Amarchand Mangaldas has launched its seventh office in Chennai. The official launch took place on July 13, 2012 although the office has been operational since March 2012. Partner Dorothy Thomas, who joined Amarchand Mangaldas earlier this year, is heading the Chennai office along with a team of seven lawyers including two Principal Associates Arun Prabhu and Gautham Srinivas.
Speaking to Bar & Bench, Dorothy Thomas said,
“I am honoured and privileged to be at the helm of our Chennai operations. Over the past couple of years, transactions and deals have become very complex, which is leading to corporates in this market demanding an array of services which can only be provided by a national law firm with localised expertise”.
Dorothy added,
“Our size and experience combined with the national presence of the firm shall empower our Chennai practice to service clients across the State of Tamil Nadu in a seamless and integrated manner. Our international outlook and personal involvement will enable us to capitalise the opportunity in this market.”
The opening of the Chennai office is part of the firm’s plan to have 1,000 lawyers and 100 partners by 2017, a strategy of formulated with the assistance of global consulting firm Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
At the launch, Managing Partner Cyril Shroff said,
“The Chennai office has an initial strength of 1 partner plus 7 lawyers but is designed to ramp up to 4 partners and about 35 lawyers in about 3-4 years time. We will keep growing as the needs of the practice demand. The firm intends to offer full suite of practice and pockets of excellence through its “String of Pearls” strategy, which is a combination of Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai offices. All the southern offices function as one business unit”.
Shroff said,
“The core logic of opening an office is the need to eliminate the “0” before the telephone number to reach us. We had to be local and will be so”.
He further said,
“Our initial focus is on Corporate M&A and PE (including all aspects of real estate), Capital markets, Family office / private client practice andFinance and infrastructure. We will add rapidly more services locally as we grow further. With our “string of pearls” of course, we can handle any type of work here. Even today, the “string of pearls” is over 50 lawyers and 7 partners and can be in Chennai at the drop of a hat”.
Talking about the firm in general Shroff said,
“We follow the professional “apprentice” model and our growth has been largely organic – we usually eschew mergers. We focus heavily on knowledge sharing, training and intellectual rigor. Our culture has helped our firm in building a unique and high performing environment. We have adopted a compensation model in our equity partnerships of an equity lockstep which encourages collegiate functioning. It is a true partnership. The reason why the best graduates from campuses vie to work for us is as one lawyer said, ‘At Amarchand you can have a long term career, not just a job’. This lies at the heart of our practice model. Today – a legal career in Amarchand is as good, if not better, than an MBA career – though some may challenge this!”
Shroff concluded,
“There is a significant gap in the market. We have a deep desire to fill this national law firm gap and bring what can best be described only as the ‘Amarchand way’ of doing things and professional standards which our most demanding clients expect from us at any of our other offices”.
The event also included a panel discussion on ‘Business and Regulatory Updates’. The panel included Former SEBI Chairman M. Damodaran, Tata Group Chief Legal & Group General Counsel Bharat Vasani, General Counsel IDFC Rajeev Uberoi, and Amarchand Partners Reeba Chacko and Dorothy Thomas. The panel was moderated by Cyril Shroff.
The panel discussed various issues such as the general business and political environment in India, the financial sector’s views on the current capital market and banking scenario in India , foreign investors on the Indian market, the business environment in Tamil Nadu, the future of independent regulators, and the challenges of corporate governance in family businesses.
While giving advice for the Chennai office of Amarchand, Vasani said,
“The firm will do exceedingly well but Chennai is a ‘price sensitive’ market and so the firm should adopt a nuanced approach of being cost competitive which will help the firm scale up much faster” while Damodaran advised the firm to, “Operate at the same level of top class efficiency, understand the value system in Chennai and marry your expertise to that”.
The firm now has nearly 575 lawyers with about 70 partners and is present in 7 cities including Chennai. The firm had recently set up an office in Ahmedabad.