Become a Corporate Lawyer.

Lawyers in India practice across three broad streams: (1) corporate / transactional law — M&A, capital markets, banking and finance, private equity, IP, employment, dispute resolution at tier-1 firms like Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM), AZB & Partners, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas (SAM), Trilegal, Khaitan & Co, Luthra & Luthra, J Sagar Associates (JSA), Nishith Desai Associates, Argus, IndusLaw, Talwar Thakore; (2) litigation — Supreme Court / High Court chambers practice including senior-advocate-led teams (Harish Salve, Mukul Rohatgi, Fali Nariman before him, Kapil Sibal, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Gopal Subramanium, Salman Khurshid, Indira Jaising), High Court trial chambers, district court / sessions court practice; (3) in-house counsel — at Indian corporates (Reliance, Tata Sons, Aditya Birla Group, Infosys, TCS, HDFC Bank, Bharti Airtel) and foreign multinationals (Google India, Microsoft India, Amazon India, Goldman Sachs India). The Indian path runs through 5-year integrated B.A.LL.B / B.B.A.LL.B at National Law Universities (NLSIU Bangalore, NALSAR Hyderabad, WBNUJS Kolkata, NLU Delhi, GNLU Gujarat, NLU Jodhpur — collectively the 'NLU' brand), or 3-year LL.B after graduation at Delhi University Faculty of Law, Government Law Colleges (Mumbai, Pune), Jindal Global Law School (private premium), Symbiosis Law School, Christ University Bengaluru, ILS Pune; followed by Bar Council of India enrolment via the All India Bar Examination (AIBE). Pay varies extremely: tier-1 firm fresh NLU graduate starts at ₹17-22L/year all-in (CAM, AZB, SAM, Trilegal, Khaitan); senior associate at 5-7 years ₹40-80L; salaried partner ₹1-3Cr; equity partner ₹2-10Cr+. Senior advocates at the Supreme Court charge ₹10-25L per appearance for the top tier and ₹50L-2Cr+ for marquee constitutional / corporate disputes. Litigation chambers practice early on pays ₹0-3L for the first 3-5 years before income builds.

Civil lawyers in India represent clients in non-criminal disputes before district civil courts, High Courts, consumer fora, RERA authorities, family courts, and the National Company Law Tribunal — covering property, contract, succession, matrimonial, and recovery matters governed by the Code of Civil Procedure 1908 (CPC). The bulk of civil court volume flows through property title disputes, loan-recovery suits, RERA complaints against builders, divorce and maintenance under the Hindu Marriage Act 1955 and Special Marriage Act 1954, succession and probate applications under the Indian Succession Act, and money-recovery suits under Order XXXVII (summary suits). Established independent advocates in tier-1 cities with a strong property or matrimonial client base earn ₹25-80L annually; district court specialists in tier-2 cities stabilise at ₹8-20L after 5-7 years. Entry into civil practice is via LL.B / B.A.LL.B enrolment with a State Bar Council followed by junior work under a senior advocate, and the AIBE from the Bar Council of India.

Criminal lawyers in India represent accused persons, complainants, and the state in offences under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) 2023 (replacing IPC), the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) 2023 (replacing CrPC), POCSO Act, Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA) 2023 (replacing the Evidence Act). Practice runs from district sessions courts — where bail applications, chargesheet challenges, and trials are conducted — up to High Courts for anticipatory bail, revision petitions, quashing petitions under Section 528 BNSS, and to the Supreme Court on special leave petitions and constitutional challenges. Leading practitioners include Senior Advocates Kapil Sibal, Mukul Rohatgi, Siddharth Luthra, Sidharth Aggarwal, Rebecca John, Vrinda Grover, and N. Hariharan, whose PMLA and UAPA practices define the ceiling of what the criminal bar commands. Entry income is low but growth tracks courtroom standing, not credentials alone — a skilled advocate who builds a Sessions Court reputation can earn ₹15-30L by year 5-7 without ever attending a tier-1 law firm.

