A lateral hire does not buy an India practice. It buys an option on one, and in this corridor the option has a shorter life than in most others.
Two events this year: On 1 July 2026, Hogan Lovells and Cadwalader launched as a combined firm of more than 3,200 lawyers, in what the firm describes as the largest law firm merger in history. On 28 October, the management committee of Weil, Gotshal & Manges with around 1,200 lawyers, revenue reported above USD2 billion, founded in 1931, recommended a wind-down, after its corporate department chair left for Cravath with colleagues, a private equity partner left for Paul Weiss, merger talks with Willkie Farr & Gallagher did not conclude, and the incoming leader declined the role.
In HogLove there is an India corridor practice with three lawyers in the 2026 India Business Law Journal International A-List. They sit in Dubai, Washington, D.C. and Singapore. It is led by a partner who arrived from a competitor in 2021, carrying the India leadership role with him. That practice has therefore changed institutional home twice in five years, and no client decided either move.
Why corridor practices travel more easily than domestic ones
How instructions are made in the corridor influence this.
Look at what the HogLove India practice is recognised for: advising Meta on a USD100 million joint venture with Reliance Industries, advising the lead managers on the USD1.2 billion SBI Fund Management IPO, and advising the lenders financing a solar and wind captive power plant in Karnataka. Two of those three instructions came from someone other than the Indian company at the centre of the transaction. The lead managers chose their own counsel. So did the lenders.
That is the standard shape of this corridor. The instruction is issued by an underwriting syndicate, a lending group, a credit fund or a foreign parent, and the selection happens inside that institution rather than inside the Indian company.
If we consider what that does to portability – a domestic client relationship is usually anchored in a panel, a procurement cycle and an arrangement that has to be renegotiated when the partner handling it leaves. There is friction that favours the law firm. A relationship with a lending group or an underwriting syndicate is held by named individuals who are known to a selection process that has nothing to do with the law firm. There is no panel to renegotiate at the Indian end, because the Indian end was never choosing.
The feature that makes corridor work valuable is that it is instructed by capital providers rather than by Indian corporates. This is the same feature that lets it walk out with the individual.
The Universal Test
Take any firm’s India practice and count the names. By names, I do not mean the list on the capability page, which will have everyone who has ever touched an Indian matter. But count the names who actually ring a bell in the sector:
- Who holds the directory and A-List entries;
- Whose quotes appear when the trade press covers an India deal;
- Whose byline is on the firm’s corridor commentary;
- Who takes the speaking slot when the firm appears on an India panel.
Then count how many offices those names sit in.
One name is an option, not a practice. Three names across three offices is a different proposition, and a client can see the difference from the outside as easily as you can.
Most India practices, tested this way, return one name. That is not a criticism of how they were built because starting with one hire is how almost every corridor practice begins, including the one described above. It is a statement about what the market currently believes the firm’s India position consists of.
What that costs is a positioning asset, not just revenue
When a corridor partner leaves, the firm does not only lose billings. It loses its entry in the rankings, because the entry was built on that person’s matters. It loses the quotes, because journalists call the name they know. It loses the standing invitation to the panel. The capability may well remain including the offices, the tax people, the structuring teams and the actual ability to do the work. But the sector’s belief about who does India at that firm resets to nothing, and rebuilding it takes a full submission cycle at minimum.
Which raises a question about where the visibility investment went. Every ranking submission, award entry, byline and conference slot is a decision about whose name carries the corridor. Those decisions get made one at a time, by people doing their jobs properly, and in aggregate they can amount to a firm having spent several years establishing an individual as the market’s India authority.
The question that is coming
There is a pitch question that will be asked far more often after this year: how many people at this firm have worked on this corridor, and what happens to our matter if the named partner leaves?
A firm with its recognition distributed across several names has a straightforward answer and an advantage that costs nothing to deploy, because the evidence is already published. A firm with one name has to decide how honest to be.
What to do about a practice that returns one name is a longer question than this piece, and an honest answer runs to a programme rather than a list. But it is to be noted that the solution does not lie in announcing the hire or running a campaign aimed at the same name. It is a question of whose name the market attaches to the corridor, and moving that attachment from a person to an institution takes longer than most firms expect, which is why so few have finished doing it.
Lawfinity Solutions advises international law firms on cross-border legal market positioning. If the India corridor is a live question for your firm, we would be interested in a conversation. Lawfinity works with one firm per jurisdiction. Engagements begin with a single conversation about your firm’s current position and where the corridor question is live for you. Write to Prachi Shrivastava
