Bar Council of India (BCI)

At a time when the judiciary is arguably facing its greatest internal crisis in decades, Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra has struck again, noting in a letter that “the entire institution is becoming a mockery at the hands of only 3-4 such Advocates” (yes advocates!) who create “ugly scenes in the courts every day”.

15 state bar councils (SBCs) will go to polls between 15 March and 28 March, starting with Jharkhand and ending with eight other SBCs, according to the election schedule announced yesterday by the Bar Council of India (BCI), as reported by Live Law and by the Times of India.

The Uttar Pradesh bar council deleted more than half of the state's enrolled advocate strength from its provisional electoral roll, which now consists of around 1.6 lakh advocates who will be eligible to vote in its upcoming bar elections.

The Karnataka bar council's elections that are nearly four years overdue will see only up to 43,566 advocates voting, despite the number of enrolled advocates in the state having gone up by almost 15% since its last elections.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has yet again hidden the exorbitant application fees of at least $2,000 for the February 2018-scheduled 13th qualifying exam for Indians holding foreign law degrees, from its notification announcing the exam.

The Maharashtra & Goa bar council has rejected 65,000 persons who had been advocates enrolled on its state rolls, with 17 days to go before closing its voter list in the run-up to long-overdue state bar council (SBC) elections.

For what it's worth, Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra told media today that he and other BCI members met with junior judges and the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dipak Misra in a “congenial atmosphere, everything will be sorted out. Bar council's role is very limited, judges have assured it there will be no problem at all”.

The points raised by judges number 2-5 of the apex court on Friday were extremely important and were a threat to democracy, which should not be politicised by either party (which is presumably directed mostly at the non-BJP parties), said Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra.

Indian lawyers practising abroad would end up bearing the brunt of the Bar Council of India (BCI) potential regulation of foreign law firms under the current regulatory regime, argued London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) counsel Dushyant Dave before the Supreme Court yesterday.

The Supreme Court refused to entertain adjournment pleas by senior advocates in today's hearing of the Bar Council of India (BCI) writ against the entry of foreign law firms into India, reported Bar & Bench.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) announced yesterday (see below) that the long-awaited certificates of practice for those who passed the 10th All India Bar Exam (AIBE) held on 26 March 2017 are now available, but only for 19 states.

In a welcome move at transparency, the Bar Council of India (BCI) has (perhaps for the first time ever) released the English language questions and answer keys to the 11th All India Bar Exam (AIBE) that took place last weekend, on 3 December.

Indian lawyers listing their profiles on a number of websites, apps and aggregators are guilty of “surrogate advertising”, Bhasin & Co managing partner Lalit Bhasin told the Hindustan Times in an article headlined “Law firms’ body seeks ban on apps, websites offering legal services”, with a nutgraf of “The Bar Council says the practice is equivalent to surrogate advertising”.

On Saturday, 11 November, the Indian National Bar Association (INBA) had held the “Bar Leadership Summit on Reforms in the Indian Legal Sector” conference to discuss the future and liberalisation of the legal profession, and to bring together leaders of the bar and the government.

Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi said at an event as reported by The Hindu that “broadly” the judiciary was “very independent”, though it occasionally submits to political pressure.

In an online straw poll of foreign law firm India group partners we conducted, 15 out of 16 (94%) responded that opening an office in a special economic zone (SEZ) in India “would not be interesting for us under any circumstances”, casting doubt over the government's current seemingly preferred approach to liberalise the Indian legal market by starting with SEZs.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) appeal against the AK Balaji judgment of the Madras high court against 31 foreign law firms has been tentatively scheduled to finally happen on 20 November 2017, with the Supreme Court registry giving the green light in a 3 October order (see below), noting that all defects in service had now been cured.

Start-up law firm MNSA Legal - founded in May 2015 - has tied up with a global law firm network younger than itself - Cathay Associates - in an exclusive referral arrangement in a bid to attract more Chinese and European work.

J Sagar Associates (JSA) has opened an office in the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) special economic zone (SEZ), after SEZ rules had recently seen a liberalisation that allows legal services providers to operate from there.