Anybody following the Indian legal market this year will have missed a lot if they haven’t been reading the Legally India website..and it’s great to see that they have finished the year with a bang. Their report (duplicated worldwide) on last week’s ruling by the High Court in Mumbai … the case of Lawyers Collective v Ashurst, Chadbourne & Parke and White & Case.
Here’s their Christmas message to their readership.. the site can be found at? www.LegallyIndia.com and we offer our congratulations to Kian Ganz and team for by far the best new legal news website in the region for 2009
Almost everything that could happen, did happen this week in Indian law.
And then hell froze over.
Legally India was the first to report one of the biggest items of foreign law firm news in 15 years: the Bombay High Court finally gave its judgment in the infamous case of Lawyers Collective v Ashurst, Chadbourne & Parke and White & Case.
The decision has dominated watercooler conversation and has sparked huge debate although the ramifications are far from clear.
Part of the trouble is that a strict reading of judgment could potentially be so far-reaching to restrict even foreign lawyers’ flying visits to India. What is also clear is that the law as it stands was not designed to cope with the current realities of the market.
Read our analysis to try and make sense of it all.
Other news hot off the press: sole law firm candidate and Luthra & Luthra partner Vijay Sondhi has won a place on the litigator heavy Delhi Bar Council, bringing to a close our live election coverage of the past weeks.
Also, domestic law firm drama aplenty.
The ill-fated merger between Paras Kuhad and Hemant Sahai two months ago has gone U-turn. The initial merger was widely perceived by insiders at the time as a recipe for disaster without a clear strategic aim and a number of partner defections.
Viewed in this light, the demerger of the firms may actually be good news and the best course of action for both.
Meanwhile, some Paras Kuhad leavers may also have acted wisely ? coinciding with the demerger of its former firm, Paras Kuhad breakaway Vidhii Partners absorbed a Bangalore firm under its new brand, looking to build a pan-Indian litigation practice.
Platinum Partners meanwhile, has recruited and doubled its partner headcount in Mumbai from Thakker & Thakker.
And more good news in start-up law firm land: Mumbai now has Ashu Thakur Associates, which is a boutique firm with a France desk.
And Amarchand Kolkata spin-off Argus Partners has almost outgrown its former firm, despite a lacklustre market in the city.
All the while, deals kept ticking with big time M&A action for Khaitan & Co and Crawford Bayley in a mammoth $400m cross-border pharma takeover.
But perhaps most importantly of all for many Delhi lawyers, Titus & Co won the Delhi T20 law firm cricket cup against Saikrishna after weeks of intense battle.
And after a long year, most Indian courts are going on their winter holidays from tomorrow. And so, Legally India too will slow down somewhat until next year.
However, we will keep updating the site occasionally with a number of major stories in the pipeline and will be providing some other interesting holiday reading, plus hopefully a few other surprises.
And finally, the Legally India team would like to wish all readers a peaceful and very happy holiday season and New Year. We would also like to thank all of you very warmly for all your support, criticism, kind wishes, patience and enthusiasm over the past seven months.
