Facing heavy internal resistance after suggesting that staff should return from their hometowns where many had sheltered during the Covid-19 lockdowns, Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan (LKS) has changed course and scrapped the policy tonight, announcing it would continue working from home indefinitely.

L&L Partners corporate transactional advisory partnership has paid out bonuses to fee-earners just a little behind schedule last week, though it notified its 44 fresh campus recruits that they would not be able to join the firm before 2021 as opposed to around this month (though a few of these have since joined - see update below).

Economic Laws Practice (ELP) has expanded its direct tax practice, hiring chartered accountant and Dhruva Advisors partner Saumil Shah as a director in Mumbai.

AZB & Partners Mumbai-based financial services partner Anu Tiwari is leaving the firm.

Khaitan & Co environment law practice partner Nawneet Vibhaw has joined Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas (SAM) in Delhi as a partner.

Until-now pureplay corporate and private equity / venture capital boutique Algo Legal has expanded its service lines into litigation with the hire of Namitha Mathews as a partner in Delhi.

Khaitan & Co has moved into a managed offices in Bengaluru operated by its client WeWork, with a seating capacity of 150, which is nearly double its current local headcount; in the National Capital Region (NCR) it has relocated to a state-of-the-art but more traditional office space in Noida from Delhi.

Economic Laws Practice (ELP) equity partner Darshan Upadhyay and partners Shyam Pandya, Amit Manubarwala and Bhavin Gada, have started up a specialist corporate firm called Stratage Law Partners.

Samvād Partners has promoted Bangalore-based counsel Anisha Shroff and Siddharth Seshan to partner.

Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan (LKS) has hired Amritha Salian, who had been an associate partner at Themis Associates in Bangalore until June 2019, and Gaurav Dayal, who had been Gurgaon-based associate general counsel at the Oyo hotels group.

Ashok Dhingra Associates equity partner Smita Singh has joined Singh & Associates to head its indirect tax practice as a partner in Delhi.

HSA Advocates partner Ramya Hariharan has re-started her briefly independent Kolkata-based law firm, Citadel Law Chambers, with five other fee-earners after four years at HSA.