Advaita Legal added three senior principals to its Delhi litigation practice – NLSIU Bangalore 2002 alumnus Kamal Sawhney, former PDS Legal associate Arijit Chakravarty and former BMR Legal associate Dharnendra Kumar Rana.
According to a source in the firm the “senior principal” designation in the firm is “equivalent to the junior partner designation” in firms which have salaried partners, because Advaita only designates equity partners as partners in the firm.
Sawhney and Chakravarty boost the firm’s corporate tax litigation team while Rana has joined the indirect tax litigation team.
Sawhney has 14 years of litigation experience and was the senior standing counsel for the income tax department in the Delhi high court. He also had a stint with Amarchand Mangaldas.
Chakravarty has 24 years of experience in direct tax litigation and has worked with PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Rana has 21 years of experience indirect tax litigation and has had stints with Soham Legal and Mazars in addition to BMR Legal. He was an independent litigator before joining Advaita.
Advaita founding partner Sujit Ghosh commented in a press release: “In the last 2 [and-a-half] years of the Firm, we have made steady progress in our capabilities by hiring senior resources and expanding to newer practice areas. About a year back, we augmented our IDT Litigation practice by hiring Madhav Rao, ex-Senior Partner, Lakshmikumaran&Sridharan and this year the focus would be to augment and consolidate our Corporate Tax & Transfer Pricing litigation.We intend to continue with our mission of adding and expanding our Tax service offerings. We are delighted that these recent hires will help us achieve this vision."
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A corporate client will occasionally have high value litigation but much more frequent low value litigation - money disputes, check bounces, labour, small contracts, consumer court lit etc.
So the Amarchand model of billing and billable hours does not fit where a couple of associates might spend the entire day in a district court waiting for a matter to be adjourned.
This is one reason why litigation strength remains with boutique firms and individual lawyers.
Also a successful litigation practice requires hanging out in court and making relationships, Again not conducive to billable hours expectations.
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