Have you ever felt that freshers are expected to start specialising in a practice area far too early? Do you think that maybe giving them sustained (i.e., a few months of) exposure to different practice areas (before getting them to make a decision on which area they eventually want to work in) will help?

1. Hire less, promote more. Indian law firms have a weird 1:10 partner to non-partner ratio. Significant number of foreign law firms have a 1:3 ratio, meaning that you have a much higher chance to partnership, once you are inducted in the firm. Indian firms over hire and are badly managed in terms of hiring and workload allocation. It is not uncommon for a deal and DD team in a foreign law firm to consist of just 3 people, including an executing partner. If you need specialised practice area teams, that's a different matter. Indian deal teams are so bloated, it is ridiculous. Ofcourse, this will lead to a much higher than current workload on existing non-partners, but as one myself, I wouldn't mind doing this if there is a clearer path to partnership.

2. Big Law firms need to cartelise and not underbill each other like sweat shops. We will bill a lot higher, and everyone will earn a lot more (looking at you, oldest Kolkata law firm). This will also help standing up against foreign law firms, who presently push out Indian law firms on bigger transactions, with Indian law firms doing only the grunt work. If no one agrees to doing only the grunt work, we will all end up getting the meatier stuff which is presently hogged by foreign law firms on cross border deals.

3. More transparent partner designation systems. Enough said.

4. Promoter driven law firms need to die a quick death. We need more meritocratic firms, and not some legacy laddu sitting on top. Hopefully I will see this happen in my lifetime. Promoter driven business works well for other businesses, but my sense is that it is horrible for law firm service delivery because it promotes sycophancy and drives away/ demotivates talented individuals - lawyering is an inherently academic pursuit, and legacy laddus are doing nothing to help it.

Addition of 3 months training for campus/fresher before they are given real work. Training should be rigorous, which teaches them how the work is done.

As people rarely find good seniors who teach with patience and they pressure at early stage turns worse eventually. Mental health, physical health, all issues start as junior is not able to deliver on time...training will also give them idea of which works take how much time, so they can push back fake deadlines.

This can in a way reduce toxicity as wel. if juniors are trained they will give decent work product, which will reduce pressures on seniors as well.

Imagine you're at the helm of your newly setup firm, or have a direct line to influence your current big/small/medium law MP. What's the one (or more) thing(s) you'd change or fix about how Indian law firms operate? If you're open to it, please share your PQE too - would be interesting to see how folks at different stages of their journey imagine changes and give context to the discussion. Would be incredible if this collective brainstorming leads to some change (or new firms!), or maybe this dies in some lonely corner of LL.