Greetings Sennai vaasis, since LI seldom has any meaningful threads discussing the legal market/pay in Chennai, pls use this thread to share insights as to the work culture, pay and hiring in Chennai.

Could be anything, open to

Senior counsel chambers

T1/T2 law firms

Boutique law firms

Requesting Mods to feature this for the sake of Law students in South India

There are similar threads on Legally India.

In the Indian context BigLaw means Mumbai, Delhi NCR (Delhi, Noida and Gurgaon) and Bangalore......

Almost all hiring, any serious deals etc is done in these three offices in the exact order.

To work in these three offices local language requirements (Tamil, Kannada or even Hindi) doesn't exist. Hiring is done on a national level.

Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkata Ahmedabad etc - these are namesake practices for BigLaw national firms. There is always a HYPE around these cities. But so far even after a decade nothing serious has happened.

Chennai National Practices are basically local tie ups of national practices with local Chennai lawyers or law firms.

For example - Khaitan Chennai is Assentio Legal, a local Chennai Law firm.

JSA Chennai is CLA (Formerly known as Commercial Law Associates)

Even most Chennai based M&A Deals, Cap Marks Transactions are done in Bangalore or Mumbai offices. TN is a big industrial economy. But not for BigLaw.

Pay is also lower in Chennai based law firms, including at BigLaw national practices.

Chennai firms mostly hire locally from TN based law colleges like Sastra, GLC or TNNLU.

Usually pay is (as told by colleagues who interned in Chennai)

60K in Tier 1 firms (National Practices) Some exceptions are there and pay according to national standards.

30 to 40K in firms like ICUL, HSB (Best in Chennai)

80K in LKS (exceptionally high for Chennai standards)

15 to 20K - paid by senior advocates (who gross over 5 crore per year)

Anyways just posting some threads

https://www.legallyindia.com/convos/topic/266717-highest-paying-law-firms-in-chennai#comment-267122

https://www.legallyindia.com/convos/topic/325227-khaitan-chennai

Peritum Partners is heavily sought after.

Pay beats a few firms, may be behind tier 1s but the culture is unparalleled. Work-life-balance actually exists and interns and associates get incredible support from the partners.

Personally know several people that have applied to work at the firm because of Karthik's kindness and mentorship. I have interacted a lot with him even though I did not work with the firm but he has supported my career in ways that no partner/mentor I have worked with has. Anyone that works at the firm probably has it way better from growth and support.

Tier 1s have the same story across, no work-life-balance but high pay. They own your soul but have your back and you will grow with glass ceiling

He isn't the ASG. The ASG is Mr. ARL Sundaresan.

Mr Sankaranarayanan was the ASG, and now has a thriving IBC practice.

He, along with Arvind Pandian, Om Prakash, R Murari, and Srinath Sridevan are the senior counsels who have a significant practice in the NCLT and NCLAT.

Other Senior Counsels who have busy chambers are:-

Satish Parasaran, V. Raghavachari, T. Mohan, and NL Rajah.

Of course, right at the top would be Mr PS Raman and Mr ARL Sundaresan (who currently hold the offical posts of AG and ASG, respectively)

Not sure. There seem to be two pay structures. One type is a lower salary with a share in fees in the cases you work on. Another type is a high salary.

also i guess most senior counsels have no restrictions on private practice being followed by the people in their chambers.

I had interned there previously. They have a good growing commercial Disputes practice. When I was interning there, it was a small team with one SA and 2 associates. Rest of the team is based out of Mumbai. I noticed that they are looking to hire aggressively. I was interning in the team that had matters in DRT, NCLT and Madras High court. The Chennai team, particular the Senior Associate was very helpful and nice to work with. He used to take time to explain the research proposition to the interns and took time to address our queries and review our work. Overall the work and office environment is silent most of the time as the SA is serious on his work, but he environment was always friendly and not toxic

The Chennai office of LEx Aeterna Practices has more or less closed it's operations. They have vacated their office space after their Senior Associate moved out with his team. The firm was already dealing with multiple exits in Mumbai, but their Chennai office has borne the brunt with close to nil matters now.

So far, very happy that it has become an informative thread, please continue commenting for making this useful for litigating lawyers/those wishing to get into Litigation in chennai.

Chennai has a good no.of tribunals

DRT,DRAT, NCLT,NCLAT, RERA, CESTAT, ITAT apart from Original Civil side, Writ Side, IP Division of MHC insights in this regard are also welcome folks.

Have a nice day/long weekend

Hi, got into both, unfortunately not in a position to intern at both due to only having a month in December, with full disclosure I had a contact from KCO but not with SAM, KCO is tough to break into but SAM is possible, email a partner, thats what I did, got an email back from the hr assuming they forwarded it internally. Had an interview rather a questionnaire to fill out and got in.

Nope, I'm from a pretty woeful private law school, Have around 10 months of Internship experience due to college permitting me to intern during the semester outside Chennai in particular in the city where my law school is as if we attend till 9:30 we get marked present for the rest of the lectures with a valid internship offer, also ended up winning an award at Vis last year which certainly helped.

Need solid insights on these great seniors - Arun C Mohan, Rahul Unnikrishnan, Karthik Sundaram
two of them were APD's juniors.
Could find quite a no. of Foreign LLM holders/NLU peeps who have returned back to MHC/Tribunal practice like Sricharan Rangarajan, M V Swaroop & the above
What is the genuine worth of Litigation in chennai, is there such a green pasture for commercial + Civil lit?