A free-trade agreement between India and the EU – which should help open up the legal market to foreign firms – is still at least three years away, according to one of the EU negotiators.

Sajjad Karim, a Conservative MEP on the international trade committee, also told the UK-India Business Relationship Conference in London last week of his surprise that no agreement had yet been reached.

Alison Hook, head of international at the Law Society, told the conference, organised by the Indo European Business Forum, that the Indian government needed to set out a clear timetable for liberalising its legal services market. She pointed to the recent experience of South Korea, where the government drew up a five-year implementation timetable. ‘For India, allowing foreign firms to practise would allow an influx of foreign business’, she said.

However, Hook added that there was a need for domestic reform in India, pointing to the 20-partner limit on partnerships, and the ban on advertising legal services.

The former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith QC, now chairman of European litigation at US firm Debevoise & Plimpton, said the introduction of foreign lawyers would be most effective in speeding up India’s sluggish dispute resolution process.

But Indian law minister Dr Hansraj Bhardwaj said that, as part of the modernisation of the legal system, the time taken to resolve disputes had fallen following recent initiatives.