You keep the client. We make you full-service on India.
Law firms outside India are regularly asked Indian questions by clients they have advised for twenty years, and referring the whole relationship to a global firm is rarely the answer anybody wants. We work as the India arm of firms in that position. The instruction stays with you, the Indian work is done here, and the client sees one team.
What we are usually asked to do
How we work with instructing firms
One named partner owns the relationship. Scope and fee are agreed in writing before work starts, on a fixed basis wherever the task allows. We report in the format your client already receives from you, under your covering note if you prefer. We do not approach your client and we do not accept instructions from them directly without your knowledge. Conflicts are cleared before the engagement letter is issued, in both directions.
Engagement and fees
Each firm is engaged separately by the client and each bills for its own work. We do not share fees, split commissions or invoice jointly, and the professional rules in India and in most of the jurisdictions we work with require exactly that. Reciprocal referral is the arrangement and it is the professional norm.
For in-house teams
Where there is no instructing firm and the general counsel is dealing with India directly, we work the same way and simply remove a layer. Many of our longest relationships began with a single question from a legal department that had been quoted three weeks and a large number by somebody else.