The Mumbai Mirror wrote about a gentleman this week who is "probably city's oldest law student" at 80 years of age. If so, he is lucky to have slipped through the age-barrier net that has been woven by the Bar Council of India (BCI).

Uddhav Alkari (not pictured) is an ex-employee of Madhya Pradesh State Secondary Education Board and the father of three children. According to tabloid Mumbai Mirror, he waited until his children were well settled to follow his dream of studying law.

He has had a tough time getting there, even without the BCI rules, as his 1967 exam scores were too low for law school admission and he had to get to law school in a round-about way.

In any case, hearty congratulations to Mr Alkari for his efforts and achievement.

However, despite most BCI members probably being of the same generation as Alkari, the body would probably not be pleased for him.

The Bar Council of India, Rules of Education, 2008 schedule III clause 28 stipulates that general category students seeking admission for BA (law) courses should not be above 20 while the age limit for the reserved category is 22 years.

The candidates for post-graduation course (LLB), in the general category should not be over 30 while for the reserved category the age limit is 35.

The Law Commission of India led by chairman A R Lakshmanan had also endorsed this rule.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court recently stayed all further proceedings in 12 High Courts on petitions challenging the Bar Council of India Rule fixing upper age limit for admission to LLB.

Delhi University Faculty of Law alumni Shilpi Gupta had studied with much older classmates and believes there is some value in the new BCI rule.

"A majority of students in our class belonged to the age group of 30 and above," she tells Legally India, "consisting of working professionals who were not interested in serious pursuit of law as a career, but rather hoped for advancement in their established fields."

"Therefore, BCI's mandate on imposing maximum age limit for admission to a law school is a welcome step. It will ensure that more seats are available for younger candidates for whom law is a preferred career option and not a tool for value addition."

Photo by Sukanto Debnath

Law minister Veerappa Moily has weighed into the debate over who should regulate legal education, opposing Human Resources Development (HRD) minister Kapil Sibal's wide-ranging plans to take control of the sector.

The Times of India reported yesterday that Moily said: "So far as introducing an academic course is concerned, we have no objection. But when it comes to setting standards of legal education, the law ministry has to consider. That is the domain of the law ministry."

This follows the Bar Council of India (BCI) disapproving of the HRD's move to take control of legal education.

In Moily the BCI will have found a powerful political ally to retain its current remit.

Karnataka Chief Justice P D Dinakaran elevation to the Supreme Court has been called into question following protests by eminent lawyers over his unaccountable ownership of 400 acres of land in rural Tamil Nadu.

The Chief Justice of India has sought an explanation from Justice Dinakaran acting on a letter submitted by prominent lawyers such as Shanti Bhushan, Fali Nariman, Anil Divan, Ashok Desai and Ram Jethmalani in which they demanded his promotion to be deferred.

Fali Nariman declined to comment when contacted by Legally India, saying that this matter could only be resolved by a sitting judge of the Supreme Court.

President of the Supreme Court Bar Association M N Krishnamani and the Delhi High Court Bar Association President K C Mittal in a joint statement demanded a change in the existing collegiums system of appointment of judges.

The bar associations have urged the Law Ministry to increase transparency and objectivity in the promotion of judges to the Supreme Court.

They have proposed a constitutional amendment to replace the collegiums system by a properly constituted National Judicial Commission to undertake the selection.

Madras High Court bar association members who have opposed Justice Dinakaran’s promotion include K R Tamizhmani, R Vaigai, Sriram Panchu, Anna Mathew, S S Vasudevan, Geetha Ramaseshan, Sudha Ramalingam, N L Rajah, D Nagasaila, S Devikarani and T Mohan.

As reported by the Times of India, the collegiums headed by the Chief Justice of India and Justice S H Kapadia, B N Agrawal, Tarun Chatterjee and Altamas Kabir will meet tomorrow to discuss on the future course of action.

Under the present collegiums system the CJI is the final authority in the matter of appointments superseding the executive also.

NLSIU Bangalore has been ordered by the Karnataka High Court not to extend benefits under the LLB 'reserved category' to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) candidates out of state.

The direction by the High Court last week can be viewed as drawing sub-categories within categories based on geographical boundaries.

Justice B S Patil partly admitted the petition of Karnataka resident Preethi and justified it on the principle of reciprocity.

He observed that SC/ST candidates migrating from Karnataka were not entitled to the same benefits in other states.

