One year ago Legally India kicked off the project of bringing independent full-time coverage to the Indian legal market. In that year Indian lawyers and law students saw more changes than ever and for the first time these were documented in real time.

Almost 900 articles, breaking news stories, features, opinions and blogs, nearly 6,000 reader comments and 1,000 forum posts shone a light on the inside workings of India Law Inc and law schools.

In that time many stories have come full circle. We look back at the top stories of the last 12 months, where they have gone and where they might go, starting off with foreign firms, new kids on the block and best friendships.

Legally India started with several stories that would continue to run throughout the year.

One of these was the entry of foreign law firms. After the Indian Union elections, pro-liberalisation law minister HR Bhardwaj was dumped from the cabinet and replaced with Veerappa Moily, who was then an unknown quantity.

Marketing liberalisation

The perennial debate therefore continued, albeit with different pace and expectations. As opposed to the standard response of “in two years”, the potential timeline to allowing foreign firms in lengthened considerably for most observers.

For one, for the new law minister liberalisation was definitely not top of the agenda.

Then out of nowhere after more than a decade of waiting came the Bombay High Court judgment in Lawyers Collective v Ashurst, Chadbourne & Parke and White & Case. It dodged some bullets, was soundly within current law and statute and for foreign firms the only very tenuous ray of light was that the court suggested to let the government deal with the issue if it really wanted to.

Debates and arguments were made in favour and against the judgement, while the last foreign firm with an office-of-sorts in India shut it down.

As things quietened down and returned to business as usual, a young enterprising lawyer by the name of Balaji in Chennai filed a wide-ranging writ petition against 31 foreign firms and a legal process outsourcing (LPO) company. The petition could be a red herring and go nowhere (certainly during the current court holidays at the moment) but foreign firms will surely not take any chances about having the rug pulled away from under their feet.

Last month then, the Bar Council of India, which has traditionally been one of the main opponents of liberalisation elected Solicitor General Gopal Subramaniam as its chairman. However, as was quickly clear, the official position remained largely identical.

Best friends forever

Best friends were vastly over hyped in the last 12 months, with everyone expecting a bandwagon to form after AZB’s tie-up with Clifford Chance in late 2008.

The predicted explosion did not happen and for good reason: best friendships are difficult to manage, even more difficult to define and in a market growing as fast as India are not in the interests of most independent firms.

In addition, everyone including the largest firms were surprised by the postponement of the liberalisation timetable.

Nevertheless, ALMT Legal tied the knot with Clyde & Co, who have kept things very quiet since then, while Vaish Associates went with Sino-Singaporean DCC and start-up RDA Legal turned to France. Several more half-hearted tie-ups were announced in other jurisdictions but what really happened was that the existing best friends attempted to solidify their offerings.

Clifford Chance, which ceased being largest firm this year, has made some progress in India although by most accounts the best friendship with AZB is not the wieldiest ship to jointly steer and the mandates both have acted on together are still in the minority. Nevertheless, CC opened up its training academy to AZB and CC India head Chris Wyman has had a very Indian year with numerous longer AZB secondments, mostly in Mumbai. And CC’s partners have been getting to know the AZBers a whole lot better.

Everyone has to start somewhere and some others have had a head start. The oldest of the lot, but also the smallest – Linklaters allies Talwar Thakore Associates – has taken two Linklaters partners on and steadily expanded, with steady being the operative work for Links, which does not seem in any hurry.

Trilegal has also become a new home for best friend Allen & Overy (A&O) Singapore capital markets Srinivas Partha.

Some perennial assumed half-truths continued to linger. The rumour of Phoenix-Lovells is no more true or official now than it was almost two years ago but has been doggedly following the Indian start-up around, which clearly enjoys its independence.

And what exactly would be the point of best friendship enjoyed in secret anyway?

To boldly go

Everyone kept talking about Chennai but few did anything about it except for Wadia Ghandy.

In Singapore Lexygen and Dua opened shop, in Mumbai, Universal Legal.

Bangalore saw Vaish arrive and Pune KSJV. And Kerala got a UAE law firm.

Mergers, friendly and hostile

A conservative number of law firm mergers this year, although most were bolt-ons rather transformational. Bangalore saw the bigger of the independent players snapped up as AZB merged with Anup Shah’s firm and JSA bagged M&C Partners.

Bharucha & Partners took on a sole practitioner as its first lateral equity partner, ALMT Legal absorbed a full projects practice, and Khaitan & Co took on a two-year old technology and telecoms boutique.

Start it up

New law firms appeared to be popping up within weeks if not days of each other as young lawyers throughout India seized the 365 days to become their own boss.

• Amarchand Mangaldas’ only Kolkata partner formed Argus Partners, promptly outgrowing his former firm.
• An ALMT partner started V Law, which amalgamated last month with two other start-ups.
• IP boutique IP Gurus built up Swiss connections.
• J Sagar Associates (JSA) partner went independent with team to M Dhruva & Partners.
• Chennai saw Surana & Surana give birth to litigation boutique Chennai Law Associates.
• A Kochhar & Co partner set up IP/IT boutique Scriboard.
• Seven lawyers made a national tier-2-city-focussed Juris Vista Law.
• A former SEBI man started up financial advisory boutique Finsec Law Advisors.
• Mumbai International Airport’s GC set up corporate firm Advaya Legal.

Plus rocky law firm politics gave birth to three more new firms…

But more on that next week.

Check back for Part 2 of the biggest stories of the year, spanning legal education, the biggest deals, bar politics, legal process outsourcing (LPO), controversy and the best (and worst) of the rest.

Finally, a great big thank you to all readers who have visited, left comments, blogged or got in touch with us. We apologise for any tardiness in our replies or any stories we did not manage to cover but hope to get to everything in turn and before our second birthday (including the associate satisfaction survey!).

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