True. But it also helps to have enough women around in senior ranks at a firm to be able to do that (and not to have a partnership committee that exclusively consists of an old boys' club).
Thanks for the reminder - true, Medhe Marathe is 2011 NUJS.
Would love to do this research again hopefully.
I should also add, if there are any other interesting angles about anyone in the list I may not be aware of (besides to Gunluites from 2011 from the same team) would be happy to update.
Full disclosure, have singled out Rishabh Bharadwaj and Sanjay Khan Nagra in the article for being 2011 graduates, but I should note that Sanjay used to work with us many years ago on the MPL in case anyone were to accuse us of bias. :)
Well, let's flip this around. Can you please name the pureplay corporate M&A partners who remain at Luthra? If I were to hazard a completely wild guess (and I accept I don't actually know that information), that number is maybe 8 (including the promoters), and out of those pretty much only Rajiv and Mohit are listed by Chambers / Legal 500 (for what it's worth, though those omissions could be blamed to the firm doing really bad PR). There's also Bikash who also does banking & finance, but I honestly struggle to think of any/many more.
Claiming that all the partners who've left are terrible is a bit of a low blow and unlikely to be accurate (and also wouldn't reflect well on hiring or promotion policies were it true), considering a sizable number of the partners who've left are now at top firms or running successful independent practices.
By comparison, take almost any other firm and the second or senior corporate layer they have beyond the promoters or even homegrown talent: AZB has always been a corporate powerhouse and they have added Ashwath & Co to that, which is almost a firm in itself, besides Gautam Saha & Co in Delhi and many others. SAM has Chudasama & Co + a whole bunch of homegrown partners and senior laterals in Delhi (including from Luthra). JSA has a pretty solid spread of corporate partners throughout, as does Khaitan (and both of these also hugely promote internally into corporate).
CAM too suffers from a bit of promoter-bias perhaps in corporate, but there too anyone could easily name a handful of senior homegrown corporate partners, such as Bangalore (including ex-Luthra's Shishir Vayttaden).
Finally, Trilegal's corporate practice may be a bit smaller and less high-profile compared to the others, but they also have a pretty small partnership, though even there you could easily name a handful of corporate partners besides the promoters.
Hate is definitely the wrong word to use, but in part what you say does play a role in PR and journalism: it's actually possible to defend JSA because they have generally been very transparent shared information - such as about their choice to ditch Day Zeros - which makes it much easier to defend :)
On the other hand, except for a few puff piece interviews Luthra has given, there is very little information about Luthra in the public domain that would allow anyone from outside the firm to jump to its defence.
As for why we don't do more of them, I believe L&L does share press releases with B&B, IBLJ and other 'friendly' publications. Unfortunately we have a backlog right now in our deals coverage and the priority is to get the press-released ones into our system, though we hope to also pick up any deals covered elsewhere for inclusion in our league tables.
But to some extent, at the end of the day, I admit that our resources permit us to only go so far to cover deals accurately and in a timely manner where a firm actively boycotts LI for whatever reason.
Even with those deals you mention, however, Luthra's deal volumes are a fraction of what they used to be even 5 years ago, which is reflected in independent league tables as much as our coverage. That said, yes, they do still have major clout with many large corporates and have a large number of loyal clients. But is that enough without a consistent second layer of partners to execute them, when there are firms like AZB, CAM, SAM and even S&R and others?
Please do read the article I linked to, which is from 2017, after JSA had decided to try out campus recruitments for the first time ever. Quoting:
"The campus recruitment process has turned into quite a circus these days,” commented JSA co-managing partner Dina Wadia. “We took a call that we would recruit primarily through our internship program as that allows us to assess the students, their abilities and how they fit into our culture in a far more effective way,” she added.
No doubt their reason not to attend may in part have had to do with the 'circus' competition in starting salaries, where they may be a bit lower, but I do also believe their reasoning that they've had good success with their internship programme.
Why?
1. NLU grads ain't necessarily all that. 2. Lots of firms that recruit heavily from campus on Day Zero end up losing a large chunk of them after a few years, which costs quite a bit of money. 3. Can you really judge whether someone will make a good associate (or future partner?) from a 30 minute interview on campus?
Both Luthra and HSA have strong projects practice and although Luthra has perhaps a couple of stronger legacy corporate and foreign law firm relationships, as well as the stronger practice areas mentioned above, they both have much smaller Mumbai and Bangalore offices than the other Big 6.
Would be happy to be enlightened though about what really differentiates L&L from HSA or LL, without a significant corporate transactional practice?
All I know, is Luthra has decided to blacklist LI for a few years now, mostly from what I understand because they were upset about negative coverage and reader comments about partner departures.
