Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan

Managing Partner: Mr. V Lakshmikumaran
Number of partners and joint partners: 106
Total no. of fee-earners: 410
Languages: English, Hindi and a variety of Indian regional languages
Office Locations: The firm has offices in- Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune, Kochi, Kolkata, Chandigarh, Gurugram, Jaipur, Nagpur and Allahabad (Prayagraj).

Firm Overview:

Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan (LKS) is a premier full-service Indian law firm specializing in areas such as corporate & M&A/PE, dispute resolution, taxation and intellectual property. 
The firm, through its 14 offices across India works closely on litigation and commercial law matters, advising and representing clients both in India and abroad.
The firm has handled more than 30,000 litigation cases before various forums including 2,000 cases before the Supreme Court of India. Over the last 37 years, the firm has worked with over 15,500 clients which range from start-ups, small & medium enterprises, to large Indian corporates and multinational companies.
The professionals within the firm bring diverse experience to service clients across sectors such as commodities, automobile, manufacturing, healthcare, IT/ITeS, FMCG, hospitality, real estate, petrochemicals, e-commerce, fintech, big data, renewables, cryptocurrency, gaming and sports. The firm takes pride in the value-based, client-focused approach that combines knowledge of the law with industry experience to design bespoke legal solutions.
The firm’s driving principles to achieve our vision are integrity, knowledge, innovation, and collaboration
International Desk:
The firm has a focused International desk which comprises of dual-qualified lawyers (India and US/ Europe mostly) with expertise across practice areas such as cross border M&As and investments, anti-trust / competition law, international trade law and international commercial arbitration. These attorneys have significant experience in advising clients across multiple jurisdictions such as US, UK, Italy, Germany, Japan, Singapore, Korea, China, Australia, Middle East, Africa etc.
International presence and alliances:
LKS is an India member firm of a top International legal network – Terralex. & First Law International.

Practice Areas:

• International Arbitration & Commercial Disputes
• Aviation
• Banking & Finance
• Competition/Antitrust
• Corporate
• M&A and PE/VC
• Data Protection & Technology
• Tax (Indirect, GST, Direct, M&A and International Tax)
• Insolvency
• Customs
• International Trade & WTO
• IPR
• Employment
• Environment
• Food Safety
• Infrastructure
• Real Estate

Main Areas of Practice:

Tax (Indirect, GST, Direct, M&A and International Tax):
With experience and years of knowledge in direct, indirect and international tax, the team handles tax disputes and represents clients at various levels from the quasi-judicial authority up to the Supreme Court of India. The team advises on transitional provisions and helps in re-designing supply chain, training, hand-holding and compliance review for assessing GST readiness. Additionally, the attorneys are adept in advising corporations on issues relating to business re-structuring, setting up new units, withholding taxes, royalty and fee for technical services, transfer pricing and contracting.

International Arbitration & Commercial Disputes:
Apart from representing clients across various authorities, tribunals and courts, the team specialises in international as well as domestic arbitrations, under institutional rules and ad hoc arbitrations. The team has represented arbitration cases in all forums, in every possible format.

Competition:
The competition law team has expertise in drafting and reviewing agreements, obtaining M&A approvals, representing clients before judicial and statutory authorities and framing competition compliance strategies for enterprises across various sectors.

IPR:
The firm’s internationally ranked multidisciplinary IPR team serves Indian and global businesses to obtain and enforce the entire spectrum of IPR. Services provided by L&S include opining on patentability, patenting, filing, prosecution, pre and post grant opposition, freedom-to-operate, due diligence, patent watch, evolving effective patent strategy, trademark registration and protection, anti-trust, plant variety protection (PVP), IP litigation and licensing of copyright to name a few.

Corporate, M&A and PE/VC:
The team advises various leading Indian and multinational corporations across diverse sectors on matters pertaining to joint ventures, mergers, demergers, acquisitions, private equity and venture capital investments, legal due diligence, spin-offs, foreign direct investments and entry strategies, restructurings including global restructurings of various multinational companies, regulatory approvals, setting up of industrial plants in India, sale of businesses, distributorship and commercial advisory agreements in India, real estate, employment, compliances, ESOP schemes, drafting, vetting and negotiating of commercial contracts and other corporate transactional work.

Customs & International Trade:
The team caters to WTO and international trade disputes arising out of or involving India. The firm’s attorneys have handled more than 400 antidumping and anti- subsidy investigations initiated by India, EU, USA, Korea, Indonesia, South Africa and Turkey. The team also handles wide variety of matters pertaining to HS Classification, Customs Valuation, FTA, safeguards investigations, market access and national treatment.

Insolvency & Bankruptcy:
The team has been involved in several matters involving the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, representing both creditors as well as debtors before various company law and appellate tribunals across various sectors.

Environmental Law:
This team provides strategic and coherent advice to clients on issues pertaining to all aspects of environmental law such as Air, Water, Forests, Hazardous substances, genetically modified organisms, Biological Diversity. The team has rich experience to conduct compliance audit, provide legal advice and represent clients before the National Green Tribunal, High Courts, and the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India in contentious matter.

Food Safety Law:
The team offers advisory, litigation and consulting services to various stakeholders in the food chain in all areas of food law and procedures including classification of food/food ingredients under the Indian Food code, usage of food additives, packaging and labelling, nutritional/health claims, food recall, import procedure compliance, country of origin determinations, product approval and various other aspects of food law.

Real Estate:
The team is equipped to advise clients on all real estate related aspects, including local practices and requirements. The team has assisted government authorities, investors, financial institutions and other leading companies across various sectors, in relation to various aspects and commercial transactions involving real estate.

