New Delhi: On one Saturday in April, BJP leader Naveen Jindal posted a video on X that immediately went viral. It showed a Mercedes, a Jaguar, a Maybach, a BMW, among a row of luxury cars parked outside the Supreme Court in New Delhi. “This is not an auto expo, but the spot where select Supreme Court lawyers park their cars,” said the post, with the title track from the movie Race playing in the background.
On Instagram, senior advocate Aman Lekhi is known to share pictures of his Ferrari. In one post, the iconic red car, with its top down, is parked on the street, with the Supreme Court building as the backdrop. In the comments section, a lawyer wrote, “This is exactly what I dream [of] sir.” Lekhi’s response: “You will have it too.”
Litigation continues to be a tough terrain, especially in the formative years, with lawyers being paid as low as Rs 10-15,000 a month, or even working for the “experience”.
However, the world of non-litigating lawyers—including those in corporate law, regulatory compliance, intellectual property, banking and finance, and foreign investment and cross border compliances—is another one altogether.
The flashy cars are just one facet of what appears to be the changing face of this aspect of the legal profession. Gone are the days when lawyers were pictured clad in black and white, setting up desks outside courts. Now, ask people to imagine a lawyer and they’ll think of Harvey Specter from the American TV drama Suits—suave, dressed in the finest suits, shooting off memorable quips in air-conditioned conference rooms.
This transformation began with India’s shift towards free markets in 1991, which opened the door for the development of what Harvard Law School calls a ‘corporate hemisphere’ for the legal industry—a transaction-focused practice.
Today, this can mean lavish parties, dinner meetings at upscale restaurants, business class travel, five-star hotel stays, and all-inclusive law firm retreats in exotic locations like Greece, Bali, Langkawi, and Shanghai for a large section of legal professionals.
ये कोई ऑटो एक्सपो नहीं बल्कि सुप्रीम कोर्ट के चुनिंदा वकीलों की पार्किंग हैं pic.twitter.com/GNdTGQvzJ1
— Naveen kr Jindal (@naveenjindalbjp) April 19, 2025
While this corporate hemisphere entered its youth in the 2020s, the advent of technology and artificial intelligence has once again begun to disrupt the legal space, democratising it like never before. For more and more lawyers, the world—or rather, the court and conference room—is their oyster.
As Naina Krishnamurthy, founder and managing partner at law firm K Law, puts it—the legal profession is having its moment right now.
Rise of the ‘corporate hemisphere’
The evolution of the legal profession is best understood by the change in how lawyers are depicted in Hindi legal dramas. Sunny Deol’s dramatic “tareekh pe tareekh” courtroom dialogue from the 1993 movie Damini has given way to a stoic battery of lawyers defending their pharmaceutical company bosses in a conference room in Netflix’s Dabba Cartel (2025). Even the types of cases have evolved, such as cases linked to copyright infringement or artificial intelligence (AI) in Amazon Prime’s Guilty Minds (2022).
Krishnamurthy told ThePrint, “Since I graduated (in 1996), look at the number of M&A (merger and acquisition) deals, the number of private equity funds that have been set up, and the volume of transaction work that has begun in India. And there’s enough work for everyone.”
An ongoing research project at the Harvard Law School Center, titled the ‘Legal Profession’s Globalisation, Lawyers, and Emerging Economies (GLEE)’, mapped the developing corporate hemisphere of the bar in emerging economies, including India. GLEE’s research on India was published in a book titled The Indian Legal Profession in the Age of Globalisation: The Rise of the Corporate Legal Sector and its Impact on Lawyers and Society. According to this book, the transformation of the Indian economy necessitated new laws, regulations and administrative apparatus. Naturally, this led to an increased demand for lawyers who specialise in this new regulatory setup.
Abhyuday Agarwal, co-founder and COO of LawSikho, said there is much more to being a lawyer today than just litigation, working at a law firm, or being an in-house counsel.
“India has more regulations now, and companies care more about compliance and regulation. Businesses earlier were informal, but they rapidly started formalising after the introduction of UPI, and the pandemic,” he explained.
There has also been a multinational corporation (MNC) revolution in the country, Agarwal added.
