If you are enrolled with a State Bar Council, you can apply to be listed here. The entry carries only the particulars the Bar Council of India permits — nothing more. There is no listing fee, no subscription and no commission, and no money moves in either direction, ever.
No listing fee, no subscription, no commission, no referral payment, no paid position and no featured slot. You pay us nothing and we pay you nothing. There is nothing to cancel later.
No stars, no review counts, no "best" or "top" lists, no success rates and no comparison between advocates. Results are listed alphabetically. That is a compliance decision, and we would rather lose the click than take the risk with your licence.
The enrolment number is checked against the State Bar Council record before anything goes up, and one enrolment number holds one live profile — so nobody can put up an entry in your name.
Whoever contacts you engages you directly. The advice, the appearance, the conduct of the matter, the fee and the result are entirely between you and that person.
Name as enrolled, mobile number, enrolment number and State Bar Council, your State and district, the courts you appear before, and the kinds of matter you handle. Everything else — email, photograph, chamber address, Bar Association, qualifications, languages and a description of your practice — is optional, and the form goes through without it. It takes about eight minutes.
An LSS-ADV reference appears on screen the moment you submit. Keep it. With your mobile number it opens your application on the Track page any time — no login and no password.
The enrolment number is checked against the State Bar Council record. If a document is needed — usually the Certificate of Enrolment — a query appears on your Track page and you reply and upload it right there. We call rather than reject silently.
Your entry is published with the permitted particulars only, and a login is created and sent to you so you can keep your own details up to date. Ask us to take it down at any time and it comes down the same day, without our asking why.
Every decision on this page comes from one rule, and most advocates have read about it far more often than they have read it. So here it is, in its own words.
Chapter II, Part VI, Bar Council of India Rules — standards of professional conduct and etiquette
"An advocate shall not solicit work or advertise, either directly or indirectly, whether by circulars, advertisements, touts, personal communications, interviews not warranted by personal relations, furnishing or inspiring newspaper comments or producing his photographs to be published in connection with cases in which he has been engaged or concerned."
The rule goes on to the familiar restraint that a sign-board or name-plate "should be of a reasonable size", and that the sign-board, name-plate or stationery should not indicate that the advocate is or has been a President or Member of a Bar Council.
Source linked at the foot of this page.
Read on its own, that rule would leave an advocate with no presence on the internet at all. The 2008 amendment is what changed that — and it is worth reading even more carefully than the rule, because of its last sentence.
"PROVIDED that this rule will not stand in the way of advocates furnishing website information as prescribed in the Schedule under intimation to and as approved by the Bar Council of India. Any additional other input in the particulars than approved by the Bar Council of India will be deemed to be violation of Rule 36 and such advocates are liable to be proceeded with misconduct under Section 35 of the Advocates Act, 1961"
Source linked at the foot of this page.
Now read that proviso a second time, and notice who it names.
It does not say the website is liable. It says the advocate is.
"Any additional other input in the particulars … will be deemed to be violation of Rule 36 and such advocates are liable to be proceeded with misconduct under Section 35 of the Advocates Act, 1961."
A portal that adds a star rating to your name, or a "Top 10" badge, or your consultation fee, has not created a problem for itself. It has created one for you — and it is your name on the entry, your enrolment number beside it, and your disciplinary proceedings if a complaint is made.
That single sentence is the reason this directory is built the way it is. We are not being cautious about our own position. We are being cautious about yours, because the rule puts the consequence on your side of the table and there is no version of this where we carry it for you.
It is also the reason we will not add things to an entry on request. Advocates do ask — for a line about years of experience framed as a claim, for the words "specialist" or "expert", for a mention of a reported matter. Each of those is an "additional other input" on the plain words of the proviso. Saying no to a listed advocate is an uncomfortable conversation. It is a much shorter one than the alternative.
If the proviso set the boundary, a judgment in July 2024 showed what happens when it is crossed at scale. It is the most important development on this subject in years, and it is worth knowing in detail before you list yourself anywhere.
P. N. Vignesh v. The Chairman and Members of the Bar Council — High Court of Judicature at Madras, S. M. Subramaniam and C. Kumarappan JJ, 3 July 2024
"Ranking or providing customer ratings to lawyers is unheard of and demeans the ethos of the profession."
"Legal service is neither a job nor a business. A business is driven purely by profit motive."
