HSA Advocates has hired Advaita Legal partner Shailendra Kumar Singh, counsel Alok Shankar and principal Monali Dutta as partners in HSA’s Delhi office with their teams of another seven fee-earners.
Shailendra Singh (a lawyers since graduating from Delhi University in 2002) had been heading projects and infrastructure at Advaita, having previously also worked at Luthra & Luthra and Trilegal. He was promoted to partner at Advaita in 2018. He specialises in infrastructure, energy and resources.
Shankar is a 2007 NLIU Bhopal graduate, who does regulatory and projects work; Dutta is a qualified lawyer from Delhi Unviersity and company secretary, and started practising in 2008 (including a four year stint at HSA from 2011 and 2015), and she specialises in infrastructure, aerospace & defence, IT & ITES, healthcare and project development.
Founding partner Hemant Sahai said in a press release: “They add further strength and caliber to our existing service offerings and will help in supplementing our capabilities in the respective practice areas. I am especially delighted to have Monali back with HSA and am looking forward to working with her again.”
Advaita: What’s left?
We understand that the raid by HSA leaves Advaita’s Delhi office substantially without any partner or senior or even fee-earner presence, though Mumbai might still have a few fee-earners remaining.
Somehow Advaita therefore still seems to be continuing, but it is unclear what the ownership structure would be without any apparent remaining partners, to the best of our knowledge. According to LinkedIn, there are around 10 fee-earners left at Advaita, with one principal, Mihir Deshmukh in Mumbai, and no partners.
KPMG has, at least externally, been notably hands-off in the day-to-day operations of Advaita but its fair to say that even with the Big 4’s support the brand is on life support.
We have reached out to KPMG’s comms team for comment.
Deathspin chronology
Advaita has been in a bit of an inexorable deathspin since the exit of its co-founder in 2018:
- tax partner Sudipta Bhattacharjee had joined Khaitan & Co in Delhi in late 2020,
- principal Gaurav Gupta went independent starting a new firm,
- senior partner Atul Dua left after conflicts issues with KPMG,
- senior lawyers Subodh Sadana and Ray Sharat Prasad left in May 2019 for Khaitan & Khaitan,
- senior principal Dharnendra Kumar Rana left for Nitya Tax Associates in April 2019,
- principal Satyajit Gupta joined Star TV as vice president legal,
- Advaita co-founding partner Sujit Ghosh had quit in July 2018.
Comments
Waah Hemant, Waah! Mauj Kardi.
It’s funny how under the guise of pandemic, people can have the audacity to do this.
Alto maintain kar nahi pa rahe aur chale Audi lene. EMI denge jab man karega
Shocking!
They would’ve been without a job. Some things never change and the CFO and CSO are taking the firm down.
[...]
Broadly, partners are supposed to get anything between 2.5-8.5 lakhs monthly. When they get it is another matter
Kaagaz ka tukda hai, kuch bhi likh do
It's unfathomable how they are getting new people without paying the existing lot. It's an open secret that every HSA lawyer and support staff CVs are in the market.