The Society of Indian Law Firms (SILF) will complain to the Bar Council of Delhi in the coming week against PDS Legal, Advaita Legal and other Indian law firms that are best friends with accountancy firms, as a follow-up to its recent complaints in the council against the Big Four consultancies E&Y, KPMG, PwC and Deloitte for their alleged unauthorized practice of law.

The Society of Indian Law Firms (SILF) elected Lalit Bhasin as its president for the third-consecutive time, in an uncontested election on Saturday. Bhasin will preside over the 15 year old society for another three-year term. Kochhar & Co founder Rohit Kochhar was elected the general secretary...

Economic Times and ET Now reported that the Delhi bar council, after a written complaint by the Society of Indian Law Firms (Silf), has served written notice on the Big Four accountancy firms, PwC, Deloitte, KPMG and EY, for allegedly “engaging in the unauthorised practice” of law: Following the ind...

Baker & McKenzie International’s Singaporean member firm Baker & McKenzie.Wong & Leow has hired Prashanth Venkatesh as a local principal on 1 July.

Commerce ministry Rajeev Kher held a press conference yesterday, saying that the government had begun talks about opening up the transactional legal services sector and India-based international arbitration, having drawn in law firm lobby group Society of Indian Law Firms (Silf) and the regulator Bar Council of India (BCI).

Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra has sent an unsolicited email to Legally India’s editor Kian Ganz earlier today, after having sent a legal notice claiming defamation just over one week ago.

Linklaters, Clifford Chance, Allen & Overy and Baker & McKenzie are the highest profile foreign law firms operating in India, according to the latest analysis of foreign law firms’ India businesses.

White & Case has hired Linklaters managing associate Pradyumna Mysoor as a local partner in its Hong Kong office.

Linklaters has promoted Linklaters London managing associates Sushil Jacob to counsel today. Jacob specialises in banking, finance and corporate, having recently advised, according to a Linklaters press release: Barclays Bank on the sale of the entirety of its banking business in Pakistan to Habib B...

Davis Polk & Wardwell registered foreign lawyer Amit Kataria has joined Morrison Foerster (MoFo) as an of counsel in Hong Kong. He specialises in cross border M&As and disputes and enforcement in India, according to MoFo’s press release, which added that he will help the firm grow its Indi...

The Business Standard today wrote a longer article with a number of law firm lawyers’ views about the entry of foreign law firms and prime minister [https://www.legallyindia.com/Law-firms/narendra-modi-speaks-for-foreign-lawyers-entry-fears-of-foreign-domination-unfounded Narendra Modi’s recent rema...

Harish Salve tweeted today at @hsalve on the issue of the foreign law firms, which prime minister Narendra Modi had recently come out in support of , saying: Entry of foreign law firms will result in young Indian lawyers being hired and trained to global standards. No foreign lawyer can or will prac...

“Why should we need to go outside the country for global arbitration? We shouldn’t think that if foreign lawyers come here, they will take away our jobs,” said prime minister Narendra Modi, for the first time publicly weighing in on the liberalisation debate, adding that fears that foreign lawyers would dominate the local profession were unfounded.

Senior advocate Harish Salve is assisting the 50-lawyer strong society of Indian lawyers fighting the Bar Council of India (BCI) in the Supreme Court, for liberalisation in Indian legal services.

The Bar Council of India’s (BCI) appeal opposing entry of foreign law firms into India today inched forward in the Supreme Court, as the respondents finished filing their written submissions 32 months after the first hearing in the case.

Commerce secretary Rajeev Kher told Mint that a committee of secretaries may “meet as early as this month to clear the proposal on legal services, which will be subsequently placed before the cabinet for a final decision”.

The Indian Express reported that the Bar Council of India (BCI) had submitted its affidavit in the Supreme Court appeal against the AK Balaji case decided in the Madras high court against law foreign firms. The affidavit filed by BCI counsel Ardhendumauli K Prasad purports to rely on the 2009 Lawyer...

The global chartered accountancy (CA) firms dwarf even global law firms in revenue and have increasingly been getting into legal services, with PwC’s legal arm now having a headcount of lawyers equivalent to the world’s tenth-largest firm already generating $500m per year from law , reports the Econ...

Law minister https://www.legallyindia.com/Law-firms/legal-market-liberalisation-investigation-into-lobbying-and-policy told The Hindu : “Yes, Japan has written to us. We are taking the issue of opening up our legal sector on a positive note, but on the condition that it will increase the face-value ...

Legally India investigates in Mint how special interests have succeeded at and could end up indefinitely stalling reform of legal services, despite the government’s best laid intentions.