Economic Laws Practice (ELP) added former Ashurst London senior associate Akshay Kishore as an associate partner in Mumbai.
Kishore will be in the firm’s alternate dispute resolution practice. He is a GLC Mumbai 2007 alumnus and did his LLM in 2009 from New York University. He had stints with ALMT Legal, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and AZB & Partners before joining Ashurst in 2012.
ELP managing partner Suhail Nathani commented in the firm’s press release: “We extend a warm welcome to Akshay as he joins our Dispute Resolution team. His extensive and specialized experience and knowledge in the financial and commercial dispute space compliments the immense depth of our litigation and dispute resolution practice. Arbitration is increasingly becoming the preferred choice for clients involved in commercial disputes. ELP has built a robust arbitration team to meet the needs of this rapidly evolving area of practice.”
Nathani was not reachable for further comment at the time of going to press.
ELP associate partner Sumit Rai and partner Karthik Sundaram left the firm recently, to go into independent counsel practice.
Comments
Tax - legacy matters from RS and RS sending them matters on which he is being briefed coupled with GST Mandates (just the sheer number of companies of >500cr MCap who need to migrate will ensure this) will tide over the firm for the next year. And mind you this team is the largest by numbers and revenue with over 60% of the employees and revenue of the firm, but the exodus of people has begun and clients are actively being poached by LKS, BMR and Dhruva without RS's brand and quality to back the tax offering.
Trade has done well and will do well with Sanjay at the helm but it's a small practice area with only 5-6 lawyers. Similarly, Competition is also doing well but again a small team by numbers (5-6) and revenue. Also very strong rumours of the driving force behind the practice being pursued by both CAM & Khaitan.
Disputes - the firm has completely lost momentum, marque clients have moved with RS, with him doing both lit strategy and appearances, and only the low value drafting work of those matters remain and new mandates have been few and far between.
Transactions and Banking - the teams are regularly undercut on fees by smaller outfits with far superior lawyers such as Veritas w Abhijit at the helm, and they don't have the client following, people or brand of the big transactional firms nor the boutiques like TTA & Platinum.
Projects team, while always good, is small and Talwar has been away for personal reasons.
Most importantly these issues w clients, people and revenue/profits may have been mitigated or managed by a strong leader but unfortunately the current leadership leaves a tremendous amount to be desired. It's amazing how the fabric and culture of a firm built over 15 years could be destroyed in 45 days. May god help us.