The High Court also relied on the Presidential Order of 1950, issued in respect of Karnataka notifying SC/STs under Article 341 and 342 of the Constitution of India.

A Presidential Order is made after a detailed inquiry as to the economic status, the level of education and the necessity of protection of SC/ST.

The High Court order now ensures the petitioner’s admission to The National Law School of India University Bangalore (NLSIU), after she was admitted in Gujarat National Law University rather than her preferred destination.

Preethi had written the common law admission test (CLAT) in 2009. After the CLAT exams, 12 students belonging to SC/ST community from other states were placed in NLSIU. The petitioner had challenged this in the High Court.

Senior counsel Raviverma Kumar for the petitioner argued that persons migrating from other states to Karnataka could not claim the status of SC/ST to secure admission in that category.

Kumar submitted that allowing quota benefits to all eligible aspirants will deprive SC/ST’s of Karnataka from availing those benefits.

Justice Neeraj Kishan Kaul of the Delhi High Court has resigned to pursue advocacy again after less than five months in the judge's robes.

A source has confirmed to Legally India that he is looking at returning to practice as an advocate but the why is unclear.

Was it the pay? Was it the hours? Was it the boss? Or was it because he was tired of putting up with the ramblings of second-rate advocates.

He could not be reached for comment at the time of going to press but the Times of India also reported this morning that Kaul had submitted his resignation letter, though no reasons were given.

Kaul became an advocate in the Delhi High Court in 1987 and was made a senior advocate in 2002. In 1998 he was appointed as standing counsel for the central government.

His resignation is only the second resignation of a serving Delhi High Court judge after then Justice M L Verma had resigned within a year of his appointment in 1991.

Update 11:22 am IST: The Press Trust of India has formally confirmed Kaul's resignation, citing personal reasons.

"I felt I enjoyed private practice more," he told the news service, adding: "I felt I was better suited for a lawyer's job and I never wanted to impose myself on the Constitutional post."

Confounding expectations Press Notes 2 and 4 will stay as they are, according to a press report this morning. Perhaps a few lawyers will not have been surprised, however.

"There is no plan to make any changes in Press Note 2 and 4 at all," an unnamed "senior finance ministry official" told the Indian daily Business Standard.

Upsetting for some - Indian lawyers have complained for months now about the grey areas in Press Notes 2, 3 and 4 that were feared (or hoped) to allow foreign direct investment (FDI) through a backdoor route.

"I am surprised that such statements are being given," said one Mumbai-based corporate partner, who added that Press Note 4 governing downstream investment and ownership and control issues needed some work done. "We were quite sure that there would be something which would clearly clarify things and not leave anything to interpretation."

On the other hand, for several months now Legally India had heard off-the-record murmurings from a small handful of lawyers that they did not think the Finance Ministry would revise the Press Notes.

Did they know something that journalists and other lawyers didn't?

Pressure from Bharti, MTN and their advisers could have also swung the mood, as both the companies and the Government hope to seal the biggest cross-border M&A deal in India's history, which will rely on the Press Notes in its complex structuring.

And Pantaloon Retail too – whose current legal advisers Legally India has unsuccessfully been trying to confirm for ages – embarked on the first steps to an ambitious restructuring to increase foreign investment stakes in reliance on Press Notes 2 and 3.

An seemingly gutsy move at the time but perhaps Pantaloon and its advisers too knew something others did not, despite the restructuring having now apparently been put on hold.

Many law firms would probably pay consultants an arm and a leg for this advice. Inspired by FoxMandal Delhi's recent cash flow woes, regular Legally India commenter Legal Dodo posted an interesting list for law firms to save money. For free!

While Legal Dodo is happy to admit that some of these points are obvious and may not necessarily apply to every law firm, his/her points are nevertheless worth thinking about:

"Here are some random thoughts/tips on cost cutting. They are in no particular order of priority and may not necessarily apply in every situation. Some of them are borne out of experience. Of course - some are very obvious.

1) Assess all the infrastructure you are using - especially the real property. Do you own excess space? Have you leased excess space? If yes, ensure that all your staff work together. Keep the excess space unoccupied. This helps save electricity costs. If you use air-conditioning - believe me - the savings can be substantial.

2) In case you are paying an above average rent for the space you are
occupying, negotiate with your landlord for a downward revision of the rent. After the recent global meltdown, there are hundreds of office spaces lying vacant.
Your landlord will be put on the defensive and is likely to accede to your request, especially if you threaten to vacate.

