While we normally don't really report news on law firm business development (BD), this one's quite interesting: Trilegal has hired the former Baker & McKenzie Hong Kong office BD and marketing director Anand Ramaswamy in Delhi, reported India Business Law Journal.

He had been at Bakers for 13 years until June 2017, after time since 1996 at Hogan Lovells, Allen & Overy and Chadbourne & Parke.

Most interestingly, he had started his legal career from 1993 to 1995 as a corporate legal assistant at the ill-fated India office of US law firm Chadbourne & Parke LLP (of Lawyers Collective Bombay high court writ petition-fame), according to his Linked-in profile, before moving to Hong Kong with the firm in 1996 as a paralegal. He entered business development for banking and finance at Allen & Overy in Hong Kong in 1997.

Ramaswamy is a 1991 commerce bachelor graduate in economics, management and business from ARSD, of the University of Delhi.

Trilegal co-founding partner Karan Singh told IBLJ that thiw as a new role to “focus our efforts on client development and retention as well as developing specific initiatives across growth markets and sectors”.

Ramaswamy would “assist the firm achieve greater organisational efficiency through process alignment and client-focused service delivery”.

Also, slightly cryptically and ominously, according to IBLJ:

Trilegal had been without a business development head since the departure of Krishnakoli Dutta, who was director strategy and outreach, in July 2016. A marketing professional who did not wish to be named described business development at Trilegal as a “high pressure job” and that the firm is one of very few in India where business development is taken seriously. “Everywhere else BD [business development] is visibility focused and has little to do with the hard work that goes into researching the market and potential clients.”