Luthra & Luthra has promoted six associates to its partnership, of whom three are in its Delhi litigation practice.
On the transactional side, managing associate Aparna Mittal and Manmeet Singh in Delhi office and Shishir Jose Vayttaden in Mumbai were promoted to partner level. Mittal and Vayttaden both specialise in corporate and M&A, while Manmeet Singh is a project finance specialist.
All have spent their entire career at Luthra with the new corporate partners – Mittal and Vayttaden – having graduated from NLSIU Bangalore in 2005, while Manmeet Singh graduated in 2004 and completed an LLM at Columbia Law School in New York in 2007.
In the Delhi litigation team managing associate Tarun Dua, and group heads Sanjeev Kumar Sharma and Suyash Srivastava were promoted to partnership.
Meanwhile, Luthra minted nine new managing associates and 20 new senior associates, reported legal website Bar & Bench today (see list below).
Managing partner Rajiv Luthra said in an emailed statement: “It’s a pleasure and moment of pride, to confirm that most of these young professionals have been nurtured by the Firm - most of them joined the firm straight out of law schools… to watch the metamorphosis of such organic growth is all together a different and indescribable joy… The years ahead are definitely going to benefit with such a foundation of immense talent…”
No announcement was made at the promotion ceremony last weekend about the firm’s long-standing plans to widen the firm’s equity to a greater number of partners, which was first announced in June 2009 but has since seen little progress.
However, it is understood that over the past years the firm has had discussions with a number of consultants about implementing such a change, with UK legal magazine Legal Week having reported in March of this year that management consultancy McKinsey was instructed.
At last year’s major partnership promotion in August 2011, the firm promoted three associates to partnership and promised a choice of BMW, Mercedes or Audi cars to five partners, of which four have taken delivery of the cars. [Correction: The original version of this story was incorrect in respect of the number of cars delivered]
A total of 11 senior associates were promoted to managing associate this time last year, while six made the jump to senior associate.
In January 2011 Indraneel Basu Majumdar was given the nod in the Delhi capital markets team, alongside tax managing associate JP Singh and corporate lawyer Deepak Joyce and project lawyer Piyush Mishra in December.
New managing associates: Tanmay Amar, Karan Chandhiok, Sandeep Grover, Manish Gupta, Vaibhav Kakkar, Sachit Mathur, Prashant Mishra, Amit Shetye and Manu Yadav.
A grand total of 20 new senior associates were also promoted: Akansha Agarwal, Surya Bala, Yohan John Balan, Aneek Bangabash, Wasim Beg, Mumtaz Bhalla, Kanika Chaudhary, Anant Garg, Vaishali Kakra, Divyakant Lahoti, Sumit Mangal, Karan Mitroo, Mahfooz Nazki, Aditya Periwal, Neha Priya, Rohit Raghavan, Neha Sachdeva, Rohan Shah, Alok Shankar, Varun Shankar, Pulkit Sharma, Tulika Sen, Bhupender Singh, Mihira Sood, Mriga Solanki, Ajay Sondhi, Sidhartha Srivastava, Saurabh Tiwari and Amit Upadhyay.
Comments
I don't know about the others but you can bet your ass 95% of these "Managing" Associates and "Senior" Associates have CVs out in the market.
The promotions are just tags. People from 2008/09 are now Senior Associates? They come to meetings like glorified clerks and have no say in decision making at all on a transaction.
Makes one want to run to amarchand! sniff.
Having said that, promoting 20 people to senior associates would result in no change in their daily work profile, except for the tag. Shouldn't there be a filtering mechanism, rather than promoting en masse?
You censored comments heavily in the AMSS-CLB fiasco. Any remote reference to the Shroffs was vigorously censored. Kudos to you for bringing out the story, but your censoring the comments clearly showed that you had double standards for personal attacks against the Shroffs and lesser mortals.
In defending this allegation against you, you said in one of your comments that " If someone comments on someone's appearance, or generally on their abilities as a lawyer, we may also moderate." You applied this standard vigorously for the shroffs but when it was against lesser firms you argued that those comments were lighthearted.
Now coming to the aforesaid comment. There is a specific reference to those who made Managing Associate and Senior Associates, each of whom are identified in your article above. The comment then calls these young lawyers "glorified clerks"! And you dont have to censor this comment? Is it not a personal attack or a comment on their ability as a lawyer? I hope you dont defend yourself saying since the attack was on a group and not an individual it is fine. By that loic the "lousiest transacational lawyer ever" also refers to one of the three equity partners, and perhaps you censored only his/her name!
Am I to assume that if i personally attack one of the Shroff brothers you would censor it, but a personal attack on the Shroff families policies or the equity partners of AMSS is fine?
You really need to get your comment moderation policy in place. A start would be requiring people to comment only after providing an email id. Even if its fake, people can judge how seriously to take a comment from ""!
I urge you to do the right thing and not just encourage slanderous comments against young lawyers, such as the SAs/MAs of LUthra, for the sake of more hits on your site. And I do hope you publish this comment.
