Law firms

In a rare move from academia to the law firm world, Link Legal India Law Services has engaged former Delhi University’s Campus Law Centre faculty Solil Paul as chair - academics at the firm.

“I received a call from the government today,“ Kaviraj Singh, secretary general of the Indian National Bar Association (INBA), told us yesterday. Staunchly pro-liberalisation INBA and Singh have been one of the stakeholders involved in discussions with the Indian government.

Former Link Legal India Law Services (LLILS) associate partner Rajdeep Choudhary has joined HSA Advocates as partner to strengthen its dispute resolution and management, projects and energy and infrastructure practices.

As first reported by Live Law, the Supreme Court has upheld the right of foreign lawyers to fly in on a temporary basis to India to advise clients, as well as finding that foreign lawyers should be allowed to conduct international arbitrations in India.

The long-long-running Supreme Court case hearing the Bar Council of India (BCI) appeal against the Madras high court's AK Balaji judgment, which allowed foreign law firms to operate in India on a fly-in-fly-out basis, is listed for tomorrow as cause list number 1501.

Six-year old Jaipur-based firm Capstone Legal, that was started up by NLSIU Bangalore 2012 alumnus Ashish K Singh fresh out of law school with his brother Vagish K Singh, who was in his fourth year at NLSIU at the time, has opened its second office, expanding to Ahmedabad.

Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas CAM has hired UK Sinha, former Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) chief of 6 years, as a senior advisor to lead its newly-established Corporate Governance Center (CGC).

As expected, after we had broken exclusively last week that Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM) had been visited by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) about Nirav Modi, the mainstream media, keen on anything NiMo-related at the moment, didn’t take long to jump on the story.

Emerging food delivery startup, Grab.in, has raised a funding of Rs 9 crores ($1.5m) from SIDBI Venture Capital, the wholly owned subsidiary of SIDBI, as reported by YourStory and MoneyControl. With the current funding, SIDBI will be joining the list of Grab's investors that include Aramex Ventures, Zomato, and Sixth Sense Ventures. The Mumbai-based startup had earlier raised $1 million from Oliphans Capital and independent investor Haresh Chawla in April 2015, while Zomato had invested an undisclosed amount in the startup five months later.

A keen-eyed reader has brought to our notice that Fox & Mandal, Kolkata, has published an advertisement in the Kolkata-based Telegraph newspaper, stating that the venerable firm, “has no other branch in any part of the country”, especially not Fox Mandal:

Tatva Legal has promoted R Venkat Raman, who heads the 5-lawyer litigation practice in Chennai, to its partnership in January, according to a press release from the firm.

Piyush Mishra, former projects partner at Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM) Delhi, who had resigned four months ago, yesterday joined AZB & Partners in Mumbai as a partner.

K Law partner and Mumbai-based litigation head Karthik Somasundram has joined Bharucha & Partners in Mumbai today, growing its litigation practice to seven partners.