Former Sequoia India general counsel (GC) Sandeep Kapoor has quietly expanded a start-up law firm to three offices in 11 partners (of whom three are associate partners) in the space of only three-odd months since opening its doors on 1 August.
Algo Legal’s aims are ambitious, with Kapoor saying, no less: “It’s my mission to transform the practice of law in the next 10 to 15 years.”
Explaining why he had decided to start a law firm after his nine-year stint at Sequoia, he said: “I want to be responsible as a service provider. Technologies can be served only when you control the process end to end.”
And such knowledge would be shared with the entire industry, Kapoor vowed: “We are going to actively help every firm, create a network, share our learning.”
So far, some of that ambition at least has been borne out in its rapid growth and technology back-end put into place.
While the firm is understood to include around 15 lawyers who formerly worked at Themis, Algo’s partnership has clearly drawn from a wider array of (primarily) VC specialist firms and independents (pictured above, left to right, top to bottom):
- Kapoor, as founder and managing partner,
- partner Siddharth Manchanda in Mumbai, heading the firm’s transactional advisory practice (formerly a partner at Themis; ILS Pune LLB 2009),
- partner Vinayak Mishra in Delhi (who had worked as an independent lawyer in early 2019 after having been a principal associate at Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas; HNLU Raipur LLB 2008),
- partner Prashant Kataria in Bangalore (who had been partner at Bangalore private equity boutique Lexygen until July; NLSIU Bangalore LLB 2003),
- partner Jitender Tanikella in Delhi joined with a team of three (co-founder of TRA Law, who went independent after the split with co-founder Anirudh Rastogi in September 2018; NLIU Bhopal LLB 2006, Columbia LLM 2012),
- partner Smita Goel, a chartered accountant (not a lawyer) heading Algo’s tax practice in Bangalore (formerly associate director at PwC India),
- partner Archan Chakraborty (formerly partner at Themis),
- partner Unnikrishnan Venugopalan, a lawyer and company secretary, heading the corporate secretarial practice at Algo (having previously worked at chipmaker Intel India as company secretary and legal adviser; LLB Bangalore University),
- associate partner Lalu John Philip in Bangalore, who joined with a team of two (after running a legal tech start-up for a year after having been senior associate at J Sagar Associates (JSA); NLSIU Bangalore 2011),
- associate partner Prateek Mohapatra in Bangalore (who had joined from K Law, where he was associate partner; RMLNLU 2012), and
- associate partner Minhaz Lokhandwala (not pictured) in Mumbai (who had joined from Khaitan & Co where he was a principal associate; ILS Pune 2010).
Kapoor said he eventually wanted Algo headcounts to continue growing, though not massively, with an emphasis on efficiencies gained through technology to allow fewer fee-earners to service multiple clients.
Techy back-ends
Algo also has a number of senior non-lawyer positions as its backbone, said Kapoor: its chief operating officer (COO) is Dhruv Nagarkatti. Before joining Algo he was CEO at LeapStart - a physical education provider to schools - from 2015 to 2018, after two years as head of operations at Bengaluru FC, around two years in the tennis coaching space, and four years at HSBC between 2006 and 2010.
Then, more unusually for most (Indian) law firms, there’s chief innovation officer (CIO) Rasmeet Charya, who had been an advocate at the Delhi high court from 1999 to 2008, worked with legal process outsourcing (LPO) company Mindcrest from until 2010, then co-founded ThemisGroup (which also includes law firm Themis Associates), and in 2016 joined Altisource and then OneDelta Technology Solutions, where she was a strategic advisor. Finally, Algo also has a chief technology officer (CTO).
Algo is a “different and unique story” emerging, noted Kapoor, in part because in “everything we will do, there will be a technology engine behind it, a tool we have built or licensed from third parties”.
Kapoor would not be drawn in great detail yet on some of the exact technology products the firm used, though he said the firm was developing a collaboration platform that promises clients seamless project and workflow management of mandates, while the firm has also started an early-stage legal tech incubation centre that is supporting a centre of online dispute resolution and another entity, which Algo is assisting in “building up an ecosystem”.
