There is a quiet frustration that runs through almost every business development professional working at an Indian law firm. They feel it in meetings where partners talk over them. They feel it when the annual budget gets cut before it is even properly spent. They feel it most acutely when they are held accountable for outcomes they were never actually given the tools to deliver.
It is not a people problem. India has some genuinely talented BD and marketing professionals working in the legal sector. The problem is structural, and until firms acknowledge it honestly, nothing will change.
Partners Do Not Actually Believe in BD
This is the uncomfortable truth that nobody in a law firm will say out loud.
Most senior partners at Indian law firms built their practice the old-fashioned way, through relationships, referrals, and reputation built over decades. They got their first clients through introductions. They grew their practice through trust. BD, in their experience, is what happens naturally when you do good work.
That mindset is not wrong. But it is incomplete for the market Indian firms are competing in today. When a global private equity fund is selecting Indian outside counsel, they are not relying on a partner's personal relationship. They are looking at directories, at thought leadership, at the firm's digital presence, and at what their peers say. The relationship still matters, but it now needs to be supported by everything else.
Until the senior partnership genuinely believes that BD is a revenue driver and not a support function, the BD head will always be fighting for a seat at a table they were never really invited to.
The Budget Does Not Match the Ambition
Ask a managing partner what their firm's BD and marketing budget is as a percentage of revenue. Then ask them what they want the firm to look like in five years, ranked in Chambers, known internationally, winning cross-border mandates, attracting lateral hires from the best firms in the country.
The gap between those two answers is where BD goes to die.
Indian law firms consistently underspend on marketing relative to the outcomes they expect. A firm with fifty lawyers and ambitions to compete with the top tier cannot achieve that on a BD budget that is primarily spent on directory submission fees, a conference sponsorship, and a website that has not been updated in three years.
The BD head knows this. They have probably said it in several meetings. But without the partnership's genuine commitment to investment, they are being asked to build a skyscraper with the budget for a garden shed.
BD Has Responsibility Without Authority
This is perhaps the most corrosive dynamic in Indian law firm BD.
The BD head is responsible for the firm's profile, its rankings, its pitches, its client events, and its marketing collateral. But they cannot decide which matters to highlight in a directory submission without partner sign-off. They cannot approve a rebrand without a partners' committee vote. They cannot commit to a speaking slot at a conference without chasing three different people for approval.
Every decision goes back to the partnership. And the partnership, quite understandably, has other things to focus on.
The result is a BD function that moves at the speed of a committee when the market moves at the speed of a competitor who has already published the thought leadership piece, already submitted to the directory, already secured the speaking slot.
The Metrics Are Wrong
In most Indian law firms, BD is measured on activity, how many events were organised, how many newsletters were sent, how many submissions were filed. These are easy to count and largely meaningless as measures of business impact.
The firms that are getting BD right, and there are a handful in India beginning to do this, are measuring it differently. They are tracking which BD activities lead to new instructions. They are measuring the firm's share of voice in key practice areas. They are correlating directory ranking improvements with inbound enquiries. They are treating BD like the revenue function it actually is.
Until BD is measured on outcomes rather than outputs, it will continue to be seen as a cost centre rather than a growth driver.
What Actually Needs to Change
None of this is unfixable. But fixing it requires honesty from the partnership, not just from the BD team.
It requires partners to accept that the way they built their practice is not the only way, and that the next generation of work will be won differently. It requires a genuine budget commitment, not a token allocation. It requires giving BD professionals the authority to make decisions, not just recommendations. And it requires measuring success in a way that connects BD activity to firm revenue.
The BD heads at Indian law firms are not failing. The system they are operating in is failing them.
The firms that recognise this first, and restructure accordingly, will be the ones that look very different five years from now.
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Pant & Co works with law firms across India on business development strategy, branding, and market positioning. If this piece resonated with you, we would be glad to have a conversation.