknowledge that merit is an important basis of the filtration process in any field, but it should be complemented with the acceptance and inclusion of people from under-represented backgrounds and social divisions.

With students joining from various law schools, Mr. Khan and Mr. Bajaj concluded the lecture by taking questions from the audience and addressing problems faced by students in real lives. The guests were delighted to see the enthusiasm of the audience in making small actions as a part of their routine to make legal education and the profession of law equally accessible for their peers.

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CPHL organised a Guest Lecture by Dr. Warren Burke on Public Health Law: Universal Themes

Centre for Public Health Law, National Law University Odisha organised a Guest Lecture by Dr. Warren Burke on ‘Public Health Law: Universal Themes’ on 10^th February 2023 (Friday) from 3:00 to 5:00 pm. The lecture provided the students of Madhusudan Law University and University Law College, Utkal University a cursory glance into the domain of public health law that they can take up for research and practice, academically and professionally. The lecture also catered to the questions like – what role do lawyers play in public health? To what extent can the law be used to regulate individual behaviour for furthering public health? How can legal intervention be used in a manner that furthers social justice and decreases health disparity?

Dr. Warren Burke is a Fulbright Scholar and a visiting professor at National Law University Odisha. He is a Senior Attorney, Office of the Legislative Counsel, United States House of Representatives.

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National Law University Odisha signed an MOU with PLR Chambers on 08.02.2023. The main purpose of object is to collaborate on matters relating to legal advisory, legislative drafting, exploratory research, empirical studies, modelling, business advisory, project consultancy, regulatory and policy issues to support public and private sector funding agencies in transitioning from concepts to commercially viable frameworks.?/p>

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About the Event

The Centre for Corporate Law, National Law University Odisha (CCL) aims to promote and fill the existing gap of theoretical knowledge and the practical application of corporate and its allied commercial laws. In furtherance of this aim, CCL shall be organising a Single Credit Course on ‘Introduction to Private Acquisitions’ with Mr. Puneet?athsharma, Partner of KT Advisors LLP and Akash Srinivasan, Associate at Khaitan and Co. The course will be conducted in hybrid mode for a span of Twenty-Five (25) teaching hours spread across the months of January to March 2023.

The course will be attended by a select cohort of sixty (60) students from 3^rd to 5^th year, and L.L.M of National Law University, Odisha (NLUO). The course outline is specifically curated and designed to include subject areas that form the core of corporate teams at a law firm. The course instructors will draw on their vast experience of practising transactional law to provide a holistic educational experience to the attendees. The certificates will be awarded to students on the basis of a MCQ based evaluation which will be conducted upon the completion of the course.

We would like to extend our deepest appreciation to the Vice Chancellor Prof. Ved Kumari, Registrar Prof. (Dr.) Rangin Pallav Triparthy, the faculty advisors and concerned authorities of the university for their support and contribution in the organisation of this valuable learning experience.

About the Guest Instructors

Mr. Puneet Rathsharma is a partner at KT Advisors LLP. He is an alumnus of West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS) and has worked in various law firms including L&L Partners & Khaitan & Co. In the course of his work, he regularly advises companies and financial institutions on various matters of transaction law including mergers, acquisitions and joint venture agreements among others. He has also represented his clients in international commercial arbitration and company law courts.

Akash Srinivasan is an associate at Khaitan & Co. He is an alumnus of National Law University, Odisha (NLUO) and throughout his course of five years at law school, he had brought many laurels to the university. These include the winner of the 3rd Pranita Mehta Memorial Essay Writing Competition (2018), best negotiation plan & quarter finalist at 4th HSF NLUD International Negotiation Competition (2017) and he had also qualified the South Asian Rounds of the Oxford Monroe E. Price Media Law Moot Competition (2016-17) among many other achievements.

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