Economic Laws Practice (ELP) tax partner Anay Banhatti has left and will be starting independent counsel practice, cementing the trend of tax lawyers choosing to join the bar in the lucrative and in-demand practice area.

His move would make ELP one of the largest partner-feeder firm to the bar besides J Sagar Associates (JSA), which has seen four partners move from office to chambers in the past five years.

Banhatti will be joining the Bombay bar and has been having discussions with a number of senior counsel for advice, he said, with the exact details of his practice still to be finalised, perhaps by next month.

He had joined Economic Laws Practice (ELP) in 2007, after graduating from ILS Pune. He had made associate partner at ELP in 2015, and partner in 2017.

“I’ve been with ELP out of college, almost 12 years,” said Banhatti. “I’ve learnt a lot there, and still continue to have good personal and professional relationships with all the partners.”

He added that becoming a counsel had always been a “personal aspiration” of his, and that he would diversify from his current practice of tax advisory and litigation, to enhance his litigation practice, also in areas other than tax.

“He’s a very nice guy and we’re very fond of him, and we wish him the best,” commented ELP managing partner Suhail Nathani.

“It’s a personal ambition and he’s not the first in ELP to do that and won’t be the last,” he added. “ELP enables its lawyers to do that. Vikram [Nankani]’s done it, Rohan [Shah]’s done it, and at the lower level, others have done it.”

“We are different in that we argue a lot of our matters through our in house [lawyers].”

Banhatti acknowledged that moving to the bar would entail “a lot of adjustment”.

“Going from a practice where I was doing both [direct and indirect] tax litigation and advisory, moving to litigation, I will have to […] get to know the court craft much more than before.”

“A lot of challenging things and issues that keep coming up, like IBC is one big thing that is there, and slowly, slowly I’ve been doing some white collar crime as well, advising clients on that. Slowly I want to expand litigation to that as well.”