Cogent Social Sciences (Dec 2024)
Outline of legal practice in India: developing the future of the Indian Legal Profession
Abstract
In contemporary legal India, it is critical to obtain a deeper understanding of the preexisting structure of Legal Practice in India. While exploring post-1991 change, we must also understand the impact of Liberalization, Privatization, and Globalization, particularly Globalization toward law practice in India. Law practice, predominantly litigation, and corporate law firms, has a significant impact on India’s socioeconomic as well as political structure. Besides, such a deeper understanding not only provides the context of the topic, theme, or purpose but also assists in constructing a relatively common factual or analytical base. This analytical and deep understanding shared by many of the prominent legal dignitaries, which can be found common, helps to understand and interpret the law in a better way. In light of this, the growth in the legal profession has been impressive, but the ground realities should not be stayed untouched. This review article has endeavored to modify the typology of the Indian Legal Profession. The base has been relied upon in the US corporate legal market. The reasons were that Western corporate firms and in-house legal departments were the first to develop and are generally acclaimed as being the best in the world. Second, even Indian lawyers who prefer not to adopt the American model often define their approach in opposition to the American model, making the comparison more relevant. Third, given India’s increasing interactions with the global marketplace, Indian law firms, their employees, and their clients are likely to have more direct exposure to US and UK corporate law firms and legal departments. Finally, to the extent that the new corporate legal market in India has developed in part in perceptions about the Anglo-American corporate legal market, changes in the latter market may foretell changes that will affect the Indian legal market in the coming years. This is particularly of interest because some of the realignment of corporate legal services markets in the United States and the United Kingdom are precipitated by globalization—which is one of the key drivers of change in the Indian legal market and its future.
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