Interviews

Dayan Krishnan, the second NLSIU Bangalore alumnus to have been designated senior counsel in a week, said that while luck, coincidence and the patronage of three seniors was instrumental in his career to date, the Delhi high court has very clearly voted for hard work in its designations.

Akshay Bhan, who is the first NLSIU Bangalore alumnus advocate designated as a senior counsel, recounts how being a former Supreme Court judge’s son helps, the importance of seniors and how he thinks other NLS alumni are likely to be elevated soon too.

A law graduate who recently blogged about how a retired Supreme Court judge sexually assaulted her while she was his intern, says that the problem is real and not uncommon at the bar and the bench.

Scores of Indian lawyers have made the transition from India to become English solicitors. However, Karishma Vora’s path to becoming a barrister in the UK from the Bombay high court is much rarer and more arduous, taking her three years. Legally India asked her how it’s done.

“If it were utopia, the moment I go to court the judge would stand up and say to me: ‘Mr. Khosla despite our best efforts at devising laws whose objective would be to prevent people breaking the law, it seems in your case we have failed. So on behalf of society I owe you an apology and I apologise. Now please tell me what your problem is and how can I help you?’ That’s how a hearing should start,” 53-year-old law student Deepak Khosla tells me.

The senior advocate, who will join top English barristers’ set Blackstone Chambers, argued forcefully for liberalisation of the Indian legal market.

“I’m not nervous about it,” claims Jyoti Sagar about surrendering the last 7-odd per cent of equity he holds in the firm he started more than 20 years ago. “It is something I have known for 10 years, not something sudden.”

“Our model is well–known but people have carried the impression that it’s just a model but not for real. But people are trying to figure out what’s going on [now that I’m actually retiring].”

Exclusive: Trilegal, which is claimed to have been growing at 25 per cent per year, has converted into nearly a full equity partnership, created an elected management committee and a democratic model where the founding partners could theoretically be ousted by an equity partnership vote.

Legally India was candidly walked through the changes and examines the back story to the end of its best friendship with Allen & Overy (A&O), the grief lawyers can cause, one-way referrals and the inevitability of associate attrition when a firm has to run fast without godfathers.

After he retires as Chief Justice of India (CJI) today, Sarosh Homi Kapadia will leave a legacy that will be both defined and shrouded by his circumstances.

Senior counsel and new additional solicitor general Sidharth Luthra’s credo - becoming so good that nobody can lay a finger on you - sits well with his propensity for hard work at nearly superhuman levels and a passion for the criminal court room. And if anyone in the Delhi courts was not already aware of him, there are also his well-known pre-court-vacation parties of course.

Advocate Adit Subramaniam Pujari meets Luthra for Legally India’s new Debrief series to find out about his practice and what makes the man tick.

Exclusive: Mohit Abraham, an equity partner at PXV Law Partners and the topper of the previous advocates-on-record (AOR) exam in November 2011, tells Legally India everything you have ever wanted to know about the AOR exam and whether there is any point to the designation.

Legally India bumped into senior counsel and BJP parliamentarian Ram Jethmalani on 5 November, relaxing on a grassy lawn of Goa’s Grand Hyatt hotel on the fringes of Tehelka’s Thinkfest, where he was a speaker.

We asked the undisputed champion of cross-examination for a master class in the subject, covering Oscar Wilde, the Bible and being a hermit in preparation. We also wondered whether politicians cared about legal sector liberalisation at all.

Exclusive interview: Following a high-powered UK delegation’s meeting with the Indian law minister and the Bar Council of India (BCI), ex-Allen & Overy (A&O) partner and current Law Society of England & Wales president John Wotton says he is optimistic about the progress of Indian legal market liberalisation.

He is not the first foreign lawyer to have felt that way.

Exclusive: As former director general of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) and the architect of the now established merger control department, Kaushal Kumar Sharma who left the regulator last month tells Legally India about wannabe competition lawyers, firmness, Bollywood, the CCI’s historical and future challenges and his plans as a free agent.

Exclusive: Individual bar examinees’ marks would be disclosed together with results on 16 March, said Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman and solicitor general Gopal Subramanium, adding that he was not averse to further state bar council involvement and confirming the fees paid to the private contractor Rainmaker for assisting on the bar exam.

Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Gopal Subramanium said in a Legally India interview that he wants to reduce the number of Indian law colleges from 913 to 175 within a year as part of an ambitious overhaul of the legal profession's regulation and education that will be announced this Thursday (15 July).