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In March 2024, a three-judge Supreme Court bench did something that doesn’t happen often: it read an entirely new right into the Constitution. In MK Ranjitsinh vs Union of India, the Court held that freedom from the adverse effects of climate change is part of the right to life and equality guaranteed under Articles 14 and 21. It’s the first time the Indian judiciary has articulated a standalone constitutional climate right.
What happened next is the part most people miss, and it’s worth knowing before you cite this case. The Supreme Court didn’t hand down a sweeping climate remedy. The case itself was actually about the Great Indian Bustard, a critically endangered bird threatened by overhead power lines in renewable energy zones, and the climate right emerged almost as a side effect of that dispute. When the Court finally disposed of the case in a final judgment on December 19, 2025, it moved away from strict protective measures and instead endorsed a science-based, zonal approach that permits continued renewable energy expansion in the bird’s habitat, rather than the blanket restrictions environmentalists had pushed for. Legal commentators have described this outcome as the Court declaring the right’s arrival without yet providing a clear roadmap for its enforcement.
Our founder Rahul Sharma, who works extensively in the law firm management and legal recruitment field, brings up this nuance deliberately. He thinks about this case every time a law student or a lawyer asks him if “ESG law” is a real practice area or just a phrase firms put on their website to look current.
His honest answer: it’s real, it’s still forming, and even its most significant legal milestone so far shows exactly how unsettled the practical application of climate law in India still is, which is exactly why it’s worth paying attention to right now, while the rules of the practice area are still being written.
The regulatory engine driving this practice
Three separate regulatory tracks are converging to create this work, and none of them are slowing down.
Disclosure.
SEBI’s BRSR Core framework, introduced in July 2023, mandates detailed ESG disclosures across nine attributes: greenhouse gas emissions, water and energy use, employee wellbeing, wage parity, and more, with third-party assurance required. It started with the top 150 listed companies by market cap in FY2023-24, expanded to the top 250 in FY2024-25, reached the top 500 for the current FY2025-26 cycle, and is scheduled to extend to the top 1,000 listed entities by FY2026-27. The framework also originally proposed mandatory value-chain ESG disclosures, requiring companies to report on their top upstream and downstream partners, though SEBI’s March 2025 circular eased this specific requirement to a voluntary, comply-or-explain basis for the current cycle rather than a hard mandate. That’s still meaningful legal work: companies preparing for eventual mandatory value-chain disclosure are already building the contracts, audit rights, and compliance frameworks now, ahead of the requirement tightening further.
Carbon markets.
India’s Carbon Credit Trading Scheme, notified in June 2023, is building out a domestic compliance carbon market, with trading expected to begin around mid-2026.
Cross-border cost.
The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism became fully operational on January 1, 2026, and it’s already showing up as a real line item on Indian exporters’ invoices. One industry cost analysis, citing Argus and Fastmarkets calculations, put the CBAM cost on Indian blast-furnace steel at roughly €254 per tonne, compared to about €94-100 for Turkish or Vietnamese steel produced through less carbon-intensive routes, the same product, priced very differently because of how it was made. Separately, a 2023 study by India’s Centre for Science and Environment estimated CBAM could impose roughly a 25% price burden on Indian steel and aluminium exports. The Indian government is reportedly working on a scheme to cover 90% of CBAM compliance costs for MSME exporters, and the UK has confirmed its own carbon border tax starting January 2027, with Australia, Canada and the US reportedly considering similar measures. This isn’t a future problem lawyers might need to think about. It’s a present cost that needs legal and commercial structuring today.
Where the litigation is headed
The disputes side of this practice is smaller than disclosure work, but the direction is unmistakable. According to the UNEP and Columbia Law School’s Global Climate Litigation Report 2025, India has registered 14 distinct climate-related cases, addressing issues from air pollution and deforestation to renewable energy obligations and the constitutional right to a clean environment. The National Green Tribunal and the Supreme Court have both been described as incorporating climate considerations into their rulings with increasing frequency, and the Ranjitsinh judgment is the clearest signal yet that this trend has legal teeth, not just rhetorical weight.
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Who’s actually building this practice
This is the part that tells you whether a practice area is real: who’s investing in it, and how.
Among Indian law firms, one industry roundup names JSA and Nishith Desai Associates as early movers on ESG, and states that by 2026 every Tier-1 Indian law firm has some form of dedicated ESG group.
Trilegal runs a standalone Environment and Climate Change practice covering compliance, ESG advisory, impact investing, and disputes, and firms like LKS Attorneys have built out entire microsites dedicated to ESG, climate, and sustainability law.
Boutique and mid-sized firms, SMV Chambers, Dhir & Dhir Associates among them, have followed with their own dedicated ESG practice pages.
But as per our Founder Parishkriti Atri, a seasoned career coach and mentor, here’s what she thinks career advice on this topic usually misses: law firms are not the main hiring engine for ESG talent right now, consulting firms are.
Deloitte India, for instance, has active postings for ESG Assurance & Advisory roles in Mumbai at both senior and entry levels (1–2 years’ experience), working directly with frameworks like GRI Standards, IFRS S1/S2, CSRD, and BRSR, and running materiality assessments, ESG data assurance, and green/sustainability bond reviews. That’s meaningfully legal-adjacent work, reading disclosure obligations, structuring compliance frameworks, understanding assurance standards, being hired for by the Big 4, not just law firms. If you’re mapping a career in this space and only looking at law firm ESG desks, you’re missing where a large share of the actual hiring volume sits.
