Rodney Ryder has merged his practice with young start-up law firm ANM Global, spinning off his Scriboard company into a separate entity for legal education.
Ryder, who founded IP and technology firm Scriboard in April after leaving Kochhar & Co, has now joined forced with ANM founding partners Anuj Gupta and Nidhish Mehrotra making a Delhi firm of around five lawyers.
Ryder said: "They have an existing law firm that has good clients to whom I could pitch my work and provide my services as well. They have clients like Parle Agro, Jet Airways and are handling Lenovo's commercial litigation in India."
The new set-up would enable him to better focus on providing legal advice without the risk of conflicts with Scriboard's other activities, which would be co-managed by Gupta and Mehrotra although for a transitional period of around six months would continue to service Ryder's existing clients.
"Scriboard will become a company mainly into legal education," explained Ryder adding that it would also be providing IP training and training programmes for the Delhi police, although it could also in future move into consultancy and recruitment.
Sweet fellows that they are – ANMR – but of course I follow my principel of not having a law firm with my name, and that is a strict religious principle, non n and will remain until the end of my life.
Under the new ANM Global partnership agreement Ryder will hold 34 per cent, while Gupta and Mehrotra will hold 33 per cent each.
Gupta qualified as a UK solicitor at Pitmans Solicitors in Reading followed by seven months at AZB & Partners, having graduated from Cardiff University in Wales in 2006.
In July 2009 he set up ANM Global with Mehrotra, who had previously worked Khaitan Jayakar Sud and Vohra having graduated from Symbiosis University in 2007.
Gupta focuses on private equity and corporate commercial work and said: "We knew [Ryder] is an authority in the IP and technology side and we thought if we merge both the firms the bigger aspect will be that we'll be able to serve our clients better.
"We thought we'll get big advantage if we get Rodney: not only is he a fantastic lawyer, but is also fantastic guy and we'd like to bring in people who we are comfortable working with and who have a good brand name."
Mehrotra said that he specialised in litigation and cyber crimes work, and wanted to particularly focus also on serving Chinese clients, such as Lenovo, which was a jurisdiction that most Indian firms had not focused on.
Mehrotra also explained that a number of the firm's other senior lawyers or partners such as Sandeep Goel, Saurabh Joshi in Chandigarh and Ankur Singhal had left ANM Global in recent months to pursue their individual practices.
Ryder said that the new merged firm would be looking to secure offices in Greater Kailash Part 1 in due course.
He also mused that he resisted adding his initial to the ANM brand-name, as not having his name on a law firm was almost a "strict religious" principle that he would follow until the end of his life.
In June Ryder had entered into a referral "best friend" arrangement with legal process outsourcing (LPO) company Overlegen.