Luthra & Luthra partner Santanu Mukherjee, who is head of international trade and policy advisory at the firm and had joined less than a year ago, has announced he’d leave Luthra to apparently go independent.

Mukherjee had joined Luthra in January 2016 from US software giant Qualcomm, where he was a senior attorney in IPR and competition for India and South Asia.

In a goodbye email to the firm, he wrote that he would be “flying solo” from the beginning of 2017 after leaving Luthra by the end of this month.

We have reached out to him and Luthra’s respective managing and senior partners, Rajiv Luthra and Mohit Saraf, for comment via email earlier today.

Mukherjee is a 1997 LLB graduate from South Calcutta Law College of Calcutta University, and holds a 2001 masters in WTO Law & Practice from the World Trade Institute in Bern, Switzerland.

He had also spent several years working on global trade and IP Policy research at the elite Max Planck Institute for IP and competition law in Munich, Germany, and on policy research and advocacy at the South Centre Secretariat in Geneva.

As a Chevening Scholar he was also a visiting lawyer at Littleton Chambers at the Inner Temple in London.

Mukherjee is at least the third partner to leave Luthra this year, following Rajesh Chavda - who left in-house only 18 months after joining from Herbert Smith Freehills, senior partner Vijaya Rao in Mumbai who went part-time, and corporate partner Aparna Mittal who departed for rival AZB & Partners.

Luthra has made several lateral partner hires in that time: Durga Bose Gandham from Tatva Legal in Hyderabad, Apurva Jayant from Samvad Partners in Mumbai, as Luthra’s former partner Pradyuman Dubey returned in litigation.