Himanshu Sinha. He is the tax head at Trilegal and primarily takes up transfer pricing and international tax matters. Seen him argue multiple times in ITAT and High Court and must say that his fundamentals are very solid. I gather that TL tax disputes team has been picking up lot of work recently. Vishal Kalra is also a great lawyer.

I wanted to know who are considered some of the best tax lawyers in India who are not senior advocates. Basically looking for top practitioners who handle direct and indirect tax matters but have not taken the senior gown yet.

It would be great if people could share names from both the direct tax and GST side.

Would also appreciate it if you could mention what makes them stand out or what kind of matters they are known for.

Hello,

I am a final year student from a T1 NLU, I have decided to enter litigation straight after my law school.

As I still have roughly 6 months to graduate, can i get some advice on how I can improve myself to be a better junior, any good book/resource recommendations, also i would like to work on my hindi proficiency any tips and recommendations would be highly appreciated.

Thanks

A first gen law student.

Your argument makes several valid and necessary points. It is indeed true that the language of the law in India is overwhelmingly English. It is also true that English proficiency, particularly the ability to think, argue, and write in English, is an indispensable professional skill for law graduates who wish to operate in the higher judiciary, in corporate law, in policy, or in academia. The deficiencies in Indian school-level education, especially in the humanities and social sciences are real and deeply entrenched. Rote memorization, poor training in analytical writing, and limited exposure to rigorous argumentation have long been endemic features of the system. The consequences of these failings are not abstract and even India’s best universities spend valuable time teaching students how to write coherent paragraphs, rather than training them to produce original scholarship or sophisticated legal argument.

However, it is crucial to locate this problem within its proper socio-economic context. The root issue is not that Indian students as such are incapable of analytical or linguistic sophistication, but that the Indian education system is profoundly unequal. Access to quality English medium education is overwhelmingly determined by parental income. What we often label as "merit" in competitive exams is, in practice, a proxy for privilege - the ability to afford the kind of schooling and extra coaching that cultivates English fluency and critical thinking. The system, therefore, rewards those who already start from an advantaged position and excludes many intellectually capable students whose families simply cannot buy entry into that world.

This inequality becomes self-reinforcing. The "meritorious" cohort appears large because India’s population is large, but it is drawn from a narrow and socio-economically homogenous band. The educational system then designs its "standards" around this band, mistaking privilege for preparedness and replicating the same elite bias at every level - from school curricula to university admissions to professional hierarchies. In such a context, to make English proficiency a decisive gatekeeping criterion without parallel investment in equitable access to English education is, effectively, to lock the gates further.

You are right that universities must "play hardball", but the battle should be fought on two fronts. One is the demand for academic rigor, which must not be compromised. The other, equally important, is the demand for structural fairness: that rigor should not be defined solely by the cultural capital of the elite. The challenge is not to abandon English, but to democratize access to it. That means pushing for systemic reforms- teacher training, curriculum redesign, early exposure to multilingual and critical pedagogy -rather than assuming that raising the linguistic bar alone will somehow lift standards.

And ultimately, this is not just a technical or policy question - it is a value choice. We must decide whether our legal education system exists to reproduce the social elite, or to identify and nurture potential wherever it resides. Upholding English proficiency as the gatekeeper of legal merit may serve the former goal, but it undermines the latter. The values that guide our admissions, curricula, and institutional practices reveal what we believe the law itself should stand for: access, fairness, and justice or exclusion dressed up as excellence.

Until the foundational inequities in schooling are addressed, “merit” will remain a distorted mirror: it will reflect privilege more faithfully than potential. The goal, therefore, should not be to dilute standards, but to expand genuine opportunity to ensure that the next generation of bright legal minds is drawn not only from the children of the upper middle class, but also from the vast reservoir of talent our current system leaves behind.