Intellectual Property lawyers in India draft and prosecute patent applications at the Indian Patent Office (IPO) under the Patents Act 1970 (as amended), file trademark and copyright applications under the Trade Marks Act 1999 and the Copyright Act 1957, and litigate IP disputes before the Delhi, Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta High Courts — IPAB was abolished in 2021 and its jurisdiction merged into the High Courts. The practice cuts across two distinct skill profiles: Patent Attorneys, who typically hold a B.Tech or B.Sc (Engineering) plus an LL.B plus the Patent Agent qualification under the Patents Act (Chapter XXIA), and IP generalists with pure LL.B degrees who handle trademarks, copyrights, designs, and IP licensing. Tier-1 IP firms — Anand & Anand (Noida), K&S Partners (Gurugram), Remfry & Sagar (Gurugram), Lall & Sethi (Delhi), S.S. Rana & Co (Delhi), and the IP teams at CAM and AZB & Partners — are the primary employers, alongside multinational pharma, tech, and FMCG in-house IP teams. PCT international filing, FTO (Freedom to Operate) opinions, technology licensing, and cross-border anti-counterfeiting enforcement are core service lines.

Tax lawyers in India litigate and advise on direct and indirect tax disputes before the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT), Customs Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal (CESTAT), Authority for Advance Rulings (AAR / Board for Advance Rulings), and the High Courts and Supreme Court — fields where Harish Salve, Arvind Datar, Sohrab Dastur, S. Ganesh, and Tarun Gulati command ₹5–50 Cr per matter and set the standard for advocacy. Unlike Chartered Accountants who file returns and give advisory opinions, or tax auditors who sign Form 3CD, the tax lawyer's core function is courtroom argumentation — drafting grounds of appeal, framing jurisdictional objections, writing writ petitions challenging CBDT circulars, and appearing before tax authorities from the Assessing Officer to the Supreme Court bench. Practice runs across income tax (Sections 9, 40A, 56, 68, 115BB, 153A, 263), GST and legacy indirect taxes (CESTAT appeals, DRC-07/08 SCN responses), transfer pricing litigation (TPO orders to ITAT Special Bench), and international treaty disputes (equalization levy, royalty vs FTS under Section 195, Vodafone-type capital gains re-characterization). Firms defining the field include Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan, Vaish Associates, Nishith Desai Associates, Khaitan & Co tax litigation team, Economic Laws Practice (ELP), and Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas.

A Judicial Services Officer (Civil Judge / Civil Judge Junior Division) is a state-government judicial officer recruited through the Direct Judicial Services Examination (DJSE) — known by state-specific names: UP HJS Prelims, Rajasthan JS Exam, Maharashtra JS Exam, Delhi HJS, Karnataka JS Exam, etc. The officer presides over a court of first instance (Munsiff / Civil Judge Junior Division for civil matters, or JMFC / Judicial Magistrate First Class for criminal matters), adjudicating civil suits up to ₹5 lakh original jurisdiction, bail applications, temporary injunctions, landlord-tenant disputes, motor-accident claims before MACT, and summary criminal trials under CrPC / BNSS. Entry is strictly limited to LLB graduates (3-year or 5-year integrated BA LLB / BBA LLB from BCI-recognised institutions); the examination is 3-stage (Prelims + Mains + Viva Voce) and administered by respective High Courts. The career ladder runs from Civil Judge Junior Division → Civil Judge Senior Division → Additional District Judge → District & Sessions Judge, with a parallel track via the Higher Judicial Services Exam (HJSE) for practising advocates with 7+ years of experience. Judges operate under the superintendence of the respective High Court under Article 235 of the Constitution.

