This interview has been taken by Priti Kumari, who is a campus leader at Lawctopus.
Please tell us about yourself your earlier education. What motivated you to opt law?
I am Rupam Banerjee, the founder of The Amikus Qriae and I am currently pursuing my BBA LLB from Noida International University and I am currently in my 4th Year. I am second generation lawyer, one of my main motivation of me taking law as a career option was by seeing & observing my father.
From the childhood itself I have been in the environment of how an typical litigant work in court of law and I always had a keen interest to know about the cases what my dad was dealing with. Though my area of interest in legal sector is to work in the Aviation and Space laws sector along with Arbitration laws.
Tell us about your law school journey at Noida International University.
My law school journey till now have been a rollercoaster ride full of Up’s and down but at the same time exciting and full of adventure. Though my aim was to be good in both academics & Co-curriculum activities but doesn’t stopped me to enjoy the college life because you won’t be able to enjoy this life after this 5 Years.
I consider myself lucky because unlike other course I got 1 Year extra by choosing Law. Though due to COVID-19 I lost my 2 precious years of this beautiful life missing the people environment out there. But once I am back after I made sure I utilise the remaining time of my college days to the fullest.
I would also like to advise all the juniors out there that with focusing on your academics & Co- Curriculum activities you should enjoy your college life.
And as you asked about my college Noida International University is one of the best University for the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. It had 75+ acres lash green campus with all the facilities. It have 180+ course taught including Medical College and a state of art hospital and if I tell about sports we have grounds for all major sports including Football, Cricket, Basketball, Badminton, Table Tennis, Chess etc.
They have well qualified professors who take good care of the students in there respective courses. In one I am completely satisfied with what NIU(Noida International University) has to offer to there students.
You talked about your interest in mooting. Please tell us more about your mooting journey . You can also mention about your intrest in other extracurricular activities.
As a student of law we are taught from the very beginning in the first year itself that you should be good at Mooting and I believe Mooting culture should gain more popularity in all the law schools to build a better professional.
I believe if we are good at moots then we get better at many things because if we participate in a moot competition on a Intra level, National Level or International Level we learn how to do intense research work, one can become good at drafting and also one can become good at pleadings and definitely one can get familiar with how a real life court works and how to tackle the questions asked by the judges and how to answer them in a way that make them satisfied with your answer.
Talking about moot court journey I started while doing 2 Intra Moot Competition before going into National Level. God was kind enough that i was able to won 2 National Awards in NMCC one as Best Speaker at ICFAI University Dehradun and the other one that I won was an award as Best Researcher at Amity University Noida.
Apart from Moot Competitions I am interested in participating in National Youth Parliament, Debate Competitions, Quiz Competitions etc. I was the winner in a Inter University Debate Competition once, I was also adjusted as winner as Intra University Article Writing Competition and the best was I was National Finalists in National Environmental Youth Parliament conducted by PRIDE a committee of Parliament of India amongst 30,000+ students who Parliament I was one of the 12 National Finalists for the competition.
You started The Amikus Qriae. Tell us the objective behind it. What difficulties did you face to establish it?
There is not one specific reason to start The Amikus Qriae there were several reasons to start it. Some of the most important reasons or problems that i faced which made me start The Amikus Qriae was that as a Law Student when I wanted to gain some certification through going through some courses I faced the problem that most of the courses which provide us the quality content & learning are very much costly and students of middle class or lower middle class cannot afford it after paying such hefty fees of the law college also this courses were not reached to the students of law who are studying at tier 2 and tier 3 cities.
Another problem that I faced was that the publication fees of some well reputed private journals were too high. So to address these problems we started The Amikus Qriae where we till now provide quality legal courses taken by industry experts at lowest cost in the market and we have students participating in these courses from across the country and we also started to provide free publication opportunities to those who have a written good papers but cannot publish it due to short of money.
We in The Amikus Qriae believe that money cannot be a barrier for gaining knowledge & updating your skills sets and with this motive me and our team are working all day to provide the best service to not only the students of law but also to the legal professionals.
You secured more than 30 internships in various law firm. How did you manage the cocurricular activities with your studies?
This is the most difficult question to answer I guess amongst all. Though I would like to answer this question so that it can help other to understand nothing is impossible to achieve in life. Well I was able to do this much of internships as well as doing all these co-cirrucular activities while maintaining the academics it was only possible because of the positive mindset that I have with me always.
Everyone has 24 hours a day even I have the same, I am not a super human but it’s only about my priorities & time management with positive mindset that gets going for me and I guess there would some formula for you as well to get yourself going just focus on your goals & set your priorities & get going.
Also, I believe I was a bit luck at times because many of these internships I did was on virtual mode during the COVID-19 on those 2 years. Everything was closed including law firms & courts so most of them were taking virtual internships.
One of the best part of those virtual internships I would say you can do more than 1 internship at a time & you can maintain the quality of your work. Although anyday I would prefer physical internships over virtual internships because it has its own positive sides.
What motivates you?
The main motivation I get is from seeing that what I have dreamt of that is getting fulfilled and people are able to get help from the initiative.
We get a lot of response from the law students that how the courses and the guidance and the internship reference help them to stand where they are standing & how they are able to get knowledge from the courses and secure themselves good Internship opportunity with renowned law firms and law chambers.
All the reviews that we get from our different initiatives keeps me motivating and encourage me to do continuous efforts for the legal fraternity through The Amikus Qriae.
Please give a small piece of advice for readers who are budding lawyers.
The advice that I would like to give to the young law students is that don’t come into the field with the pre concive notion that I would go into corporate or I would go into a In-house counsel or into litigation.
We all don’t know what life has to offer for us explore all the possible laws you can get experience while interning everywhere right from District Court to NGO to High Court to Law Firms to Supreme Court to different tribunals to different in-house counsels learn every bit from them in the 5 Years or 3 Years time and then at the end you can be your best judge that where you can work and what you want to do you can even think of working with startup or you can yourself start your own start up.
I would say you are never late for anything. Everyone has different right timing your one can come little early or little late but while waiting for that time get your experiences count. Also don’t forget to enjoy this life of your college it won’t come try to balance your academics as well as mental health which is very important take some small trips which can keep you fresh and always be ready to accept new challenges success will only come once you start facing hardships in life.
This Interview is a part of our Star Student/Faculty interview series wherein our campus leaders interview the star student/faculty of their college. Stay tuned for more!
Source: Lawctopus
