Not only has FoxMandal Little lost four partners this year – it has also gained a new competitor. Ravi Bishnoi and Rajan Gupta have left FoxMandal Little to establish SRGR Law with Saroj Jha and Gaurav Bhatia, both of whom resigned from the firm earlier this year.

Despite having received offers from leading law firms and requests from in-house legal teams, the four partners decided to join together to execute a long-term vision of driving their own firm into the top league within India. “Right now the immediate vision is that by the end of March 2011, we will be among the top-10 law firms [in terms of revenue] in Delhi, not nationally,” said Rajan Gupta, corporate partner at SRGR Law.

It is a grand ambition that they hope to achieve by building a full-service law firm. “At present, among the four of us, we cover almost all fields of law, except for a few areas like IP and IT, which we are not able to cover at this point time,” said Gupta. “Going forward we will add new capabilities as when we need them – that’s our game plan.”

Each of the four founding partners will take an equal equity share in the new firm and contribute their expertise in the areas of corporate advisory and M&A, infrastructure projects, real estate and litigation. SRGR Law currently employs six associates who have between three to five years of experience and it plans to recruit at least four more associates in the next six months.

The new firm has only been operational for a week and the partners are still in the process of establishing engagement agreements with clients. “There are a few large clients, both domestic and international, who have agreed to come on board,” said Gupta. He declined to name any potential clients, stating that it would be premature to do so.

It is also expected that the firm will be able to benefit from existing relationships with international law firms. “We also have considerable experience with handling cross-border transactions and we have working relationships with many international law firms both in the UK and the US. We expect referral work from them as well,” said Gupta. The firm does not anticipate establishing an exclusive alliance with any one particular international law firm; rather it prefers the freedom of working with several firms. “We are not going to have any exclusivity with any firms right now. We would be available for work with all firms,” Gupta said.

Gupta didn’t provide any other reason for his decision to leave FoxMandal Little but the firm has hit headlines this year as a result of cash flow problems. It delayed salary payments to its Delhi-based lawyers as a result of late payments from overseas clients. 

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