As for whether Algo was already able to utilise any gains in efficiency, COO Nagarkatti noted that the firm was “already using contract automation tools to generate contracts, and where we work with funds, we standardise our processes - it is part of our DNA when it comes to processes”.
A large part of that DNA will not just be efficiency, but detailed analytics of exactly what each lawyer is doing and for how long, which will hopefully allow the firm to model how to be more efficient in future. “We have put in the foundation to start collecting data that will give us some insights,” noted Nagarkatti.
Cyborg-lawyer practice profiles
The firm’s main focus, much in line with Kapoor’s and most of the other partners’ background, is on private equity, venture capital and corporate work, though the firm is also assisting clients with finance work, for instance, and “supporting our clients on litigation through our associate networks”, Kapoor said.
That said, it is understood that some areas such as capital markets, for instance, were currently not explicitly on the cards, though service lines would be client-demand driven.
In addition to servicing clients, Algo’s partners will also be expected to strongly interact and improve with technology, including whatever comes out of the incubator or the products that are eventually developed in-house. “We want partners to invest time to ensure the [technology] initiatives take place.”
How grim / bright is the future for tech-aided lawyering?
We asked Nagarkatti, who holds bachelors and masters degrees in mathematics, what kind of maximum efficiencies could be expected from the roll-out of legal technologies in future, but the answer is not so simple. “It’s too early in the day to [establish such figures],” he said. “Even something like a document editing [software] could give you 10% efficiency [boost] - but what does this mean overall? I don’t think anyone has the answer.”
As for whether technology was finally getting into a place where several pundits’ long-predicted ‘death of lawyers’ and the legal profession could become a reality, he said: “Absolutely not. That is something we’re absolutely clear on. Too much has been written about how AI can replace lawyers but technology is there to aid the process. Lawyering will always be an art and [about application of] mind.”
“Where technology comes in, is where it frees up lawyers to do the lawyering.”
On the flipside, and perhaps as a corollary, is it possible that most legal tech is still overhyped and its promises often too lofty, with it never quite getting there? “If [we] had that conviction, I don’t think we would go down that path,” said Nagarkatti. “The reason we are building these tools is because we believe there is value in integrating technology in the entire life cycle of a transaction.”
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The first prediction has come true already, as if it were a soothsayer's premonition..8 out of the founding 11 are out!!! Of the remaining, it's SK as non-lawyer Founder and SG as non-lawyer tax partner. Today this corporate VC focussed firm as only 2 so-called VC lawyers across the board!! With a non-lawyer sitting on the top as Managing Partner, this was bound to happen! Let's see if SK manages to prove the 3-year predictions wrong.
“Where technology comes in, is where it frees up lawyers to do the lawyering.” - I think this principle is absolutely necessary for any legal tech venture.
I see a lot of lawyers' time is wasted in operational overheads, waiting in courts, drowning in heaps of paperwork. They should be spending time doing thorough case research, improving efficiency of legal services etc. Tech driven services like what Algo Legal is providing should take a lot of burden off the lawyers' shoulders and help them focus on lawyering instead.
The tech just don't exist yet and no matter how much machine learning or AI-assisted software is put into place, you simply can't replace a lawyer with an app, just yet.
Anyhow I'm sure these guys know what they are doing - best of luck to the Algo team!
Some advice. I know that you have sold subscriptions and now need to justify the same. This article is not that big a scoop that it needed to be redacted for subscribers for a while. This has been in the news for a while. You really need to make a better call on what to keep locked and what to release to the public. Keeping articles like this locked is counter productive to the subscription model and will put off people like me from becoming a subscriber if this is the exclusivity that is being offered.
Well wisher of LI.
Regarding subscription, our strategy is very much to put more and more stories behind a temporary paywall accessible only to subscribers. Some of the news may be super fresh, some may have been kicking around the market for a while longer, but I think most are interesting and relevant reads about the market. This story, judging by the reader interest and traffic at least, certainly seems to be one of those.
