Advaita Legal's Senior Partner Atul Dua to set up independent High Court chambers practice

June 08, 2019:

Advaita Legal Senior Partner Atul Dua will be setting up an independent high court chambers practice, after disagreements between him and Advaita’s best friend consultancy firm KPMG.

We had reported last month that Dua was in the final stages of leaving the firm and have confirmed that his departure is now official, from several sources close in the know.

We understand authoritatively that the relationship between Dua and KPMG - for whom Advaita is its closely-allied law firm with which it shares clients (though we have no evidence that the two are sharing profits) - had soured primarily over client conflicts.

Notably, under Advaita’s agreement with KPMG, Advaita (and therefore Dua) clients would have had to pass KPMG’s conflict checks before being onboarded.

Several of Dua’s clients are believed to have failed KPMG’s conflicts checks, which is unsurprising considering the huge swathe of companies for which the Big 4 does auditing work, which led to long-running friction.

Dua did not answer calls and messages for comment. Advaita declined to comment.

Dua had moved to Advaita in 2017 with his team of 20 lawyers.

We understand that, at present, his team is not set to join him in independent practice.

He had joined Advaita shortly after the firm he had founded, Seth Dua Associates, was dissolved after the death of his co-founding partner Sunil Seth.