That said, we treat Luthra in the same as any other firm, other than the fact that it chooses not to include any comment in the stories that could provide some perspective on the facts.
Some free PR suggestions for spinning this could include: "we wish him well", or "L&L continues having a market-leading corporate practice", or "we still have X top corporate lawyers and continue advising on marquee mandates for our clients", or any combination of the above.
When nearly every corporate partner at a firm keeps quitting, then yes, it's a trend.
The other big 6 pretty much all have much deeper corporate bench strengths and stronger M&A league table positions than Luthra, and firms like CAM that have seen similar levels of corporate partner attrition, nevertheless have hired a similar number laterally and regularly promote into corporate, which is probably their biggest practice area.
The gaps between L&L and firms like Link Legal or HSA are shrinking, if it were not for Luthra disputes, cap markets and tax, and slightly higher salaries (in some departments).
The facts that are public really speak for themselves here, though we remain open to being corrected on these by management or insiders, either anonymously in the comments or on the record.
Finally, management choosing not to engage means either that they don't care about this perception, or that they know that it's true and would rather ignore it. Which is their prerogative of course.
On the other hand, playing devil's advocate (hah), litigation is also not all roses and wine, and a large number of litigators burn out and leave.
Off the top of my head, as in part mentioned above, unscientifically:
1. Remuneration is mostly really bad, at least initially, and many seniors will treat juniors as clerks, basically. 2. Litigators (at least some) will be dependent on their law firm or in-house 'clerical' buddies for briefs. 3. A LOT of waiting around in courts doing nothing or asking for adjournments or putting up with bureaucracy or time-wasting opposing advocates, which is basically also 'clerical' work, though it involves speaking sometimes. 4. The bar is pretty damn sexist. 5. Judges are worse than most law firm bosses (ok, this one's arguable). 6. Dealing with the scorching heat / humidity and the dusty outdoors every day (at least in places like Delhi, Mumbai or Chennai), as opposed to a spending all day in a nicely air-conditioned fridge at your desk, with amenities like gym, canteen, etc. 7. Very hard to get into without a godfather compared to law firms. 8. Litigation is all consuming - work hours can theoretically be even more erratic than law firms (?), and achieving any semblance of work life balance may be easier in some law firms (though your mileage may vary there, depending on your firm). 9. Lack of a safety net (financial or otherwise). 10. Lack of career options: the only way is to keep doing what you're doing, perhaps in different fora. From law firms, you can more easily move to in-house, perhaps the business side or different professions?
In my humble opinion, using first names in journalistic is indefensible, unless you're writing about Bollywood celebs. Using surnames, without titles, is our house style, which is similar to that followed by a number of international newspapers and magazines. And if you like, you can call me Ganz :)
Haha, I was also surprised by our reader/commentership.
My personal suspicion is that Sadhguru disciples have a Google alert set up for his name and Nalsar and jumped on this thread immediately to register their delight at the BCI's (April foolish) move :)
As indicated in the article, the practice profiles are actually direct quotes from the Trilegal press release. We could change it, but then it wouldn't be a direct quote anymore and would have to put it in square brackets... In any case, everyone always says Nalsar, right?
Hi, thanks for your feedback, but the answer is quite simple. DU (and other traditional universities) have traditionally dominated the senior counsel rounds until now. That's not news, much like a headline: "GLC grads dominate Bombay HC elevations" would not be news either.
However, the influx of graduates from NLUs at the bar is something new and notable. And several NLU grads becoming senior counsel at the Supreme Court is unprecedented. This is a trend that was also seen in law firms for a bit longer already (stats here - https://www.legallyindia.com/law-firms/nls-glc-du-ils-rule-law-firm-partnerships-law-firms-don-rsquo-t-play-favourites-20131004-4020 ), but it has obviously taken longer to occur at the bar (perhaps in part because for a while law firms hoovered up a lot of the talent from NLUs, leaving only a minority for the bar).
The fact that this is changing now, however, is most definitely news and therefore the headline.
Hiya, I'm a bit confused. Are you saying they were not instructed by any of these companies, or that there was no Indian work involved in this deal, or something else?
We actually spoke to several people close to GNLU, who, to the best of their knowledge, confirmed or did not contradict the Mirror version of events.
Plus, this narrative very much fits with what we had reported in our earlier story, that Mathew has been stripped of his registrar powers (which I assume is undisputed).
Finally, the Mirror story has been out for quite a few days now - if it was not accurate, surely Dr Patel, Mathew or someone else could easily issue a correction or denials to the Mirror, to us, to GNLU students, via Twitter, a press release, some friendly publications, or the many many other channels available to them.
To be honest, I didn't quite understand your comment, it was rather cryptic...
