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Hi, m a third year at a borderline T1 college from central India. Have been reading aviation law and thereabouts for some time. Wanted to know what's the scope in India. What's the money like for associates at likes of sarin, are there other firms aside from sarin operating in the field? Is it wise to make it my niche area of interest?
Hey man,
To be completely honest, the scope of work is limited. The initial years are going to be difficult because of how few law firms focus on this matter. However, aviation is a growing sector with India poised to be a huge market for aviation in the future. This should allow you to thrive in the long run, when you have established yourself. But yeah, the short term does stink.
I have been hearing this aviation sector is growing thing from years now. No doubt it has grown but no way is it a profitable sector.

Will not recommend this field. The options are limited.
Poonam Verma and Shivpriya Nanda do aviation law in JSA. Try their teams maybe?
I work in a boutique law firm that is / was well ranked in aviation by Chambers.

Occassionally, you'll get interesting client queries on use of drones in random settings, or using satellites for geo surveillance. But most of the time you'll be stuck with aircraft DDR. Doing DD of aircrafts is just as mind numbing as DD in any other field.

I initially thought I'd build some familiarity with sectoral laws like DGCA Civil Aviation Requirements. However, because it's a such a niche and technical field, all regulatory work seems to be handled one on one between DGCA/BCAS and the client, with little role for external lawyer. Only time I learn some sectoral laws is when I fill non billable questionnaires from aviation law firm networks that my firm is a part of.
Link Legal has few aviation clients.
SpaviaTech is the new.
Sarin & Co. has good aviation work.
If you want to do the big ticket aviation deals, consider only London or Singapore law firms aviation practice. Indian aviation practice has very limited scope today since all documents are English law based.
Do you like aviation law? Or do you like aviation? Many lawyers have tried to chase their real career dreams through the proxy of law. This is not always a good idea. Unfortunate truth is that lawyers are always better off being interdisciplinary. If you want to understand the scope of any legal practice area, then open the newspaper. See how often that subject actually gets discussed in the news.

If you struggle to find out much about the practice area, the scope is probably restricted. If you do really enjoy aviation, its a great hobby to pursue on its own.
Do some random LLM and take other courses as a prof.

Such sectors are not meant for practice but teaching and studying for officials and the likes
It's niche but it exists. Chartering aircrafts, negotiating deals like F&B, dealing with consumer complaints etc. Best way to learn is probably in house.
I dunno. I am a commercial litigator and do corp advisory & regulatory. Once my buddy who has a small airplane company asked me to review documents relating to the sale of an aircraft for him. It wasn't really rocket science really. Seemed like your run of the mill contract and regulatory law really. See the terms, read the regulations, check if terms and regulations align and ensure your client's interest was protected. Review the finance agreements (this seemed like banking to me) and figure out the procedure to create a charge.

This is definitely not a field with enough scope to focus on to run your practice only doing this.

You're better off doing general corp with this as an added button on your belt or if you want the really fun aircraft deals going into defence acquisition.