Diwali is usually a quieter time in India, as lawyers spend time at home with their families basking in the warm glow of candles and rainbow fairy lights.

Not so for the Veerappa Moily, apparently, whose ministry unveiled an ambitious proposal that could signal the end of an era of Bar Council of India (BCI) dominance (or irrelevance as some might say).

Hastened by the impending Diwali court holidays and the 31 October deadline to apply for the bar exam, the petitions against the exam in the Supreme Court momentarily picked up speed this week.

Khaitan & Co celebrated a major win this week in its campaign of growth when AZB & Partners rising star Vaishali Sharma decided to join the firm. For AZB, however, it marked the culmination of several months of somewhat troubling associate attrition.

No one enjoys waiting in immigration these days, least of all when trying to get into the US of A.

The sole proprietorship law firm model has certain advantages. Depending on the proprietor such firms may have stronger strategic direction and decisions can be made quickly, for example.

All is calm and kites flew high over the Colaba slums this evening. In the absence of riots and overt discontent on either side, it is fair to say that the Allahabad High Court ruling in the Ayodyah case yesterday was diplomatically just, in deciding to partition the site of the demolished Babri mosque and the (now legal) birthplace of the god-king Ram into three parts.

This controversy-packed week all of India lived in fear of Friday, awaiting the verdict in the 60-year-old Ayodhya land title dispute.

Indian lawyers planning to qualify as English solicitors were thrown into temporary tizzy this week, as the new Qualified Lawyers Transfer Scheme (QLTS) came into effect. Under the new rules Indian lawyers will not be allowed to apply to practise in the UK, as India is not included in the list of jurisdictions to benefit from the QLTS.

Few were surprised when the Bar Council of India (BCI) had too much to do and too little time last weekend, and worked its way through only a few points on its long list.

For once it seems the American law firms rather than the Brits publicly took the lead in India.

Lawyering is beginning younger and younger these days as a number of 2010 graduates won the first court victories of their careers in a controversial high-profile case.

For now they are only skirmishes but these are also early hints of future salary wars brewing.

Optimism is back on the menu, it seems.

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.

Is India a success story because or in spite of democracy? Compared to China, for example, hundreds if not thousands of different vested interests have made Indian reform painfully slow, if not impossible.

But in the legal sector someone is clearly trying to force a leapfrog.

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.

For a firm that first made its name as a capital markets boutique, the fact that that S&R Associates did not have an office in India’s financial capital was always glaring.

The current law minister has talked often about cutting the backlog of cases in India, perhaps more consistently than many before him.

The Monsoon has been welcome where it has hit but the real floodgates apparently opened this week with the publication of the Gazette of India, which contained the notification of the Bar Council of India’s (BCI) resolution to hold an all-India bar exam.

Legally India has published the results of the first open starting salary survey across 17 Indian law firms this week, as AZB, Trilegal and Wadia Ghandy hiked their basic starting remuneration packages.

The figures at the top are good and if salaries keep growing at current rates how much would foreign firms realistically be able to exceed these by if they were to set up shop in India?