AZB & Partners Delhi partnership, following four recent promotions in Mumbai and Bangalore, has promoted five to partner (pictured above, left to right):
Akansha Aggarwal ,tax ,University School of Law and Legal Studies GGSIP ,2008 Anisha Shridhar corporate ,Bangalore Institute of Legal Studies ,2009 Aprajita Rana corporate ,SLS Pune ,2009 Jaishree Tolani corporate ,University of Gujarat ,2008 Varun Lamba corporate ,Institute of Law and Management Studies ,2008
Unusually for law firms globally and in India, where partnership gender ratios are heavily skewed in favour of men, in this promotion round there have been four out of five women.
Three have been promoted to counsel level (pictured below, left to right):
- Ambarish Mohanty
- Anshuman Singh
- Bharat Apte
To be updated.
Comments
Overall good to see AZB fixing the skewed gender ratio.
a. Firms which do not have salaried Partner designation, induct or promote lawyers with rainmaking capabilities as Counsels, provided if thresholds are met, induction into equity follows; [eg: Trilegal, AZB etc.]
b. Firms which induct only laterals, hesitantly at best, who may be potential rainmakers, and await breaching of thresholds of salaried Partnership; [eg:Phoenix]
c. Firms which want an intermediate level to appease semi-senior lawyers without appearing to be obsessively top heavy, but with characteristics/optics/flavor of both points a. and b., as cited above; [eg: Khaitan] {Exception- Khaitan also has Associate Partner designation, thus intent for Counsel designation unclear/debatable.}
d. Firms with Associate Partner (mostly execution) and 'Partner' designation without access to equity; [eg: D&D, Wadia etc.]; {intent behind Counsel designation unclear/debatable}
Just my understanding, please feel free to express your thoughts and views. The designation of Counsel, in a law firm perspective, is increasingly finding acceptance amongst Indian law firms. However, role, obligation, duties, prerogatives and lastly rights are not clearly indentified and/or understood.
Kian - why don't you initiate a discussion/debate/study on this designation - Counsel - from an Indian law firm perspective.
I haven't read the B&B article, but I assume they got colleges from Linked-in, where I've seen sometimes people only list their LLM if they don't like their LLB, so it's not necessarily B&B's fault (in this case at least ;)