Competition Law
CCI investigations, merger filings, and a Section 4 abuse case that never quite closes.
A day, honestly described.
A merger-control filing is due before the CCI on Friday. The transaction is a USD 1.6 billion acquisition of a digital-services platform; the parties trigger the asset-and-turnover threshold under the Combination Regulations. You spend the morning preparing the Form I (or Form II if the de minimis exemption does not apply), the next two days running the relevant-market analysis with an economist, and the rest of the week drafting the response to the inevitable Section 29(1) inquiry.
Competition practice splits into merger-control (filings, second-stage inquiries, gun-jumping defences), enforcement (Section 3 cartel investigations, Section 4 abuse-of-dominance defences), and advisory (compliance programmes, distribution-agreement review, leniency applications). The work is interdisciplinary — economics, regulatory law, and procedure all matter, often in the same memo.
The CCI is procedurally demanding and substantively unpredictable; some early decisions have aged poorly, others have aligned with mature competition jurisprudence. Practice rewards economists-trained-as-lawyers and lawyers-comfortable-with-economists. You will read OECD papers, EU competition decisions, and the Combination Regulations 2024 in the same week.
Where the work happens. Who hires. What you'll be paid.
Where the work happens
Recruitment pathway
Competition teams at Tier-1 firms recruit through standard PPO funnels but specifically value candidates with economics or industrial-organisation training. A B.Com / B.A. (Econ) / B.Stats undergraduate background before LLB is meaningfully helpful, though not required.
A summer with a competition team is the strongest signal. International experience (Brussels secondment, EU competition fellowship) accelerates partner-track movement at the senior-associate stage. Published commentary on recent CCI decisions (XYZ, the digital-markets cases) carries weight in interviews.
First-year vs senior associate
Drafting Forms I and II for merger filings, preparing relevant-market analyses with the economist, researching CCI precedent. You will read the Combination Regulations end-to-end in your first month. You will not lead a filing.
You lead drafting of merger filings. You appear before the CCI on procedural matters. On enforcement side, you draft responses to Section 3 / 4 investigations and lead second-tier defence projects. You begin to advise clients directly on compliance programmes.
Compensation bands (approximate)
What law students consistently lack — and how to fix it.
Each gap below is something we have heard from Competition Law hiring partners. The simulation column is what closes it before your first internship.
Relevant-market analysis is taught as doctrine — SSNIP test, demand-side substitutability — but students cannot perform an analysis on a real fact pattern.
The Iura competition simulation gives you a fact pattern and asks you to write a one-page market-definition memo.
The Combination Regulations 2024 introduced a deal-value threshold; students who studied the older framework do not know the new triggers.
A threshold-analysis task using the current regulations.
No exposure to leniency applications — yet they are a staple of cartel-defence practice.
A leniency-application drafting task with a senior's annotated model.
Work your first competition law brief — free, in your browser, in 45 minutes.
We're shipping Competition Law simulations soon. In the meantime, try one of our published simulations to see the format.
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Competition practice is intellectually unusual on this list — it is the most economist-adjacent of the legal practices. The work is interesting, the pay is firm-track, and the path to international work is shorter than in any other Indian practice. Intern with a competition team in 3rd-year summer.