Reimagining Legal Education: A Letter To A Marginalised Law Student On Merit, Barriers, And Belonging

In this deeply personal and evocative piece, Anchal Bhatheja, a visually impaired lawyer, Research Fellow at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, and an incoming LL.M. candidate at Harvard Law School, reimagines that foundational conversation. Drawing from Anchal's own lived experiences, addresses the intersecting realities of disability, gender, caste, and institutional exclusion. This letter is not just a guide for those navigating additional structural hurdles; it is an urgent reminder to the legal fraternity to re-examine its conventional definitions of merit, success, and belonging.

Editor 

Dear Young Law Student,

I sit down today to write you a letter to read, while you navigate law school. I know you might be filled with great anticipation and a little dread. It is a natural reaction. I hope that I am able to assuage some of your concern, and to help you get a good night's sleep.

These were the opening lines of Corinne Cooper's Letter to a Young Law Student. It was one of the first texts I read when I entered NLSIU in 2018. In it, she describes legal education as a pyramid, where the deepest learning happens within the student, followed by learning from peers, and finally from faculty. The burden and the power of learning, she suggests, rests largely on you.

I am reattempting that letter, from the margins, to the margins. I write as a queer, blind lawyer from India, recently admitted to Harvard Law School for the LL.M. my second educational endeavor that made me pause and reflect on my first one, and everything I navigated to get here.

This reattempt feels necessary because Cooper's letter is written from a perspective that assumes certain privileges: access to resources, ease of language, confidence to participate, and familiarity with the social and academic codes of law school. These are not universal conditions. They are unevenly distributed, and often remain invisible to those who already possess them.

For many of you, the road to law school is not straightforward. You may be studying on scholarships or operating under significant financial constraints. In my own case, the disability-related concession in tuition fees accounted for less than 1% of the total cost of attendance. While symbolically important, it did not meaningfully reduce the larger financial burden of studying law with a visual impairment. Financial strain, combined with accessibility barriers, often runs parallel to academic demands, and both shape how you experience law school.

Many of you may also belong to historically marginalised categories like SC, ST, OBC, or PwD and may face questioning of your place in law school. I faced this as well. I often heard comments tied to my CLAT rank (1103), used as shorthand to suggest that I did not “belong” among higher-ranked peers. These comments appeared in sociology classes and mess table conversations. Over time, I realised that such remarks accumulate in ways that are not always immediately visible, but are nonetheless deeply felt.

Over time, I also realised that the meaning of “merit” shifts once you enter law school. One of my batch mates once corrected an unreserved student by saying, “NLSIU doesn't have 50, but 80 talented students.” That line captured something I also experienced. Once projects, vivas, and classroom discussions replaced multiple-choice examinations, the hierarchy suggested by entrance ranks became far less stable as a measure of ability or contribution.

You may still feel that your admission is explained only through affirmative action or quotas. But it is important to recognise that what is often called merit is itself structured by prior access—schooling, language, familiarity with English, and exposure to institutions. This is not an argument against merit, but a way of situating it within the conditions that produce it.

Language will likely be one of your earliest challenges. I struggled in debates and law classes, where my arguments were often less polished than those of my peers. I once had to write a project on market analysis of Starbucks, at a time when I had never even heard of the brand. In another assignment, I was asked to critique a Supreme Court judgment on the Industrial Disputes Act, an area I had no prior understanding of. My visual impairment added another layer of difficulty, as my screen reader could not process graphs in the inaccessible material provided.

What sustained me was repetition rather than immediate understanding. Reading, failing to understand, returning again, and slowly refining comprehension. Over time, I managed to perform well in a graph-heavy course. The point is not initial mastery, but accumulation through persistence.

Self-study, especially for marginalised students, is not linear. It involves reading incorrectly, correcting oneself, and reading again. A junior once told me that he wrote his thoughts in Hindi and used Google Translate to convert them into English for submissions. He cleared the UPSC this year. Law's language may appear inaccessible at first, but it is ultimately learnable.

You will also encounter peers who appear far ahead in mooting, debating, publications, or internships. It is natural to feel behind in such environments. But law school does not move in a single direction. I know people who excelled in litigation without participating in moots. Others who were not academically dominant are now teaching in top universities. I also know of a senior who became a monk after graduating from an NLU. There is no linear template for success.

Confidence will fluctuate. You may hesitate to speak for fear of being wrong. That hesitation is familiar. But participation matters even when imperfect. One professor once told me, “I know you worked hard, but I can't give marks for hard work.” Yet much of that work shows elsewhere in how you read judgments, structure arguments, and develop intuition about law.

Social integration can also be uneven. You may not have the financial flexibility to participate in dinners, trips, or informal gatherings that shape peer networks. You may not have institutional or regional networks that others rely on. I experienced this as well. Over time, I realised that community is not only about frequency of interaction, but about consistency of presence. One of my seniors, then SBA president, sensitised my batch mates about disability. That single intervention created a foundation for inclusion.

You may need to begin by becoming your own community. I did this by praying, petitioning and protesting for accessible materials and infrastructural accommodations. I started my college's first disability support group, to provide structure to my individual advocacy, that could benefit other similarly placed students. Over time, this created institutional response as well as informal networks of support.

Simultaneously, informal networks developed through self-acceptance and patience. My room in Narmada Hostel, over time, became an informal common space where people would often sit and study. During exam nights, we would make coffee together and fret about the volume of the syllabus.

With time, I found people who would take me for treks, or help me with laundry. These were not planned acts of inclusion, but they became part of how community formed around me. It was only when I began to accept my own identity more fully, and became more confident in acknowledging both my strengths and my limits, that these relationships also became more stable and mutual.

Lastly, I cannot emphasise enough the importance of mental health in this process. Law school often creates a sense of constant evaluation, where everything appears measurable. But much of what matters cannot be measured immediately. You do not need to resolve everything at once. You will find rhythm over time.

There will be setbacks. They will not define your trajectory.

You are already more than the system knows how to measure.

Sincerely,

Anchal Bhatheja

who was as lost as you

Author is a visually impaired Lawyer, Research Fellow at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. Views are personal.