LawSikho teams up with Texas A&M University School of Law

LawSikho teams up with Texas A&M University School of Law. The first batch is expected to begin in August 2022 with 20 lawyers

LawSikho, a legal edtech start-up, has teamed up with the Texas A&M University School of Law, a law school in the US, to bring young lawyers from developing countries in South Asia on a par with international IP careers worldwide.

Texas A&M University, a public university in the state of Texas, has one of the US's largest alumni and student bases. Texas A&M Law School has been moving up the US law school rankings very fast in the last ten years and is ranked sixth amongst all US IP law programmes, as per the latest rankings by US News. The law school identified that a large number of lawyers from developing countries harbour aspirations of building international legal careers, but due to the high cost of education as well as comparatively high living costs in the USA, they cannot access high-quality international higher education.

Under the leadership of Robert Ahdieh, dean, and Srividhya Ragavan, senior IP law professor of Indian origin and a graduate of the National Law School in Bangalore, the law school started working on a special LLM programme along with substantial scholarship opportunities in 2019. This culminated in the law school announcing an LLM programme for students from developing countries on its blog in April 2022.

"There is a great deal of legal talent in developing countries, but they often struggle to access high-quality international legal education. Often, it is a question of affordability, which we will address through this programme," said Ragavan, spearheading the programme. "Personally, I look forward to contributing to the development of international legal scholarship, creating a pool of international lawyers who understand the US legal system and can contribute to growing cooperation between the US and their nations."

This LLM programme, emphasising international IP law, has been formulated to allow increased global participation from students in South Asia. Sharing his views, Ahdieh said, "We want to extend this opportunity to a carefully selected group of international students from developing countries this year and create outstanding learning and career outcomes for each of them. The first batch is expected to begin in August 2022 with 20 lawyers."

Ramanuj Mukherjee, CEO at LawSikho, stated, "The edtech start-up will play a key role in the growth of the programme by offering outreach through its platform, placement support and training, preparation courses for several international bar exams, and international outreach opportunities for the learners."

"This will be a game-changer for many lawyers already benefiting from global talent arbitrage opportunities and international remote work as they can enhance their credibility and track record through a programme like this. One of the leading US law schools recognising this growing opportunity will accelerate mainstreaming of international remote work in the legal domain," added Mukherjee.