Where Law Meets Innovation: A Conversation with Pragyan Sharma
What does it take to build a legal career that extends beyond classrooms and courtrooms into entrepreneurship, technology, and social impact?
1. Many students enter law school focused on grades or placements. What made you gravitate toward mooting, policy research, and leadership roles so early in your journey at BITS Law School?
Ans:
Law school gives you a strange kind of freedom in the first year. Everything is new, and nothing has been decided yet. I realised early that there isn't one way to "do" law. A problem can be looked at from ten angles, and an effective lawyer is someone who has trained themselves to see all of them.
Grades matter. They open doors to better internships and better placements. But firms and institutions today are increasingly looking for candidates who bring something more than a transcript: a rounded understanding of how law actually works. That's where mooting comes in. A good lawyer isn't just someone who knows the law; it's someone who can convey what they know to the person across the table. Mooting gives you that space to build the skill.
Research does something different. It shows you the limits of what you know, and forces you to understand a topic with precision, in the shortest possible time. Leadership, in my experience, emerges out of both. Once you understand a system, you understand how to make it work, and how to help others navigate it.
My motivation was simple: you cannot afford to be one-dimensional in this profession. You have to be ready for the real world, not just the classroom.
2. From working with the India Justice Report to interning with the Excise & Taxation Department and now firms like Fox Mandal and CMS INDUSLAW, how has your understanding of the relationship between law, policy, and governance evolved?
Ans:
Honestly, the difference between these institutions was starker than I expected.
The India Justice Report measures a state's capacity to deliver justice across four parameters. It takes numerical data and asks what it translates to on the ground. Government departments sit at a different point in the chain: they're concerned with what can be improved, how a law should be legislated, and how interpretive problems get resolved once the law is in force. Firms sit at yet another point. They deal with the law's actual effect on real parties in real transactions. And that's where you see how often the law as made diverges from the law as it lands. You see interpretations shift depending on who's looking and why.
As a student, I think you have to pass through all of these rooms to understand the full arc: how policy becomes law, and how law becomes governance. Each one only shows you a slice.
3. Your team secured the 3rd Overall Rank at the Dastur National Direct Tax Moot and you were recognized among the Top 10 Oralists. What did that experience teach you about legal advocacy that classrooms alone cannot?
Ans:
A classroom teaches you to understand what's being taught. A moot teaches you to convey it, under pressure, to someone who is actively trying to find the hole in your argument.
Dastur was where research, drafting, and oral pleading stopped being three separate skills and converged into one. You realise that a brilliant argument on paper means very little if you can't hold it together when a judge interrupts you thirty seconds in.
Classrooms give you knowledge. Moot courts give you practicality. You need both, but only one of them is going to be there on the day you're actually on your feet.
4. You cleared the CSEET while simultaneously managing law school, internships, and extracurricular commitments. How do you approach discipline, prioritization, and long-term goal setting?
Ans:
I've always been drawn to finance, and law with a Company Secretary qualification felt like the natural way to follow that instinct.
Long-term goal setting, for me, comes down to interest. You can't sustain something you're not genuinely interested in. Yes, some things have to be done to build a resume. That's just reality. But it's equally important that what you're building actually points toward where your interest lies. Otherwise you're just accumulating credentials for a life you don't want.
As for discipline and prioritisation: law school asks you to manage a lot at once. Coursework, grades, moots, competitions, policy work, papers, internships. What made it workable for me wasn't a system or a schedule. It was having something outside all of it that lets you take your mind off things. That's what makes the discipline sustainable rather than exhausting.
5. As Convenor of the Student Moot Court Society (SMCC), how has leading a community of aspiring mooters changed the way you think about leadership and mentorship?
Ans:
Leadership and mentorship have been part of my life long before SMCC. My approach has always been the same: understand the system first, then lead in a way that makes it better.
Leading a committee where so many people are thinking about how to approach moots and competitions feels, in a strange way, like being in first year all over again. Learning what to do and how to do it, from scratch, but now with responsibility attached.
What I want is for the next generation to be better equipped than mine was. That's the whole point of what we're building at SMCC: a genuine connect between the what and the how, so that the batch after us doesn't have to rediscover everything themselves. Put simply, I want them to start where we ended. That's how a legacy actually moves forward.
6. You've worked across litigation-oriented internships, taxation, policy research, and corporate law exposure. At this stage, do you see yourself gravitating toward a particular area of law, or are you still intentionally exploring different paths?
Ans:
As I said, I have a real love for finance. I enjoy crunching numbers and sitting with a problem long enough to actually understand it.
But that's not a reason to stay in one lane. Right now I'm deliberately navigating across domains: litigation, taxation, policy, corporate. I have the time to explore and the freedom to be a beginner. That window closes eventually. It would be a waste not to use it.
7. Your profile reflects a strong balance between academics, leadership, community initiatives, and professional development. Looking back, what opportunities or habits do you think contributed most to your growth as a student?
Ans:
You lose every opportunity you don't say yes to.
That's the one habit I'd point to. If I could give first-year students a single piece of advice, it's this: say yes to things. Say yes to the moot you're underprepared for, the paper outside your comfort zone, the committee role nobody wants. Some of them will cost you a few all-nighters. Almost all of them will teach you something you couldn't have learned by opting out.
The balance in my profile isn't the result of a plan. It's the result of not turning things down.
8. If you could give one piece of advice to a first-year law student who feels overwhelmed by competitions, internships, networking, and the pressure to build a strong profile, what would it be and why?
Ans:
Breathe. The overwhelm is real, but it comes from a false premise: that everything must happen at once, and that everyone else has already figured it out. They haven't.
Here's what I'd say. First, say yes more than you say no in your first two years. You don't yet know what you like, and the only way to find out is to try things. A moot, a research paper, a committee, an internship in a field you've never considered. You'll lose some sleep. That's a fair trade for finding out what actually holds your interest.
Second, don't build a profile. Build a person. A resume full of things you did because they "looked good" is easy to spot and easier to forget. The people who do well are the ones whose choices have a thread running through them, even if that thread only becomes visible in hindsight.
Third, be patient with the process. Nobody expects a first-year to know insolvency law or draft a share purchase agreement. What they do expect is that you're curious, that you show up, and that you're willing to be bad at something before you're good at it. Every senior you're intimidated by was once exactly where you are.
And finally, the pressure never fully goes away, so learn early how to work with it rather than against it. Find the thing that takes your mind off law. Go to the gym, write, cook—whatever it is. You cannot argue well, write well, or lead well if you're running on empty.
Law school is five years. That's a long time. Use it to explore, not to sprint.
Connect with Pragyan
About Conversations by Brains in You
Conversations by Brains in You is a curated interview series featuring students, professionals, entrepreneurs, creators, researchers, and changemakers whose journeys offer meaningful lessons beyond conventional achievements.
Rather than focusing solely on titles or milestones, each conversation explores the decisions, experiences, challenges, and perspectives that shaped the individual behind the profile. The aim is to create a growing repository of practical insights that help students and young professionals navigate their own careers with greater clarity, productivity, integrity, and purpose.
Every featured conversation is thoughtfully selected with the belief that authentic experiences can inspire informed decisions, lifelong learning, and better human development.
Comments
Post a Comment