Our fourth newsletter has details on JSA's South India strategy as well as stories on lots of other legal entrepreneurs. Enter your email name and email address below to receive the next issue straight to your inbox:
Much of India is suffering under the delayed monsoon so badly that many economists are talking of revising growth forecasts downwards...
But in addition to being the lucky beneficiary of the first trickles, South India is also set to profit from the movements of two major rainmakers.
J Sagar Associates (JSA) doubled its size in Bangalore this week by merging with a firm that was started up a year ago by two intrepid AZB heavy hitters.
This is certainly good news for Bangalore as a legal market. But JSA is thinking bigger: name partner Jyoti Sagar told Legally India that he was looking to create a pan-South Indian practice.
"We are eventually going to have an axis – Hyderabad, Chennai and Bangalore," he said, adding: "Nobody has really addressed the market in that way before." The three cities' offices will share resources and co-ordinate partner and practice group efforts.
If there truly is a niche in South India, JSA took a bold step in Bangalore by creating one of the largest teams there. However, it is only a first step: its Hyderabad base is currently still small at eight lawyers and its Chennai office is as yet non-existent.
KSB Partners has also been busy filling niches with its LPO spin-off that is targeting a domestic corporate market that it claims was previously handled entirely in-house. And badly at that.
Law Minister Moily too has been happy to encourage legal business – or, as some readers have asked, does he just want to turn India's legal system into a big clerking factory?
Other entrepreneurs have fared less well. The Bar Council wants to shut down law schools that have been "mushrooming" all over the country, trying to make a good living out of the 80,000 odd law graduates per year.
As ever in India, where there is business to be made, the law is not far away.
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