Neelakanta Ramakrishna Madhava Menon is an Indian legal educator, considered by many as the father of modern legal education in India. He is the founder Director of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) and the National Judicial Academy, Bhopal and the founder Vice Chancellor of the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS).Menon was honored by the Government of India, in 2003, with the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri.

Born on 4 May 1935 at Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala to Bhavani Amma and Ramakrishna Menon as the fourth of their six children. Menon’s father, a law graduate and a Revenue Officer working for the Travancore Corporation, passed away when he was only two years old and he was brought up by his mother, with the assistance of her brothers and sisters. His mother took up a job as a clerk at Travancore Corporation to bring up Appu, as he was known at home, and his three elder sisters and one younger brother; one of his brother passed away at a young age.

Madhava Menon did his schooling from Sreemoolavilasam Government High School, Thiruvananthapuram from where he cleared matriculation in 1949 and completed the Pre University course in 1950, when the erstwhile two-year course was realigned as a truncated oneyear course. His graduate studies were at S. D. College, Alappuzha from where he did BSc in Zoology in 1953. He also took the Hindi Visharad course conducted by the Dakshin Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha simultaneously with his graduate studies.He continued his studies at Government Law College, Ernakulam, but shifted to Government Law College, Thiruvananthapuram when the college was restarted in the capital city in 1953 and became the Student Editor of the College magazine in 1954-55. He completed the law course (BL) in 1955.

Madava Menon started his career in 1955, as an apprentice to a locally known lawyer, V. Nagappan Nair, and assisted him for 13 months. The next year, in 1956, he registered at the High Court of Kerala, in Ernakulam, as a lawyer and started practice under advocate Poovanpallil Neelakandan Pillai at the district court in Thiruvananthapuram. One year later, Menon appeared for the Civil Services Examination but could get only a lower grade which made him eligible for a job at the Central Secretariat Service, in New Delhi. On the advice of his teacher and mentor, Mr. A. T. Markose, the first director of the Indian Law Institute and the author of Judicial Control of Administrative Action in India, he took up the job at the secretariat in New Delhi.

While working at the secretariat, Menon continued his studies at Campus College located at Gole Market, affiliated to Punjab University and secured a post graduate degree (MA) in political science with distinction, in 1960. Afterwards, Menon joined Faculty of Law, Aligarh Muslim University for further studies in law and passed the master’s degree in law (LLM) and, obtaining a UGC scholarship, continued research on the topic, White Collar Crime. Teaching and working a part-time job as the warden of the Sir Syed Hall at the university, he completed his research to obtain PhD in 1965. He then relocated to Delhi, and got married to Rema Devi, the same year. He is the first PhD of Faculty of Law, Aligarh Muslim University.He was also the first non- Muslim to be appointed warden of a hostel at Aligarh Muslim University.

In 1968, Menon joined his alma mater, Faculty of Law, Aligarh Muslim University, as a professor. He then subsequently moved to University of Delhi as the Reader in the faculty of law, and later became the professor of the department. During his stint there, he received a Fulbright Scholarship from the American Council of Learned Societies and had the opportunity to present a paper on “Legal Aid” at Berkeley, California. He was a member of the Delhi University panel which liaised with universities from the United States such as Harvard, Columbia, Michigan and Yale. It was during this period that Menon published his first book, Law Relating to Government Control Over Private Enterprise, co-authored by his colleague, G. Narasimhaswamy, published through Eastern Law Book Company. Soon after that, his second book, Law and Property was published by N. M. Tripathy Co. Menon along with Clarke Cunningham authored anarticle which was published in the Michigan Law Review.

Madhava Menon, while working in Delhi, is known to have organized the annual conference of the All India Law Teachers Association, in 1972, where he as elected as the Secretary General of the association. He has served as a member of the Committee for Implementing Legal Aid Schemes (CILAS), which was formed under the chairmanship of V. R. Krishna Iyer, by the Indira Gandhi government, in connection with the GaribiHatao programme. He has also served as the Secretary of the Bar Council of India Trust. During an interlude, he worked as the principal of the Government Law College, Pondicherry. When the Bar Council of India decided to establish a new law school in early 1980s, Menon’s services were sought and he is known to have set up the Bangalorebased National Law School of India University with a US$ 150,000 government grant. The school was the first in India to use the Harvard Law School’s case study method, which later became the mainstream form of legal education in India. Menon worked there for 12 years as the director, moving from there after the institution gained university status.