Courting the Corporate

Gauri chhabra

The corporate landscape has seen an unprecedented growth in the last few decades with mergersand acquisitions, IPOs, joint ventures and LPOs becoming commonplace and frequent. This has created huge opportunities for the corporate law professionals in the industry.Today, many law students have started accepting jobs with corporate firms as compared to starting their own practice.

What is corporate law?

Corporate law, as the name depicts, deals in legal aspects of the corporate world such as mergers and acquisitions, industrial relations and settling legal disputes with competitors. If you are interested in making career in corporate law, you may either pursue a three-year course after graduation in any discipline or five-year course after Class XII.

Eligibility and skill set

You must pass your Class 12th or senior secondary examination with an aggregate of 45 per cent from a recognized board or university. Thereafter, you can appear for the CLAT exam (common law admission test), conducted for admission to the top government and private colleges in India which consists of  subjects like English comprehension, general knowledge & current affairs, legal aptitude, mathematics and logical reasoning. After successfully clearing the exam, you may choose the course and specialised law branch of your choice.You should have updated yourself with the latest knowledge of new rules and regulations of business, corporate law and company status guidelines. Other skills like drafting as well as debating are also equally important.

Requirements

As a corporate lawyer, you would serve only one client — the corporation you choose to work for. You will be called upon to handle a variety of legal tasks including corporate taxes, mergers and acquisitions, corporate structure issues, employment law, employees' contracts, labour and employment law and government reporting. You will generally need to be knowledgeable in a wide range of legal fields and will need to be able to handle a large number of issues like patents, mergers and acquisitions, global economics, securities, accounting, business contracts and more. Some corporations will hire multiple lawyers and each will be a specialist in one or two areas of corporate law. You would also look into a matter in case some sort of criminal charges are there against your client regarding his business activities, and also legalised any new business initiative or business deal performed by an organization. Your job duties may include meeting with clients and other attorneys, preparing legal briefs, opening and closing courtroom arguments, conducting research and compiling evidence.

Institute Scape

• Bharti Vidyapeeth Deemed University, New Law College, Maharashtra, offering certificate course in Corporate Law.
• Shamsher Bahadur Saxena College of Law, Haryana offering one-year diploma in Corporate Law and Management.
• Effort Institute of Management and Technology, Delhi, offering BA in Corporate Secretaryship.
• Aligarh Muslim University, Faculty of Law, Aligarh, offering PG diploma in Corporate law.
• Dr Ambedkar College of Law, Andhra Pradesh, offering, Master of Law (Corporate and Security Law).
• National Law School of India University, Bangalore, offering Master of Law in Corporate and Security Law.
• Management Education and Research Institute, MERI Professional & Law Institute, Delhi, offering PG diploma in Corporate Law.
• Indian Law Institute, New Delhi, offering PG diploma in Corporate Law.
• University of Lucknow, Lucknow, offering MBA in Corporate Secretaryship