Lahore University of Management Sciences

Department of Law and Policy

Career Counseling and Future Prospects

	Student Advisory System Market Exposure & Summer Placements Career Opportunities & Prospects

Student Advisory System

The Law & Policy Program at LUMS is the first to have a systematized student advisory system in Pakistan, whereby each student is formally assigned a faculty advisor for advice and mentorship regarding various issues ranging from academic support during the LL.B to counseling for summer placements and future career choices. The faculty-student ratio positively augments the advisory system – the capping of the law class at 50 students and the expected full-time permanent faculty of about 10 to 12 members, and several adjunct and visiting faculty members, ensure that this ratio will endure within, or as close to as possible, the single digit range at full operating capacity.

The student advisory system enhances and facilitates not just the law students’ smooth transition into the Program but also their thinking process about their future careers. Needless to say, it allows law students at all levels to enjoy direct and intensive engagement with the Law Faculty’s expertise and inspiration. Thus, law students are encouraged to interact regularly with their advisors. The system is designed to be flexible in that students are at liberty to substitute their advisor during the second year of the LL.B provided that the substitution correlates with the area of specialization they wish to pursue as part of the Directed Studies course.

Market Exposure & Summer Placements

The Law & Policy Program at LUMS strongly encourages its students to acquire familiarity with and training in various sectors of the legal profession through involvement in vocational experience over the summer breaks. As a Program that is particularly geared towards providing research-oriented and quality clinical legal education, one of its primary aims is to facilitate an interface between students and a myriad of legal and law-related vocations so as to create an impetus for bright and young students of today to plough back their knowledge, skills and enthusiasm into their future work environment and the legal profession in Pakistan.

Already, students from the Law & Policy Program have had exposure to or interaction with the following organizations and law firms mainly through summer placements:

• Department of Law, Securities & Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), Islamabad
• Punjab Planning & Development Center, Asian Development Bank (ADB), Lahore
• Research Society for International Law (RSIL), Lahore
• Minto & Mirza, Advocates, Lahore
• Vellani & Vellani, Advocates & Legal Consultants, Karachi
• Ramday Law Associates, Advocates, Lahore
• The News, Lahore

Further, activities such as academic and guest lectures are planned throughout the academic year, the main objectives of which are to provide the law and policy students with insight into the justice system, to inspire them in their study of law and policy, and to develop meaningful linkages with the market. For more detail on academic and guest lectures and other extracurricular activities that facilitate market exposure for students, please visit the section on “Program Development & Extracurricular”.

Career Opportunities & Prospects

Even unsuccessful lawyers do well in life! Some of them become world class writers. For example Dickens, Flaubert, Balzac, Kafka, R.L. Stevenson, Thackeray, Nehru, and the list goes on….

Successful ones are bound to do better. Most champions of freedom and founding fathers of nation states, including those in South Asia, and most current leaders of the world were and are legally trained. From Mr. Jinnah to Mr. Mandela, the list is long and glorious. These are people who have shaped history and are behind some of the most significant ideas put forth.

Our graduating lawyers will be trained in not just law but in many related disciplines as well as in the important areas of communication and leadership. This translates into tremendous marketability for such graduates, whether they pursue traditional vocations in the legal profession or whether they wish to explore many and varied opportunities in the private sector, academia, NGOs, civil bureaucracy, regulatory, research and policy making agencies and financial institutions.

Apart from the Law & Policy Program’s internal advisory, mentoring and career counseling through its Faculty, the LUMS Career Development Office also actively assists graduates in seeking placement and helps them to make informed career choices, for higher studies, internships or for starting a professional career.