Independent advocate Sumit P has joined HSA Advocates as a partner in Delhi, following two partners in the firm’s regulatory practice having left the firm in the last two months.

HSA senior partner Apoorva Misra had left the firm late last year and has set up his own practice, and associate partner Aditya K Singh left in January and is also starting his independent practice.

Sumit P joins in banking & finance

New joiner Sumit P, who has been a lawyer for 16 years and a partner at Kochhar & Co between 2015 and 2016, specialises in banking and finance. He has been operating independently since leaving Kochhar in 2016.

Besides finance, Sumit P also does general corporate and private equity work and foreign investment-related advice.

In his independent practice, he primarily worked in the financing, structuring and transactional space, according to the firm.

HSA founding partner Hemant Sahai noted that his joining would “help augment our capabilities in serving BFSI [banking, financial services and insurance] clients across the entire spectrum of their legal requirements”.

Apoorva Misra starts independent Delhi-Lucknow practice

Meanwhile, HSA senior partner Apoorva Misra, who had left the firm around December 2020, has started up his own independent practice dubbed AM Law Offices.

Misra said: “I will be primarily based out of Delhi but owing to my background I have created base in Lucknow and Allahabad.

He would focus mainly on regulatory disputes, a field he had more than 15 years of professional experience in, he said that he also aimed to expand beyond just that area. “The fact that my father is a practising lawyer in Allahabad High Court will definitely be helpful for me and being an independent lawyer will give me the desired flexibility,” he said.

He is a 2001 Lucknow University graduate who had joined HSA in 2018, having been at JSA for 11 years previously (including time as a partner).

Sahai commented: “Apoorva is heading to Lucknow to take over his father’s practice.”

Associate partner Aditya K Singh departs

HSA associate partner Aditya K Singh, a 2009 HNLU Raipur LLB graduate with a 2012 LLM in Finance from Goethe University in Frankfurt, had left the firm in January and is currently in the process of setting up his own practice.

We understand that he would be formally set up by next month and might tie up with another independent lawyer in his practice. We have reached out to him for comment.

“Aditya too is similarly setting up his own counsel practice, which is what he used to do earlier prior to joining HSA and something he always wanted to return to,” commented Sahai.

Sahai added about the departures: “Neither of them are joining another firm.

“Once again, a clear demonstration of the leadership that we encourage and allow withing the firm. These people who leave and set up own practices (and there are several such instances by now of partners leaving HSA to set up own practices) are in the end ambassadors of the firm.

“We get referred matters by these partners and there are few instances where I am called as counsel for matters by these partners.”

HSA turnover

HSA has continued seeing some recent churn, with Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas corporate partner Saurya Bhattacharya joining after the departure of energy and infrastructure partner Akshay Malhotra moving to Khaitan & Co.