Link Legal India Law Services corporate partner Harish Kumar - who had joined in July 2016 - has left the firm and is in the process of setting up new law firm HSK Legal, according to his Linked-in profile.

Kumar, a 2009 Delhi University graduate, confirmed his leaving but declined to comment further at the time of publication.

“We wish Harish all the very best in his new endeavour,” commented Link Legal chief executive officer (CEO) Jayanarayanan NR.

Over the past 12 months, Kumar is the fifth partner to leave Link Legal, which had merged with DH Law in December 2016, and has been laterally hiring aggressively (such as Khaitan & Co senior associate Alok Sonker , AZB & Partners’ Ashutosh Narang, Milind Jha from K Law, and litigation partner Saloni Gupta from Kochhar & Co, as well as former Pinsent Masons chairman Martin Harman in the UK to assist in international work).

In July 2016, Link Legal had hired Delhi-based DGS Associates partner Bhumesh Verma as a partner and associate partner Vikas Gaur as partner, both in the firm’s corporate practice.

Both have since left: Verma started up a new firm Corp Comm Legal in April 2017, while Gaur left on 31 May 2017, and is understood to be currently practising independently.

Clarification: Verma was not the founder of DGS as originally published, which continues with its two founder partners.

Verma commented: “The idea was to have more flexibility in our operations, to provide value for money to clients, and more customised and personalised service to domestic and foreign clients, which sometimes goes missing in a law firm service due to inflexibility of the system, due to fee levels, transaction sizes, and so on. We wanted to be more amendable and approachable.”

He added that since leaving he had formed a “unique global law firms network” and released a book on commercial drafting.

As reported in March of this year, corporate partner Shubha Karra left - who had joined Link Legal at the same time as Kumar in July 2016 - for Aditya Birla’s legal cell.

And in November 2016, Delhi litigation partner Yogesh Gupta left to join Larsen & Toubro as legal deputy general manager.