As an equity partner you need contacts, unless you are one of those execution partners who are given the equity tag for retention purposes. The rain markers need to be influential and part of the elite social circles to be able to get work and maintain relationships with top bosses and promoters. There are exceptions of course but the above is the norm

Thank you. My primary motivation is to gain a solid understanding of this subject. However, being from DU, the placement opportunities here are quite limited, which makes me a bit concerned about finding my way into the corporate field. That’s one of the reasons I’m considering this course. I’m hoping it might help me navigate internships and freelancing opportunities better. The reviews for LawSikho are generally positive, though a few mixed ones have left me a bit uncertain about their services. Lawctopus, on the other hand, seems quite reliable, however doesn't come with a diploma and neither it's recognised by govt.

Chief Justice Gavai's decision reported in the Press to reserve two Supreme Court of India Law Clerk positions for Bhutan Law Graduates is incorrect. Law Clerks assist Judges. Under the Indian Constitution, Judges must be Indian Citizens. As a corollary, their researchers must also be Indian Citizens. And under what power has Justice Gavai decided this. The Chief Justice has no such power. Besides being completely unconstitutional and illegal, this decision is also arbitrary and takes away a valuable resource from Indian Citizens.

To understand the objection, consider whether Justice Gavai could have declared that two law clerk positions in the Supreme Court of India will be reserved for Law Graduates from the USA? He could not have done that. Similarly he cannot legally or constitutionally do this for Bhutan Law Graduates.

Another thing, Why was Justice Gavai having official meetings with Heads of States in both Bhutan and Mauritius. If these were merely courtesy meetings, it would be unobjectionable. But the press reports project the Bhutan meetings of Justice Gavai with the King and the Prime Minister as furthering Bhutan India ties. The Judiciary in India does not play a constitutional role in external affairs of the Country. These kind of engagements by our Judges are a form of Judicial transgression into Affairs of the State and must not be encouraged by the Government of India. These kind of engagements by Judges transgress into the domain of the executive and are contrary to the principle of separation of powers.

Why must these questions be asked. It is because accountability requires asking questions and offering critiques. India does not have Kings of any kind. Everyone including the Judiciary must be held to scrutiny.

If your comment is to be taken at face value then a client would give a partner only one hamper no. How can one hamper be distributed across multiple members of a team (most teams have multiple members). Think before spewing venom just for the sake of it. Just because your partner is a cheap skate does not mean that others are like that. My partner gave us a lovely hamper which had personally selected items.

It is the thought that counts.

And that very same old NLU has also churned alot of good Senior Advocates, which you forgot to mention.

Now tell me, of the people graduating today or those who did between say 2005-2019ish, or even today, where a good majority of these NLU graduates choose a law firm, how many of them will become such judges/SAs? True, their contribution and share would increase, but it will never be the same or even close to TLCs till the day NLUs stop producing clerks joining law firms.

Get it thru your head - people in law firms may call themselves lawyers- but at the end of the day, as regards the OP's question- these law firm clerks would never ever know and get into politics. Every single politician, or even a very high majority of them, have been from litigation.

You want to rile up students and mislead them into seeing a regime change in state as a silver bullet. I am not a Green supporter. But the saffron in this state do not inspire confidence. All said and done the CM actually did stuff on the ground as an opposition leader. We may not agree with her politics etc. But she was light years ahead of the kind that we see now. And even now she has just not survived but thrived despite the saffron having so many institutional levers.

Maybe check in with the brotherhood. Do you really think they are interested to remove the CM or her Chosen? Unless the brotherhood agrees the so called Nationalistic Chowkidars can only do headline management.

So please take your tired attempts and vacuous politics elsewhere.

I am sorry to hear this and please change your team or firm. I am also a woman working in a tier 1 and have had a similar experience in one particular tier 1 firm- but because my parents are well off, rest of my team came from a very humble background. I kept getting questioned- why do you have to work. Why don’t you do painting. And shit like that. So may be it’s nothing to do with your background and more to do with your gender. What works always- keeping a thick skin and giving it back- in a polite but assertive manner.

