PDS Legal lost 10 lawyers and four support staff in its direct tax practice after they followed former PDS partner Deepak Chopra to AZB & Partners, effective 1 December.

Chopra, who had joined AZB in October as a partner and head of its direct tax litigation practice, brings along with him six senior associates and four associates from PDS Legal.

Senior associates Amit Shrivastava, Harpreet Singh Ajmani, Piyush Singh, Abhimanyu Chopra, Manasvini Bajpai and Rashi Khanna and associates Rohan Khare, Sheel Vardhan, Anmol Anand and Ankul Goyal are part of the team that has moved.

AZB partner Ajay Bahl commented: “It is a significant number of people as far as we’re concerned and shows a significant confidence in Deepak. This movement of people really has completely established how valued he is and it really is an indication of Deepak as a leader and that is very important to us. We never had any doubts about what he is capable of but there is nothing better than when people you work with are ready to take the plunge with you.”

PDS partner Vihang Virkar said that other than Chopra there remained two partners in the firm’s direct tax practice in Delhi and Mumbai, “several other lawyers”, and that direct tax “continues to be an active area for PDS Legal”.