The Court recorded that advocates enlisting on commercial listing websites were openly soliciting legal work, which is misconduct under Section 35 of the Advocates Act, 1961. It directed the Bar Council of India to issue circulars initiating disciplinary proceedings against advocates advertising or soliciting work, to register complaints against the intermediaries assisting them, and to have the offending material removed. The portals before the Court were directed to "remove all the contents which are in violation of Rule 36".
Source linked at the foot of this page.
Notice the direction that affects you, not the portal. The Court did not only tell the websites to clean up. It told the Bar Council to start disciplinary proceedings against the advocates on them.
An advocate whose profile sat on a rating site did not choose the rating, did not write it, and in many cases did not know it was there. That did not take them outside the direction. The listing was in their name.
We say two honest things about this, and we would rather say them here than have you discover them later.
First, the position is not finally settled. Appeals are pending, and the law on online listing may develop further. Nobody — including us — can tell you today exactly where the line will sit in five years.
Second, that is precisely why we stay well inside it. No rating. No ranking. No review. No fee published. No paid placement. Alphabetical order. Publication only on your own written request, and removal the same day you ask. When the boundary is uncertain, the sensible place to stand is nowhere near it.
What that costs us, since you may as well know. A directory that cannot rank, cannot feature, and cannot sell placement has no product to sell to advocates. That is why this is free, and it is not generosity — it is the only business model the rule leaves open. We earn from our own documentation work, not from you.
| Particular | On your entry? |
|---|---|
| Name and designation | ✓ Yes |
| Enrolment number, date of enrolment, State Bar Council | ✓ Yes
Schedule under Rule 36, items 3(a)–(c)
|
| Bar Association | ✓ Yes |
| Professional and academic qualifications | ✓ Yes |
| Areas of practice | ✓ Yes |
| Courts and forums you appear before | ✓ Yes |
| Address, telephone, email | ✓ Yes
Only what you choose to give
|
| Languages you work in | ✓ Yes |
| A factual description of your practice | ✓ Yes
Written by you; no claims of quality
|
| Photograph | ✓ Yes
Optional
|
| Star rating or score | ✗ No
Never — a rating is a ranking
|
| Client reviews or testimonials | ✗ No
Never
|
| "Best", "top", "leading", "expert" | ✗ No
Never — unverifiable superlatives
|
| Success rate or case results | ✗ No
Never
|
| Your consultation or case fee | ✗ No
Never published, compared or discounted
|
| Paid or featured placement | ✗ No
Does not exist here — listing is alphabetical
|
| Comparison with another advocate | ✗ No
Never
|
The permitted list comes from the proviso to Rule 36 of the Bar Council of India Rules read with the Schedule approved by Council Resolution No. 50 of 2008. The Bar Council's own note warns that any input beyond those particulars is deemed a violation of Rule 36 — which is why the second half of this table exists and why we will not add to it on request.
The Schedule approved under the 2008 proviso is short. Most advocates have never seen it set out, and it is worth going through each item — partly so you know what your entry can carry, and partly because filling each one well is the difference between an entry a client can act on and an entry they scroll past.
As it appears on the roll. Not a trade name, not a firm name you practise under informally, and not a shortened version. If a client or a court registry looks you up, the name on the entry and the name on the roll should be the same one. Where you are known by a different spelling, tell us and we will note it — but the roll spelling is what is published.
Your professional address, and only as much of it as you want published. A good many advocates give the chamber block and the court complex without the room number, which is enough for a client to reach you and enough for the entry to be genuine. If you work from a residence, give a locality rather than a house number. We would rather publish less than have you uncomfortable about what is public.
Whatever you are prepared to answer. This is the item advocates most often get wrong in the other direction — giving a number they do not pick up. A directory entry with an unanswered number is worse for you than no entry, because the client's impression of you is formed by the ring that went nowhere.
Published exactly as on the roll, because these are the two particulars that let anybody verify you independently. They are also the reason a fabricated entry cannot survive here: we check them before publication, and one enrolment number can hold only one live entry.
And, where it differs, the one on whose roll your name currently stands. Advocates who have transferred often leave this incomplete, and it is the commonest reason verification takes an extra day.
Which associations you belong to. Factual, verifiable, and genuinely useful to a client trying to work out whether you are ordinarily at the court their matter is in.
Degrees and professional qualifications, with the institution and year. Qualifications only — not achievements, not positions held, not awards. The rule permits the qualification; it does not permit the gloss.
The matters you actually handle. This is the item that does the most work for you, and the section below is about how to write it, because "civil, criminal, family, corporate, property, consumer, labour, tax" tells a client nothing at all.