“Currently, there are 1,700-1,800 MNCs in the country, but in the next 5 years, this number will grow by 700 to 1,000 MNCs. They are going to hire people in different capacities, including lawyers, for their Indian and global compliance and legal work,” he told ThePrint. And according to him, a lot of this will happen in tier 2 and tier 3 cities because the companies see cost advantages and a big talent pool there.
Law firms, he said, are also expanding to tier 2 cities because these cities are seeing a rapid expansion of real estate and infrastructure growth.
Apart from law firms, Krishnamurthy said, in-house teams at companies have also grown over the years. “When I started the profession, the in-house team at a company would primarily be a conduit to engage outside counsel. But today in-house counsel have so much more control over how legal work and sometimes even business is done.”
Plus, she adds, India is a much more litigious society today.
Also Read: Lineage runs deep in India’s Supreme Court. 60% judges are from lawyer or judge families
From dispute resolution to deal-making
Pratik Patnaik, partner at law firm Samvād: Partners, pointed to an increase in law firms catering to deal-making, not only in the post-liberalisation era, but also significantly in the last decade or so.
“One driver of this is the volume of FDI commitment flowing through to India, as well as the increase in mergers and acquisitions activity in India,” he told ThePrint.
A Press Information Bureau release from December last year showed that, between April 2014 and September 2024, the total Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows into India amounted to $709.84 billion, accounting for 68.69 percent of the overall inflow in the past 24 years.
A partner at a Delhi-based law firm, on the condition of anonymity, told ThePrint it is also because of labour arbitrage—the practice of finding workforce in locations where the wages may be lower than in other locations.
The India Business Law Journal’s annual Billing Rates Survey 2024 showed that hourly billing rates for junior and senior associate categories were pegged at $142 (approx Rs 12,000) and $203 (Rs 17,000), respectively, while a junior partner could charge around $288 (Rs 24,000) per hour. The survey, conducted with 50 law firms from 9 cities, also said senior partners could charge $348 (Rs 29,000) per hour, while the hourly rates of managing partners stood at $458 (Rs 39,000).
The law firm partner quoted above said that at some of the biggest law firms, foreign clients are usually charged downwards of $650 (Rs 55,000) per hour. Hourly rates for associates range between $150 to $200, between $250 to $325 for senior associates, and between $325 to $400 for principal associates. Partners can charge around $400 to $500, and senior partners can charge $500 to $650.
As for Indian clients, he told ThePrint that the rates would work back downwards of Rs 35,000. “So the associates will start off from Rs 8,500 to 12,500, senior associates could charge around Rs 14,500 to 16,500 per hour, principal associates could charge between Rs 18,500 to 22,500, while partners can charge around Rs 25,000 per hour and elite partners can quote around Rs 35,000 per hour.”
However, he added, “Most deals happen at a blended rate, which is a rate across all categories of lawyers, because you may have more associates working on a deal than partners, so you’d give that a discount. And the blend in India is between Rs 8,500 to Rs 14,500 an hour for the top firms.”
This is what he calls an “elite billing model”. However, he told ThePrint that there is a fixed-fee model as well. “So, for example, let’s say, in a million-dollar transaction, legal fees will be 1 percent or 3 percent of the transaction.”
As for salaries, the India Salary Guide 2025, released by Michael Page, shows that lawyers with 3-5 years of experience in in-house roles in companies continue to command a base salary of 7 to 45 lakh per annum. For lawyers with 10-15 years of experience, this number could go up to 1.5 crore per annum.
Legal education evolution
With the changes in the legal industry, simultaneously, the legal education sector also began gearing up to cater to the increasing demand in the market.
The first national law school was set up in Bengaluru in 1987, paving the way for structured and focused legal education that could produce a highly skilled workforce suited to the increasingly globalised institutions. Before that, the only option available to become a lawyer was to pursue a three-year undergraduate degree, and then a traditional three-year law degree.
“When it started, NLSIU was one of its kind, in terms of the professional legal course that it introduced…When we graduated, we even had campus recruitments, which were unheard of at the time, which is now par for the course. So, to that extent, the colour of the legal profession had started changing slowly,” Krishnamurthy explained.
However, she said, the compensation in the industry took some time to catch up. “Each year, the reputation of these lawyers from the law schools became better and better, which led to a gradual increase in the base fee for lawyers.”