According to our policy, generally comments about larger groups of people are fine, yes, because they are not personal criticism and no individual is singled out.
The SA/MAs in this case weren't slandered, it was just pointed out that they were young, which is a valid question to ask and not necessarily a bad thing.
Your email address solution really doesn't work - for one, it is a recipe for spam; second it is an invasion of privacy; third, it would stifle open debate and criticism; fourth, unless we checked each one it is impossible to enforce and everyone could give the address of someone else at a firm, which is an even bigger risk; fifth, can a comment not be judged on its content and merits by intelligent readers rather than on which email address it was sent from?
Best wishes
Kian
What is someone said [...] was a "glorified wimp"? Let me change that to a "group" attack. What is someone said that the Equity Partners at [...] are "glorified wimps with not an inch of integrity [...]"!
What are you going to censor?
Ps. Moot point: did the former BCI chairman slander all law firm lawyers by calling them "dignified clerks"?
http://www.legallyindia.com/2009062872/Interviews/interview-bar-council-chairman-snp-sinha
I wrote what I did because I have worked across the table with the aforementioned [...] partner several times and while he is a nice enough guy, his legal skills are nowhere close to what I believe is required of a partner - hence the contrast with Umakanth. He may have spent [...] years in the firm [...] but if that were the only ask, almost a third of the associates in all big firms today would be partners.
A clerk is a white collar worker who lacks discretion and
must strictly follow procedure. No different from these so called 'senior associates and managing associates'.
Luthra is living in a dream world if he thinks these promotions will improve the quality of his firm or the promotees
You need to be able to tell genuine criticism from trolling. And certainly not pander to every sensitive bloke out there who gets upset because a comment hit home.
On a separate note - curious to know the amount of M&A and general corporate work L&L is having (as its always known as a Project Finance Firm) with so many partners in that area - Mohit, Samir, Sandeep, Prof. Rai, Alina, Nivedita, Deepak, Aparna, Shishir + other Mumbai partners !
I guess - all these promotions are to satisfy the increments expectations!!! - smart move Mr. Luthra.
Some of these new partners, may just have finished 7 or 8 years, but the amount of work that they have done in these years (esp during the 2007 to 2009 boom), makes them far more experienced than their peers. I understand Shishir has also written a book on a complicated subject and that just shows the experience these three have. kudos
Also I think Amit Shetye got promoted a few months back. Another insanely driven lawyer.
If anyone has the full or partial list of AMSS associate promos, please post it in a comment anonymously, not for publication, and we will confirm and cover.
Best wishes,
Kian
Partnership promotions in India could well be called, Senior Associate, Managing Associate, Senior Managing Associate, Principal Associate Designate, Principal Associate, Senior Principal Associate, etc. etc. based on the imagination of the firm!
I guess it's actually smart on Luthra's part if they don't go to NLIU.
request you to act more responsibly before commenting on any law school next time.
Newly promoted associates, “Aye, Aye Partner”
I also agree that an average partner cannot be compared to Umakanth. come to think of it, Luthra has done an amarchand on everyone [...]. Typical of L&L, they look like a joke, besides even the outlandish AMSS choices this year.
I think however the org pyramid at AMSS is steeper, unlike Luthra where practically everyone from the 2008 batch got SA
4 year PQE lawyers usually make SAs
New partners and partners with 10 years experience have no difference in designation.
Why all this bitching and grumbling? Obviously you guys don't like the fact that others are doing well.
In foreign firms, first 2 years are spent as Trainees doing little work (a lot like what interns do in India) and being spoon-fed. In contrast, in India it's the fresh graduates are left out into the wild to fend for themselves and learn. Pl take that out of the 6 year PQE that you refer to, and you're left with 4 years of hardcore experience.
4 years is more than enough for these Associates to get great offers if they step out into the market. It would be stupid for any firm to not promote them. They've earned the promotions and commanded the respect to justify their elevation to the next level.
Having gone through the 'training contract' procedure as well as having interned as one of the blue chip law firms in India, I have definitely seen and experienced the difference from very close quarters.
It's a known fact that the Magic Circle firms have an incredibly high prof reputation, as well as ethics, etc. (a blunder like AMSS CLB-gate would cost a senior partner his job without doubt).
Getting SA is very competitive and Partner more so. Hogwash like 'loyalty' to firm and 'years of experience' come second only to ability and acumen.
Indian firms have to do this shit (quick promos, more partners, dilute quality) for a business reason. If they don't lawyers will quit. Same reason why a Manager at Tata Administrative Service = Senior VP at Dalmia Jain & Co., export merchants (no offence to marwaris intended)
With a lot of criticism about your censorship policy, I see you have taken a foot backwards. If you read 19. and 19.1 together, you would have realised that the bracketed name was put alongside the same pedestrial as Umakant in terms of caliber and repute as a lawyer. It was meant to be a compliment for the bracketed lawyer.
Do you want to reconsider your censor or maybe enlighten me as to how that name in that post does not suit your editorial policy?
Regards,
Dahi Balla