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This article, like many others, was first published exclusively for long-term supporters, 4 hours before everyone else got to read it.

DMD poaches SAM’s Vivek Agarwal as partner, 1st competition full-timer

He’s probably the first lawyer to leave SAM’s competition team for partnership elsewhere

Vivek Agarwal joins DMD as partner from SAM
Vivek Agarwal joins DMD as partner from SAM

DMD Advocates has hired Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas (SAM) principal associate Vivek Agarwal has joined DMD Advocates as its first full-time competition partner.

While Agarwal has not joined with any lawyers from SAM, it is understood that he will be building a competition team at the firm.

DMD - formerly known as Dutt Menon Dunmorrsett - managing partner Anuradha Dutt said that Agarwal was the first full-timer in competition, though the firm had two lawyers who had worked on competition matters and investigations. “We’re hoping he brings the expertise to grow the practice.”

With Agarwal’s joining “everything is possible” to offer clients, including merger control work, she added.

Agarwal graduated in 2008 with an LLB from Savitribhai Phule Pune University, obtaining an LLM in competition law in 2009 from Kings College London.

From 2009 to 2010, he had had stints at UK retail giant Tesco in London, and at Linklaters as a secondee in Belgium and London’s competition practice.

In September 2009, he joined Linklaters’ erstwhile Indian competition law best friend firm Dhall Law Chambers, moving to what-was-then Amarchand Mangaldas Delhi in 2011.

Litigation remained the mainstay of the majority of DMD Advocates14 partners, of whom 1 was a pureplay corporate transactional partner (Rashi Dhir), and 4 were tax specialist partners. The total fee-earner headcount was at around 85 right now across Mumbai and Delhi (with Delhi making up around 60).

“We don’t want to expand for the sake of expanding, because quality is very very crucial for the firm,” commented Dutt. “I’d rather do less work than non-quality work. We focus on clients and helping them across in all spheres so we can build relationships with clients and give them quality.”

There was “hardly a matter in the firm which is not supervised by a partner”, she added.

We understand that SAM’s competition team had so far been blessed with relatively few departures at senior levels, making Agarwal possibly the first to leave its competition team directly for partnership at another law firm.

Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas commented: “We wish Vivek much success in his new innings at DMD Associates.”

SAM had promoted competition salaried partner Harman Singh Sandhu to equity partnership a few days ago.

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