Clifford Chance

senior partner Stuart Popham recounts his UK ministerial visit to India last month, which included Ambani, best friends and mile-high parties, as first published by the UK’s The Lawyer magazine.

The government appears to have scrapped plans to move the Chennai writ petition against 31 foreign law firms to the Supreme Court, as law firms Dua Associates and Kachwaha & Partners alongside a raft of senior counsel appeared for nine US firms, Slaughter and May, the LPO Integreon, and two Australian firms.

The petitioner’s plea for an injunction against the foreign firms was stayed for two weeks until the government and foreign firms could formulate responses.

Kochhar & Co has entered into two best-friend alliances with law firms in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the firm said in a press release.

Clifford Chance expects to have an office in India by late 2012 said the firm’s senior partner Stuart Popham, vowing to keep pushing the liberalisation agenda in India despite a lack of “overnight” results during his visit as part of the UK prime minister’s delegation.

Clifford Chance senior partner Stuart Popham is the law firm representative on British prime minister David Cameron’s India delegation this week, representing the UK legal and financial professional services community as head of a new trade body.

“The legal profession in so-called advanced countries is a product of Industrial Revolution whereas in India it is a product of Independence Revolution” — Mr Lalit Bhasin These are the words that made me think. Should foreign law firms be allowed in India? Are they necessary? Just as I questioned my...

“The legal profession in so-called advanced countries is a product of Industrial Revolution whereas in India it is a product of Independence Revolution” — Mr Lalit Bhasin These are the words that made me think. Should foreign law firms be allowed in India? Are they necessary? Just as I questioned my...

It appears there is just no winning in India for foreign law firms.

As though the opposition to them practising law here is not enough, the Indian Revenue Services (IRS) too are making their life hard.

The Indian government will attempt to move the Chennai writ petition against 31 foreign firms to the Supreme Court in order to take a “broader perspective” and make a “final decision” on the entry of foreign law firms said law minister Veerappa Moily, according to newspaper reports.

Friday’s Mumbai Income Appellate Tax Tribunal (ITAT) ruling against Linklaters makes potentially all overseas professional services and law firms subject to income tax in India for the last six years or more if their staff visit India for 90 days in aggregate per year. The repercussions could be serious, according to Indian tax lawyers.

The beginning of the week got off to a slow start as opposition parties called a national strike (Bharat bandh) to protest the fuel price hike. In Bangalore, Mumbai and Kolkata many streets were deserted.

By contrast Tamil Nadu, which was largely unaffected by the bandh, was comparatively active.

As the Madras High Court decided on Wednesday (7 July) to serve 31 foreign law firms with the petition that seeks to prevent them from operating in India, respondent firms and local corporate lawyers have expressed confidence that firms’ India businesses would remain largely unaffected.

The 31 international law firms and one legal process outsourcing (LPO) company will now be served with notices to defend the Chennai writ petition that aims to prevent foreign firms practising any law in India.

Today, as the petitioner pressed for an injunction against the foreign firms, the government respondents’ counsels asked for time to file responses while the law ministry and Bar Council of India would “frame guidelines” on the issue.

The Union law minister Veerapa Moily has publicly said for the first time that the entry of foreign law firms was more of a “transitional problem” rather than “perennial” and that minds should not be shut to “big ideas”, while reasserting the need for “proper capacity building”.

All government respondents have now formally filed their representations through senior counsels in the Chennai writ petition case against foreign law firms when the matter was listed for hearing on 9 June after the end of one month of Madras High Court vacations on 7 June.

The 86-year-old senior advocate and politician Ram Jethmalani is a living legend of the criminal bar that is unlikely to ever fade quietly into the background. Despite his self-proclaimed desperation to retire he was recently instructed to co-defend former IPL chairman Lalit Modi, fought for Anil Ambani against his estranged brother in the Supreme Court and won the presidential election to the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), vowing to clean up the tainted body.

Unafraid of controversy, Jethmalani remains as outspoken as ever and Legally India talks to him about the practice of law, why he thinks that foreign law firms would benefit Indian lawyers, how a bar exam is not necessary and how the corruption, backlog of cases and decline of the legal profession are squarely the government’s fault.

Legal process outsourcing (LPO) companies have come under the spotlight after the the recent Balaji Chennai High Court writ petition and the Bombay High Court’s decision in the Lawyers Collective v. Ashurst case. The cases have created significant uncertainty, argues SDD Global’s Sanjay Bhatia, although for the most part it has been a false alarm for LPOs.

The first hearing in the Chennai writ petition against 31 foreign law firms has run into the Madras High Court holidays and will not be heard for at least another month, although several other interested parties have now also pledged to file affidavits in support of the petition.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has been pivotal in the debate on the entry of foreign law firms. The Solicitor general and newly elected BCI chairman Gopal Subramaniam tells Legally India about what has to happen before foreign lawyers can practice here.

The Chennai public interest litigation (PIL) against 31 foreign law firms that was scheduled for Government respondents’ filing of replies on 8 April remains unheard to date owing to judicial delays.