The ninth item is the one the Schedule does not contain. Anything beyond the eight above is, on the plain words of the proviso, an "additional other input". That is why there is no ratings column on this website and never will be, whoever asks.
We publish two further things that are not in the Schedule but are, in our view, plainly within the spirit of it: the courts and forums you appear before, and the languages you work in. Both are factual, neither is a claim of quality, and both are what a client actually needs in order to choose sensibly. If you would prefer either left off your entry, say so and it will be.
Advocates ask how this differs from the listing sites they are already on, or are being sold. The honest comparison is below. Some of what a paid portal offers is real, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
| A typical paid portal | This directory | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost to you | A listing fee, a subscription, a per-lead charge, or a share of what the client pays. | Nothing, at any stage. No money moves in either direction. |
| Position in the list | Usually bought. Paid placement, "featured", "premium", "verified plus". | Alphabetical. There is nothing to buy, so there is nothing to lose by not buying it. |
| Rating and reviews | Stars, scores, client reviews, "98% success". | None, ever. See the judgment quoted above. |
| Your fee | Often published, compared, and sometimes discounted in a sale. | Never published, never compared, never discounted. Your fee is between you and your client. |
| Who the client belongs to | Frequently the platform's. Contact details withheld until a lead is bought. | Yours. The client contacts you and engages you directly. |
| Who carries the Rule 36 risk | You. The proviso names the advocate, not the website. | Still you — which is why the entry carries nothing that could create it. |
| Getting out | Notice periods, contract terms, renewal dates. | Ask, and the entry comes down the same day. There is no contract. |
| What they are honestly better at | Volume. A large portal has more traffic than we do, and pretending otherwise would be silly. | We are a documentation company with a directory attached, not a marketplace. Fewer clients reach you, and the ones who do have read a factual entry rather than a star rating. |
So the choice is not "better or worse". It is a different trade. A paid portal offers you reach, and asks for money and a compliance risk in return. This offers you a compliant entry and a client who comes to you directly, and asks for nothing — but it will send you fewer people, and we would rather say so on this page than have you find out and feel misled.
Of everything on the application, this is the part that decides whether the entry works for you. It is also the part where advocates most often write something that is either useless or non-compliant, and occasionally both.
Be specific about the matters, and factual about everything else. Not "family law" but "maintenance and custody matters in the Family Courts at Saket and Rohini, and mutual consent petitions". Not "property" but "title verification, sale deeds and disputes over undivided shares in Delhi".
That sentence does two things at once. A client with exactly that problem recognises it. And it is purely factual — a statement of what you do, which is what Rule 36 permits, rather than a statement of how well you do it, which is what it forbids.
Two more things worth doing, both small:
We would rather you did not apply than apply and find this was not what you wanted.
| This suits you if… | This is not for you if… |
|---|---|
| You want a factual entry that will not embarrass you if a Bar Council committee ever reads it. | You want volume, and you are prepared to pay and to carry the compliance question that comes with it. |
| You are early in practice and have no presence at all, and want one that costs nothing and risks nothing. | You want to be at the top of a list. There is no top here — it is alphabetical. |
| You are content to be found by clients who already know what their problem is. | You want leads generated and pushed to you. |
| You want to be able to take it down in a day, with no contract and no fee. | You want a marketing service. We are not one and could not become one without breaching the rule. |
| You are enrolled with any State Bar Council in India and your enrolment is current. | Your enrolment is suspended, or you are not enrolled. We cannot publish an entry in either case. |
Worth setting out plainly, because this is where most directories are vague and where the difference between a directory and a marketplace actually shows.
What we do not do at any point in that sequence: we do not price the work, we do not negotiate on your behalf, we do not guarantee the client anything about you, and we do not guarantee you any volume of requests. A directory that promised you work would be soliciting on your behalf, which is the thing the rule forbids.
One consequence worth being honest about: because the client comes to you directly, we have no way of knowing whether the matter went anywhere. Some advocates find that unsatisfying and would prefer a system that tracked outcomes. We would prefer it too, as a matter of curiosity. But a system that tracked what you earned from a client would be a system with an interest in what you earned, and that is the beginning of every arrangement the rule exists to prevent.
Once the entry is published, a login is created for you. It is not decoration — the entry is yours to run.
Address, telephone, email, courts, areas of practice, languages, your practice description. Changes to the permitted particulars are yours to make. Changes to the enrolment particulars go through a check, for the obvious reason.
