An American Bar Association (ABA) source told Legally India that the ABA president Paulette Brown had met with the Union law minister DV Sadananda Gowda yesterday and talked about liberalisation. She had also met the Bar Council of India (BCI) on Wednesday.

The exact content of the discussion could not be confirmed at the time of going to press, though we expect some to be revealed at a session on liberalisation this morning at the Society of Indian Law Firms- (Silf) and ABA-organised second edition of the Indo-US Cross Border Investment Forum in Delhi.

SILF president Lalit Bhasin told Legally India yesterday that he did not know how long the BCI and the government would take to finally liberalise, which were not doing anything on it at the moment, but said that SILF had no problem with foreign firms entering. Ours is not the stage it is stuck at, he said.

But Bhasin added that the BCI should also first liberalise the profession internally, by allowing law firms to have proper websites.

A press release sent out yesterday, stated:

Lalit Bhasin, President of Society of Indian Law Firms and Chair of the Conference, assured that SILF is fully supportive of the government policy of opening and liberalisation of legal services sector in India, which has previously been a sore point between Indian law firms and their foreign counterparts. “Indian law firms are now open to face the challenge of foreign law firms,” he added.