This practice area is well past its golden days. There are too many law firms and boutique consultants competing for the same limited number of trade investigations that Indian government carries out each year. The fee that these firms charge has kept declining over the years. Competition for work is too intense. With revenues stalling or declining, trade teams across firms have seen very limited growth in terms of number of attorneys and attorney promotions overall have also become difficult in teams among larger law firms. Merely that the field may offer interesting work should not be the only factor for a fresher to enter this field. Trade law work in India primarily concerns trade investigations, which extensively involves data/number crunching for which CAs are always preferred. Core legal issues are hardly fought at investigation level. Most legal submissions in investigations are copy-paste of past templates. Even if you try new arguments, you will not see much acceptance from the trade department officers. If at all some legal issues require appeals to higher forums, such appeals are limited in number and appellate tribunal or High Courts/Supreme Court are not very keen to hear such complex data heavy matters on priority. If you want to be trained as a good lawyer, the trade investigations side of things is not really a good place to start your career. If numbers don’t bother you, you may try, but your growth and promotion potential over a long-term period shall be limited. If you aspire to be a partner some day, I am sorry to break it to you, it is going to be very difficult in comparison to growth in other traditional and upcoming areas of law. There are very few trade law firms in India that do advisory work in trade law, which encompasses interpretation of WTO agreements, free trade agreements, non-tariff barriers, etc. Work on the advisory side is also limited and very niche. I cannot think of any trade practitioner who has made it practicing trade advisory work - perhaps Clarus Law. But again, beyond gaining valuable experience in your formative years, you won’t be able to progress beyond a certain point in trade advisory firms as well. Other places for trade advisory work would be Centre for WTO Studies and Centre for Trade and Investment Law. You will get intellectually rewarding work in these Indian government think tanks, and they directly work with Ministry of Commerce. The trade teams in law firms are structured in such a way because of the kind of trade law work that commands value in India - which is basically trade investigations and some limited number of appeals in tribunal and courts. Trade law work in the US, UK, and EU is much diverse - but it is very difficult to get into those firms and too in such niche practice areas. Trade law work may look appealing, but it is not for everyone. And if you have growth aspirations, avoid this area. I am not trying to sound gloomy, but just sharing my lived experience practicing trade law.

I recently did an internship at TPM, its good for the start, it pays around 12LPA as a fresher, rest pays around 15-16LPA (Trilegal, LKS, ELP) though Trilegal does not hire specifically for trade law, they look for indirect taxes, same goes for LKS. Only numbers economics pays a role that too to a very limited extend firms has dedicated Cost Accounting teams for economics and science.