HSA Advocates has announced its annual promotions across three partnership ranks, and to its principal associate and senior associate designations, writing in its press release:

In recognition of their standing and stature within the legal fraternity and steadfast contributions to the Firm, three more of the existing Partners namely Amit Jajoo (Mumbai), Avijeet Kumar Lala (New Delhi) and Harsh Arora (New Delhi) have been elevated as Equity Partners, while another of its existing Partners, Ramya Hariharan (Kolkata) is formally inducted into HSA’s equity fold.

Hariharan had joined HSA in November of last year from Udwadia Udeshi & Argus Partners.

The press release added that six associate partners who had “demonstrated consistently high levels of performance” were promoted to the partnership (though not to equity partner level, which is one rung above ‘partner’ at HSA in terms of seniority).

Another seven senior associates were promoted to associate partner level.

“These promotions are a culmination of a rigorous and transparent internal process that engaged all stakeholders - a process that is unprecedented in the Indian law firm fraternity,” noted HSA in its statement announcing the promotions.

“With this, HSA now has a collegium of 34 partners and associate partners, and a team of around 100 fee earners working across offices in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Kolkata.”

HSA has expanded aggressively via lateral hiring, after the joining of Amitabh Sharma from Khaitan & Co as managing partner nearly a year ago.

Practice breakdown: Projects still rules HSA, but disputes gets big push

From the promotions it appears that HSA continues to be strongly defined by its projects practice, with two of the new equity partners, 4 of its new partners (non-equity), and one of its new associate partners having some kind of projects focus to their practice profile.

However, in the younger, associate partner ranks, it was disputes and regulatory that saw the greatest number of promotions, suggesting a strategic focus by HSA into litigation: 4 out of 7 new associate partners are involved in disputes and regulatory work (and 2 of the new partners, and one new equity partner).

The corporate practice grew more slowly but nevertheless steadily, with the area seeing only one new equity partner, one new partner and one new associate partner.

4 new equity partners

6 new partners (non-equity)

• Amrita Narayan
• Aniket Prasoon
• Deepak Kumar Thakur
• Rahul Arora
• Soumya De Mallik
• Sushmita Gandhi

7 new associate partners

• Akshay Malhotra
• Anand Shrivastava
• Avinash Kumar Khard
• Kunal Badyal
• Murtaza Kachwalla
• Pragya Ohri
• Vaidehi Naik

Associate promotions

HSA also promoted one senior associate to principal associate, and 14 associates to senior associate level.