By way of further seasonal greetings, Legally India brings you all the legal news you may have missed over the past few months, wrapped in one newsletter.

The India Law Inc Chronicles, Q3 2012

Mainstream highlights included the bombshell of FDI for multi-brand-retail.

India also welcomed a new law minister, a new Chief Justice of India succeeded the now-possibly-legendary SH Kapadia, and a new, improved foreign arbitration doctrine finally fixed the old.

Trilegal and Allen & Overy, one of the oldest and most well-known Anglo-Indian best friendships, has ended.

Alone, Trilegal has tried to reinvent itself, hoping that its radical management & equity shake-up would help prevent stagnation.

The Company Law Board (CLB) made history and an example that put the fear of judges into all lawyers, with the first reported case of an Indian court fining a law firm for mistakes made. Read the full story: CLB fines Amarchand Delhi for wrong affidavits; Firm sacks two associates.

Tax proved to be a cobweb: The DHCBA got the rules of restaurant service tax law wrong in a ‘public interest’ notice, which embarrassingly went viral on Facebook. Meanwhile, the rules around lawyers' own service tax liability are still being fought and remain unclear to many.

Women in law talked suits vs skirts:

• All-boys clubs and short skirt stereotypes hurt women’s legal careers, says SOWL panel
• Zero women in 2012 Bombay senior counsel promo round of 8 (again)
• BCI, courts don’t help victims of sex harassment in courts

The law school bully may have evolved but continues to lurk: Ragging cured at law school?

Law firms

Fundamental to the future of India Law Inc is the question Legally India asked clients: are small legal start-ups competing with the big boys?

And we examined the art of rainmaking and why so many excellent young lawyers leave.

Newly starting up start-ups

• Infosys GC Samuel Mani + 2 heads start superfirm
• Amarchand ex-tax head Aseem Chawla starts up law firm
• Ex-CCI chief KK Sharma sets up comp law boutique
• SRGR lawyer, Videocon counsel start firm in Delhi
• MMB partner Talha Salaria starts up Bgl firm

Leavers

• AZB partner Vineetha MG resigns
• ALMT co-founder Ananjan Mitter retires to start business
• Fox Mandal London founding partner Ajit Mishra quits

Movers and shakers

• BG counsel Smriti Subramanian joins Vaidyanathan’s Advaya
• Khaitan’s Anindita Phukan joins Hyd start-up Tempus
  
• Dua starts tax practice with ex-Deloitte director; partners get Beemers
• JSA's Srishti Ojha joins Desai & Diwanji as CM partner
• Amarchand hires new senior Irish competition lawyer
• SEBI exec director Usha Narayanan joins Amarchand Mumbai as counsel
• Priti Suri’s PSA evolves with lit partner Anuradha Lall
• IndiGo counsel Piyush Gupta joins Kochhar as aviation comp partner
• JSA gets Brit ONG counsel Nitin Banerjee as partner
• DSK partner Jagvir Singh joins HSA as 15th partner
• ELP restocks comp with Luthra’s Ravisekhar Nair
• Ex-Trilegal counsel Christopher Krishnamoorthy joins Majmudar
• Khaitan Sud gears up car insurance practice with Bangalore partner

Overseas immigrations

• Lexygen partner Yang Yen Thaw joins Sino-Sg firm Dacheng Wong
• JSA’s Abhijit Narayan replenishes German firm Hengeler India desk
• Lalwani replaces Jacobs as Baker Macs India head

Promotions

• JSA promotes 2 disputes lawyers to salaried
• Luthra promotes 3 corp, 3 lit partners and raft of assoc

Practice expansion & more

• Dhir & Dhir hires ex-Singhania CEO Manju Mohotra joins
• King Stubb Kasiva opens Bangalore proper, aims for Ahmedabad
  
• Singh & Associates seconds partner to China for Guangda alliance
• Anand & Anand scales up Chennai operations
  
  
• JSA hikes fresher base salary by 9% to cross Rs 10 lakh p.a.
  

Law firm politics

Singh & Singh & Singh & Associates: IP Feud over name, stealing clients

Deals:

• Click and skim the latest instructions and mandates
• Link Legal tops H1-2012 project finance league table ahead of Amarchand, Luthra, Clasis

The lives and times of seniors

Outlook briefly profiled India’s eight most expensive senior advocates.

Two new additional solicitor generals (ASGs) for the Delhi high court: Paras Kuhad, and Rakesh Khanna appointed, while new SC ASG Sidharth Luthra shared his views with Legally India on creativity, criminals, success and tea with kindly judges.

Shamed ex-senior RK Anand accepted Supreme Court’s offer to work for free and make a huge BCI donation, to avoid imprisonment under the Contempt of Courts Act.

Judicial vacancy in India’s high courts decreased by one jot, but the CCI grappled with 62% vacancy and mounting case load.

Judicial Appointments

• New CJ at Chhatisgarh HC: Allahabad HC judge Yatindra Singh
• Bombay HC judge Bobde to head MP HC
• Delhi, Kerala, P&H HC get new chief justices
• TDSAT chairman SB Sinha retires, ex-SC judge Cyriac Joseph gets chair

Also read: Court Witness's beginner’s guide to winning at the Adjournment Game

Top cases:

• SEBI vs Sahara: SC applies record $3bn screws to Sahara, lines up crim case. What gives?
• 2G prez ref: SC says it won’t prescribe resource auctions to gov’t in 2G pres ref + 'cheeky' Khehar coalgate dig
• Media trials: Breaking media trial debate: SC allows temporary court reporting gag to prevent contempt, shies away from regulation. Also read the analysis.
• Plagiarism allegations in the publisher wars: SCC's EBC vs Lexis, Butterworths, Westlaw, Indlaw & more
• SC forces RTI info commissions to be headed by judges, CIC freezes

Internet freedoms:

• Del HC questions locus of internet users to defend Article 19 right in posting content
• Delhi HC turns down law students’ plea to unblock URLs blocked by DoT in August, follows SC turn-down

Misreporting court proceedings: Express & Pioneer to carry front page apologies to SC for court reporting

Another day, another legal blog sued: Delhi HC declines interim injunction in SpicyIP–Natco Defamation case

Outsourcing the law

On the Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) front, Clifford Chance’s OSC doubled in size, and UnitedLex got Ex-NSN chief and made $42.8m.

The regulator

Also, yet another date (9 December) for the BCI's next bar exam under a new operator, at an inexplicably hiked cost.

The BCI is not just working on its bank balance with the 50 per cent hike in AIBE application fees, but also from the Rs 3+ crore it wants to earn from web registration portal fees for law students, teachers, colleges and lawyers

Meanwhile law teachers asked the BCI for a say in legal education and to scrap those fees.

Legal education

The one year LLM programme may finally become a reality.

Also read Why there's no fool-proof way to rank law schools and there are unlikely to be any much fatter average pay packages for law grads any time soon.

And this is what we know some of the top schools did last summer:

Season 4, sponsored by Herbert Smith Freehills, began at the home of Indian mooting, with JGLS Sonipat’s lead that was quickly taken away by Manfred lachs world round winners NLSIU Bangalore.

Careers Counsel

• Careers Counsel on how not to network: M glad2knw datU R in ma Linkedin ntwrk
  
• When you start your law career at a small law firm

Top of the blogs

• Four types of law firm bosses we hate working for (and one that we love too much)
• Legal Aid - My Liberating Experiences
• How Nandii Reywal got drunk, got wild and got laid (off)
• Wow...I am still on PROBATION!
• Why not be a lawyer?
• Why does no one want to teach?

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Top photo by ZeePack,
other photos under creative commons license have details available on linked-to pages.