Senior Indian law firm partners’ billing rates have increased by around 17% over two years to an average of $335 an hour (Rs 21,580 at current exchange rates) from $292 in 2015 (Rs 18,500 at exchange rates at that time), according to consultancy RSG India’s latest research and its figures from 2015.

In the business of law, the limited resource is not raw materials, marketing budgets or factory output capacity; it is literally the available time of a firm’s lawyers.

Corporate and commercial law firms in India turned over just over $1 billion in revenue in the 2014-15 financial year, estimated London-based legal market consultancy RSG Consulting in its bi-annual report on the Indian legal industry based on a survey of more than 500 clients and 26 law firm managing partners.

Getting the ratio of partners to non-partner fee-earners right has its rewards, but it is, at best, an inexact science.