Amarchand & Mangaldas, India’s biggest law firm, has all the trappings of a family-run enterprise including sibling rivalry. The Shroff brothers must quickly set their house in order
If I hadn’t done law, I would have been a doctor,” says the quiet and diminutive man sitting on a plush chair at the Mumbai office of Amarchand & Mangaldas & Suresh A. Shroff & Co. (AMSS), the firm that advises the bluest of blue chips in corporate India. In many ways, Cyril Shroff brought medical precision to the practice of law at the family-run firm, one half of which he inherited.
Some who know the brothers closely say the situation between the two has not always been rosy. Sometimes, it was compared to the feud between the Ambani brothers especially when their mother came in for the mediation. When asked about it, Cyril laughs dismissively and says he has also heard this comparison.
For instance, On Wednesday, April 24, 2008, at 6:02 p.m., the Mumbai lawyers of Amarchand, the country’s supreme corporate legal minds who routinely dispense advice to clients worth billions of dollars, received an unusual email in their inbox. Paridhi Shroff, at the time the 18-year-old daughter of managing partners Cyril Shroff and his wife Vandana, had put out a firm-wide alert, a desperate plea for help from the lawyers who worked for her father. Paridhi was looking for someone to do her homework. Infographic: Minal Shetty
“This is a modified lockstep in the sense that if somebody is not performing as well as expected, they can be halted and if somebody is really performing well, they can be advanced quicker,” says Nick Jarrett-Kerr, a consultant specialising in strategy, governance and leadership development for law firms and who advised Amarchand on the overhaul of its lockstep “But even though the family share will eventually dilute over time, it will become a smaller slice of a bigger pizza.” Infographic: Minal ShettyThe move is welcome. Equity partners like L. Viswanathan and Ashwath Rau, both contemporaries of Guptan, feel the lockstep is a sign that the Shroffs want them to have a real stake and sense of ownership in the firm. They never left because they feel adequately rewarded, have strong client relationships that were allowed to develop and they maintain Amarchand is the best law firm to work for. “The legal profession in India continues to be dominated by individuals. Just like Jack Welch of GE dominated his space. But he didn’t do it at the cost of others — he was a giant among giants. You have to build other giants, “says Dinesh Kanabar, Deputy CEO of KPMG, India. Accounting firms like his went through similar challenges in professionalising about 30 or 40 years ago.
(This story appears in the 30 July, 2010 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)