The ruling in the Chennai writ petition was hailed as pragmatic for solving the nearly two-year-old deadlock foreign firms were in. But frankly it is likely to continue exposing the deficiencies of the 1961 Advocates Act in dealing with modern-day India. And it could possibly  plunge a number of industries into a world of pain via the Bar Council of India (BCI).

Dear corporate law firm lawyers, dear advocates. Have you ever struggled to explain to your non-lawyer friends what you do? Does your mum know what you do? Seniors, clients and spouses do not seem to have much of an insight either?

Until last Wednesday, an explosive 161-page document prepared by four judges was gathering dust in the office of Nalsar Hyderabad vice chancellor (VC) Veer Singh for nearly four months. Few, if any, had read it and most faculty and students claimed they were unaware even of its existence or any details.

The story of that report is Nalsar’s alone. But this is also a story of academic power struggles, law school management and students caught in between, that will have near-universal parallels in many Indian law schools.

The Vodafone tax case will not just be remembered for being one of the biggest in Indian history, but also for cementing the reputations of a raft of lawyers at the top of their game and others who are rapidly getting there.

Click here to read about how lawyers like Harish Salve, Rohinton Nariman, Dutt Menon Dunmorrsett (DMD) and others fought the case, exclusively in today’s Mint.

Exclusive: Mohit Abraham, an equity partner at PXV Law Partners and the topper of the previous advocates-on-record (AOR) exam in November 2011, tells Legally India everything you have ever wanted to know about the AOR exam and whether there is any point to the designation.

Khaitan & Co took home the winning trophy at the ELP Masters Cup 2012 last weekend, as 16 law firm teams battled it out on the grounds of the Police Gymkhana in Mumbai. Two-time defending champions Wadia Ghandy failed to make the cut.

Exclusive: A few years ago, Indian lawyers who took a top LLM in the US were inundated with job offers from prestigious US and international law firms. Many accepted. But in 2011 only five out of 60 students got such a ticket. Have $70,000 US LLMs just become a way for colleges to cash in on Indian students? Find out why the Brazilians seem to fare better than the Indians.

Madhava Menon’s national law school experiment of 1986 may have failed to pull hundreds of Indian law schools out of mediocrity but it has brought newfound respect to legal education, reports Mint today. Critics complain that the national law schools have mostly benefited corporate law but this may not be their fault. While no NLS grads have so far made it to senior counsel rank, some are making their mark in litigation.

Exclusive in today’s Mint: Revealing two years of research, over 20 interviews with current and former lawyers, and never-read-before insider details and accounts, read the most definitive and balanced account published so far of Fox Mandal Delhi’s financial woes and how the merger between Fox and Little & Co Mumbai unravelled. 

Mint - easily India’s best quality business daily - will now feature cutting-edge legal industry news and analysis in its pages every second Friday under an exclusive new content partnership with Legally India.

In today’s Mint edition, Legally India editor Kian Ganz’s colum demystifies India’s legal market: Despite India’s fairly average legal population density every lawyer here has to make do with only $1.4m of GDP. This, it turns out, is the lowest figure in both developed and developing legal markets. Click here to read the column on this, pseudo lawyers and more.

Please comment below or on Mint with suggestions for future topics or stories worth covering.

Also in today’s Mint: all-new research on salary progression at law firms, as well as how and why law firm salaries have risen so much in the last five years.

Law firms pay lawyers with six years of experience up to around Rs 30 lakh per annum in Mumbai, revealed analysis of data collected in Legally India’s associate survey, as first published in Mint today.

The annual Delhi Twenty20 Westlaw-SILF law firm cricket tournament has had a spectacular start in Delhi this month with Trilegal and Saikrishna & Associates showing a definite lead in the points tally after the completion of 13 exciting intra-pool matches played over the last two weekends.

Legally India bumped into senior counsel and BJP parliamentarian Ram Jethmalani on 5 November, relaxing on a grassy lawn of Goa’s Grand Hyatt hotel on the fringes of Tehelka’s Thinkfest, where he was a speaker.

We asked the undisputed champion of cross-examination for a master class in the subject, covering Oscar Wilde, the Bible and being a hermit in preparation. We also wondered whether politicians cared about legal sector liberalisation at all.

Legally India editor Kian Ganz will now blog regularly in The Lawyer magazine’s new blogs section about the Indian legal landscape. Here is the first post.

By far the personal question that I get asked the most by lawyers in India and abroad is: “Why India?” You might want to ask A&O, CC, Links or Freshfields or the rest of the pack the same question.

Exclusive interview: Following a high-powered UK delegation’s meeting with the Indian law minister and the Bar Council of India (BCI), ex-Allen & Overy (A&O) partner and current Law Society of England & Wales president John Wotton says he is optimistic about the progress of Indian legal market liberalisation.

He is not the first foreign lawyer to have felt that way.

Exclusive: As former director general of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) and the architect of the now established merger control department, Kaushal Kumar Sharma who left the regulator last month tells Legally India about wannabe competition lawyers, firmness, Bollywood, the CCI’s historical and future challenges and his plans as a free agent.