The 10 Rising Law Firm Startups To Watch In 2019

Niti Paul
Co-founder
Harry Chawla
Co-founder
the market like the “Banking &
Finance Law Firm of The Year - India
by ACQ5 Global Awards 2019”.
The Legal System and its Challenges
Like any other profession, the legal
one is also hounded by many issues.
Some of the key challenges faced by
Indian law firms as per the ALP team
are:
a) Reigning in costs by moving from
a traditional hourly billable format
to fixed fee matters.
b) Achieving super specialization to
face intense competition heads on.
c) Threat from accounting /
consulting firms who have been
investing heavily in their legal
services arm.
d) Selection, grooming and retention
of talent with thousands of lawyers
entering the legal market on a
regular basis.
Apart from these what also bothers the
Legal Fraternity is the gap between
Law Formulation and Law
Enforcement. The founders believe that
laws exist to fill in the various gaps
created by society and the actions of
men. However, the enforcement of
these laws is far from satisfactory. To
explain their view, they give the
example of the recently formulated
Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code.
They feel, “It is a comprehensive
statute that seeks to cover all plausible
situations involved in the insolvency
resolution of a company. However, in
terms of implementation, the road to
success is slow and ever-changing. The
fine-tuning of the law continues to
date.”
But the founders are also positive
about the future as they see the
younger generation take up law more
seriously. They feel that start-ups and
entrepreneurs in the law firm space
need to identify their niche practice
areas and work with a focus towards
developing these. In this day and age
of super specialization, it is important,
especially for start-up law firms to
identify their practice areas and hire
the right talent for these practice areas
and industry sectors.
Looking Ahead
As its future prospect, Atlas Law
Partners endeavours to grow from
strength to strength. The founders say,
“We see our prospects increasing in
leaps and bounds in our areas of
specializations including banking &
finance, mergers and acquisitions and
real estate. We also see ourselves
growing in the startup space,
representing investors and startups
alike from an early stage seed
investment to a 6th / 7th round of
funding. Our competition law practice,
particularly in regards to merger
control filing, is recent and has
received successful approvals one after
another.” The ALP team is a small but
effective one, and it hopes to grow in
numbers and transactions size and
volume year on year.
25 JUNE 2019