We'll take it with grain of salt but a friend of friend of friend has told me that the pay is very low, litigation level, at start and this will go on till 3-4 years in starting years. Then it may accelerate by 2-3x once you prove yourself to be an asset to firm.

Culture is undeniably good and their deals are really nothing short than any boutique firm located in Mumbai, Delhi or Banglore. They have stronghold in the Pune market.

I have applied for the NLU Delhi Phd. I have not given NET yet. December would be my first attempt at NET. Is it still possible to get selected to the NLUD PhD program without a NET ? Has anyone given the written and interview before ? What is the syllabus for the written ? Is there any partiality in the interview round ? Will a Human rights topic be good for NLUD ? Thanks

Looking for Boutique law firms and good chambers in delhi/bombay. The problem is i am a first year with a second year's CV, moved from a good pvt college to a tier-1 NLU, have prior experience with Chambers and commercial legal issues.
Kindly let me know realistically good boutique law firms to enhance my CV and learn something at the same time.

There was a case last year where an incoming A0's offer letter was revoked after they submitted a fully AI-generated note on some legal query to the associate. The associate directly sent it to the partner for his review, and he found out that it was AI-generated + the incoming A0 had no idea when follow-up questions were asked. This is, of course, an extreme case. Usually, your offer cannot be revoked if you don't give them a very strong reason.

Ma’am is from an illustrious family. Her father is a noted surgeon from AIIMS and Harvard, who won the Padma Shri. Her mother is a noted activist from LSE and SOAS who founded the Spastics Society of India.

Like her parents, Ma’am is super brilliant: she studied at St Stephen’s, Cambridge and Columbia. She DECLINED a job at Clifford Chance, which is the ultimate dream of NLU graduates. She instead chose to work in India and serve the cause of human rights and work pro bono.She has argued some of the most landmark cases in India: Shreya Singhal case, MC Mehta case etc. She is representing the parents in the RG Kar rape case in Kolkata. She is also spearheading the effort to criminalises marital rape in India. She is a brilliant speaker and her English is flawless. For all her achievements, she was felicitated by TIME magazine as one of the hundred most influential people in the world.

Salute to her. 🫡🥰

Source: Wikipedia

Another discrimination against NLUs. Will media ever bitter to report that an entire dept was created by a VC so that his ahem could be imported in as Prof? And then so many events were organised with a bevy if HC judges to popularize courses that would be lead by ahem. Despite the splurge and repeated flip flops whether the courses would be regular, hybrid, online etc, very few took admissions. But the charade continued.

Never try for a foreign law firm position or to qualify in a foreign jurisdiction until your attitude has changed. Say this nonsense to the NY bar law examiners board or the England and Wales Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and they will kick you in the butt and tell you to go back for empathy to your own country.

Not sure about the amounts paid to each senior counsel you mentioned , ie. K. Sibal and AM. Singhvi. These two, along with a few others like Rakesh Dwivedi and firms like Aquilaw and FM (the red one) seem to frequently represent the State of WB in almost all matters. J Gupta rather not so much. What's sad is that the Calcutta Bar gave exemplary members to the SC Bar, like Barry Sen, Niren De, NC Chatterjee, Somnath Chatterjee, Ashok Sen, Dipankar Gupta, Bhaskar Gupta, SC Roy, S S Ray, etc etc. They, or even members of the Calcutta Bar, including the Advocate General (who were, and still are regarded as the leader of the Bar, like Sir S.M. Bose, S.D Banerjee, B.C. Ray, J. Mitra, B. Chatterjee, A. Mitra, SN Mookherjee, etc) used to come down to SC even till perhaps the early 2000s (subject to correction). Today, its these seniors whom you mentioned who do the matters in SC. About the 100cr being spent, you can find it in the budget itself, and that is indeed true. Its perhaps more than what the State paid to its own AG and standing counsels in the state itself. Such details are available in the state budget, and not only can you find the same for WB, but for other states as well