The only partner in Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas’ Hyderabad office, Harita Rao, has given notice last month.

Projects lawyer Rao was promoted to salaried partnership at the firm in 2015.

She is a Nalsar Hyderabad graduate who had been at Amarchand Mangaldas since 2004. We have reached out to her for comment.

When questioned, senior Cyril Amarchand sources said that there were no plans to close the office.

That said, Rao was the sole remaining partner in Hyderabad following a line of partner departures: the move of Anshuman Jaiswal to renewables company Greenko around a year ago (after having transferred from the Mumbai office only several months before), had been preceded in mid-2016 by previous Hyderabad head Rahul Sarella leaving.

Sarella has since gone independent as founding partner of Hyderabad Law Associates.

We have not been able to confirm Rao’s next move or whether another partner would be moved to Hyderabad.

Update 15:09: According to a source, we understand that Cyril Amarchand internally announced today that the Hyderabad office would be run out of Bangalore for the time being.

The Southern India region, including Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad, is managed by Bangalore partner Arjun Lall.

In Chennai, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas had in 2016 hired Cyril Amarchand’s former Chennai office head Dorothy Thomas - involving a rather acrimonious legal dispute and settlement.

Update 13:39: One Legally India subscriber, commenting on the story due to his frequent travel to Hyderabad for litigation, said that the local market seemed to be dominated by a few local players, such as Vivek Reddy & Associates (for contentious and non-contentious matters) and Ganu & Co for contentious matters. “Then, there are few boutique firms that only have a presence in South India - even such firms, in most cases, have offices for namesake. And, these offices are managed by lawyers who share a sort of non-exclusive relationship,” he added.

Update 2, 14:16: Another local LI subscriber explained that the Hyderabad market was often tough for the national firms, since local promoters usually do not want to pay the high fees that they’re used to charging in Mumbai, Delhi and even Bangalore.

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