I have wanted to write some of these things at different times since it happened, and always shied away, argues Mihira Sood, gathering the courage to speak out about sexual harassment in the courts.

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*A law firm pro has penned a response to the controversial Ramblings of a GC column from last week.

While hourly rates continue to increase and add up, the quality of India’s legal advice unfortunately continues to spiral downwards. Affronted? Well, you should be.

So, Legally India sometimes gets accidentally addressed mail making us privy to some of the less public proposals law firms receive.

Monday’s Madras high court judgment by Justice Karnan caused debate, outrage and counter-outrage in and between traditional, new and social media, which unfortunately missed the wood for the trees, argues Prachi Shrivastava.

In last week’s Mint: Travel site Cleartrip landed a massive PR victory and garnered lots of Internet brownie points this month, ironically after firing its PR company.

In today’s edition of Mint: A lot of Indian law firms are run like the personal fiefdom of a senior or founding partner. The senior partners are a law unto themselves and are neither accountable internally nor externally. Such systems can breed unique pressures and cultures, quite separately from associate satisfaction with their salaries.

Editorial: Bangalore’s police, media and educators have shown themselves at their worst in the past days, appearing intent to keep slinging mud on a law school student who was allegedly the victim of a violent sex crime.

A lot of the recent frictions between the judiciary and the media are little more than misunderstandings, argues Kian Ganz.

Freedom of speech is impossible to agree about. While hardly anyone will dispute that freedom of expression is essential for a democratic society and an effective free market, almost no one will be able to agree about exactly where to draw the line.

In one corner, fighting for unbridled expression in various degrees, you have a disparate group that may include various shades of liberals and conservatives, freedom fighters, anarchists, journalists, academics, libertarians, criminals, terrorists, artists, copyright pirates, pornographers and paedophiles.

The other day a public relations (PR) agency called me and said that it really wanted an article written for Mint about one of its clients, a fairly well known Delhi lawyer. They said they wanted an interview with or a quote from that lawyer to appear by next week and they would arrange a meeting as soon as possible. As far as pitches for stories go, it was pretty weak.

In today’s edition of Mint: The Indian lawyers’ pie may be large but taking the first nibble is often the hardest part.

In today’s edition of Mint: On the face of it, my mission was the simplest of tasks possible within the legal system: to get an affidavit. I needed the sworn document proving my identity and address to sign up for a Bharatgas connection. In going the sworn path, I also went against the well-meaning advice of those who told me that getting a gas cylinder from the grey market was easier.

Either the Bar Council of India (BCI) should censure dozens of law firms for their singing and dancing websites, or it needs to be realistic and relax its strict advertising restrictions, argues Raghul Sudheesh.

In today’s edition of Mint: The success story of the NLU model has been spun mainly around two factors: the impressive employment statistics and enormous salaries offered to students from top NLUs and the ability of few alumni to gain admission to the world’s top law school, argue Anup Surendranath and Chinmayi Arun.

Everyone’s talking about the cat that accidentally got out of the bag. Private screenings of a video featuring two people are being organised around town.

Reviews have been not been flattering. The video “deserves a PG-13 rating”, says one who saw it. “It’s a bit like a bad Hindi movie which usually shields anything remotely sexual with a flower or some such inane object.”

Mint legal correspondent Nikhil Kanekal argues in today’s legal page in the paper that the hearing the Supreme Court is waging against the media, is fundamentally unfair and misunderstands the trade of journalism, as lawyers and judges are often wont to.

Mint column: Lawyers should be the noble and independent servants of justice, the courts and their clients. Finding lawyers who do all three of those things is the exception, rather than the rule.

For starters, Indian clients have very little, if any, recourse against lawyers who give them bad, negligent or harmful legal advice, as explained in today’s Mint feature. But that is just the tip of lawyers’ legal immunity iceberg.

A corollary of the Rule of Law is that legislation with retrospective effect is highly dubious, argues Kian Ganz. The latest budget proposals to tax offshore transactions going back to 1962, is a worrying sign of the kind of country India wants to be.

Mint’s Nikhil Kanekal argues in today’s edition of Mint that the Bar Council of India (BCI) should be stripped of most of its powers and replaced with an independent regulators who can better oversee legal education and the noble profession.