Recently, there have been so many associates/senior associates who've moved to London (December specially). What is the reason behind the same? Have Magic Circle/White Shoe firms started recruiting Indian lawyers more freely or its normal? 2 people from my firm itself have left
This is a myth btw. A good skilled lawyer is likely to get hired irrespective of their practice area, an average CM lawyer might not, on the other hand.
in all likelihood, your colleagues had been planning the move in advance since you can't move laterally from India to London without the English qualifications. It isn't a lottery system my man.
Associates tend to write the QLTS (now SQE) AFTER making the move to London. The firm covers for all of that. You'd have known as much if you weren't interested in just shit posting.
Your work product needs to be approved by an E&W solicitor if you aren't qualified. For all practical purposes otherwise, you can work at a firm without passing the SQE.
United Kingdom (UK) law firms recruit fresher lawyers from India generally from campus recruitment offers or internship pre placement offers (ppo) from top Indian National Law Universities like NLSIU, WBNUJS, NALSAR etc. The job offers offered by UK law firms are known as Training Contracts. After training contracts starts within two years the concerned trainee Indian lawyer must qualify QLTS (now SQE) i.e. acquire the English qualifications for practise as a lawyer or solicitor in United Kingdom.
They needed people with good understanding of the basic concepts and standard documents + have the ability to handle / manage complex negotiations. This interest in Indian lawyers started out with the realisation that experienced lawyers from top law firms in the common law countries are a good or even better set to replace the European trainees they have lost access to. AFAIK, the UK firms would hire you at a couple of rungs lower than your band with your current firm. Also, a lot of work would also relate to LIBOR transitioning projects, etc.
Yup, at 2PQE lower than your PQE in India. This is cancelled against the Training Contract which the UK lawyers have to go through. However, I still have one question. They used to prefer Australian/NZ lawyers, so how did this paradigm shift happen or what led to it? Given Australia and UK have just signed a trade pact
There's no paradigm shift, that's still very much the case. There's just a minor uptick in Indian lawyers being hired, but nothing big enough to warrant it being described as a paradigm shift so far.
Really annoyed at this obsession to go abroad. Stay in your country and do something for it. Life in the west is not as glamourous as it sounds. India is the place to be right now, specially for lawyers. Please get some sense.
Tujhe kab sense hoga ke jo tere understanding mein sensible hai woh koi universal truth nahi but tera opinion hai. others may have a completely different view.
Did these people have LLMs/any other foreign degrees?