Does that make law schools the new IITs or IIMs?
Not yet, but they “are on the path to,” according to Sherbir Panag, founder and managing partner of law firm Panag & Babu. The five-year law course pioneered by NLSIU Bengaluru “brought in a sense of competitiveness”, and the centralised examination system also made the process hyper-competitive.
According to Delhi-based litigation lawyer, the reason for the increased affluence in the legal profession may be tied to “excellence” in the profession.
“The reason that these places are paying higher money is because they are looking for excellence, which is why most of these law firms are trying to hire from the best of colleges, or trying to pick the cream out of all the colleges in the country, and also spend time and money in training them,” she told ThePrint. “If you look at some of the top-paid lawyers in the country, you’ll see that they bring about a new level of nuance and excellence to the profession.”
Although there is no official data on the number of law graduates and law schools in the country, the government told the Rajya Sabha in 2023 that there were over 20 lakh lawyers registered with the state bar councils in the country. Another response in the Parliament from 2022 revealed that a total of 1,721 law colleges and universities were operating in the country at the time.
However, Panag also points to the disparity between the “elite” pool of lawyers graduating from top universities and others, saying, “There also needs to be a conversation around the quality of legal education, and the significant number of new law schools that have emerged.”
Startup boom & the ‘Shark Tank’ lawyer
Among other things, Vinayak Burman describes himself, on social media, as a “founder’s best friend”. That is also the idea behind the law firm Vertices Partners, co-founded by Burman in 2016.
“I asked myself: Can I build a firm which would be known as the founder’s go-to firm, and can I build a firm which will focus on today’s mid-market? Because today’s mid-market is tomorrow’s bulge-bracket,” he told ThePrint.
“At that time, entrepreneurship wasn’t as celebrated as it is today. The Shark Tank syndrome had not even come into India,” he added, referring to the business TV show that revolves around entrepreneurship.
However, since then, India has established itself as the third-largest startup ecosystem in the world. An official government statement from February this year, titled India’s Startup Revolution, said the number of Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT)-recognised startups had risen from 502 in 2016 to 1,57,706 as of 31 December 2024. There were over 100 unicorns, it added.
Law firms and advisers quickly saw the benefit of advising these new-age businesses a betting on the fact that they could evolve into large-stake players. For Burman and other lawyers catering to the startup space, this means being more than just a legal adviser to the founders.
“After a point in time, you are not just a lawyer for the founder. You’re a confidant to the founder, someone the founder looks up to, talks to, discusses and shares things with. A good adviser is someone who becomes a trusted confidant,” Burman added.
Also Read: Let’s talk about red tape, cash flow, say Indian startup founders
Litigation remains a tough field
This affluence, however, does not extend to juniors in litigation. “Litigation is extremely top-heavy. There are people making a lot of money, but the younger ones continue to struggle. I know people who are still being paid 15 to 20 thousand in Delhi. You can’t even pay your rent in that amount,” a lawyer practising in Delhi, quoted earlier, told ThePrint.
“The generation perception in litigation, unfortunately, is that the initial 5-10 years are for ‘learning,’” she told ThePrint.
However, she said, on condition of anonymity, that the experience remains varied, with a new crop of lawyers who may not be paying their juniors decent money, but allowing them to take their own work on the side.
“There is enough affluence flowing into the profession, but it needs to trickle down a little bit more,” Gupta added.
In comparison, a partner at another Delhi-based law firm told ThePrint that at tier-1 law firms, the associates start at 15 to 18 lakh per annum, while salaried partners at most elite law firms make around Rs 1 crore a year.
“Once you become an equity partner or a senior advocate, the sky is the limit,” he said.
Sherbir Panag also said there was a lack of innovation in the legal industry.
“Law firms in India, just like world-over, are poorly managed businesses, with our own legacy issues of family-owned structures and opaque equity structures. We haven’t had any real innovation in the market, despite there being more affluence and growth in the market,” he asserted.
The “harsh reality”, he said, is that while the market has expanded and there are more opportunities for young lawyers now than before, there is also a “mass disparity” in the market on how many jobs the legal industry can offer versus the number of graduates. A structured approach to foreign law firms entering India needs to happen on a war footing, he added.
