Swami Vivekananda’s success mantra was to “take up one idea. Make that one idea your life; dream of it; think of it; live on that idea. Let the brain, the body, muscles, nerves, and every part of your body be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced”. Thiswas the source of my inspiration when I had plans of starting a blog back in December 2019. Initially, I was reluctant to pursue this idea due to a lot of constraints mostly human resources.
In April 2020, when the pandemic had taken over the world, everything came to a halt. We had to stay locked up inside our homes with no physical contact with outsiders. This period was difficult for students across the board, but it was categorically tough for law students. This is when a friend of mine suggested I open a LinkedIn account as it would be a helping hand in order to know about the professionals of the legal industry. Initially, when I had limited connections on LinkedIn, I saw many law students finding it very difficult to cope with the virtual mode, especially in legal research and internships. Since the virtual world was a new space for all of us, many employers were not able to provide sufficient opportunities to the students in the virtual mode. At this point, my brother motivated me to put my plans into action and put in place a blog that would help law students in their research work and internships.
After that, I had a word with Shubhank, the Co-Founder to work together on a blog which seemed a distant reality at that point. I was short on ideas regarding that first big step to turn the plan into a reality and that is when Shubhank came to my rescue and put forward some ideas which proved to be extremely helpful. After a lot of tussles, the idea was finally set in motion when we launched the blog, All India Legal Forum, on 17th May 2020 on the public forum. We had the initial support of only 25 members who worked with utmost dedication and supported us in design, marketing, editing, research, etc.
The first big accomplishment for us was when we organized our first Quiz Competition on Constitutional Law and it received more than 2500+ registrations. With time and a lot of hard work and dedication, we expanded ourselves to a community of 3,000 students and started the Research Board to focus on our objective of free legal resources to assist the students during the pandemic. Research Board under my chairmanship put together a lot of materials including a guide to Manupatra, Oscola, SCC Online, how to improve research, and further provided free legal notes, daily awareness materials, etc.
After establishing different boards and teams, All India Legal Forum organized plenty of research events including national as well as international webinars, essay competitions, courses, etc. which included representations from across the globe. In furtherance of the objective of the internship, I have trained around 5,000 students across the country in over 100 internship programmes that we have conducted thus far. There’s no halt if you are persistent and evidently, we grew and became a community of 16,000 students, which is not heard of in other organizations,
We have had tremendous support from the legal fraternity which includes Hon’ble Judges, Partners from top law firms, and Academicians from reputed institutions, etc who have guided us at every step to enhance the productivity of the organization. With time, we have realised the importance of mental health along with productivity and introduced a flexible work model for my colleagues to enhance the working atmosphere in the organization. The primary reason for the unparalleled success of All India Legal Forum within such a short period of time are my colleagues, many of whom have been a part of the organization from the very beginning and have seen it grow from scratch. I am extremely grateful to each one of them for helping me turn my idea into a reality and I would sincerely thank them for all the support that they have rendered to me and the organization since its very establishment.
To conclude things, I would like to say that now it’s time to start a new innings after the completion of these glorifying two and a half years for the organization and, as rightly pointed out by Catherine Pulsifer that “no one can ever take your memories from you – each day is a new beginning, make good memories every day.”
Cheers,
Aayush Akar
ALL INDIA LEGAL FORUM 