Where law meets strategy: India’s business development evolution
Veena Goswami
Trilegal, Mumbai
veena.goswami@trilegal.com
Over the past two decades, India’s role in global legal services has evolved from demonstrating execution and efficiency, answering ‘Can you execute?’, to helping clients make complex decisions and answering, ‘Can you help us make a decision?’. This evolution has been reinforced by India’s growing relevance as a global investment destination. Multinational clients increasingly see India as central to supply chain decisions and deal quarterbacks, coordinating global counsel. Against a complex and dynamic regulatory and policy environment, Indian law firms are called upon not merely for legal analysis, but for a perspective on how regulators may approach a matter, how policy may evolve and how legal risk intersects with broader business and geopolitical realities.
As India’s legal market has grown in sophistication, so too has the way Indian law firms interact with their clients. The work they conduct is no longer confined to discrete transactions or clearly defined mandates. Instead, clients often seek support in navigating uncertainty: regulatory change, policy interpretation, market entry decisions and cross-border risk. In this environment, legal advice is most valuable when it helps clients decide how to move forward, not simply how to execute a predetermined course of action.
Business development at the strategic core
This evolution in the provision of legal services has significantly elevated the role of business development (BD) within law firms. Traditionally, BD teams in law firms have been instrumental in strengthening client relationships, crafting compelling pitches, showcasing the firm’s credentials and ensuring the firm’s brand is communicated with clarity and consistency. Today, these core capabilities remain essential, but they have been expanded in scope by empowering BD professionals to thrive in dynamic legal and commercial environments. By combining deep client insight with strategic execution, BD teams are now positioned as key drivers of growth, innovation and long-term value creation for their firms. As client conversations become more strategic and forward-looking, BD professionals are also increasingly involved in helping shape how firms understand opportunities and position their expertise.
In many firms, BD today sits at the intersection between client insight, market intelligence and firm strategy. Rather than being limited to execution at the end of the process, BD teams often help interpret what clients are really asking for, sometimes even before a formal request has been made. This requires an understanding of sector dynamics, the regulatory direction and commercial pressures, and then BD teams must work with partners to align the firm’s response accordingly. The shift is subtle but important: BD teams have moved from focusing primarily on ‘how to respond?’ to also considering ‘what is the right response?’
Supporting these conversations requires coordination and clarity. BD professionals play an important role in ensuring that the firm’s collective experience is brought to bear in a way that is coherent and relevant to the client’s decision-making process. This includes helping firms prioritise opportunities, assemble the right teams and communicate value in commercial terms that resonates with global audiences. It also involves maintaining continuity in regard to relationship development, so that the advice provided is informed by the client’s context and history, not just the immediate mandate.
Delivering value and driving collective growth
For global clients, this integrated approach is increasingly defining what they look for in Indian counsel. Technical excellence is assumed; what differentiates firms is their ability to engage thoughtfully with uncertainty and complexity. Law firm BD teams contribute to this new approach by acting as the institutional memory and strategic connectors, linking client objectives with the firm’s capabilities over time, rather than transaction by transaction.
Looking ahead, with India’s role in the global legal services value chain likely to deepen further as cross-border work becomes more complex and emerging markets play a more significant role in global growth, the BD function within law firms will continue to evolve, not by replacing its traditional strengths, but by building on them. Execution remains critical. What is being added into the mix is a greater emphasis on insight, anticipation and alignment.
Ultimately, the future of legal services will be shaped by collaboration between clients and firms, between lawyers and BD professionals and between execution and decision-making. India’s experience offers a useful lens on this transition: one where a firm’s delivery capability remains foundational, but long-term value is increasingly defined by the firm’s ability to help clients decide with confidence in the face of uncertainty.