Shishir Sharma, senior partner and former managing partner at law firm Tatva Legal, is joining Dua Associates along with two other partners and four associates.
The move will increase Dua Associates’ tally of partners to 64 and of lawyers to 250, the law firm said in a statement.
Sharma and non-equity partners Seher Ali and Natasha Tuli will be based in Gurgaon and start work on 1 September, Dua Associates chairman Ranji Dua said.
Tatva Legal said in a separate statement that its New Delhi office, led by Avinash Mody, will continue to service clients in the region. It added that the firm has a team of 80 professionals, including 21 partners, at five offices in Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and New Delhi.
This is the second homecoming for Sharma. He had first joined Dua Associates in 1995 and worked until 2002, when he moved to DSK Legal to head its New Delhi office. In 2004, he shifted back to Dua Associates as the head of corporate and M&A practice. He joined Tatva Legal in January 2010 to lead the newly formed firm.
Sharma is an alumnus of Jodhpur University from the 1988 batch. He had started his career with PH Parekh & Associates in New Delhi and later moved to Bhasin & Co as a senior associate.
Seher Ali had joined Dua Associates in 2007 and had left along with Sharma. Tuli is an alumnus of Amity Law School and University College, London. She had started her career with Porsche Cars GB Ltd as an in-house lawyer in 2008 and later worked with human resource firm CIPD and Pfizer Ltd before joining Tatva in 2011.
A Mumbai-based consultant, who advises firms on hiring and strategies, said big law firms are increasingly poaching either practice heads or entire operations in a location rather than hiring single partners. “This not only helps these law firms to scale but also helps them get quick access to the clients of rival firms,†the consultant said.
Recently, top law firm Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co had poached five partners and over 30 lawyers from smaller rival BMR Legal to ramp up its M&A and deal advisory practice in Mumbai and other cities.
*This article has been updated to include a comment from Tatva Legal.