Link Legal starts Mumbai office, entices rare move to private practice from GVK in-houser in Hyderabad

Link Legal has put pan-Indian growth further on top of its agenda, having opened up a new Mumbai office and hiring former GVK in-house counsel V Akshay Babu as its second partner in its Hyderabad office.

"Mumbai is a big market we missed out on for a long time," said Link Legal managing partner Atul Sharma, adding that the office would focus on M&A, project finance and general corporate commercial work.

"We believe in cautious growth and we will not grow at the cost of quality," he explained. "That is why we've been slow in setting up our offices but once we set up we offer quality service which is our USP and we would like to stick to it."

Ajay Sawhney, who was promoted to partner from senior associate in February, will be the partner-in-charge of Link Legal's new Mumbai office which began operating two months ago.

https://www.legallyindia.com/20100210479/Law-firms/link-legal-makes-new-partner

Sharma noted: "Ajay is spending much time in Bombay now; the office is set-up and operational now since two months and we’ve already done five to seven transactions from there."

"We will go slow and let the operation stabilise and then we’ll go in for expansion. We are already doing some good business out of there, the way it looks now we may need more people by year end."

Link Legal's 1,200 square foot Mumbai office is located at Nariman Point in the Embassy Center building, which also houses Luthra & Luthra.

Its Mumbai office currently consists of one partner, two senior associates and one associate.

Meanwhile, Link Legal Hyderabad has ramped up its presence with a second partner, after V Akshay Babu joined from GVK on 1 June in a rare move from in-house to private practice.

Babu has spent the majority of his 20-year legal career as an in-houser, most recently working with GVK for six years after serving as the India head of Group4 Security for two years and the Oberoi group of hotels for 10 years.

Babu told Legally India: "I was planning to get back into corporate practice for some time with a good law firm so I decided to join Link Legal and also for the reason of my old-time association with Mr Sharma and other partners in the firm."

He further noted that the Hyderabad office was in the process of developing a team to provide a full service practice with a focus on infrastructure and contract management in addition to general commercial work.

Link Legal has around 35 lawyers across its four offices. Five of its partners are based in Delhi, with two now in Hyderabad and one each in Bangalore and Mumbai.