It is not just the Indian techies who are at the receiving end of protectionism and the global downturn.
It is not just the Indian techies who are at the receiving end of protectionism and the global downturn.
Many Indian lawyers currently working with the UK law firms, too, are facing the cold winds of protectionism, though this time, the fences have come up closer to home.
British law firms, which recruited around 200 corporate lawyers from Delhi more than two years ago, are starting to send many of them back to India as the country’s legal services industry failed to open up. Almost half of the lawyers, most of whom were employed with top-notch firms such as Luthra & Luthra and Amarchand Mangaldas before they left India, have come back over the last four months, according to industry sources.
“I got a call a few days from one of my ex-employees,” says the chief of a big law firm in Delhi. “She wanted to come back and join us, but I told her the only job now available is that of a housemaid.”
Reports from Delhi are corroborated by those from London. Says a lawyer, still in London, who has seen many of his friends pack up and leave, “I believe that lawyers may find it difficult to look for ready alternatives, at least in the UK as there are scores of CVs floating around, and not just of India-qualified lawyers.”
In the relatively closed community of corporate law firms, most people estimate that around half of the 200 or so lawyers would have returned.
The foreign firm story has gone wrong due to two factors — the delay in the opening up of the Indian legal services industry and the global downturn.
India is obliged under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules to open up its legal services sector to foreign firms.
In anticipation, several large British law firms, which already deal with a legal system similar to India’s, starting setting up ‘India desks’ in 2006. This process ran into rough weather in the wake of law-suits and tough lobbying by Indian law firms, which see foreign players as threat.
“When you open up legal services, you are opening up the administration of justice, to foreigners,” says senior lawyer and general secretary of the Bar Association of India,
Lalit Bhasin.
Bhasin says the principle of reciprocity — where both countries benefit equally from opening up their economies — does not apply in the context of India and countries like Britain. “If an Indian lawyer wants to go to the UK, getting a work permit is so difficult. In India, we don’t have such restrictions. They can easily get a visa,” he says.
Nevertheless, Britain has kept up the pressure on India to open up the legal sector, the most recent being a visit early this month by Allison Hook, head of international, the Law Society of England.
For the lawyers caught in the crossfire, there are no easy alternatives. “Most of them eventually wanted to return to India when the sector would open up in two years and the foreign firms could establish their branches here,” says another Indian lawyer in London. “Because of this, most of them did not try to take the necessary exam and complete the formalities for being admitted as solicitors in England and Wales,” he says.
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}