NIRF 2023: Placements Analysis Of Law Colleges Across North India

A recently released National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) ranked 30 law colleges across the country. For the benefit of our readers Careers360 analysed the data obtained from the official report by NIRF and we have found that the number of graduating lawyers has increased over the years, however, placements and annual salary packages have not shown any significant increase. Our analysis tells us that more and more law graduates are pursuing higher studies in hope of better opportunities after their masters qualification.

Let us look into each of the parameters studied by the NIRF while ranking these institutions. To begin with, we divided the colleges of India as per zones of the county say- north, south, east, west, central, and northeastern. In this analysis, we only included the states and union territories located in the northern zone of the country.

The is a government-accepted barometer to rank colleges providing higher education in their respective field. In 2023, NIRF ranked 30 law colleges from all zones of India providing undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in law. For a comparative analysis in this article we will focus on colleges in the northern states of India, and the period between 2019 to 2022.

The north zone includes the states of Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, and Rajasthan, and union territories of Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh, and Delhi.

In this report have only analysed colleges with five-year undergraduate programmes. The law colleges with three-year undergraduate programmes and post-graduate programmes have not been taken into consideration.

As mentioned above the NIRF ranked 30 colleges across India, eight of these fall in the north zone region.

Four out of these eight law colleges are from Delhi which includes National Law University, Jamia Millia Islamia, Indian Law Institute, and Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University. The National Law University (NLU), New Delhi enjoys the status of being an institute of national importance.

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We have already mentioned the names of four colleges in Delhi, the other four colleges that fall in the north zone are: Lovely Professional University, The Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Amity University Haryana and Army Institute of Law, in Punjab and Haryana. Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh had no colleges or universities ranked in the law category.

A point to note here is that, the Government of India has passed an act “The Jammu and Kashmir National Law University Act, 2018” to set up an NLU in Jammu and Kashmir, however there is an inordinate delay in establishing the campus.

NIRF 2023: Ranked Law Colleges in North Zone of India

* Indian Law Institute has been left out of any further analysis as it only offers a one-year postgraduate degree in law.

High Rate Of Graduated Students

The percentage of law students who graduate in a minimum stipulated time of five years is quite high. The rate of graduation here is calculated on the basis of the total intake of college in a particular year. The total intake is the number of students admitted through a proper admission process and the students admitted through lateral entry in that particular year.

However, none of the law colleges of North India have admitted students through lateral entry in the years considered. The term percentage points discussed below in the article means the difference between two percentage values.

Army Institute of Law, Sector-68 and Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi have maintained their percentage of graduated students over a period of five years. Lovely Professional University on the other hand initially struggled with a poor percentage of graduated students in 2019-20, but witnessed an increase of 45.90 percentage points in 2020-21. However, it again fell by 6.03 percentage points in 2021-22.

Here’s a table showing all the necessary data on graduate students in the years 2020 to 2022 within the stipulated time of five years.

Percentage of graduating students

Average Placement Report

Though the law colleges showed satisfactory results in the rate of graduate students in the minimum stipulated time, the placement report is quite average. Jamia Millia placed the highest percentage of graduates in 2021-22 in comparison to other listed colleges.

Lovely Professional University could not provide adequate placement support to their graduating batch. Amity University Haryana, Gurgaon has shown a constant decline in its placement percentage since 2019-20. It could hardly place six per cent of its graduate class.

This is a very worrying scenario for these colleges as they are not able to pool an adequate number of companies or law firms to place their graduate students. Either that could be the reason, or the colleges have failed in getting their students meet industry requirements for hiring freshers at various law firms.

The table below shows the percentage of graduate students who got placed in a company or law firm over a period of three years.

Percentage of students who got placed

Stagnant Median Salary

There was not much significant change in median salary packages received by placed in a period of three years. National Law University, New Delhi was able to get their students the highest placement package among the colleges listed below. Yet the growth of the package over previous years is quite slow.

Lovely Professional University has shown an increase of 2.7 LPA in the median salary of 2021-22 when compared to 2019-20. Colleges like Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi and Army Institute of Law, Sector-68 underperformed in providing median salary in 2021-22 when compared to 2019-20. Amity University Haryana, Gurgaon which ranks 23rd on the list of top 30 law schools as per the NIRF Ranking could merely provide the median salary of 3 LPA to its students.

These stagnant salary numbers can be a concern for aspiring lawyers in the country.

In the table below we have listed the median salary packages received by students placed from the law school from 2019-20 to 2021-22.

Salaries (in lakhs per annum) received during campus placement

Students Opting For Higher Studies

Jamia Millia Islamia which once recorded the highest number of selecting half of the graduating batch for students for higher studies has come down to 18.46 per cent. The percentage of graduate students who went for higher students 2021-22 came down to 21.91 per cent even in NLU, New Delhi when compared to 2019-20.

Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University recorded mediocre salary packages, it recorded the highest percentage of graduate students opting for higher education in comparison to other colleges in the list. This could mean the graduates of this college have to go for higher education to earn a good salary package.

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Look at the table below for the percentage of graduate students who opted for higher education over a period of three years.

Percentage of graduates who pursued higher education

Law is a very demanding career option, it can also be lucrative. However, the current placement analysis shows that there is no financial stability to students of colleges in North India when it comes to employment. Students have to go for higher education to ensure a financially secure future. The gap between the percentage of graduate students and the percentage of placed students shows a worrying trend.