3) Alternatively, negotiate for a right to sub-let. If you have excess space and your growth plans are not as aggressive as they were when you first leased your office space, short-term sub-letting makes a lot of sense.

4) Is your office located on a main road in a prime business location? If yes - then reconsider whether it makes sense continuing from there. For a law firm, such a location offers little advantage. Consider shifting into a suburb or into an office off the main road. Rents are considerably lesser in these areas. Perhaps, your staff's efficiency may also increase.

4) Do you have multiple telephone connections (landlines) or multiple
Internet connections? If so, it makes sense to cut down on them.

5) If your office has good ventilation and natural lighting, consider making optimum use of the natural air and light. This could help cut down your electricity consumption.

6) Cut down on your marketing and promotional spending. Avoid sponsoring seminars, conferences, moot-courts, local-events and/or business-round-tables.
In my experience, these are a colossal waste of time and money.

7) Similarly, stop attending such seminars, conferences or other events, especially if you have to pay through your nose for it. If you are invited, and do not want to miss out on the networking opportunity, offer to speak at the conference. Often, organizers are short of speakers. If so, they will be more than happy to
get a free speaker and perhaps may also give you a few free delegate passes, which you can share with your colleagues.

8) Avoid wasteful travel. If you have to travel, then do so and stay economically. Staying in five star hotels and commuting in expensive chauffeur driven cars burn a significant hole in your pocket. You can stay just as comfortably in good service apartments and save on transport by using city taxi. Avoid overnight stay, if possible.

9) Avoid expensive lunches/outings and/or throwing lavish parties.

10) Cut down on the freebies that you give to your staff. Do they have free telephones? Are they provided with expensive cars? Impose a limit on their telephone usage. Consider car pooling for the staff.

11) Cut down on your excess security and maintenance staff. Keep the minimum staff required to ensure security and cleanliness of the office. Invariably, these employees are sourced from a security or house keeping agency. Therefore, you are not firing anyone, and even better, they are not losing their jobs when you relieve the security and maintenance personnel of their duties.

12) Cut down on unnecessary subscriptions, especially foreign publications.

13) Hire interns, instead of fresh employees, for doing routine work or carrying out support functions.

14) Use Skype or e-mail to communicate and reduce telephone costs. Reduce stationary usage by printing only if you have to. Use both sides of paper while printing. For rough drafts, you can use the printer option to print multiple pages per sheet.

15) Cut down on giving corporate gifts.

16) Use the courier service only for important documents. For routine mails, use the postal service. It's much cheaper.

17) This is the most contentious point. Chop dead wood. In other words, identify the non performing staff and encourage them to leave. Almost every organization lands up making hiring mistakes and taking on people whom it should never have hired. Employees with an "entitlement culture," i.e. those who cannot look beyond their own nose, are the worst people to have around at any time, more so during an economic crisis. Such employees shirk work, avoid responsibility and mysteriously develop high fever or a severe tummy ache whenever a complex assignment crops up. They stop looking for work the moment they are employed.

Once employed, they are the first to approach the HR Department to ascertain how many sick leaves, casual leaves, paid leaves and national holidays they are entitled to. They expect hefty pay hikes every six months and fudge their time/work records to show how well they are performing. While at "work," they spend time chatting, surfing the net, taking long coffee and smoking breaks and complain about just anything they can complain about. Invariably, whatever little work they do requires to be entirely redone. Such employees are a big nuisance and extremely demoralizing to have around. It's a big mistake to consider them as "family" and put up with them. Invariably, they go around bad-mouthing the organization at every given opportunity. Such employees are perhaps the greatest liability any organization can have, especially a service oriented organization like a law firm, whose human capital is its greatest asset. It's wise to be diplomatic while doing away with such employees. Give them glowing recommendation letters, if necessary. Words are free. Won't you be glad that your worst performer lands up joining your rival?

As I mentioned earlier, these are just random thoughts. Constructive criticism welcome. Feel free to add to the list.

Legal Dodo."

And as requested, I'd like to add a couple of extra points to this very comprehensive list:

18) Institute reasonable pay-cuts. A lot less painful that outright lay-offs and a sensible option for unsustainable salaries that were pegged after blind competition in a boom market.

