A postcard from India

Chris Parsons, who recently stepped down as chairman of Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer’s India practice, looks back with warmth and candour on the remarkable transformation of India’s legal landscape over the past two decades

Little did I know in 2005 that India was about to become my second home for the next 20 years. Earlier in my 40-year career at Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) Kramer (as it was to become), I had spent time on secondment to our Hong Kong and Singapore offices. On returning to London in 2004, our then-senior partner (David Gold) came into my office and noticed I looked rather glum after my travels to Asia, so he asked if I would like to get involved in India as chair of our new India executive. I didn’t need to be asked twice. My love affair with India was about to start.

Taking my inspiration from Alastair Cook’s Letter from America, each time I returned from a trip to India, I produced what I called a Postcard from India in which I tried to capture the essence of each visit, complete with photographs. I shared this with our India leadership team and wider India group. Through these postcards, I was able to chronicle my observations of India over what has proved an extraordinary 20 years.

I have recently retired and, for the purposes of this article, I have tried to capture what has struck me most about the Indian legal landscape between 2005 and 2025. These are my personal observations and not those of HSF Kramer.

Indian law firms

When I first landed at the old Mumbai airport with its handful of craft shops, I was to discover a small legal elite heading just three firms — Amarchand & Mangaldas, AZB and JSA. Amarchand was the market leader, having been established in 1917 and now being led by Cyril Shroff in Mumbai and Shardul Shroff in New Delhi. JSA had been established in the early 1990s by Jyoti Sagar and was primarily a New Delhi firm, but was expanding rapidly in Mumbai under the leadership of Berjis Desai. AZB had only been created in 2004 and was led in Mumbai by Zia Mody and Bahram Vakil, and in Delhi by Ajay Bahl. This legal royalty was unlike any senior lawyers I had met before on my international travels, given their deep personal links to the families that dominated corporate India.

Khaitan & Co was essentially a Kolkata law firm with a presence in Mumbai through its recent office opening, backed by Haigreve Khaitan. Trilegal had been founded in 2000 by a group of ex-National Law School students, but had only just begun to register its presence on the radar of leading firms.

Despite their status, what I will stress at the outset is how welcoming this group of senior lawyers was to a relatively young newcomer from Herbert Smith in London.