Every consultation request, with the date it arrived and what the client said. Nothing is hidden behind a payment.
If verification needs a document, the query appears in your panel and on the Track page. You reply and upload there, rather than by email to somebody who may be on leave.
Ask, and it comes down the same day. You do not have to give a reason, there is no notice period, and there is nothing to pay on the way out. Your data is deleted on request.
A practical note on the login. It is sent to the email on your profile. If it does not arrive, check the spam folder first and then tell us — we can send it again, and if the password has been lost we create a new one rather than leaving you locked out. Please change it the first time you log in.
"Free" on the internet usually means the money is somewhere else in the arrangement. So here is where ours is: we are a legal documentation company. We draft and file documents for clients, and that is what we are paid for. The directory does not earn anything, from you or from the client.
That is not a virtue we are claiming. It is closer to a constraint we accepted, and there are three reasons it has to be this way.
The moment a directory takes money from an advocate in exchange for visibility, what the advocate has bought is the promotion of their practice. Whatever it is called on the invoice, that is advertising, and the rule quoted at the top of this page is about advertising.
An advocate's professional fee is not income that can be divided with a company that is not entitled to practise. Any arrangement in which a listing service takes a percentage of what you are paid is an arrangement worth looking at very hard before signing.
If we sold you a lead, our interest would be in the number of leads, not in whether the person on the other end had a real problem you could help with. Every directory that charges per lead ends up optimising for volume, because that is what it is paid for.
What this means for you in practice. There is no invoice, no renewal date, no upsell call, and nothing that lapses if you forget about it. There is also nobody here with a commercial reason to push you into taking a matter you should decline. That is the whole of the arrangement, and it is deliberately dull.
Most applications are published within one to three working days. The ones that are not are almost always held up by the same handful of things, and all of them are avoidable.
You do not have to guess where an application has reached. The Application Number beginning LSS-ADV is shown the moment you submit, and the Track page shows the current stage, any query raised, and a box to reply and upload. If you have lost the number, your enrolment number and mobile will find it.
Stated plainly, because an advocate deciding whether to be associated with an organisation is entitled to know exactly what that organisation is.
And the thing we will not do, since it is the request that comes most often. We will not describe you as the best, the leading, the most experienced or the top-rated anything — not on your entry, not in a search description, and not because you ask nicely. If that is what you are looking for from a listing, this is the wrong directory, and we would rather tell you now than take your application and disappoint you later.
Section 35 is quoted often and read rarely. Since it is the provision the Rule 36 proviso points at, and since it is the consequence being described when anyone says "misconduct", it is worth knowing what it sets in motion.
Section 35, The Advocates Act, 1961
35(1) — "Where on receipt of a complaint or otherwise a State Bar Council has reason to believe that any advocate on its roll has been guilty of professional or other misconduct, it shall refer the case for disposal to its disciplinary committee."
Under sub-section (3), the disciplinary committee, after hearing the advocate and the Advocate-General, may:
"(a) dismiss the complaint or … direct that the proceedings be filed; (b) reprimand the advocate; (c) suspend the advocate from practice for such period as it may deem fit; (d) remove the name of the advocate from the State roll of advocates."
Source linked at the foot of this page.
Three things about that are worth holding on to.
The threshold is low to start. "Reason to believe", on a complaint or otherwise. A proceeding can begin without anybody complaining, which is exactly what a direction from a High Court to the Bar Council contemplates.
The range is wide at the end. Between (a) and (d) sits everything from the complaint being dismissed to the name coming off the roll. Most listing-related matters would never approach the far end of that range — but the far end exists, and it is attached to the same section the Rule 36 proviso names.
The process itself is the cost. Ask any advocate who has answered a disciplinary reference. Whatever the outcome, it consumes months, it is answered personally, and it is not something a listing website shares with you.
We are not saying a rating on a portal will end your practice. That would be alarmist and it would not be true. What we are saying is narrower and, we think, harder to argue with: the proviso puts the liability on the advocate, Section 35 is the route it travels, and a directory entry that carries nothing beyond the permitted particulars removes the question entirely.
You can get the same benefit from a listing without the question attached. That is the whole proposition, and it is why this page spends so long on a rule rather than on us.
A large share of the advocates who apply here are in the first five years of practice, and their position is different enough to deserve its own section.
