India's largest law firm Fox Mandal Little (FML) has added a total of 11 new partners to its ranks, four of which have been snatched from rival local Indian firm Khaitan & Co.
 
The remainder of the new partners, from a variety of practice backgrounds, is made up by internal promotions and two other external hires - one from in-house and another from an advisory role. The hires bring FML's total number of partners to 50 nationwide.
 
Khaitan & Co's losses to Fox Mandal are capital markets specialist Manish Sharma, tax and corporate restructuring lawyer Rajan Gupta, litigation-focused Shruti Chaudhary (Pictured), and corporate partner Sudesh Sharma. The four lawyers decided to depart as a group.
 
Proshanto Banerjee has been recruited to head the group's oil and gas practice from his former position as chairman of GAIL - India's principal gas transmission company.
 
The final external hire is well-respected IT-focused lawyer Rodney Ryder, who is the advisor to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in India on the implementation of the Information Technology Act of 2000.
 
"Due to a large increase in the volume of work we are doing we had a need for specialist partners, so we had to hire these partners," said Fox Mandal's Juhi Garg.
 
"They were attracted to the firm because most of the other good firms in India are family controlled and outside partners have a lesser say. At Fox Mandal Little, although it has a lot of family members, it functions more independently," Garg says.
 
The internal promotions are: Pooja Dodd, Intellectual Property; Moushumi Chopra, Corporate; Shyamal Mukherjee, Corporate; Deepti Anurag, Real Estate; Jeevanandham Rajagopal, Corporate/ IP (Chennai); and Santosh Vikram Singh, IP (Bangalore).
 
Garg says there have been so many internal promotions as the lawyers have been fit for the role for some time, with the firm waiting to put its expansion plans into action.
 
Mid-last year, Fox Mandal rocked the Indian market after its combination with Little & Co (to form Fox Mandal Little) saw it become the biggest law firm in India by size.