Lalit Bhasin just called the BCI’s rules on liberalisation a “bad piece of drafting”

The swords are out, make no mistake about that. At (yet another) event on the liberalisation of the legal market, SILF President Lalit Bhasin tore into the proposed rules drafted by the Bar Council of India. Describing the rules as a “bad piece of drafting”, Bhasin said that were the rules to be implemented, it would be a complete “disaster”.

He also questioned the right of the Bar Council of India to represent the Indian legal community as a whole.

“The BCI does not represent the legal profession, it’s the regulatory body. It is the bar associations that represent the legal profession”

These comments come one day before the SILF is required to submit its comments on the BCI’s draft rules on the liberalisation of the Indian legal market.

Bhasin’s comments were made at the Jindal Global Event on Liberalisation of the Legal Market held in Delhi today. The event saw a broad range of panelists, including the Joint Secretary (Ministry of Commerce) Sudhanshu Pandey, Luthra & Luthra’s Rajiv Luthra, Samvad Partners’ Siddharth Raja, Nishith Desai’s Pratibha Jain and Everstone Capital’s General Counsel, PM Devaiah with the panel being moderated by Professor Rajkumar.

The Union of India, or at least the Commerce Ministry, seems to be quite clear about the opening up of the legal market. Pandey remarked that liberalisation would be “success story” but this required domestic reforms to provide a “level playing field”. Specifically mentioning limitations on the right to advertise, Pandey also added that there was a pressing need for the “right kind of governance” in the Indian legal market.

The need for a “level playing field” was reiterated by Samvad’s Raja, who said that limitations on law firms included the fact that law firms do not have access to working capital credit.

Rajiv Luthra, unlike Bhasin, was slightly more circumspect. The founder of one of the country’s largest law firms said that domestic law firms are already entering into exchange programmes with law firms, as well as facilitating “internal training”. Luthra clarified that what was needed was a “blue print” on how liberalisation would take place.

But perhaps the most interesting point of view came from Everstone’s PM Devaiah who said that international law firms are far superior to domestic law firms when it comes to learnings.

“It is a completely different experience working with international law firms.”