Democratisation of law
A few months ago, Dr Arvind Singhatiya, the founder of LegalKart, shared the story of a 31-year-old lawyer who went from earning Rs 40,000 a month to 48 lakh a year by working with the platform.
Singhatiya started LegalKart in 2019 with the idea of connecting practicing lawyers of varied expertise with people who need legal advice. The interaction takes place through its app over a confidential call.
“I was the head of legal policy for Ola cabs, so my inspiration comes from Ola, and from connecting the user with the drivers,” Singhatiya told ThePrint.
The over 17,000 lawyers on the platform share their per-minute rates, which start at Rs 31 per minute, and can go up to Rs 101 or even Rs 500 per minute. The platform is accessible 24/7, and 20 percent of the calls are from outside India, according to Singhatiya. Another 35 percent of the calls come from tier 2, tier 3 and tier 4 cities.
“So we have a lawyer from Kadapa, which is a small city near Hyderabad, and that lawyer is now catering to someone sitting in Delhi as well. Earlier, for a Kadapa lawyer, the geographical location was restricted to only their local area,” Singhatiya explained.
This is just one example of how technology has democratised the field and opened up new avenues for lawyers to earn money.
Another example is LawSikho, which started training lawyers post-pandemic to take up international legal remote work.
“Post-pandemic, we started training our students to take up international remote work because suddenly, for a 6-7 month period, domestic jobs had dried up. We began with US intellectual property-related assignments, and moved to international contracts and data protection,” founder Agarwal told ThePrint.
“You are not formally qualified as a lawyer in a foreign jurisdiction unless you crack their bar exam, but you can assist clients as a paralegal, which itself is very rewarding.”
The integration of AI has also levelled the playing field. Firms like Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, one of India’s top firms, for instance, use AI and machine-learning tools for tasks such as due diligence, proofreading and editing, contract review, evidence management, litigation strategy, legal research, and intellectual property.
So despite legal tech being in its nascent stages, Singhatiya said, “for example, a two-year experienced newcomer lawyer who just freshly passed out from the university can know a better or a similar kind of drafting when compared with a person who has 20 years of experience.”
“Of course, the strategy and the approach are something which will obviously differ with the experience, but the majority part is well taken care of with the help of technology.”
However, Samvād: Partners’s Patnaik says that thinning margins in the legal industry are pushing the profession toward commodification. However, he believes that the thoughtful, ethical, and transparent use of AI offers a way to resist this drift, allowing firms to handle larger volumes of work without sacrificing the bespoke nature of legal advice.
“Earlier, legal services were never treated as a commodity. Even documents for the same parties had to be drafted afresh, with close attention to detail,” he explains. “But with mounting pressure on turnaround times and margins, there is a growing tendency to treat legal documents like non-specialty coffee, you just change the bottle and deliver.”
In contrast, Patnaik argues that when used responsibly, AI can reinforce the craft of lawyering. “It can help lawyers focus on tasks that require judgment and nuance, while automating the mechanical. That is how you scale without losing quality.”
Non-traditional avenues
Then, there are the non-traditional legal spaces, such as law firm management. Here, the work involves charting the growth plan for a law firm and implementing it, from human resources, finance and culture to client feedback, client relationship training and coaching law firm partners. It even includes stress management training and soft skill training.
“There are people who study law for their interest in the field, but who want to stay connected with the field of law without practising it. All of this led to law firms waking up to the idea of having people to manage and run some of the business support functions,” explained Nipun Bhatia, CEO of Legal League Consulting.
“If you get these professionals from other industries, they don’t know how lawyers function, but somebody from the same profession does.”
However, he said, law firms are also increasingly seeking out top-level corporate executives (CXO-level), relying on CEOs, CTOs, and COOs to manage the business-side of things.
“Earlier, this was confined to a few elite firms, but now, firms with less than 75 or even 50 members have fledged professional support to take care of their non-key earning roles,” he explained.
For instance, Bhatia pointed out that with AI entering the legal space, Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) are also increasingly finding a prominent place in law firms.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
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This was made possible by my godship and lawyer’s lovely marriage. The majority of litigious societies are not necessarily utopian.