New ethical guidelines for lawyers would be ready by the end of this year, Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman and solicitor general Gopal Subramanium told a number of papers, in contrast to earlier plans to have the rules adopted by October 2010.

Subramanium told a variety of media over the weekend: “We are trying to frame new ‘ethical guidelines code’ based on international principles. The guidelines have been published in the draft form. Now it will be circulated widely for various stakeholders and we will go into it elaborately and notify the new code hopefully before the end of the year.”

But in August 2010 Subramanium told Legally India that he hoped the new draft ethics rules, which would be modelled on South Africa’s lawyers’ ethics rules, would be adopted at the next BCI meeting in October 2010.

Subramanium was unavailable for comment at the time of going to press.