01/04/2025 | Mina Jenkins

If scale is the goal for partners in western law firms – witness the tie-ups that yielded the 4,000-lawyer A&O Shearman in 2024, and the 1,600-lawyer Troutman Pepper Locke this year – their Indian counterparts seem keener to go it alone. RSGI’s research for Resight India shows that boutique and breakaway firms have proliferated in recent years.

Of the 106 law firms profiled on the platform, 39 (36%) were established after 2015, with 20 (19%) set up after 2019. Among the 39 firms that are less than 10 years old, RSGI considers 23 to be true breakaways, defined as small outfits set up by one or more partners from big institutional law firms.

Other observers set higher benchmarks. Shuva Mandal, ex-general counsel of Tata Group and founder of Anagram Partners, defines a breakaway as a firm with “multiple partners, scalability and institutional clients”. While 13 (60%) of Resight’s 23 breakaways have three or fewer equity partners, 10 are closer to Mandal’s definition: six have four equity partners, while four – Anagram Partners, AP & Partners, Bombay Law Chambers and Veritas Legal – have five or more equity partners and employ an average of 50 lawyers.

But what drives partners to forgo the security of a big, established firm and go it alone? From more than 100 interviews with Indian law firm leaders, RSGI has identified three key reasons why partners are taking the plunge.

1. Greater wealth, faster law

'There is enough work for everybody'

Though its GDP growth rate has been slowing over the past year – reaching 5.4% in the third quarter of 2024, compared with 8.6% in the fourth quarter of 2023 – India has put in a formidable economic performance since the Covid-19 pandemic. The fifth largest economy in the world, it remains the fastest growing among the G20, and is a key destination for foreign direct investment, despite some significant outflows in recent months.

Surging investment has driven a flurry of corporate activity: research by consultancy Grant Thornton Bharat puts the total value of M&A, private equity and other deals in India in 2024 at $116bn, representing a 76% increase in deal value and a 33% increase in volume compared with 2023. According to data provider Dealogic, India was second only to the US for equity fundraising in 2024.

At the same time, the digitalisation of India’s courts, which also accelerated after Covid-19, has helped make litigation quicker and cheaper – and thus more attractive to businesses flush with cash from investors. Little wonder, then, that Deep Roy, managing partner of Equilex, a three-partner firm founded in 2019, has noticed a “huge upsurge in the litigious attitudes of borrowers, their promoters, interested bidders and other stakeholders in the financing and insolvency space”.

Given a deal-hungry market and litigious clients, the conclusion that many would-be founders have reached is that “there is enough work for everybody”.

2. A new breed of buyer

'The profile of the decision-maker is changing'

India is a deeply entrepreneurial market, with a thriving technology and start-up scene supported by a government that sees digitalisation as crucial to economic
development. Between the start of 2016 and the end of 2024, the government-backed Start-Up India initiative registered 157,000 start-ups.

This results in demand for legal services, of course, but also for legal services from firms with similarly entrepreneurial DNA. “Clients now care more about the person that services them, and not just the brand,” says Samir Gandhi, founding partner of Axiom5.

And as start-ups grow – and India now has more than 100 unicorns, or start-ups worth over $1bn – the deals they pursue will do likewise. “A sizeable part of the Indian economy has been driven by new-age entrepreneurs, many of whom come from professional service backgrounds,” says Arjun Sinha of AP & Partners. “They are now increasingly looking to expand overseas and pursue significant acquisitions as part of their growth strategies.”

General counsels and decision-makers with larger wallets for legal work are also not necessarily looking for big brand names. “The profile of the decision-maker is changing,” says Rahul Rai from Axiom5. “The new age general counsels, who have moved in house by choice, know where strengths and capabilities lie, and are moving instruction to non-traditional law firms. Global MNCs, with instructing lawyers in California, London or Brussels. . . do not have old traditional law firms.”

Many observers say that the legal market is moving away from the generalist lawyer towards the specialist, giving the boutiques a chance to win work from big clients.

3. Small is beautiful

'There is no space for underperforming partners'

If the above are pull factors, reducing the perceived risk of going it alone, push factors, in the form of personal or professional priorities, are at work too. Partners in big firms may want greater agency and involvement in executive decisions, feeling they have hit barriers to promotion and to greater remuneration too soon. They may want to create something with a distinctive culture, unencumbered by legacy management structures and able quickly to pivot towards emerging practice areas.

Sherbir Panag, co-founder of the Law Offices of Panag & Babu in 2017, says he made a point of hiring business staff who had never worked for a law firm before.

“Law firm management. . . has not kept up with the times, not just in India but globally,” he explains. “That’s testament to how slow law firms are to respond to market opportunities and new practice areas.” He attributes his firm’s success to large firms’ foot-dragging on establishing white collar crime practices, one of Panag & Babu’s specialisms. “If we were one or two years late to the rodeo, the large firms were five to seven years behind,” Panag says.

Of course, money matters too: some partners did the maths and realised that they could probably earn more on their own. Of the 11 breakaway firms willing to report annual revenue figures, six are making more than $2mn, including one in the $5mn-$10mn bracket. Fewer equity partners means each can receives a larger slice of the pie.

Smaller firms have fewer conflicts of interest and can be correspondingly more agile in picking up business. “As an equity owner, you will make more money than elsewhere,” says a founding partner of a breakaway firm. “Overheads are lower, more manageable, and there is no dead wood. There is no space for underperforming partners.” Entrepreneurial partners value freedom and innovation above the security and prestige offered by long-established firms.

The top 10 law firms in India still dominate the market, but that does not mean there is no room for anyone else: as Anagram’s Shuva Mandal points out, “everyone needs a lawyer”. Making a dent in the hegemony of the top 10 will only require a few institutional clients to move – and both breakaway founders and general counsels say this is only a question of time.

Mina Jenkins is a researcher at RSGI
mina.jenkins@rsgi.co

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