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Now a days, whenever I introduce myself to relatives/dates, it feels so a embarassing "I work as an associate at Cyril/Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas" none of the three words in that name ring any bell with most people I meet. They think I'm working at some random Gujju shop. Then you tell them you don't even go to court. At this point, people start thinking you're not even a real lawyer or perhaps not doing very well in life. They advice you to appear for government exams instead. Or they tell you how another person they know is a Supreme Court lawyer.
I don't know if others also face this or is it just me. But this makes me think - does anyone outside really care about the brand value of the law firm you are from? Say when you're applying abroad for higher education, or sitting for a UPSC interview or applying for positions outside law - do recruiters even know to distinguish between names of Indian law firms? Does an Amarchand name have any extra value compared to say, S&R or Trilegal?
"Oh I research what is the law on claw back clauses and suitably adapt previous reiteration into current draft"
Yawn
Forgive me mate, but frankly, if you aren't working in a swanky foreign law firm, you don't have all that much to say for yourself. I was in London a couple of months ago, met some folks for dinner there (two families, who me and my people are friendly with). However, the two families we met in London (let us call them Family A and Family B) hadn't met each other. Both families comprise a middle-aged couple and, in the case of Family A, their daughter, who works at an American firm in London (she studied law in Britain). When one of the members of Family B asked the woman in Family A 'What does your daughter do?', she replied, 'My daughter works for [Firm X]'. As the brand value of Firm X is quite significant, the mother, upon learning that the man from Family B hadn't heard of firm X, was able to raise her eyebrows and shame him quite effectively, by getting him to do a Google search and dig up the firm's Wikipedia page. Unfortunately, that is very hard to do with the kinds of firms we think are swanky in the Indian context.