LexOrbis partner Pooja Dodd has gone independent again, restarting Delhi intellectual property-led boutique firm Dodd & Co, which would focus on clients in the “creative industry”.

She has started with four full-time lawyers in addition to several part-time lawyers support staff, based in an office in Delhi’s Uday Park area, but said she aimed to “keep the firm small but sharp” and “keeping my expectations low and overheads light” since luck is a “capricious component”. Nevertheless, she said she felt “free and cautiously optimistic” about the firm.

Dodd commented: “With 17 years in law, I have developed strategic resources and clients that provided me the initial impetus to set up Dodd & Co.

“The decision to start off on my own was made for the mutual benefit of my clients and I In the 21st century, with a more sophisticated, knowledgeable and aware population, working in a traditional environment (legally speaking) can be both stifling and limiting. There is a higher and more targeted demand for bespoke legal services and I found it hard to do justice (no pun intended) to my clients’ requirements in a traditional firm setting.”

While IP would be the core area of the firm, Dodd said that the firm would “provide legal service to the creative industry in virtually all areas of law”.

“I whimsically similise the firm to a horse-drawn chariot, pulled by three horses - only one of which is IP,” she said. “Traditionally, law practices have been defined by the expertise of the lawyer(s) - whereas I have conceptualized Dodd & Co differently and, therefore, visualise it more as a solutions-based, client-need-dependent, non-traditional, Google-like, friendly business place where the lawyers interact with clients over a cup of coffee (or tea, or anything else for that matter).”

She added that she does “not envision suits and ties” at Dodd & Co.

Dodd had been hired into LexOrbis’ partnership in 2014.

The 1999-Delhi University graduate, with a 2002-LLM in IP from what-was-then Franklin Pierce Law Center at the University of New Hampshire, has worked in Dubai at The Rights Lawyers and had joined the Delhi office of FoxMandal Little, as it then was in 2005.

In 2009, she started up IP Gurus before moving to LexOrbis.

We have reached out to LexOrbis partner Manisha Singh for comment.