Employment:
The team has rich experience in advising our multinational and domestic clients across sectors on various labour and employment issues by offering clear, business-friendly and pragmatic solutions.

Banking & Finance:
The team is well-positioned to support banking, corporate and cross-border financing requirements. It assists clients in structuring complex transactions that are successful and cater to regulatory and industry concerns.

Infrastructure & Energy:
The firm’s attorneys have been involved in various complex transactions and in framing model agreements with government agencies in various sectors where private entrepreneurship has shown interest.

Aviation:
The team assists in structuring of transactions pursuant to legal and regulatory requirements pertaining to sale, purchase, wet and dry leasing of aircrafts, financing and chartering of aircrafts and buy back of planes. The firm advises on civil aviation requirements and approvals from Ministry of Civil Aviation extending to infrastructure and greenfield projects.

Data Protection & Technology:
The team advises businesses, public sector bodies and not-for-profit organizations on all areas of data protection, privacy law, information governance and freedom of information. The team offers the best of both worlds: IP and regulatory affairs specialists who work directly alongside our privacy professionals.

Technological innovation at LKS
The firm is constantly working with in-house technology and research teams to bring in innovation in the operating procedures to ensure increased efficiency and productivity while further adding value to our clients. The internal team  has developed a new IT tool, a case management system that is specific to the in-house process of patent preparation and prosecution. 

The firm has also developed a state of the art billing and time management software that enables the firm to bill the clients in 1 minute slots, the smallest denomination of billing in the industry. In addition, the firm is able to draw upon its database of information and in-depth understanding of the nuances involved in M&A transactions to provide clients with  time and cost-efficient solutions. 

Training programme 
The firm has been undertaking research based focused training programs and design thinking initiatives with clients on how to be prepared for changes in the legal and regulatory environment. These training programs have been designed to spread awareness and educate stakeholders. The legal industry is a knowledge intensive industry that is constantly evolving and growing. To ensure that our clients are abreast of new developments, we share updates relating to new developments by way of L&S Amicus, newsletters, alerts and more.

Recent developments
We have recently opened new offices in Kochi, Jaipur and Nagpur. We envision opening a few more office across India to service our clients in a more personalised manner. 

Diversity and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives

As a firm, we undertook some significant steps to combat the uncertainties and succeeded in coming out of these testing times with our highly enterprising and energetic workforce to combat the impact of COVID-19.

The firm created a task force of LKS volunteers who scanned all the possible information available on social media and created an active database for the cities with the correct contact details of various suppliers. This database acted as a ready reckoner for all the employees to refer for COVID essentials.

b. The firm formed the 'L&S COVID Facebook SOS' group where anyone could get real-time information on all essential requirements to combat the pandemic 
c. The firm partnered with several agencies to support employees and their families with resources such as Ambulance (Help Now), Home Isolation Consultation (HCAH), Hotel Isolation Centers (OYO) etc.
d. Several Oxygen Concentrators across offices were procured to assist employees and their families who were suffering from COVID 19 and the most potent medicines and injections like Remdesivir, Tocilizumab were procured to support the employees.

AWARD RECEIVED BY THE FIRM FOR MANAGING THE COVID CRISIS PeopleQ Inspiration Award recognized our firm for its stellar initiatives towards its people engagement and client delight during the pandemic. 
Our efforts were recognized in the following four categories: 

a. Best Initiative Towards People Productivity 
b. Best Initiative Towards People Engagement 
c. Best Initiative Towards Client Engagement 
d. The Most Adaptable Organization

As thought leaders in the industry, the Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan team has authored various articles in leading national and international publications and legal magazines. The leaders are regularly quoted in various reputable national newspapers, publications etc.

The management strongly believes in contributing back to the society and therefore our expert professionals hold regular awareness lectures for small time business units in the field of emerging laws to build an informed community of professionals such as:

• Sensitization Programmes for small time traders and businessmen of various laws which lead to litigation for them. 
• The firm has appeared for under privileged litigants before the Hon’ble Supreme Court on pro bono basis eg. Assistant Teachers from underprivileged backgrounds who have not been made permanent due to some procedural error. 
• The firm has advised small time businessmen who have been trapped by coercion by Government Authorities 
• We are helping small time traders and manufacturers (who are the biggest victim of any new tax structure) by educating them about the new taxation regime. 
• The senior partners hold classes teaching law students and Chartered Accountants about the practicalities of tax laws. 

The firm holds regular lectures and workshops in universities across India to systematically introduce and educate students on the subjects of tax, litigation, data protection and more

The firm is fully committed towards the environment. 

LKS, firmly support the Net Zero approach and therefore had started aligning our pro bono efforts towards this  direction 
A. Across all  offices, plastic water-bottles were replaced with glass bottles and steel water bottles. Use of plastic or paper cups has been completely replaced with dedicated ceramic cups for each employee 
B. Conservation of electricity is also one our key responsibilities that we practice with diligence 
- Many of LKS offices are equipped with solar panels 
- Office interiors are designed to have natural light to reduce electricity consumption 
- Optimal usage of electrical appliances at work 
C. Conservation of water: 
- Usage of “Urinal Bio Blocks” in male urinals - completely waterless urinal system saving approx. 1 lakh litres of water annually per flushed urinal. Bio blocks are also packed with billions of biological bacteria and deodorising agents, naturally eliminating the solid build up inside the drain line and killing the root cause of the smell. 
- Rainwater harvesting in most of our offices 
D. Flood and drought relief activities (during natural calamities), etc. 
Joined hands with few NGOs- set up camps for people suffering due to the floods in Maharashtra, Bihar, Karnataka, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh