Breaking: Karnataka High Court designates 18 new Senior Advocates

The Karnataka High Court has designated eighteen lawyers as Senior Advocates. At least five of the designees are partners at various law firms.

The following lawyers have been designated:

Arun Kumar K
AS Ponnanna (AAG)
G Shivadass
Gurudas Kannur
Gurumath Gangadhar Rudramuni Sharma
Hasmath Pasha
Jayna Kothari
KN Phanindra
Kuloor Arvind Kamath
Lakshmi Iyengar
M. Nagaprasanna
RV Prasad
RV Subramanya Naik
Sandesh J Chouta
Shankar A
S. Susheela
Srinivasa Raghavan V
TS Amar Kumar

(Top Row L-R): TS Amarkumar, Hashmath Pasha, Nagaprasanna Mahesh, (Bottom Row L-R): RV Prasad, Sandeep Chouta, G Shivadass

Arun Kumar is a Founding Partner at CrestLaw Partners. Prior to setting up CrestLaw, he was an Equity Partner at Dua Associates. He is a 1994 graduate of National Law School of India University, Bangalore.

Arvind Kamath was enrolled on 12th June 1993 and has since practiced before various courts at the original and appellate levels. He regularly appears before the Karnataka High Court, and in the course of practice, he has also appeared before other High Courts in the country and the Supreme Court of India. He heads the dispute resolution practice at ALMT Legal’s Bangalore office.

AS Ponnanna is an Additional Advocate General at the Karnataka High Court. Ponnanna climbed through the ranks of state government’s legal team in a relatively short span of time.

Sandesh Chouta is also an Additional Advocate General. He was appointed in August 2018.

Top Row L-R: Arun Kumar, Arvind Kamath, AS Ponnanna<br />Bottom Row L-R: Jayna Kothari, Srinivas Raghavan, Lakshmi Iyengar

Top Row L-R: Arun Kumar, Arvind Kamath, AS Ponnanna
Bottom Row L-R: Jayna Kothari, Srinivas Raghavan, Lakshmi Iyengar

Jayna Kothari is a co-founder of Centre for Law and Policy Research. She is also a partner at Ashira Law, a Bangalore-based law firm, and practices in the Karnataka High Court and the Supreme Court of India. She graduated from University Law College with a B.A. LL.B degree and holds a BCL degree from Oxford University. She is one of three women lawyers to be designated, the other two being Lakshmi Iyengar and S Susheela.

Srinivas Raghavan heads the Litigation & Dispute Resolution practice at IndusLaw and has over 20 years’ of experience litigating complex disputes. He is a 1996 graduate of National Law School of India University, Bangalore.

G Shivadass heads the Bangalore office of Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan, and has been with the firm since 1993.

The names of Gurudas Kannur, Arvind Kamath and KN Phanindra recently came up for elevation as High Court judges, but were eventually remitted to the Chief Justice of Karnataka High Court by the Supreme Court Collegium.

These designations are the first to take place ever since the Supreme Court’s judgment in Indira Jaising v. Union of India, by which the system of designating Senior Advocates saw a change.