L&L Partners Delhi-based private equity and corporate partner Vishwanath Pratap Singh is leaving the firm, we have confirmed from several sources.
The 2007 NLSIU Bangalore graduate specialises in private equity and also does corporate work.
It is understood that he will be taking some time off for now, though Singh did not respond to requests for comment.
Singh had joined the firm just over a year ago from Trilegal, where he was a counsel, where he was a welcome and much-needed reinforcement to Luthra’s corporate transactional practice.
He had begun his career at erstwhile Amarchand Mangaldas and had joined Trilegal as a principal associate in 2015, before joining Luthra.
We have reached out to managing partner Rajiv Luthra and senior partner Mohit Saraf for comment.
What’s ailing Luthra corporate?
While boasting strong capital markets, projects and disputes offerings, the firm has struggled to maintain a footprint in the vital corporate transactional space. It has failed to make dents, compared to its peers, in M&A and private equity league tables for years now, for example, and no partner was promoted in the corporate M&A practice in the last round of August 2018.
The Legal500 directory lists only Mohit Saraf and Rajiv Luthra as leading individuals (though the firm is ranked tier 1 for corporate M&A); Chambers and Partners ranks Luthra as “band 3” in corporate, citing Saraf (band 2), Rajiv Luthra (“eminent practitioners”) and partner Sundeep Dudeja (band 4) who is heading the firm’s corporate restructuring and regulatory practice (Chambers ranks its private equity group as band 4, listing only Saraf).
Although, just after Singh’s joining, the firm had hired SAM corporate partner Jay Parikh in Mumbai in in May 2018 and Akshay Nagpal from Interglobe as a partner and and Harish Kumar as a partner designate, Singh is the latest in many corporate partners to defect from L&L, particularly in Delhi:
- Corporate partner designate Alok Sonker, who had joined in July 2018, left in January 2019.
- Neha Sinha, who was made a partner at the firm’s Delhi office in 2017, left for Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas (SAM) early this year.
- Delhi corporate partner Anshul Jain had joined PwC in September 2018.
- Corporate partner Shikhar Kacker left in April 2018.
- In November 2017, homegrown corporate partner Pranjal Bora left.
- Delhi corporate partner Dipti Lavya Swain left for Azure Power, where he became general counsel.
Between 2014 and 2016:
- Delhi corporate partner Aparna Mittal had left.
- Mumbai partner Sudipta Routh has left for Agram,
- Delhi’s Nivedita Tiwari joined MNK Law Offices,
- Mumbai partner Shishir Vayttaden went to Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas.
Corporate partner Shinoj Koshy who had joined from Nishith Desai Associates in 2015 remains with the firm.
Comments
Between 2014-2016 many more partners quit including Deepak Joyce, Pranjal Bora, Tarun govil, piyush mishra, Rajesh chavda, santanu, Sanjeev Sachdeva, Moushami, Shweta, anil Rai, Patnaik, Ameet Dutta, Ajit Warrier, Madhurima, it’s an endless list :(
The other big 6 pretty much all have much deeper corporate bench strengths and stronger M&A league table positions than Luthra, and firms like CAM that have seen similar levels of corporate partner attrition, nevertheless have hired a similar number laterally and regularly promote into corporate, which is probably their biggest practice area.
The gaps between L&L and firms like Link Legal or HSA are shrinking, if it were not for Luthra disputes, cap markets and tax, and slightly higher salaries (in some departments).
The facts that are public really speak for themselves here, though we remain open to being corrected on these by management or insiders, either anonymously in the comments or on the record.
Finally, management choosing not to engage means either that they don't care about this perception, or that they know that it's true and would rather ignore it. Which is their prerogative of course.
Unless you took into account the similarities between RL and HS.
Would be happy to be enlightened though about what really differentiates L&L from HSA or LL, without a significant corporate transactional practice?
I feel comparing L&L with one-trick ponies like LLILS and HSA is taking it too far. Link Legal, from what I have heard, is doing well, but they still has some distance to cover when it comes to corporate work, and also in terms of perception in the market as a full service firm.
HSA – less said the better. Other than their regulatory practice, they are no-where in the picture in any other area. Revenue wise there cannot be any comparison between HSA and L&L. Of course there are similarities between how the management of both L&L and HSA have squandered a tremendous opportunity to grow their respective firms.
L&L is now more like best of the rest after the Top-6 of AZB, KCO, SAM, CAM, Trilegal and JSA.
Claiming that all the partners who've left are terrible is a bit of a low blow and unlikely to be accurate (and also wouldn't reflect well on hiring or promotion policies were it true), considering a sizable number of the partners who've left are now at top firms or running successful independent practices.
By comparison, take almost any other firm and the second or senior corporate layer they have beyond the promoters or even homegrown talent: AZB has always been a corporate powerhouse and they have added Ashwath & Co to that, which is almost a firm in itself, besides Gautam Saha & Co in Delhi and many others. SAM has Chudasama & Co + a whole bunch of homegrown partners and senior laterals in Delhi (including from Luthra). JSA has a pretty solid spread of corporate partners throughout, as does Khaitan (and both of these also hugely promote internally into corporate).