In any case, in line with our usual takedown and moderation policy, after the comment was reported and no evidence had been offered in support of whatever argument it was making, we took it down (although I'm not sure how any evidence could have been proffered, since its point was so oblique?).
Hehe. Not sure though, this would surely depend on the interviewer, no? It might work with some firms or organisations. And it's also not that different from student politics...
It says Prof Jaswal only (the first time his name is mentioned). After that, in accordance with our house style that applies equally to judges, law firm partners or students, we refer to people by their surnames alone. ;)
Dear 3 and 4, generally, it's best not to assume, as counseled by an well-known proverb. In any case, we are aware of the protests and are working on a story...
Hi, thanks for checking - have confirmed that it's a shared office... I understand that registration as a foreign law firm is only required when billing happens from the China office but since it's currently only a rep office, where the billing and advice happens from India, no registration is required right now.
I don't think it's an office space with reception and that kind of full set-up, but lots of law firms nowadays in India also work from shared spaces or the like. But as far as I know, I don't think there are restrictions in China on foreign lawyers having a representative office, if they don't do go to Chinese courts, etc.
Interesting, didn't realise this, thanks for sharing... From the links, not sure if it was a full-blown office or a cabin with a local best friend firm arrangement / 'presence' - does anyone remember or have details?
Well, maybe it's sensible for an international lawyer with a new office in China to be a little impartial rather than imbibe a nationalistic them vs us philosophy? I, for one, found his objectiveness regarding the politics of the situation refreshing.
Furthermore, 'they' in this is very obviously referring to the Indian government, which is a different entity from the Indian people, India the country, or a signifier of your own nationality, as far as I understand it...
Would love to do this research again hopefully.
I should also add, if there are any other interesting angles about anyone in the list I may not be aware of (besides to Gunluites from 2011 from the same team) would be happy to update.
Claiming that all the partners who've left are terrible is a bit of a low blow and unlikely to be accurate (and also wouldn't reflect well on hiring or promotion policies were it true), considering a sizable number of the partners who've left are now at top firms or running successful independent practices.
By comparison, take almost any other firm and the second or senior corporate layer they have beyond the promoters or even homegrown talent: AZB has always been a corporate powerhouse and they have added Ashwath & Co to that, which is almost a firm in itself, besides Gautam Saha & Co in Delhi and many others. SAM has Chudasama & Co + a whole bunch of homegrown partners and senior laterals in Delhi (including from Luthra). JSA has a pretty solid spread of corporate partners throughout, as does Khaitan (and both of these also hugely promote internally into corporate).
CAM too suffers from a bit of promoter-bias perhaps in corporate, but there too anyone could easily name a handful of senior homegrown corporate partners, such as Bangalore (including ex-Luthra's Shishir Vayttaden).
Finally, Trilegal's corporate practice may be a bit smaller and less high-profile compared to the others, but they also have a pretty small partnership, though even there you could easily name a handful of corporate partners besides the promoters.
On the other hand, except for a few puff piece interviews Luthra has given, there is very little information about Luthra in the public domain that would allow anyone from outside the firm to jump to its defence.
As for why we don't do more of them, I believe L&L does share press releases with B&B, IBLJ and other 'friendly' publications. Unfortunately we have a backlog right now in our deals coverage and the priority is to get the press-released ones into our system, though we hope to also pick up any deals covered elsewhere for inclusion in our league tables.
But to some extent, at the end of the day, I admit that our resources permit us to only go so far to cover deals accurately and in a timely manner where a firm actively boycotts LI for whatever reason.
Even with those deals you mention, however, Luthra's deal volumes are a fraction of what they used to be even 5 years ago, which is reflected in independent league tables as much as our coverage. That said, yes, they do still have major clout with many large corporates and have a large number of loyal clients. But is that enough without a consistent second layer of partners to execute them, when there are firms like AZB, CAM, SAM and even S&R and others?
"The campus recruitment process has turned into quite a circus these days,” commented JSA co-managing partner Dina Wadia. “We took a call that we would recruit primarily through our internship program as that allows us to assess the students, their abilities and how they fit into our culture in a far more effective way,” she added.
No doubt their reason not to attend may in part have had to do with the 'circus' competition in starting salaries, where they may be a bit lower, but I do also believe their reasoning that they've had good success with their internship programme.
Why?
1. NLU grads ain't necessarily all that.
2. Lots of firms that recruit heavily from campus on Day Zero end up losing a large chunk of them after a few years, which costs quite a bit of money.
3. Can you really judge whether someone will make a good associate (or future partner?) from a 30 minute interview on campus?
Would be happy to be enlightened though about what really differentiates L&L from HSA or LL, without a significant corporate transactional practice?
All I know, is Luthra has decided to blacklist LI for a few years now, mostly from what I understand because they were upset about negative coverage and reader comments about partner departures.
That said, we treat Luthra in the same as any other firm, other than the fact that it chooses not to include any comment in the stories that could provide some perspective on the facts.
Some free PR suggestions for spinning this could include: "we wish him well", or "L&L continues having a market-leading corporate practice", or "we still have X top corporate lawyers and continue advising on marquee mandates for our clients", or any combination of the above.
In the absence of this, we will continue reporting positive and negative stories about the firm such as ( https://www.legallyindia.com/lawfirms/hsa-projects-partner-deepak-thakur-ail-07-joins-luthra-20190405-9979 ) , but it can't be our job to spin positives about a firm in light of pretty clear evidence to the contrary...
The other big 6 pretty much all have much deeper corporate bench strengths and stronger M&A league table positions than Luthra, and firms like CAM that have seen similar levels of corporate partner attrition, nevertheless have hired a similar number laterally and regularly promote into corporate, which is probably their biggest practice area.
The gaps between L&L and firms like Link Legal or HSA are shrinking, if it were not for Luthra disputes, cap markets and tax, and slightly higher salaries (in some departments).
The facts that are public really speak for themselves here, though we remain open to being corrected on these by management or insiders, either anonymously in the comments or on the record.
Finally, management choosing not to engage means either that they don't care about this perception, or that they know that it's true and would rather ignore it. Which is their prerogative of course.
https://www.legallyindia.com/home/9-top-firms-hire-10-more-214-from-campus-for-2018-khaitan-goes-80-20-jsa-opts-out-of-campus-circus-nujs-keeps-shtum-again-20170428-8479
Off the top of my head, as in part mentioned above, unscientifically:
1. Remuneration is mostly really bad, at least initially, and many seniors will treat juniors as clerks, basically.
2. Litigators (at least some) will be dependent on their law firm or in-house 'clerical' buddies for briefs.
3. A LOT of waiting around in courts doing nothing or asking for adjournments or putting up with bureaucracy or time-wasting opposing advocates, which is basically also 'clerical' work, though it involves speaking sometimes.
4. The bar is pretty damn sexist.
5. Judges are worse than most law firm bosses (ok, this one's arguable).
6. Dealing with the scorching heat / humidity and the dusty outdoors every day (at least in places like Delhi, Mumbai or Chennai), as opposed to a spending all day in a nicely air-conditioned fridge at your desk, with amenities like gym, canteen, etc.
7. Very hard to get into without a godfather compared to law firms.
8. Litigation is all consuming - work hours can theoretically be even more erratic than law firms (?), and achieving any semblance of work life balance may be easier in some law firms (though your mileage may vary there, depending on your firm).
9. Lack of a safety net (financial or otherwise).
10. Lack of career options: the only way is to keep doing what you're doing, perhaps in different fora. From law firms, you can more easily move to in-house, perhaps the business side or different professions?
Using surnames, without titles, is our house style, which is similar to that followed by a number of international newspapers and magazines.
And if you like, you can call me Ganz :)
My personal suspicion is that Sadhguru disciples have a Google alert set up for his name and Nalsar and jumped on this thread immediately to register their delight at the BCI's (April foolish) move :)
However, the influx of graduates from NLUs at the bar is something new and notable. And several NLU grads becoming senior counsel at the Supreme Court is unprecedented. This is a trend that was also seen in law firms for a bit longer already (stats here - https://www.legallyindia.com/law-firms/nls-glc-du-ils-rule-law-firm-partnerships-law-firms-don-rsquo-t-play-favourites-20131004-4020 ), but it has obviously taken longer to occur at the bar (perhaps in part because for a while law firms hoovered up a lot of the talent from NLUs, leaving only a minority for the bar).
The fact that this is changing now, however, is most definitely news and therefore the headline.
Plus, this narrative very much fits with what we had reported in our earlier story, that Mathew has been stripped of his registrar powers (which I assume is undisputed).
Finally, the Mirror story has been out for quite a few days now - if it was not accurate, surely Dr Patel, Mathew or someone else could easily issue a correction or denials to the Mirror, to us, to GNLU students, via Twitter, a press release, some friendly publications, or the many many other channels available to them.
In any case, in line with our usual takedown and moderation policy, after the comment was reported and no evidence had been offered in support of whatever argument it was making, we took it down (although I'm not sure how any evidence could have been proffered, since its point was so oblique?).
Furthermore, 'they' in this is very obviously referring to the Indian government, which is a different entity from the Indian people, India the country, or a signifier of your own nationality, as far as I understand it...