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Responsibility management / Issue 26

LegallyIndia_KianGanz-180
LegallyIndia_KianGanz-180
Things usually start out nice and steady and the managing partner wears the star rainmaker cap and every other hat on top of it.

But with greater size come greater responsibilities.

It is therefore not a huge surprise that Amarchand Mumbai has taken on a chief operating officer (COO) to relieve the Shroff family of some of its internal management duties.

That Amarchand has hired a non-Indian COO from the UK is more unusual.

While the cultural fit remains to be tested, it is potentially a shrewd move aimed at bringing overseas' best practices home to Amarchand.

A number of other fast-growing firms are understood to be improving their management processes, putting in place non-lawyers to head various internal functions such as HR, knowledge management and IT.

Nevertheless, firms' evolution out of the proprietorship stage will not happen overnight - and for some firms probably never at all.

But if you thought that managing a law firm is hard, running a legal process outsourcing company is probably twice as tough.

Clifford Chance has been careful in its choice of words about the news that two staff in its Gurgaon-based legal offshoring centre have been promoted to Clifford Chance associates in London and Abu Dhabi.

Good news for the two lawyers' wallets and partially for Clifford Chance, which has clearly managed to attract talent into its captive LPO in only a short time.

However, it highlights the inherent difficulty in running an LPO-style business.

Certain people are never going to be content with doc ument management and review work for the rest of their LPO careers where promotion opportunities are limited.

But creating an expectation that the LPO is a temporary stepping stone into an associate job will attract exactly the kind of people who will not be satisfied with an LPO job; staff retention suffers.

It is therefore clear why Clifford Chance has been keen to stress that these cases were an exception and that Gurgaon is not becoming "a conveyor belt into Clifford Chance".

One expects that at least a few future applicants will hope that it turns into a conveyor belt after all.

But to be completely honest there are probably worse problems to have.

Such as those of expat Indian lawyers, who ask themselves whether giving up Indian citizenship loses you the right to be an advocate. And what does the Advocates Act really say about foreign lawyers? Read the buzzing forum discussion and share your learned view.

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More London arbitrators are coming to India this week, a raft of deals and turning FCCBs to convertible bonds is all the rage for some firms.

Dua Associates, Luthra & Luthra and Trilegal go into the Delhi cricket tournament knock-out stage as favourites.

Law Schools:
Careers Counsel: How to write the perfect CV and a fill-in-the-blanks template to get a law firm job.

Our Mooting Premier League sees the national law schools of Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Bhopal in the top three positions after Jodhpur cleaning-up at Stetson North.

NUJS Kolkata has launched a themed edition of its law journal that hopes to help the Supreme Court Judges make their decision on the anti-gay section 377.

And finally, NLS Bangalore's Strawberry Fields festival was a rocking success.

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