India’s Advocates Act, 1961 enshrines a national right of advocates to practice “throughout the territories of India” once enrolled. In 2010 the Bar Council of India (BCI) introduced the All India Bar Examination (AIBE) to test basic competence and to issue a Certificate of Practice to law graduates. Passing the AIBE has been made mandatory by Act and rule for all enrolled advocates to argue in any court. According to recent Supreme Court guidance, no law graduate is allowed to practice law in India unless they have passed the AIBE.

The AIBE is explicitly intended as a national license: after clearing it, “the candidate will be awarded a certificate of practice and is eligible to practice in any court in India”. In other words, an advocate with an AIBE certificate should, in principle, be able to represent clients country-wide. Yet a strange paradox has emerged: many High Courts and bar associations require out-of-state lawyers to team up with “local counsel” when appearing in their courts, effectively undermining the pan-India license that the AIBE is supposed to grant.

The AIBE was introduced and upheld by the courts as a gatekeeper for competence. A Constitution Bench (Kaul J., 2023) unanimously upheld the BCI’s power to hold the AIBE, noting that it ensures only qualified candidates enter the profession. The BCI rules make clear that passing the AIBE confers the license to “practice and argue before all courts in the country”. Supporters of the AIBE stress this benchmark role: as one analysis points out, India’s exam is analogous to U.S. and U.K. bar tests that filter out under-qualified graduates and protect the public by ensuring a basic level of legal knowledge.

The Supreme Court has likewise suggested strict enforcement of the AIBE: as recently as May 2025, the CJI proposed a rule requiring every vakalatnama (litigation power of attorney) to state whether the lawyer passed the AIBE, warning that omitting this would be “misconduct under the Advocates Act.” In effect, the judiciary publicly affirms that passing the AIBE is a fundamental step toward practicing anywhere in India.

Under the Advocates Act and Constitution, however, this right to practice is subject to conditions. Section 30 of the Act guarantees every advocate on a State roll the right to practice in all Indian courts, subject to the Act’s provisions. Crucially, Section 34 of the Act (read with Article 225 of the Constitution) empowers each High Court to frame rules “laying down the conditions subject to which an advocate shall be permitted to practice” in that High Court and its subordinate courts. Many High Courts have invoked this authority to impose local conditions. A common pattern is to require any advocate not on the local Bar Council’s roll to file a vakalatnama only through a local lawyer.

For example, Schedule VII to the Bombay High Court’s Rules (framed under Section 34) provides: “An Advocate who is not on the roll of Advocates of the Bar Council of Maharashtra shall not appear or act in any Court, unless he files a Vakalatnama along with an Advocate who is on the roll of the Bar Council of Maharashtra and who is ordinarily practising in such Court.” In practical terms, even if a lawyer from Delhi or Kerala holds a valid AIBE, he must engage a Maharashtra-registered lawyer to formally assist if he files a case in Mumbai or Pune.

The Punjab & Haryana High Court recently took this a step further. In early 2021 it issued a circular creating a Roll of Advocates for that High Court. Under its Rule 3-A, “unless the court grants leave, an advocate who is not on the roll of Advocates in the Punjab and Haryana High Court shall not be allowed to appear… unless he/she files appointment along with an Advocate who is on such roll”. In practice this means any out-of-state lawyer, even if duly admitted elsewhere, must file a vakalatnama joined by a local Punjab/Haryana advocate.

A Times of India report explains that “even a lawyer coming from Delhi, Mumbai or any other part of the country” will need a locally-registered counsel to argue before the P&H High Court. The move explicitly forces non-local lawyers to “engage a counsel registered as per the ‘Roll of Advocates’”. Its promoters frankly admit the purpose: local bar leaders hailed it as “immense benefit for the HC bar, as they will have to be engaged by lawyers coming from other parts of the country”. A similar tactic was publicly endorsed by the Faridabad (Haryana) Bar Association, which in 2018 passed a resolution barring out-of-station advocates from appearing in local courts “unless accompanied by local counsel”.

That resolution even cited “loss of work to our fellow advocates” as the reason for prohibiting strangers from practicing solo. In short, multiple High Courts and Bar groups have effectively curtailed the practical scope of Section 30, turning pan-Indian practice into a conditional franchise tied to local partnership.

These local counsel requirements have also been upheld by the Supreme Court as valid exercises of judicial rule-making. The leading case is Jamshed Ansari v. Allahabad High Court (2016). There the Court considered identical provisions in the Allahabad High Court Rules (1952) requiring any lawyer not on the UP State roll to file vakalatnama with a UP-registered advocate. Dismissing the challenge, a bench of Justices Sikri and Ramana held that Rules 3 and 3A of the Allahabad Rules “are perfectly valid, legal and do not violate” the advocate’s right under Article 19(1)(g).

The Court emphasized that the right to practice is a statutory privilege subject to reasonable conditions and that courts have a supervisory duty over appearances. Justice Sikri elaborated that such rules are aimed at regulating court functioning: they ensure rolls are maintained “to effect service of notices and copies of pleadings” and to fix responsibility for compliance with procedures. In plain language, the Court believed that a local roll helps track who is in court and holds someone accountable. Finding these measures reasonable, the Supreme Court declared that courts may frame even locality-based restrictions if justified by the interest of justice.

