Boutique Mumbai law firm M Mulla Associates, which had been started in 2010 by Mulla & Mulla partner Maneck Mulla, has internally promoted one senior associate to associate partner, after having hired former Naik Naik & Company partner Anuja Jhunjhunwala as a partner in January 2019.

Jhunjhunwala specialises in dispute resolution, matters related to white collar crimes and real estate work.

Real estate and commercial practice senior associate Scherezad Parelvala has been promoted to associate partner, with effect from 1 April. She had been with Maneck Mulla since he had started the firm in June 2010, with her and one secretary.

Maneck Mulla, who is a fourth generation lawyer of the eponymous Mulla & Mulla & Craigie Blunt & Caroe solicitors heritage, said: “We have relatively been an under-the-radar firm but have slowly changed that style of working and coming out of our shell.

“By the grace of god, we have a lot of work on our table and are servicing Fortune 500 firms.”

M Mulla Associates is now 4 partners strong (including 1 associate partner and the 1 founding equity partner, Maneck Mulla), having hired Epic Television Networks general counsel (GC) Vaibhav Warerkar one year ago as a partner, specialising in media, information technology and banking. The firm has 12 fee-earners.

He was at Mulla & Mulla for 13 years, became a partner there in 2006 and moved to Wakariya & Wakhariya Advocates as a partner in 2008 before setting out on his own in 2010.

Mulla specialises primarily in real estate, disputes and general corporate advisory work, and is a graduate of GLC Mumbai.

In terms of future plans, he said: “We definitely want to grow - it would be wrong to say you don’t want to grow and grow as big as possible, but I don’t know whether I really want to reach those scales [of the larger firms]. I will probably position it as a mid-size firm in times to come.”