Senior: ₹20.4L

Hospital Administrators run the operational, financial, and regulatory machinery of Indian hospitals — corporate chains like Apollo, Fortis, Manipal, and Max as well as standalone 50-500-bed facilities. The role owns everything that keeps clinical staff productive and patients safe: NABH / JCI accreditation compliance, OPD throughput, ICU and OR scheduling, HR for 200-2,000 hospital employees, vendor contracts for pharma and equipment, and P&L accountability down to department level. Entry requires an MHA, MBA (Healthcare), or PGDM Hospital Management — a two-year postgraduate degree taken after any bachelor's. Top feeders are TISS Mumbai, IIHMR Jaipur, IIHMR Delhi, Symbiosis SIHS Pune, AIIMS Healthcare Management, and ISB Heller School. Administrators sit at the intersection of medical excellence, regulatory compliance, and financial discipline — a role that breaks on soft skill as often as on operational knowledge.

Senior: ₹36.0L

A Registered Nurse (RN) is a licensed clinician who carries primary responsibility for bedside patient assessment, medication administration, care planning, and clinical advocacy across hospital wards, ICUs, OTs, and community settings. In India, registration requires completing either a 4-year B.Sc Nursing (with NEET-UG or state entrance for premier colleges like AIIMS, CMC Vellore, JIPMER) or a 3-year GNM diploma followed by the Post-Basic B.Sc Nursing bridge, and then enrolling with the Indian Nursing Council (INC) through the respective state nursing council. Domestically, RNs staff AIIMS, PGIMER, government district hospitals (7th CPC Level 7 pay scale ₹44,900–1,42,400), and major private chains — Apollo, Fortis, Manipal, Medanta, Max — where salaries scale sharply with specialisation (ICU, cath-lab, transplant). Internationally, NCLEX-RN opens US hospitals ($60–110k), NHS UK needs OSCE/CBT (£28–38k Band 5–6), Australia uses AHPRA, and the Gulf requires Prometric or Dataflow verification — giving Indian RNs one of the most globally portable healthcare credentials in the world.

Senior: ₹14.0L

Product Cataloguing Specialists are the accuracy layer of India's marketplace economy — they create, standardise, and maintain product listings on Amazon India, Flipkart, Meesho, Myntra, JioMart, and D2C storefronts so that items are discoverable, correctly categorised, and legally compliant before going live. The work covers SKU creation with keyword-rich titles, bullet points, A+ Content / EBC, GTIN/EAN/ASIN attribute mapping, image quality review against 1000×1000-pixel standards, taxonomy placement, content moderation, and listing-quality score management. KPO firms — Outsource2India, Cogitate Technology, SunTec India, Flatworld Solutions — run large cataloguing teams serving international marketplace sellers; FMCG and electronics brands (P&G, Samsung, Philips, Godrej) employ in-house catalog managers to maintain brand registry integrity and standardise their product data across platforms. Entry into this role requires a B.A./B.Com plus genuine product knowledge in the relevant category; no specialised degree is gatekeeping it, making it one of the few Operations paths accessible from tier-2 cities.

Senior: N/A

An Intelligence Bureau (IB) Officer works for India's domestic intelligence agency under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) — the country's oldest intelligence organisation, founded in 1887. The primary entry route is the SSC IB ACIO exam (Assistant Central Intelligence Officer Grade-II / Executive), open to graduates; a second route is ACIO-I / Sub-Inspector through SSC CGL with IB as stream preference. IB officers collect, analyse, and disseminate intelligence on threats to internal security — counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency, communal tensions, organised crime, espionage, and politically sensitive surveillance — exclusively within India's borders. Unlike RAW (external intelligence), IB has no mandate outside India. Officers work in plainclothes, operate human-intelligence (HUMINT) networks, conduct source meetings, surveil persons of interest, analyse open-source and signals intelligence, write threat assessments for MHA and the Prime Minister's Office, and brief senior IPS/IAS officers and ministers on actionable intelligence. The career is shrouded in official secrecy — officers are barred from discussing their work publicly, and the service has no official social-media presence.

Senior: ₹24.0L