In any case, I think this kind of front-ended paywall is a lot better and fairer to readers than hiding all our archives or all our articles behind a paywall, which would be an easy road to take. But for those who enjoy being in the loop on the cutting edge of what's going on in the Indian corporate legal market, I think it's a good way of supporting independent publishing, while still giving access to information to those who can't afford it.
It seems like a group of lawyers who have decent traction and name in the market are trying to do something different.
Legal Tech is already creating ripples in the west and is touted as the next big thing. Unlike some of the more prestigious firms (who have the so called legal Tech programmes), these guys are actually investing time, money and effort in doing something different.
Whether it works or not, only time will tell. What though is accurate is that they are targeting something largely untouched in Indian legal ecosystem.
as long as men are not going about retorting to judges, stealing public money or .. raping.. and as long as they are doing a legal productive business which involves atleast some honest old-fashioned work: it is good. wish them
well. it is a good team.
The talent at Algo that continued from Themis continued because of inertia not because they agreed with the Algo vision, before Sandeep can sell the Algo vision to the world he needs to sell it to his own team; and he needs to ensure it’s not used as a factory to feed the “tech” arm and that the tech arm has its own resources and is not overburdening the law firm arm.
All the best guys!
The answer is a big NO. So what do you do to circumvent law? Give the law firm's brand name to the tech company or give the accountant's brand name to the law firm. As long as the invoicing is done under a different heading, who cares about law/ethics?
Firstly, this article of Legally India states that tax practice is headed by a partner who is a chartered accountant no less from PwC while the corporate secretarial practice is headed by a partner who is a company secretary. When reviewing the Bar Council Rules, I found a mention that accounts has to be audited by a chartered accountant or a firm of chartered accountants (CAs). Going by the same analogy that a firm of chartered accountants cannot have non-CA, when we talk about legal advice, it can either be a from lawyer or firm of lawyers. So it is legally permissible to have a law firm whose partners include a chartered accountant and a practicing company secretary? Would a client availing service from such a firm with non-lawyer partners get the the promise of advice which is statutorily legal?
Secondly, this article mentions that the managing partner had a nine year stint at some private company, before starting a firm in August 2019. When bar council of India rules mandate a lawyer to suspend practice during any employment and prohibits lawyers to engage in any business (law firm is not a business - its a profession of lawyers alone),does the client verify/due diligence if the partners of a law firm have a valid roll number from bar council before engaging with them?
Unlike the United States of America, where even a advice in legal matters from a non-lawyer qualify to be a privilege, does Indian laws consider any legal advise as attorney-client privilege or legal advise only from a lawyer who has a valid roll number? Just like in any agreement, we verify that the authorized signatory have the authority to sign the agreement, do clients in India demand that the law firms provide the roll numbers of all its partners before engaging them for any legal related work?
What is the position in case of Goods and Services Tax (GST) paid on reverse charge mechanism by clients, in case it is held by Bar Council that the law firm's advice does not qualify to be legal advice? When such a law firm loses its standing in law to be a GST exempted establishment, what happens to all the validity of legal due diligence reports performed by such law firm from its inception?
As stated in comment no 22.1.1, rule 36 prevents lawyers from producing photographs such as the one published in this article for advertisement. In comment no.14.1 Kianganz admits that what he publishes qualifies to be news. So, will Legally India be liable for publishing interviews about the practice of a lawyer or will bar council will take action against the law firm for giving interviews?
Why does all these comments (including mine) are submitted anonimously? Is it because that rule 36 mandates lawyers to not solicit by way of inspiring newspaper comments?
Best regards,
Rumor Monger
Is this the reason that companies outsource the legal work to a law-firm with partners-all of whom are lawyers who are enrolled in bar council, even though they may have an in-house counsel?
Best Regards,
Rumor-monger
Post Script: My intention is not to harm any one individual but just a humorous way of depicting the way corporate law firms are being managed in India. I have also not touched upon the subject of foreign lawyers or opinion given by Indian law firms in association with foreign law firms, which will be more juicier than what is stated until now.
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