On March 17, the Bar Council of India issued a stern statement warning advocates against the “increasingly prevalent and unethical practice of advocates advertising their legal services”. It prohibited the use of “Bollywood actors, celebrities, and digital media platforms as promotional tools” since law is a “noble profession”, not a “commercial business venture”.
The trigger: a promotional video by law firm DSK Legal starring actor Rahul Bose.
The Bar Council, the statutory body governing lawyers in India, pointed to its rules which prohibit advocates from soliciting work or advertising, directly or indirectly. The council also cited a 2024 Madras High Court judgment emphasising that the law is a “noble profession”. Promotional activities via online platforms, the court ruled, according to the Bar Council’s press release, “severely compromise ethical standards and professional integrity”.
This move reignited a long-standing debate within the legal community. Should lawyers be allowed to advertise their legal services? The reactions of lawyers that Scroll spoke with revealed a fissure within the legal community.
Some lawyers view the bar on advertising as essential for maintaining the dignity of the profession and preventing monopolies by large law firms. Others see the prohibition, at least in its current form, as outdated.
They point to the unavoidable reality of promotions in the digital age and argue for clear, modern regulations rather than a blanket ban that may stymie new lawyers from building their practices.
‘Noble profession’ versus modern reality
The basis of the ban lies in the concept of law as a profession driven by social service, not commercial gain. This idea, many lawyers note, distinguishes the legal profession from purely commercial ventures.
Advocate and writer Kaleeswaram Raj, who practices in the Supreme Court and the Kerala High Court, traces this idea back to the anti-colonial movement. “The ban on advertising has a strong ethical foundation,” he argued. “The Indian legal profession has its historical base in India’s freedom struggle. It was not treated as a mere commercial activity.”
However, other lawyers see this as an outdated concept. Delhi-based advocate and writer Rohin Bhatt called it a “remnant from the colonial era”, arguing that the legal landscape has changed.
Delhi-based advocate Nipun Saxena agreed. He said that the “nobility” of the legal profession is linked to the idea that lawyers are officers of the court. This historical justification, he acknowledged, does not always hold true in the face of the practical needs of lawyers and their clients today.
Level playing field
Several lawyers strongly advocate for maintaining the prohibition on advertisements. Their arguments centred on insulating the profession from potentially corrosive market pressures.
Delhi-based Advocate on Record Anshul Gupta emphasised preserving professional standards and protecting clients from misleading claims. Allowing advertising, he feared, could lead to “very bad consequences” such as lawyers promoting “misleading information” about their success rates to secure clients.
The underlying assumption is that advertising inherently risks putting profit over professional duty.
However, Bhatt referred to a US study from the 1980s. It suggested that allowing lawyers to advertise actually made legal services more affordable. This challenges the notion that commercialisation inevitably harms clients.
Fairness was another major concern. Some lawyers underscored fears that advertising could consolidate market power among lawyers with more resources rather than democratise access to clients for lawyers.
“Big law firms with deep pockets will be the ones to exploit the opportunity to advertise,” warned Saxena. They would overshadow brilliant individual lawyers who lack funds for large promotional campaigns, he said.
Delhi-based advocate Bilal Khan echoed this. “A fresher who neither has an established practice nor resources will find it next to impossible to market himself,” he said.
Khan said that the current system of lawyers getting work through client referrals promotes merit. “If clients are satisfied with a lawyer’s work, they will spread positive word-of-mouth,” he argued. “In the absence of advertising, the parameters of client satisfaction and hard work create a level playing field among lawyers.”
Saxena underlined the promotion of merit when it came to the current system. He said that a lawyer’s “performance is all that matters” for building a practice through referrals.
However, Delhi-based lawyer Gautam Khazanchi disagreed. He contended that the lack of advertising actually hinders public access to legal help. He suggested that it makes it harder for ordinary people to find suitable lawyers for particular kinds of cases, potentially impacting access to justice itself.
Raj disagreed that advertising played much of a role in discovering good lawyers. “A litigant has the right to know about lawyers, of course,” he acknowledged. However, information about lawyers must, he said, ought to come from “legitimate sources” – word of mouth publicity and client referrals rather than advertisements by lawyers themselves.
Would advertising help or hinder new lawyers? While Khan and Gupta felt that advertising would disadvantage new lawyers without an established family practice, Bhatt argued the current ban hurts them more. “This ban often hurts first-generation lawyers and lawyers from marginalised backgrounds,” he said. “They don’t have the social and structural capital to build a practice.”
Saxena countered that first-generation lawyers would not have the funds to compete if advertising were allowed. Allowing lawyers to advertise would potentially worsen their position against established firms or “generational lawyers”, he said.
Out-of-date
Some lawyers argued that the ban is out of sync with current times, highlighting a disconnect between the rule’s intent and its application in a media-saturated environment. A significant problem with the ban, these lawyers said, is the lack of clarity on what exactly qualifies as advertising. The line between permissible information sharing and prohibited advertising is blurry, especially online.
Rule 36 of the Bar Council of India rules, which bans advertising by lawyers, covers not just direct advertisements but also alludes to indirect advertising. Within this, it refers to using the media for self-promotion, such as offering comments for news stories or interviews to newspapers.
But lawyers routinely write in newspapers and provide comments for media stories. This suggests a gap between the letter of the law and its practical enforcement over time, explained Delhi-based Senior Advocate Mohan Katarki.
“Even personal communication is impermissible by Rule 36,” Katarki told Scroll. “If so, even handing over a visiting card is not permissible.” According to him, except open solicitation and paid advertisement, the rest of the directives in Rule 36 regarding indirect advertisement are not implemented. “They are in disuse and have arguably lost validity,” he said.
Bhatt pointed out that lawyers already advertise indirectly through social media posts. Some lawyers pose with celebrity clients or appear in clips with their comments to media channels. “Making reels and podcasts about one’s work: are these not forms of advertisement?” Bhatt asked.
Khazanchi said that some lawyers use public relations firms to get media coverage of successful cases.
The implication was that the ban may be failing to curb promotional activities, merely pushing them into indirect channels.
Khazanchi and Bhatt emphasised the need for the Bar Council of India to provide clear, updated guidelines on what qualifies as advertising. According to Bhatt, without such clarity, lawyers operate in a grey area, unsure of compliance.
Dilemma over digital directories
The Bar Council’s focus on online legal directories highlights a key area where traditional rules may struggle to keep pace with the modern media landscape. The Bar Council press release said that in July 2024, it had mandated “immediate disciplinary action against advocates engaging in unethical advertising or solicitation of work” through online portals such as Quikr, Sulekha, Just Dial and Grotal. It had also directed these online platforms to remove all listings, profiles and advertisements related to advocates. This followed the 2024 Madras High Court order ruling advertisements by lawyers on these platforms contrary to the Bar Council’s rules.
However, these platforms continue to provide listings for lawyers.
Saxena drew a distinction between online legal directories that provide the contact details of lawyers and those that actively promote lawyers who might pay them. Some online aggregators, he argued, often engage in problematic practices such as paid rankings of lawyers in return for commissions.
However, simple online directories that only list contact details must be seen as mere informational repositories, similar to old phone books, said Khazanchi. The challenge, according to Khazanchi and Saxena, lies in differentiating platforms that passively provide information from those actively facilitating client acquisition.
It is unclear whether the Bar Council’s ban applies to all online legal directories or only to those that commit the problematic practices that Saxena alluded to.
Sulekha’s appeal against the Madras High Court judgement is pending before the Supreme Court.
