Vivek Daswaney, who had merged his independent firm V Law into DH Law Associates two years ago, has joined IndusLaw as Mumbai partner with his team of five, taking it to 17 partners and over 100 associates in four offices.

His joining will take IndusLaw’s Mumbai presence to 20 lawyers and three partners, including Khaitan & Co lateral Nishant Singh, and ex-RDA Legal partner and ex-Khaitan lawyer Anupam Prasad.

Daswaney commented that his departure from the merged DH Law was amicable but that he felt that Indus would be a “better fit” for him personally going forward. After meeting IndusLaw, within only a few weeks late last year and early this year, “everything fell into place, we’d done some work together in the past, there was an immediate connect”, he said.

Link Legal India Law Services co-managing partner Nusrat Hassan commented: “Vivek has moved on for new opportunities and I wish him all the best.”

Hassan was managing partner of DH Law before it merged into Link Legal ILS, and added: “We had an excellent association at DH Law.”

Daswaney said that he thought the DH Law Link Legal merger was a “damn good merger” and that one could expect to “see good things happening there”.

At the end of last year, DH Law merged had merged with Link Legal India Law Services to create a 35-partner, 155-lawyer firm.

Daswaney will be joined at Indus by his team of senior associate Vidya Rao, associates Divakar Bhatia and Krupa Desai - who had been with him since his V Law days - and articled clerks Shriya Rao and Shreshth Bhartia.

Daswaney specialises in real estate diligence and transactions, employment and general advisory, and also practices corporate litigation and arbitration.

As we had reported in 2009, Daswaney had set up V Law coming from ALMT Legal where he was a partner.

The England and Bombay-qualified solicitor is a 1998 graduate of GJ Advani Law College, and holds an LLM from the University of Mumbai. He had begun his career at ARA Law, moved to Dua Associates in 2002, followed by Kochhar & Co, until he joined ALMT Legal in 2004 and became a partner there.

IndusLaw partner Suneeth Katarki commented in the firm’s press release: “Vivek brings nearly 20 years of experience in legal work in Mumbai as a qualified solicitor. This will strengthen and broaden our client services capability in Mumbai.”

Daswaney’s hire at IndusLaw follows the addition of Sandeep Grover as a litigation partner in Delhi from Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas at the beginning of this year.