People Moves: Jan – April, 2013

The first four months of this year has seen a significant number of lateral shifts amongst the country’s bigger law firms, while breakaway firms have either dissolved or merged with other startups. At the same time, this time period has also seen a number of Partner promotions, indicating a possible rise in market sentiment. Of course, the spate of promotions could also be a move towards stemming attrition, something that seems to be plaguing quite a few law firms..Lateral Shifts.When it comes to lateral shifts, the largest movement has been at Economic Laws Practice, where 14 lawyers, including Partners Tarun Gulati, Sanjay Notani, and Associate Partner Neil Hildrith have shifted to PDS Legal. Nishith Desai saw two of its senior lawyers; Sidharth Shah and Bijal Ajinkya leave the firm to join Khaitan & Co. .Seth Dua Associates got three new partners and saw the exit of one; Salman Waris from HSA Advocates, Gautam Chopra from Vaish Associates and Competition Law expert VK Aggarwal joined Seth Dua while Rahul Goel left to join Dhir & Dhir..Other Partner shifts include Desai Diwanji’s Amit Khansaheb moving to BMR Legal, JSA’s Abeezar E Faizullabhoy shifting to a power projects company, Sidanth Rajgopal moving from Clasis Law to Clyde & Co where he has been made an Equity Partner and Harry Chawla, Senior Partner and member of the management committee at Amarchand Mangaldas moving to Kochhar & Co..Retirements.J. Sagar Associates saw the retirement of its founding partner, a decision that was made 10 years back. Jyoti has retired as an equity partner of his firm setting the stage for Berjis Desai. Jyoti will now be associated with the firm as a Chairman in a mentoring role. Wadia Ghandy also saw the departure of one of their Senior Partners, Djena Sunavala who left after working at the firm for 23 years..Promotions.J. Sagar Associates, which saw the departure of their founder Jyoti Sagar earlier this year, has announced bumper promotions, promoting 18 of its Senior Associates to the post of Retained Partner, while also making two of its Retained Partners (Vishnu Sudarsan and Varghese Thomas) Equity Partner Elect..Khaitan & Co has also seen some changes at the top, bringing in Morgan Stanley’s Sudhir Bassi as the firm’s new Executive Director. Khaitan & Co also promoted 5 Principal Associates to Associate Partnership. In second place is Desai & Diwanji that saw 10 Associate Partners being promoted to Partnership. Anand and Anand has also seen a rise in the number of Partners, with 6 new partner promotions..New Firms/Mergers/Dissolutions.The first three months saw the establishment of “V Chambers of Law” by ex-AZB Partner, Vineetha MG in January this year. However a few weeks later, Vineetha merged her firm with Narasappa Dorawamy & Raja to form a new law firm, “Samvad”. This time period also saw the integration of practices of both Link Legal and India Law Services to form Link Legal – India Law Services..The first two months of this year saw the last steps in the dissolution of Alliance Legal, a firm co-founded by Vishnu Jerome, Ravi Kumar and Priyanka Roy. While Jerome has opened up the Mumbai office of Poovayya & Co, Kumar has returned to Amarchand Mangaldas as Senior Consultant. Roy, on the other hand, has joined the Mumbai office of Indus Law where she is an Equity Partner..In London, Clasis Law co-founder Shalini Agarwal left the firm and has established a legal consultancy firm “In Se Legal”.International Firms.With respect to international law firms, Allen & Overy promoted Counsel Gautam Narasimhan at the firm’s Singapore office, to Partnership, and Linklaters made its Manaing Associate Savi Hebbur, a Partner at the London office in the last week of April..The full report can be seen below: