How to Perform Conflict Checks in an Indian Law Firm

Practice Management · Conflict Checks

Updated for 2026 · Claw Editorial

Missing a conflict of interest is one of the fastest ways an Indian law firm can end up disqualified from a matter, facing a professional misconduct complaint, or losing a client’s trust. A conflict check is the process of screening a new client or new matter against everyone the firm already represents, has represented, or is adverse to, before the firm agrees to take it on. This guide walks through how to run that check properly, what counts as a conflict under Indian practice, and how to keep a record that holds up if anyone ever questions it.

01Why conflict checks matter in an Indian law firm

A conflict check is a screening step, done before a firm accepts a new client or a new matter, to make sure taking it on will not put the firm on both sides of the same dispute, against a current client, or in a position where its judgment for one client is compromised by duties to another. Skipping it, or doing it casually, is a real and recurring risk for Indian firms.

The professional conduct rules are clear on this

Standards of professional conduct for advocates in India are set out in Part VI, Chapter II of the Bar Council of India Rules, framed under the Advocates Act, 1961. An advocate who has advised, drafted pleadings for, or appeared for a party in a matter should not then act, attend, or plead for the opposing side in that same matter. Representing conflicting interests without full disclosure and the express consent of everyone concerned is treated as unprofessional conduct. That makes conflict checking a compliance obligation, not just good practice.

Growth is what makes conflicts more likely

The risk grows with the firm. A lateral hire brings a client list from their old firm. A branch office in another city takes on a matter without knowing what the head office already handles. A corporate client and its subsidiary, promoter, or a related group company show up as separate matters years apart, and nobody connects them. Litigation teams see the same opposing counsel and the same set of parties again and again across unrelated disputes. Every one of these is a normal, everyday event in a growing practice, and every one of them can create a conflict if nobody is checking.

What is actually at stake

A missed conflict discovered mid-matter is far worse than one caught at intake. It can force the firm to withdraw from a case partway through, which damages the client relationship and can invite a professional misconduct complaint to the State Bar Council. It can also expose the firm to a claim that confidential information from one client was available to lawyers acting for another. None of this needs to happen if the check is built into how the firm takes on work.

02What counts as a conflict, in practice

In practice, a conflict is not always as obvious as representing both sides of the same case. Most conflicts that catch firms out are less direct than that.

Most conflicts that catch a law firm out are not the obvious ones. They are the related company, the former client, or the matter that arrives through a different lawyer at the same firm.

03The step-by-step process

A conflict check works reliably only if it is a routine step, applied to every new client and every new matter, not something done only when someone happens to remember.

Step 1: Keep one central client and matter list

Before you can check anything, you need a single, up-to-date list of every client and every matter the firm has ever handled, current and closed. If this list lives in different lawyers’ heads, personal notebooks, or separate branch-office files, a check against it is not really a check. This is the single most important thing to get right, and it usually needs a shared system rather than a spreadsheet once a firm has more than a handful of lawyers.

Step 2: Capture full details at intake, not just a name

When a new client or matter comes in, record the full legal name of the client, any known aliases or former names, related entities such as parent and subsidiary companies, and the names of the opposing parties in the matter. A search on “Sharma Enterprises” alone will miss a conflict if the actual party is “Sharma Enterprises Private Limited, formerly Sharma Traders.”

Step 3: Search before you accept, not after

Run the new client and all opposing parties named in the matter against the central list, before the engagement letter goes out and before any substantive work starts. Check both directions: is the new client adverse to anyone the firm currently or formerly represented, and is anyone on the other side of this matter someone the firm already represents.

Step 4: Ask about relationships, not just records

A database search will not catch a personal or financial interest that was never entered anywhere. Make it standard practice to ask the lawyer taking on the matter, and where relevant the partners involved, whether they or a close family member have any personal or financial connection to any party.

Step 5: Decide, and document the decision

If the search comes back clear, note that it was run and the result, even though nothing was found. This creates the record that shows the firm checked. If a potential conflict shows up, it should go to a named partner or a conflicts owner to decide the outcome: decline the matter, decline for the specific lawyers involved and build an ethical screen around them, or proceed only with full disclosure and the express, written consent of everyone concerned.

Step 6: Repeat it at the right trigger points

Run the check again whenever a lateral hire joins, since they bring a new set of prior clients and matters with them, and whenever an existing client opens a genuinely new matter, since the parties on the other side may differ from the last one. A conflict check done once at the start of a relationship is not enough for a firm that takes on repeat work.

04Keeping a defensible record

The check itself protects the firm today. The record of it protects the firm later, if a decision is ever questioned by a client, an opposing party, or a Bar Council. For every intake, keep a note of who was searched, when, against what list, what was found, and what was decided. If a partial conflict was cleared through disclosure and consent, keep that consent in writing.

This record-keeping is really an extension of how a firm manages its clients and matters day to day. If your firm is still working out that broader system, our guide to case management for law firms in India covers how a central client and matter record should work in practice.

05Manual checklist vs conflict check software

A small firm with a handful of lawyers can run this process on a well-maintained spreadsheet or document register, as long as everyone actually uses it and it is kept current. The approach above works at that scale.

It gets harder to do reliably by hand once a firm has multiple offices, several lateral hires, or a client base with many related group companies. At that point, a manual search across scattered files is slow and easy to get wrong, and the record-keeping tends to slip. Practice management and client management platforms increasingly build conflict checking in as a standard feature, alongside client intake and matter records, precisely because it needs one central, searchable list to work at all. If you are evaluating dedicated tools for this, our roundup of conflict check software for Indian law firms compares the options.

06Where Claw fits

Claw is an all-in-one legaltech platform for Indian advocates, law firms, and corporate legal teams, combining AI-based case search, an AI legal assistant (Legal GPT), case management, and compliance automation across all Indian courts and tribunals.

For conflict checking specifically, what matters is having one reliable, searchable record of every client and matter the firm has handled, which is exactly what a central case management system is built to hold. Because Claw’s case management covers client and matter records alongside case tracking and AI tools in a single system, firms using it already have the single source of truth that a proper conflict check depends on, rather than having to search across separate spreadsheets, branch offices, or individual lawyers’ files. It does not replace the judgment call of deciding whether a conflict is waivable, but it removes the more basic failure point: not knowing what the firm has already handled.

07Sources and further reading

References used for this guide, linked to their official sources:

• Bar Council of India, Rules on Professional Standards (Part VI, Chapter II): barcouncilofindia.org
• The Advocates Act, 1961: indiacode.nic.in
• Claw: clawlaw.in

This guide explains the process in general terms. It is not legal advice, and firms should confirm current Bar Council rules and their own conflicts policy with their compliance or ethics counsel.

08Frequently asked questions