What the hiring data shows
ESG-related job postings in India are reported to have grown substantially in recent years, one HR industry analysis cites a roughly 70% increase in ESG-related postings between 2020 and 2023, and a broader 200-223% growth in the overall ESG job market from 2019 to 2023, with sustainability role postings up roughly 81% year-on-year.
On live job counts, we found meaningfully different numbers across platforms and even across different searches on the same platform, LinkedIn showed anywhere from roughly 870 to over 1,000 ESG-related postings in India depending on the exact search, and Indeed showed just under 1,000.
One caveat here: the overwhelming majority of these postings are for sustainability analysts, ESG reporting officers, and decarbonisation specialists, not lawyers specifically.
That’s actually useful information, not a discouraging one: it tells you that in this practice area, the legal skill set often gets absorbed into a broader “ESG professional” title rather than sitting in a clearly labelled legal role. If you’re a lawyer entering this space, you should expect to compete for, and thrive in, roles that aren’t always titled “counsel.”
Right now, most lawyers doing serious ESG work in India are corporate, capital markets, or environmental lawyers who’ve added this as a specialisation on top of an existing base salary, not people hired into a freestanding “ESG counsel” pay band. That will almost certainly change as the practice matures.
Building a career here: Where to actually start
Get fluent in the frameworks, not just the statutes. BRSR, GRI, TCFD, IFRS S1/S2 and CSRD aren’t interchangeable, they’re overlapping but distinct disclosure standards, and companies increasingly need advisors who can map one against another. This is a learnable skill set, and very few junior lawyers currently have it.
Look at Big 4 ESG advisory as seriously as you’d look at a law firm. Deloitte, EY, PwC and KPMG are actively building ESG assurance and advisory teams that value legal and regulatory fluency, often at more accessible entry points than a Tier-1 law firm associate seat.
Follow the litigation, even if you’re not a litigator. The Ranjitsinh judgment and the growing NGT docket are the leading indicators for where regulatory obligations will tighten next. Lawyers who track this closely will see compliance requirements coming before their competitors do.
Don’t wait for a “ESG lawyer” job title to appear. Given how much of this hiring currently happens under broader sustainability titles, the more useful move is often building the specialisation inside an existing corporate, capital markets, or environmental law role, and making that expertise visible, rather than waiting for a perfectly labelled vacancy.
Where this leaves you
A constitutional right that didn’t exist two years ago. A carbon border tax that’s already showing up on export invoices. Regulatory disclosure requirements expanding every financial year. And a hiring market growing fast enough that the job titles haven’t caught up to the actual work yet.
That combination: real regulatory urgency, immature market structure, is precisely the environment where early movers build outsized careers. The lawyers who invest in this fluency now, while the practice area is still finding its shape, are likely to be the ones defining what an “ESG counsel” role even looks like in five years.
If you’re trying to figure out how to position yourself for a shift like this, whether that means building a new specialisation inside your current role or making a more direct move, that’s exactly the kind of career strategy conversation we have with candidates through our coaching work. Feel free to reach out if you want to think it through. [Review our services here: https://neetishastra.com/boss-lawyer-programme-legal-coach-law-firm-lawyer/]
Good luck, and if you require further guidance, connect with me at teamneetishastra@gmail.com or via Instagram.
Sources and further reading:
- Supreme Court of India, MK Ranjitsinh & Ors. v. Union of India & Ors., 2024 INSC 280 (order dated 21 March 2024) and 2025 INSC 1472 (final judgment dated 19 December 2025) — primary judgment text via Indian Kanoon
- Down To Earth, “Was there a judicial balancing between the Great Indian Bustard and solar panels in MK Ranjitsinh v Union of India”
- Verdictum, “Supreme Court Issues Directions For Conservation Of Great Indian Bustard; Approves Restrictions On Future Renewable Energy Projects In Rajasthan”
- Verfassungsblog, “India’s New Constitutional Climate Right”
- American Journal of International Law (Cambridge Core), case note on M.K. Ranjitsinh, 2024 INSC 280
- Chambers Expert Focus, “ESG Disclosures in India and Internationally”
- Law.Asia, “India ESG rules: SEBI disclosures, green incentives, M&A guide”
- Legal 500, India Environmental, Social and Governance country guide
- SEBI, BRSR Core circular (July 2023) and subsequent phase-in guidance;
- Vakilsearch and ManufacturingPlantIndia trackers on FY-wise applicability, including the March 2025 easing of value-chain disclosure to comply-or-explain
- Treelife, “ESG Compliance in India” (CCTS and Green Credit Programme)
- Down To Earth, “EU Carbon Border Tax Takes Effect, Impacting Indian Export Costs” (CSE study on 25% price burden)
- Business Standard, “CBAM explained: Why Europe’s carbon tax matters for India’s exporters”
- OneStopESG, “EU CBAM 2026: A Practical Guide for Exporters” (Argus/Fastmarkets cost figures, cited secondhand)
- Outlook Business, “Climate Litigation Rises in India as Courts Uphold Right to Healthy Environment” (UNEP/Sabin Center Global Climate Litigation Report 2025)
- Taggd, “Sustainability Hiring in India: Trends, Challenges, and Talent Gaps in 2026”
- LinkedIn India and Indeed India, live ESG job listings
If you are looking for legal jobs and legal internships, join NS Inbox, which is a one – of – its kind curated legal opportunity subscription, where we have shared 2,000+ opportunities in the last 4 months: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSebugj8j7nA4rdRIssqbtD4o4ec-Z8taH-LkhSBBxWDtYgICg/viewform
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By Parishkriti Atri
Parishkriti is a lawyer and an entrepreneur who loves creating content. In her free time, she loves napping and gorging on chinese food.