L&L Partners 2014-litigation partner Anirban Bhattacharya has left to make it as an independent arguing counsel, as first reported by Bar & Bench.

The 2004 ILS Pune grad went independent on 1 January 2019 and his chambers would be ready by around 15 January, he told us today.

Bhattacharya said: “I am going into full counsel practice, starting my own chambers, not a firm.”

Bhattacharya had been part of Delhi-based L&L disputes senior partner Vijay Sondhi’s team. Sondhi commented: “He is a hardcore professional and a thorough gentleman. I wish him all the success in his future endeavours.”

While he has primarily focused on white collar crime and civil commercial disputes in his career, he said he would “take up any work in any form”, from Supreme Court to any other fora.

He said that he wanted to go independent to get the chance to argue more high-value matters himself, because “high stakes cases come to a law firm such as ours [L&L], and there we take high profile counsels”.

“I believe the routine is different, but the work I’ll be doing is essentially the same,” he added, about the adjustment from law firm to counsel.

Several clients he had been working with at L&L as arguing counsel, had chosen to continue instructing him in “not too high stakes” cases because of his “expertise in the white collar crime scenario”.

After a two-year post-graduation stint with Paras Kuhad & Associates, he moved to Luthra & Luthra, as it then was, where he was promoted to partnership in 2014.