In terms of money, work hours and opportunities apart from working in a law firm - is it better to be a general corp lawyer and doing some M&A work here and there or to be working in niche practices like the ones mentioned above?

How can gen corp lawyers working in mid-tier firms move to bigger firms and switch to a niche practice, and is it advisable to do so?

lesser scope of growth as compared to other practice areas towards the top, lot of entry barrier, clerical nature of work and existence of only few firms that put in quality work - AZB, CAM, SAM, Indus, S&R, KCO, JSA & Trilegal. The only good thing about the practice is the international transferability of skills without having to do an LLM to secure a job abroad. Speak to an insider in one of the firms as have been mentioned above to be better informed about the stress and burnout that the nature of work in this "niche" practice brings. Avoid it at all costs and go for practice areas like Banking/M&A/Disputes, you may be better off.

There is money (although fixed fee mandates) but the kind of work makes you question everything. You will learn the ropes 6 months into the practice just to realise that you are not even practicing law - its just knotting down management profiles, drafting very very lengthy business chapters and communicating the ins and outs of a company (including 1000 pager litigations) in the most crisp manner possible; for the sake of "disclosures" to SEBI. Now, there will be a large chunk of people who will try to tell you that the skills are easily transferrable abroad but the number of people making such a switch are very few in number, simply because the Indian BigLaw equivalents (in this space) don't allow you to think beyond the existing mirage of what has been existing for years. Lastly, if you ever feel like you are stuck in this rathole (which a lot of people are aross tier 1s), making a shift to another practice area or in-house positions is next to impossible because of the restrictive sense of skillset built over the years (owing to solely being exposed to IPOs, QIPs, REITs, INVITs, NCDs & Block Trades). Please know what you are getting into before making an informed choice - to all the interns/law students/laterals and what not. Thanks and best wishes!

While my 2 years of capmarks were great (solely in terms of money), I had to start from scratch while making the shift after constant back and forth with the partners at hand. Very few people are really cut out for this practice area man, it is difficult and tedious in every way possible. Please be completely informed before freezing a practice without considering every aspect involved thereof.