You have the least to spend on visibility and the most to lose from a bad decision about it. A paid portal is a real cost against an income that is still uneven. And a compliance question at the start of a career is worth avoiding far more than it is at the end of one.
What a factual entry does for a junior, honestly stated. It will not fill your diary. What it does is make you findable and verifiable — a client, a senior looking for somebody at a particular court, or an instructing office can confirm that you are enrolled, see which courts you are at, and reach you. For a good many juniors that is the entire gap between existing and being found.
Some practical suggestions, from applications we see:
If you are not yet enrolled — law student, or awaiting enrolment — this directory is not open to you, because we publish enrolment particulars and verify them. But our internships are open, they are free, and there is no listing fee, commission or charge in that direction either.
We are based in Delhi and most of our own documentation work is Delhi work. The directory is not limited to it.
An advocate enrolled with any State Bar Council in India can apply. The entry carries the State Bar Council on whose roll your name stands, your district and the courts you appear before, so a client searching from anywhere sees where you actually practise rather than where we happen to sit.
Being honest about what that means today. The directory is young and it is thicker in Delhi than anywhere else. An advocate enrolled in a State where we have few entries will, for now, be found by fewer people than one in Delhi. We would rather write that sentence than let you assume otherwise.
What does not change with geography: the entry is free, the particulars are the same permitted ones, the order is alphabetical, and the client reaches you directly.
Two situations that come up often with advocates outside Delhi:
Advocates ask what the entry looks like from the other side. It is a plain page, and deliberately so.
Your name as enrolled, your city and district, and the courts you appear before. No badge, no score, no "responds in 2 hours".
Your enrolment number, date of enrolment and State Bar Council — stated so that the client can check them independently. This is the single most valuable thing on the page for a client who has been cheated before, and a great many of them have.
In your words, factual. This is what the client reads to decide whether their problem is one you handle.
Stated flatly, without adjectives.
The contact route you gave us, and a consultation request form. No gate, no payment, no "unlock contact details".
And what the client is told about us, on your page. That Legal Space Services is not a law firm, does not practise law, does not appear for anybody, and has no share in what you charge. A client who thinks we are your employer would be a problem for you long before it became one for us, so we say it plainly on every profile.
The least interesting section on this page, and the one most likely to stop you being disappointed.
And the standing offer. If after six months the entry has done nothing for you, take it down. It costs nothing to remove, there is no contract, and nobody will call you to ask why. A listing that is not working for you is not something we want to hold on to.
Different from the list further down, which answers what people search for. These are the ones that come up in conversation, usually at the point of deciding.
You can see for yourself — the whole directory is open at Find Advocate, with no login and nothing hidden. We would rather you looked before applying than after. If the directory is thin in your city today, that is what you will see, and you can decide accordingly.
Two things. The enrolment number is verified against the Bar Council record before anything is published, and one enrolment number can hold only one live entry. If an application already exists on your number, the form will not create a second. If you ever find an entry in your name that you did not ask for — here or anywhere — tell us and we will take it down immediately and tell you what we know about where it came from.
Yes. Ask, and we will send you the draft entry before publication. Nothing goes up that you have not seen. This is also the easiest point at which to have the "please remove that adjective" conversation, which is better had before the page exists than after.
No. A consultation request goes to you, not through us. We do not follow up with the client, we do not ask them what happened, and we do not market anything to them on the back of an enquiry they made about you. The one exception is a client who writes to us saying they could not reach you — in which case we tell you, once.
Tell us at once. We will give you, in writing, exactly what was published, when, on whose instruction, and the fact that no money passed in either direction. That record is yours to use. We keep it precisely because a factual entry is defensible and we should be able to prove what it contained.
The login is issued in your name and the entry is your responsibility under the rule, so it should stay with you. If somebody else updates it in practice, that is your arrangement — but the Bar Council will not be interested in who typed it.
The honest answer is that the catch is the reach. We are a documentation company with a directory attached, not a marketplace with a marketing budget. Fewer people will see your entry here than on a large portal. What you are not giving up in exchange is money, control of your client, or a compliance question. Whether that trade is worth it is a judgement only you can make, and we have tried on this page to give you enough to make it properly.
One last thing, and then the application. If having read all of this you decide against listing — here or anywhere — that is a perfectly sensible conclusion and we would rather you reached it from the rule than from a sales page. The Rule 36 material above is accurate whether or not you ever apply to us, and you are welcome to use it.
Call us. We will tell you exactly what goes on the entry and what does not, before you fill anything in — and there is nothing to pay at any point.