Just two years ago India’s market–where foreign firms are not allowed to have offices, much less practice Indian law–seemed to be on the verge of opening up. Law minister Hansraj Bhardwaj had made liberalization a priority and urged the domestic legal profession to accept its inevitability.
“We certainly thought, given all the public utterances that were coming from the government of India at the time, that liberalization was sooner rather than later,” recalls Jonathan Brayne, the London-based head of Allen & Overy‘s India group.
