Ramanuj Mukherjee
Ramanuj Mukherjee is a young corporate lawyer and an alumnus of National University of Juridical Sciences. He co-founded iPleaders, seeking to make law easily accessible to everyone.
Our editorial team got a chance to catch up with Ramanuj Mukherjee . Here we are glad to present the interview on our website.
Law Mantra: Hello Sir, please tell us something about yourself.
Ramanuj Mukherjee:I am Ramanuj Mukherjee. I am passionate about teaching, blogging and my startup iPleaders. I am also currently learning a form of karate.
Law Mantra: Describe your childhood in brief.
Ramanuj Mukherjee: I grew up in a small town in Howrah district called Santragachi in a very green neighbourhood with a lake. I played a lot, went for swims every day and studied hard. I always wanted to be successful in everything I did. I wanted to become a footballer, but my parents didn’t like the idea. They wanted me to become a doctor. However, while preparing for the entrance exam and boards at the same time, I came across the idea of studying at a national law university. I felt this would be the perfect thing to do, and I jumped at the opportunity. It was a little challenging to learn enough English quickly as I had always studied in vernacular schools, but I managed.
Law Mantra: Why did you choose the law as your career? Any particular person who inspired you?
Ramanuj Mukherjee: Studying law seemed to open a lot of doors in terms of leadership, experiences, traveling, academic exposure and career options – I liked this very much. When I was preparing for law school, I thought I want to become a diplomat. Law seemed to be a very appropriate subject to study for that. I also associated learning law with some sort of acquiring of power and critical knowledge about the society in which I live in.
A lot of these realisations came to me as I attended a workshop organized by Sachin Malhan when he was promoting his startup LST in Kolkata. I attended the workshop and felt that if law school can produce someone like Sachin then I also will go to a law school! So I went home and declared to my parents that I am going to study law.
Initially they hoped this is some random idea which will go away soon, and they tried hard to make me opt for medicine – but they gave up in the end. I was so attracted to law as a career I was not even prepared to consider anything else.
Law Mantra: Are you satisfied with your profession? Did you ever regret your choice of career?
Ramanuj Mukherjee: I never regretted. I had an amazing time at NUJS. Those were very productive years and I emerged transformed. Since college, I have pretty much created the opportunities I am currently working on painstakingly, and I am very proud of my work. I sometimes do wish that I had some programming skills but I am sure I am going to learn to code somewhere along the way.
Law Mantra: How was your college life? What strategies did you use to be successful in college?
Ramanuj Mukherjee: My first two years were like that of any other law student – trying to cope with the deluge of academic curriculum, at the same time trying to get better at extra-curricular activities. Becoming member of various student societies seemed to be a popular thing to do, so I tried to do that. I got membership in every student Society and committee I could. That was very misguided, and a waste of time. I tried to study hard, do my projects well – put in a lot of effort and then was surprised to see that I scored just a little above average. I was not in the top 10 and that bothered me. I was still a terrible speaker as a struggled to learn to speak English – I fared terribly in moots and debates. Many people made fun of my accent and manner of speaking. I was, however, always certain that I am as good as anyone and I was going to succeed no matter what. I just didn’t know how.
I found out in my 3rd year that if I just keep following conventional wisdom and work hard, I will probably achieve only average success. I was not going to find the outlier successes that way. A lot of this was influenced by a blog I started reading at that time “A Four Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferriss. Here I came across the 80:20 principle and the idea of lifestyle hacking.
I immediately invested in learning skills like speed reading, networking and web development. I started blogging around the same time about things I knew. I designed systems that made my life simpler and my work easier. I devised a way to get coursework done optimally in very less time. That left me a lot of time to explore my abilities, learn new skills and do things outside the University. I did not bother so much about debating mooting etc that occupies all the time of most law students and instead developed my business skills. I made it a point to surround myself with wonderful and smart people, including some entrepreneurs, mentors and innovators.
By end of my third year I was managing a team of 20+law students developing course materials for a testprep giant which outsourced all its law entrance related content development to me. I was also ghostwriting several textbooks. I earned a very significant amount every year that allowed me to travel to other countries, travel to almost all the states of India. I will sometimes simply go to Goa in the middle of a semester and spend 15 days working from beachshacks.
Later in my 4th year I went on to start a legal risk management consultancy – we worked with several corporates including listed companies on interesting projects, helping them to minimize their legal risk. It was a very interesting experience.
