The Ex-Co-Founding Partner of Trilegal, Anand Prasad, has in latest development started up a 4-Partner boutique law firm AP & Partners.
He has taken up the step after going independent for two years and being a budding politician for some while.
Prasad had gone independent in 2017, leaving behind the firm he had co-founded in 2000, to work as an Independent Counsel and rub hands in politics.
“My efforts on the political side collapsed”, he laughed, when asked about his political career.
It was an attempt to revive the liberal-free-market Swatantra Party; like most non-BJP parties in this day and age. It though had presumably failed to make much of an impact.
However, talking about the independent counseling, it has gone better he said. He had independently worked primarily on arbitrations and board-level advisory instructions, as well as some matters in Courts and the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT).
Naming it as another chapter of his life, he said, “We are all coming together to form a smaller firm, that is more ‘complex situation oriented. It won’t do large M&A, stuff like that but it’s essentially focused on difficult situations that clients are doing, [as well as] acting for the sellers, acting for promoters, because it doesn’t require a huge team.”, he explained.
The team he incorporated, right now is a total of 6 fee-earners, including Prasad and 3 fellow Partners, all of whom are equity (much similar to the Trilegal model).
It has been reported that all three of them are also ex-Trilegalites who have gone independent over the past years, and Prasad has said to be king with them for 12 to 18 months.
Moksha Bhat (a 2009 NUJS Kolkata Graduate) focuses on Corporate M&A, had worked in the chambers of senior counsel Abhishek Manu Singhvi for a year, and had been at Trilegal between 2011 and 2018, leaving as Counsel.
Sandeep D Das (2008 Delhi University) is a commercial litigator, including white-collar crime, compliance, and arbitration, as well as an advocate-on-record. He had spent 5 years at Trilegal, becoming junior of Counsel there, before setting up Das Law in 2013.
Arjun Sinha (NUJS Kolkata 2010) does a mix of corporate, technology and policy work. He had begun working at Trilegal in 2010, had a stint as a policy lawyer at PLR Law Chambers, followed by another two years at Trilegal until 2018 before going independent.
A Delhi office and formal launch would be finalized in the coming weeks, said Prasad, and the firm would remain small and not “like a typical large firm”, he announced. It was also hard to find lawyers “inclined” to work on what may be smaller deals and not acting for acquirers, for instance, he mused.
The firm though likely to grow a little. “The idea is for each partner to have at least two associates working with them. Once we have office space we will tend to, from time to time, bring in people on an ad hoc basis,” Prasad said.
Prasad himself would focus on the general overview and strategic advice, he said, while his Co-Partners would handle the majority of client work directly.
That different model was also part of the reason that he did not return to Trilegal where administration, for instance, would have taken away a lot of time from clients, he said when asked: “If I go back to Trilegal, I’d go back to doing what I was doing earlier.”