Thus, from a legal perspective, there is no per se bar on mandating local counsel. Section 34 expressly permits High Courts to impose practice conditions, and the Supreme Court has sanctioned rules requiring local co-counsel as falling within this power. At least three High Courts, Allahabad, Bombay, and Punjab & Haryana, have promulgated such rules. Faridabad’s bar and others rely on the Jamshed Ansari precedent to argue that demanding local counsel is not unconstitutional. In other words, the judiciary has largely upheld that an advocate’s nationwide enrolment is subject to local procedural rules.

But this creates an undeniable conflict with the spirit of the AIBE and Section 30.

If any advocate with a law degree and valid registration in one state can, by the Act’s own terms, appear anywhere, why impose a geographic second-authenticator?

Requiring local counsel negates much of the AIBE’s purpose: an advocate may jump through all Bar Council hoops and pass the AIBE, yet still find himself unable to appear in another state’s courts without paying a local ally.

The Punjab & Haryana case makes this painfully clear: as one report notes, “even a lawyer coming from Delhi, Mumbai or any other part of the country” must bring along a registered local counsel to speak in the P&H High Court. In short, the provincial rules effectively turn the AIBE’s promise of pan-India practice into a half measure.

From the standpoint of lawyers and litigants, these overlapping requirements impose redundancy and inefficiency. A client engaging an out-of-town lawyer now faces the cost of retaining two advocates for a single matter: the specialist (from, say, Delhi) plus a local backup. The local counsel often simply files paperwork while the real advocacy is done by the outsider, but the fees for both must be borne by the client. This doubles litigation expenses and complicates communication, for no obvious gain in legal quality.

In practice, the only beneficiaries are the local bar members: by rule or resolution, they have guaranteed roles on all briefs filed in their home state. The Times of India report on the P&H roll candidly quotes a Bar Association leader saying the move is “immense benefit for the HC bar as well as its member advocates” because non-local lawyers “will have to be engaged by lawyers coming from other parts of the country”. In Haryana’s Faridabad, the bar association framed it as preventing “loss of work to our fellow advocates” when outsiders practice alone. These statements underscore the protectionist logic behind local counsel rules.

No doubt, courts have been told that these rules are needed for orderly administration. The Allahabad High Court rules were defended on precisely such grounds, service of notices, fixing responsibility, and ensuring someone is present if called by the court. But in practice there are alternative means to achieve transparency without completely barring solo practice. For instance, modern e-filing requires each lawyer to provide contact and address details anyway. The P&H roll itself collects advocates’ addresses and contact information with every biometrics and photograph.

One could imagine simpler rules (for example, compelling every non-local counsel to designate an address for service) that would ensure accountability without imposing an assisting advocate requirement. Ironically, the Punjab & Haryana court implemented its roll during the COVID-19 pandemic, ostensibly because so many outsiders were appearing by video, yet the response was to force even those virtual advocates to officially link up with local counsel. Rather than facilitating nationwide access, the court essentially said: even on Zoom, you need a local proxy.

All of this points to a systemic inconsistency. On one hand, the Advocates Act and recent constitutional jurisprudence have welded Indian advocates into a single professional class with a single national license. On the other hand, actual practice is being carved back into state-based silos. For a young lawyer who toiled through the AIBE, such rules must feel like a bait-and-switch: the Act promises that enrollment confers a right to practice everywhere, but local counsel mandates scrap much of that promise in practice.

If every High Court can unilaterally limit out-of-state participation to only supervised appearances, then the very raison d’être of an All-India Bar exam is called into question. Indeed, critics have pointed out that requiring AIBE after full legal training becomes absurd if state rules still block free practice.

One commentator argues that filtering candidates at the tail end; after five or six years of legal study, is a “mockery of the Indian legal education system,” and that essentially “creating a barricade and filtering out students” post-graduation is “a waste of time, money and resources.” His point resonates here:

Why force every law graduate to pay for and pass a national exam if, by local fiat, they then can do nothing more than file papers without a native colleague?

Ultimately this dissonance harms the legal profession and the public. Promoting local counsel requirements in the name of protecting jobs may advantage existing practitioners in a given city, but it throttles mobility for competent lawyers from other states. Fresh graduates who clear the AIBE with difficulty may find themselves confined to their own home courts unless they can establish local partnerships. This not only squanders the time and money invested in clearing the All-India exam, but also erects artificial barriers to clients accessing the best representation across states. Even the AIBE itself was conceived to improve the standard of advocates nationwide; yet the local counsel rules undercut its national standard-setting by re-fragmenting the bar.

In sum, the dual system is riddled with inefficiencies and contradictions. State-enforced “local counsel” mandates treat the AIBE’s comprehensive qualification as inadequate, while simultaneously nullifying its intended benefit. Lawyers end up paying twice, once for the All-India Bar exam, and again in fees to local counsel, and clients pay twice as well. These measures do little to improve the quality of lawyering or justice delivery.

As one analysis concludes, forcing additional filters after legal education merely “creates a barricade” that wastes scarce time and resources. It would seem more logical to either allow true pan-Indian practice as envisioned by Section 30 and the AIBE, or else formally institutionalize residency requirements in the Act itself. Until then, the current patchwork of High Court rules is a policy paradox: a uniform national license for advocates that is routinely circumscribed by local procedural hoops.