I landed several job offers on day zero, which was the first day of my 5th year in college. I accepted the offer from Trilegal. With this already in my kitty, I devote my entire 5th year to building iPleaders as a legal risk management business along with a couple of partners drawn from NUJS itself. This led to some of the most valuable business lessons of my life. In our 5th year we also launched BarHacker.in. I also volunteered at Startup Saturday, Kolkata for more than two years. In the process I met hundreds of entrepreneurs which was a big blessing for me.
The funny thing is that as I focused more on matters of more long term importance to me, my performance in academics also improved alongside. Since my 3rd year, I managed to stay in the top 10 with an exception in the 5th year, and ranked in the top 3 in one instance.
Law Mantra: What according to you should be the focus of the law students at law school? How should they shape up their potential career graph?
Ramanuj Mukherjee: I say that there are three basic skills that every lawyer must acquire. These are writing, research and speaking skills.If you are really good at these three skills, you will eventually learn everything else. So first ensure that you get these skills right. Do whatever it takes for that.
Next, try to do some real life work, anything that adds value to other people. Help labourers to get minimum wages, help poor people to get bail by giving them free legal support. I had helped many young entrepreneurs without any revenue stream with free legal help, which not only helped me to improve my own legal skills but a pipeline of work coming in much letter. If you are blogging to share legal knowledge with people, that also falls in the same category because it helps a lot of people to find relevant information. Help journalists with relevant legal research. Intern with startups for free. If you keep doing such things continuously for a long time, over time you will reap incredible benefits in your career. Your peers will not even be able to understand what is leading to the astronomical growth of your career.
Law Mantra: Sir you have done yourB.A LL.B from WB NUJSwhat is your biggest achievement during your LL.B Career.
Ramanuj Mukherjee: I was able to help a few juniors out by putting them on the right track of personal development. I have also been able to help some of my students with their careers whenever they reached out. I consider these to be my greatest success.
Law Mantra: Tell us some about your project iPleaders and Super lawyerConcept. What is the story of your start-up?
Ramanuj Mukherjee: iPleaders is not only my project, I have two co-founders, Abhyudaya Agarwal who is a classmate and Pallavi Pareek, who I met in Mumbai and requested to join us as a co-founder in 2012. iPleaders helps premier law universities to build practical online courses for Indian students and professionals. We have helped NUJS Kolkata to build several amazing courses for law students, lawyer and even other professionals. We also help some of India’s top corporates to implement the sexual harassment law through online solutions. We write some of India’s most well known law blogs. We are always trying to come up with new ways to make law more accessible to common people.
Superlawyer is a website where we curate career insights for young lawyers and law students through interviews. Career experiences and insights from older lawyers can be very valuable for young law students. This is what we are trying to showcase through Superlawyer.in.
Law Mantra: What gave you the confidence to try and differ from your other conventional counterparts after law school?
Ramanuj Mukherjee: I did a lot of work related to building courses, blogging, consulting, marketing and sales while I was in college itself. I got a lot of exposure from these activities. I had an idea as to what needs to be done when I was about to start iPleaders due to years of experience of building online communities, educational products and consulting. This is what gave me the confidence and expertise required to scale my venture quickly enough without outside capital.
Law Mantra: Sir what is your view on Mushrooming of National Law University. Because Lots of universities are running without good infrastructure, management. Whether Law University is losing their charm?
Ramanuj Mukherjee: Just constructing a building and calling it a National Law University is not good enough.While at some of the new NLU’s infrastructure is splendid – they have failed to create good academic culture and environment of scholarship. Others have not even bothered to create minimum infrastructure. This is a sad situation. The students attending these NLUs certainly deserve better – but I can tell you one thing. High quality students will succeed no matter what constraints they have. It is responsibility of law students to take initiatives to make their alma mater a better place, and you get 5 years to do it. Students need to be bold and pro-active.
Law MantraWhat is your advice to law student who want to secure good internship during college life and good job after completing their degree?
Ramanuj Mukherjee: Before asking for jobs and internships, please develop your own skills. At least become a good researcher, good writer. Don’t write atrocious emails with terribly formatted CVs. Develop an eye for detail. If you are a capable person, if you are constantly striving for successes, avenues will open up. Don’t be shy of hard work and low pay. These are created to make opportunities look less interesting – but often these are disguise put upon great opportunities. Don’t just chase shiny offices and big names – that is often counter-productive for your learning and development.
Law Mantra: Sir, Any message to our reader, follower?
Ramanuj Mukherjee: Develop a vision, work hard, don’t go easy on yourself. You can do better, so keep improving, keep the hunger alive, keep the sharpness of youth always with you. Feel free to reach out to me, I am glad to help in any way. However, don’t ask me questions that you should google first!