19) Introduce a part-time working option for employees who are interested for personal or other reasons. Someone on a four-day week will save a firm 20 per cent and if the employee is good they could end up managing their time more efficiently than a full-time employee. On the flipside, it can be a headache to manage from an HR and client service-level perspective.

20) Consider outsourcing your back-office operations (which is perhaps my most contentious point). Clifford Chance, for example, was targeting £8m (around Rs 60 crore) annual cost savings with its offshoring of document production (and now also paralegal fee-earners) to Gurgaon.

Please do add your ideas, suggestions and comments.

Good news: no lawyers were laid off in US Biglaw last week - the first time since records began (this year). But how have Indian lawyers fared in the downturn?

US blawg Abovethelaw.com teamed up with fellow blawgers Lawshucks to produce a beautiful graph of number of lawyers retrenched versus time.

And lo-and-behold, a trend is clearly visible - lay-offs spiked heavily in March, then began dropping off gradually until this week, when for the first time this year all US lawyers apparently held on to their jobs.

Although the US economy and lawyers are unlikely to be out of the woods yet completely - almost 600 US lawyers still lost their jobs in July and the country overall saw an increase in initial jobless claims to 558,000 last week.

Nevertheless, in the US and UK, lawyers' jobs were amongst the first professions to get hit by the downturn, exhibiting as they do exposure and sensitivity to many sectors.

This could also mean they will be at the vanguard of the recovery.

In India, by contrast, retrenchment has often been talked about in hushed tones with many firms denying any took place whatsoever.

What has been your experience?

Please comment below or send us an email confidentially: .

UK law firms are being wooed by private equity houses looking to take a stake - meanwhile, in India, UK law firms are wooing Indian law firms for closer relationships.

The UK's Legal Services Act 2007 will allow external investment into law firms from 2011 and news wire Bloomberg has reported that private equity investors are already lining up to take advantage.

PE funds Fleming Family & Partners, Phoenix Equity Partners and Lyceum Capital Partners were reported by the news service to be interested or in talks to directly invest into law firms.

Apparently law firms make "attractive investments as they have stable cash flows, long track records of business operations and increasingly are much better run".

Most UK law firms are not convinced yet by the proposition - in the words of Allen & Overy's managing partner Wim Dejonghe to Bloomberg: "We looked into it, but decided it wasn’t right for us. Why would we need the money?"

That is a similar question many Indian law firms may be asking themselves when foreign law firms are knocking on their door although judging by the current mood in the profession it will still be a long time before private equity will be allowed into the legal business.

A new university course offering a qualification in legal process outsourcing (LPO) has been launched in a barrage of acronyms.

The course is a joint venture between Indian legal training providers/recruiters Rainmaker and the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) School of Law.

The Rs.18,000 one-year on-line taught course is snappily entitled P.G.D.L.P.O. (or Post-Graduate Diploma in Legal Process Outsourcing, to give it its full name).

According to a press release published on LPO blog Legally Yours, the syllabus will cover: "Professional English Proficiency (“PEP”), Virtual Intelligence Methods (“VIM”), Legal Education and Proficiency (“LEAP”), Skills, Personal Effectiveness and Enterprise Development (“SPEED”)".

Catchy! (even though VIM's long-form is slightly confusing).

Apparently, according to the press release, 500 students have applied already for the first semester and the University is going to roll out a second intake in August to meet demand.

This programme could very well catch on and it could also be something that LPO providers facing high staff attrition have been clamouring for.

The main question will be whether law graduates will really be up for spending another year studying and losing themselves in an acronym jungle.

Photo by vlima.com

Long delays in recovering fees has become an increasing a problem for law firms whose clients are caught in the credit crunch, most recently preventing FoxMandal Little in Delhi from paying some of its staff their salaries.

"Lock-up is a big issue for most firms these days in particular collections on long-overdue invoices," says Kerma Partners legal consultant Friedrich Blase in New York and adds: "It's become harder for firms to collect on the work produced."

Will limited liability partnerships (LLPs) actually work, asks Indian Corporate Law Blog, notwithstanding the recent tax changes.

Lead blawger V Umakanth uncovered an interesting academic paper analysising what the Limited Liability Partnership Act could actually mean in practice for lawyers.

One possible conclusion is that, hindered by the Indian Companies Act 1956, it in fact won't do anything to alleviate one of the main reasons for law firms to turn LLP in the first place: breaking through the technical 20 partner limit.

