Both sides of the now divided Amarchand Mangaldas family empire have considerably increased their recruitments for 2017 from top law schools, many top firms have filled up their quota from recruits from top law schools already.

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“He would have found it challenging,” says Pallavi Shroff, Delhi managing partner at Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas (SAM), about how Mumbai managing partner Akshay Chudasama, hired from the very different J. Sagar Associates (JSA), would have fit into the legacy firm had he joined before the break-up.

Can your accountant also assist you on drafting a joint venture agreement? Or is this work best left to a lawyer to check for compliance with various rules and legislation? And what happens when one company drops a nasty legal notice on the former joint venture partner? Is when things get contentious and litigious the line where only a lawyer can step in and take care of business?

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*This year’s entrance exam has landed in controversy and faces at least one writ petition in court.

In last week’s Mint: Most non-lawyers will not have heard of AIBE, but one week this month, more people in India searched Google for the term than for Sonia Gandhi, according to Google Trends. As a pure exercise in branding, the less than two-year-old AIBE—or to use its full name, the All India Bar Examination—should be considered a huge success for the Bar Council of India (BCI). That can’t be said of the exam itself.

Exclusive: The second part of Legally India’s salary survey analysis is out in print in Mint today, and coupled with personal interviews and additional research, revealed huge discrepancies between salaries even within the same firm at the more senior levels. Click through to read the analysis.

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.

Today’s Legally India page in Mint: The typical citizen could be forgiven for fearing that the world’s largest democracy is hurtling towards George Orwell’s 1984 rather than 2013.

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 finance ministry’s latest concession on service tax imposed on lawyers that was notified in June has been welcomed by some; others continue to say it wasn’t enough and many remained unaware of the current law and how, or if at all, they had to pay this tax.

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: “Today our biggest problem is not foreign firms, it is people working at one-tenth the price that we work at,” said Cyril Shroff, the Mumbai managing partner of Amarchand & Mangaldas & Suresh A. Shroff & Co., in an interview in early 2012. “You are constantly being pulled down in price.”

One of the few things that get law student readers on Legally India as excited as reading about jobs are the league tables of colleges drawn up by publications every year. But do they do so needlessly, asks Kian Ganz.

In today’s edition of Mint: Law firms enjoy unequal bargaining power in a market where the talent pool is deepening every year.

The sobering state of the economy has got India’s law students worried. For many, particularly at the top few schools, getting a high-paying job was the primary aim of their legal education. The higher pay packets also justified the pursuit of an interest in the law, especially when it came to convincing parents who would otherwise prefer their children aspire for admission to an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) or Indian Institute of Management (IIM).

When Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia started his term in May 2010 it was widely reported that he didn’t take the traditional May-June court vacation but worked through it, aiming to look at ways of reducing the time it takes to hear cases and making the Supreme Court administration more efficient.

”) In today’s edition of Mint: Indian lawyers have it pretty good when compared with the average citizen, of whom only 8% are positive about their jobs—as a Gallup survey revealed last week. Nevertheless, the corporate law profession faces a crisis of confidence.

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.

In today’s edition of Mint: The National Law School of India University (NLSIU) Bangalore may face a funding gap of Rs. 2 crore this fiscal year after the Karnataka state government cut its grant by 50% from Rs. 4 crore last year. NLSIU was established in 1987 as the first of India’s flagship national law universities (NLUs).

In today’s edition of Mint: The turf war on legal education between the human resources development (HRD) ministry and the Bar Council of India (BCI) remains unresolved.

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.