Ashlar Law, a corporate law firm that worked with Sidley Austin LLP to advise Brazil in the WTO dispute on India’s sugar subsidy, plans to scale up operations.
Founded in 2014 by two city-born lawyers – Pingal Khan and Souvik Bhadra – the firm has offices in Calcutta, Mumbai, and Bangalore and will open an office in New Delhi next year.
With clients ranging from fintech, deep tech and banking to healthcare and luxury real estate, the firm offers advisory services on the changing technology regulatory landscape in the country and the emerging legislation around gig workers.
The founders told The Telegraph that although they had studied together at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, their paths were initially divergent.
But they started considering coming together to build a practice with the shifts in market trends following the 2008-09 recession.
“The industry started feeling the effects with clients becoming very prudent about expenses and at the same time, we could see that in big firms we were not being able to provide a value for the price. At the same time a young generation of entrepreneurs were rising who needed legal support,” said Bhadra.
“Souvik and I decided to start Ashlar Law to transform our vision of a 21st-century law firm into reality, with offices at Calcutta, Bangalore, and a small presence in Mumbai,” said Khan.
No named partners
A key trend among legal firms both globally and in India is to have the surname of the founding partners or family name in the registered name of the firm.
“In India, the big law firms are mostly personality-driven. In many firms, none of the promoters have exited the firm or at least stopped being involved in day-to-day practice. We wanted to and still look forward to building an institution that is bigger than any of us individuals,” Khan said.
“I read about the term ‘ashlar’ which in classical architecture refers to a piece of stone used to build monuments. We thought this signifies hard work and the pursuit of perfection. This we felt symbolised our journey till then and also going forward.”
Ashlar has advised Workex in a funding round from Michael and Susan Dell Foundation.
It has supported fintech platform Benow in their merger with Mosambee. Other clients include Wow Momo, Eupheus Technologies, Le 15 Patisserie.
The firm has also represented pharmaceutical majors like Merck and Sun Pharma and advised ITC, Diageo, NPCI, and Standard Chartered Bank on different issues.
Expansion
Khan said that the firm was careful in not splurging on big set-ups in the early stages to bring down the establishment cost which aided in achieving a running break even in the first quarter.
“We had about six lawyers when we started. Now we have two more partners and in total, we have 15 lawyers in 3 offices. We have expanded the Bombay practice. At the end of 2019, we were clear we wanted to start the Delhi office from April 2020. But that has not happened because of the pandemic. Now, we are in a stage where we would start that office by April 2022,” said Bhadra.
“We are setting up a Delhi office to give our existing clients a seamless experience at the highest appellate forums, and also because in the last few years NCR has emerged as an exciting hub for disruptive technology companies,” said Khan.