A commenter disagrees with the analysis and writes that the Indian Companies Act's section 11 provides "a carve out for associations 'formed in pursuance of some other Indian law'."

The "some other Indian law" in this case would presumably be the LLP Act, but it remains to be seen how lawyers will interpret (embrace?) the law.

Legally India has currently not had any luck accessing the original article directly (linked to from Indian Corporate Law), but will be sure to read it as soon as it is back on-line.

London paper the Evening Standard has run a scare story on legal jobs going to India today, which makes a welcome change on the paper's usual stories on transport chaos and terrorism.

FoxMandal Little's (FML) outsourcing arm in particular, will supposedly be single-handedly responsible for taking away 1,000 UK lawyers' jobs by the end of the year, according to a quick extrapolation done by the Evening Standard on the back of a napkin.

As far as Legally India understands it, FML's outsourcing venture Legal Circle is still one of the smaller operations in the market but that should not put a halt to ambition.

Legal Circle's outsourcing head Soumitro Chatterjee told the Evening Standard that he had met 10 UK firms and added: "All of them are thinking of creating between 50 to 100 seats [jobs]."

Is the paper counting FML's chickens before they've hatched, perhaps? No, 10 times 100 equals 1,000. That'll make a headline.

Most Evening Standard readers are not excited by the prospect, however remote.

"Outsourcing work to India is not good," writes Jan Need from Romford in the on-line comments. "It would probably be a lot easier to do [the work] in London in the first place. The main reason for all this is obvious. £6,000 for a lawyer in Mumbai £70,000+ for a London lawyer. Need I say more?"

Photo by vlima.com

The bench has called an extraordinary meeting to deal with lawyers' growing violence against judges, after a group of lawyers allegedly assaulted a District Court judge on Wednesday.

Delhi lawyers Vikas Gupta and Rekha Sharma allegedly slapped Additional District Judge Pankaj Gupta on Wednesday. Gupta was arrested outside Rohini Court early on Thursday morning before a crowd of lawyers and leaders of the lower court bar gathered.

The Judicial Officers Association issued a press calling a general meeting to discuss the growing number of incidents of court room hooliganism.

Bar Council of India chairman SNP Sinha told Legally India: "I don’t know the full facts of this case but if it is true then it is deplorable. This is not the way a lawyer should conduct himself in the court."

The bench has also formed a fact finding committee to investigate the case under the chairmanship of senior advocate A S Chandhioke.

Sources told Legally India that bar leaders have attempted to settle the matter amicably out of court but that the judicial officers have not responded.

Gupta's lawyers have failed to secure bail for their client and he remains in custody.

Senior advocate A S Chandhioke said: "It is a very unfortunate incident and should not have happened. We will look into the issue and I am hopeful that the Bar Council and the Bar Association concerned shall do whatever is necessary."

It turns out not all lawyers are against being charged service tax...

The Bar Council of India for one has come out in favour of the tax change that was introduced in Monday's budget, which meant that for the first time ever, Indian lawyers will be deemed to provide a service - something that clients will no doubt applaud after years of being palmed off with mere professional advice.

BCI chairman SNP Sinha told the Business Standard he thought it was a great idea that law firms would finally be taxed.

"The government of India has taken a wise decision by imposing tax," he said. "In the wake of the recently passed Limited Liability Partnership Act, foreign law firms are making (back-door) entry through joint ventures and collaboration. Thus they are justified in imposing tax."

Perhaps crucially, the tax change will not affect individual practitioners or those rendering services to - sorry, advising - individuals.

Unsurprisingly, the Society of Indian Law Firms (SILF) was not happy. The body's president Lalit Bhasin told the daily paper: "It is a (retrograde) step.

"Instead of helping, strengthening and promoting Indian law firms, the government is trying to substantially weaken them, and they are facing the threat of entry of foreign firms in the country."

Thanks to islandexpress who first tweeted the Business Standard article.

Blawger Legally Infantile dishes out some choice legal advice to an old school colleague about being fined Rs 5,000 for getting caught cheating at exams.

Never mind that the school will allow him to remain at the school as well as retake the exam, the culprit now wants to sue the school.

Legally Infantile, being a sensible young corporate lawyer, tells him to go away. Somewhat politely.

Do you have any stories of relatives and old friends coming out of the woodworks asking for obscure legal advice, as soon as you qualified as a lawyer?

Were you able to help?