CAM too suffers from a bit of promoter-bias perhaps in corporate, but there too anyone could easily name a handful of senior homegrown corporate partners, such as Bangalore (including ex-Luthra's Shishir Vayttaden).
Finally, Trilegal's corporate practice may be a bit smaller and less high-profile compared to the others, but they also have a pretty small partnership, though even there you could easily name a handful of corporate partners besides the promoters.
I'm sure to a large extent the problem is that Luthra does not publicise the deals of most of these partners at all, so it's hard to know whether the firm actually has any M&A work spread around those partners or if it's just 1 or 2 of those partners handling 99%. By press releases sent to B&B and IBLJ, it appears to be the latter, but again, I'll be the first to admit that this could just be bad PR.
All I know, is Luthra has decided to blacklist LI for a few years now, mostly from what I understand because they were upset about negative coverage and reader comments about partner departures.
That said, we treat Luthra in the same as any other firm, other than the fact that it chooses not to include any comment in the stories that could provide some perspective on the facts.
Some free PR suggestions for spinning this could include: "we wish him well", or "L&L continues having a market-leading corporate practice", or "we still have X top corporate lawyers and continue advising on marquee mandates for our clients", or any combination of the above.
In the absence of this, we will continue reporting positive and negative stories about the firm such as ( https://www.legallyindia.com/lawfirms/hsa-projects-partner-deepak-thakur-ail-07-joins-luthra-20190405-9979 ) , but it can't be our job to spin positives about a firm in light of pretty clear evidence to the contrary...
As for why we don't do more of them, I believe L&L does share press releases with B&B, IBLJ and other 'friendly' publications. Unfortunately we have a backlog right now in our deals coverage and the priority is to get the press-released ones into our system, though we hope to also pick up any deals covered elsewhere for inclusion in our league tables.
But to some extent, at the end of the day, I admit that our resources permit us to only go so far to cover deals accurately and in a timely manner where a firm actively boycotts LI for whatever reason.
Even with those deals you mention, however, Luthra's deal volumes are a fraction of what they used to be even 5 years ago, which is reflected in independent league tables as much as our coverage. That said, yes, they do still have major clout with many large corporates and have a large number of loyal clients. But is that enough without a consistent second layer of partners to execute them, when there are firms like AZB, CAM, SAM and even S&R and others?
ps: frustrated ex-teammate
Just saying.
1. No matter when you leave Luthra, you will leave some money on the table. The bonus are split in two equal tranches. The 1st one paid in March and the second one in July. Mind you the dates are never told in advance and people only find out a few days before the roll out. All of this is decided by one man alone. Any guesses? Also if you leave in the middle of the two bonus payouts you will not be paid the second tranche
2. Increments are rolled out at least 6/7 months later and typically after the promotions. Feel free to track the previous 5/6 rounds of promotions and you will see that this never happened before October / November. While L&L does have an EC, the bonus and salary revisions are again only decided by one and only. He would usually sit down with a huge ruler and an excel sheet in his glass cabin a few days before the roll out. So if he is travelling, you can easily forget your bonus for a few weeks.
3. The partners have absolutely no say in policies or payouts. It’s been common for partners to suggest promotions or raise but shot down subsequently my the man.
4. All publications and magazines have names of only 2 people’s name as the preferred contacts. All conferences or news are attended by one man alone. This means zero recognition outside office even though the man will try to tell you that you are the best lawyer he has ever seen.
5. FaceTiming is usually stressed upon at Luthra. If you don’t work on weekends / beyond 11 pm, you don’t work hard enough. For this very reason, the [...] and only reach office post lunch. Ask anyone and you will see the attrition is maximum at his team. One partner even was forced to switch teams to pick up another practice area even though it involved a substantial cut in his cheque size. Any guesses who this [...] is?
6. All selections are decided by one man alone (even of fresh college graduates). Partners have no say and quite a few recommendations have been unilaterally recommended by him alone.
7. A partner (then MA) was shouted at for initiating BD meetings without consulting MS because he thought that she would pose a threat to the firm by developing an independent client base.
8. Public humiliation and insulting is prevalent at Luthra. While you may get pulled up at other firms, at Luthra you may just come across as a stickler or someone who cares a lot about his work.
I think an interesting exercise would be to carry out where the partners now are who had quit Luthra (like Shishir is acing at CAM, Siddharth Srivastava is heading the PF practice at Linklegal, Manish Gupta is also at Linklegal on his way to develop a strong practice, Aparna Mittal had joined AZB but now has her own policy firm on gender equality, the world knows where Madhurima is, and Neha Sinha is with SAM.)
It all boils down to a very feudal mindset - the counsels at L&L are my servants. That sentiment prevails across the board. At the partner level it is more pronounced because, most people who are partners for more than 5 years have nothing to look forward to - there is no equity. So to create an artificial sense of self importance they create unnecessary red tape in the sense - if you make a partner type an email at L&L, most will take half an hour, replete with typos and bad grammar (they are so out of practice of working, that even the simplest thing has to be done for them).
The Shotgun gets much of the flak, but he can't move an inch without the Biggun's nod. Whatever he does is part of the responsibility delegated to him by the Biggun. They play out the good cop bad cop ritual.
Lot of good people left only to thrive elsewhere.