Pro Bono and Corporate Legal Sector in India

Abstract

The corporate legal sector in India is growing at a spectacular pace in terms of its size, reach, areas of expertise and revenue. Within the last couple of decades, it has emerged as one of the most important constituents of the Indian legal profession, and an important player in global legal marketplace. Due to the recent origins of this development and the paucity of studies on it, there is a great deal of curiosity about the functioning of different aspects of India’s corporate legal sector. One such aspect is the extent and kind of engagement of Indian law firms with pro bono work. This study seeks to fill an important knowledge gap by undertaking a qualitative empirical research on the pro bono practices of the top-tier corporate law firms in India. It relies upon a detailed questionnaire survey as the primary tool to map and analyse the following four aspects of corporate pro bono practice in India: the extent of institutionalization of pro bono among the firms under study, the range of pro bono and other socially-oriented activities being undertaken by them, their shared understanding of the term pro bono; and the factors influencing the pro bono culture among the Indian corporate law firms.

Keywords: pro bono, institutionalization, PIL, globalization, Indian corporate legal sector