Gurgaon-based law firm, Corrida Legal, equipped with a corporate office in Mumbai is providing the much-needed top quality law firm experience at amenable rates. Not a surprise given the law firm is spearheaded by Pushkar Thakur, an ex-AVP, Fortune 500 investment bank, who has ventured into the sphere of firm practice with the intention of providing top quality legal services to clients but at correct rates. Pushkar dons the dual hat of a corporate lawyer and litigator, with his cross-functional experience straddling general corporate advisory and high-stakes litigation. In the corporate and commercial sphere, he has extensive experience advising on end-to-end corporate law and operational matters in addition to PE/VC investments, acquisitions & strategic buyouts. He has advised clients across a series of civil, commercial, and criminal matters with a focus on and white-collar crimes, consumer, and real estate disputes.
Corrida Legal has a close-knit team and are experts in Corporate Laws, M&A/PE/VC, Litigation, Employment Law & Data Protection. Their energy, positivity, and passion for their craft enable strong client relationships and make a law firm that is solid and grounded. The value propositions they bring are honesty, creativity, and innovation apart from the most suitable and appropriate technical responses. The client’s needs are met with efficiency with the best mix of lawyers and personnel for each client.
The word ‘Corrida’ stands for ‘bullfight’ in Spanish, which constitutes the company’s motto where the vision lies in protecting clients legally whilst keeping their core principles intact. ‘Honesty’, ‘Hard work’ and ‘Diligence’ are the foundation of the firm. The mission is to provide high quality corporate legal and compliance solutions to clients, while also ensuring cost-effectiveness. Corrida Legal sticks to core areas of expertise in order to provide clients with top quality services.
Distinguished Services Offered by Corrida Legal
Corrida Legal provides end to end corporate law advisory, in addition to assisting on a range of commercial matters and providing contract drafting expertise to its clientele. The firm advises on complex transactions and day-to-day issues on compliance with Companies Act, 2013 and other corporate and commercial laws. Corrida Legal has specialists in Civil and Criminal Litigation, IPR, Tax, Statutory Compliances and Registrations, Employment and Labour Laws, Technology and Media Law, Data Privacy and POSH related advisory.
Having a myriad of specializations allows Corrida Legal to obtain a diverse set of clients across the legal spectrum. They comprise IT/ITES, FMCG, banking, aviation, construction, real estate industry, e-commerce and start-ups across industries.
Journey of the Eminent Leader
Mr. Pushkar Thakur, a corporate lawyer and litigator is an alumnus of West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences. He brings forth a unique blend of law firm and in-house experience, having worked with leading Indian law firms including Kochhar & Co, being an ex-Assistant Vice President at Nomura, in addition to working with and leading the legal teams at Drake & Scull International and Emaar India.
As an arguing counsel before various Courts at Mumbai and Delhi NCR, Pushkar has represented corporates such as EMC (now Dell), International Air Transport Association, Lumata Digital, Rae Bareilly Allahabad Highway Private Limited across a range of commercial and criminal matters. He is well versed with complex mandates, having advised a consortium of more than fifty international airline companies including Lufthansa Airlines, British Airways and United Airlines in matters including civil recoveries and white-collar crimes.
Having a blended experience of both law firm and in-house work, Pushkar saw a poor rate of work delivery by smaller law firms. Mostly such law firms would either give poor quality work or would delay matters. With the intention of changing this and the vision of putting forth a law firm that offers top quality legal services in Delhi NCR and Maharashtra, the firm Corrida Legal was set up by Pushkar.
Pushkar is a team player and a sports enthusiast. He was the captain of his University’s basketball and volleyball team. He is an awardee of the Best Sportsman of the University and Sporting Colours for his University. Pushkar also writes and has won the fiction writing competition at West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences for his piece, “Injustice in Justice”.
Challenges Faced
Like every law firm, Corrida Legal faces competition from a variety of law firms, which are fairly reputed, established and have been practising in the same area of law for several decades. Hence, the firm focuses on ensuring that its services stand out as unique, in terms of bringing highly specialized solutions at value-based pricing.
“Corrida Legal also believes in stepping into the shoes of clients, given that I have been associated with several corporate majors in the past. This helps us stand out from other law firms and make our own space,” said the acclaimed lawyer.
Coping with the Pandemic
Despite the pandemic, the firm remains active and is willing to take upon any opportunities it is presented with. However, given legal work is driven by corporate actions, it cannot be denied that the pandemic has slowed the process of new transactions and recovery actions by corporates.
The team at Corrida Legal has shifted its employees to operate on a work-from-home model wherein all the work is performed remotely. The team follows the same rules for its interns, who are also paid a healthy stipend of INR 5,000 per four weeks to ensure financial assistance during the pandemic.
Advice to Budding Entrepreneurs
Any young lawyer, before starting his/her own endeavour must first gather sufficient training and expertise working under any such lawyer, organisation or firm in a similar capacity. This would help that individual gain market knowledge, information on clientele, as well as the nuances which guide business in the legal service sector.
Vision and Future Goals
Corrida Legal envisions to become the go-to and affordable law firm for Indian and International corporates. Its aim is to become a reputed Indian corporate legal venture in Corporate Law advisory, governance and contracts, civil and criminal litigation, Mergers and Acquisitions, Employment Law, Intellectual Property and Data Protection.
The firm aims to provide high quality legal services to corporates at affordable and accessible rates and to expand across different cities in India.
Current Industrial Scenario of the Indian Legal Space
The Indian legal space has suffered a setback since the closure of courts has affected the operation of legal recoveries and disputes throughout the nation. This has also become an opportunity for the Indian legal space, which was predominantly offline, to explore several online mediums of conducting the same work performed in an offline medium. These include, but are not limited to, Court hearings, arbitration processes and even law school education having to operate through video-communication services such as Zoom, Google Meets and Microsoft teams. The shift to online medium has been advantageous to some, but heavily disadvantageous to others. The significant gap in digital literacy in our country has also affected the Indian legal space and those with a lack of technological know-how, or internet resources having been significantly disadvantaged.
Dynamics of Corporate Law Amidst Covid-19
COVID-19 has forced several changes within the Corporate Legal scenario. For starters, the pandemic is encouraging corporate legal departments and top law firms of India to innovate themselves technologically. Top corporate firms are looking at making investments in the prospect of Artificial Intelligence natural language processing (NLP), and robotic process automation (RPA). Many corporate legal departments are also substantively involved in addressing business continuity and cyber vulnerabilities.
The Government is attempting to provide some respite to the sector via introducing changes under legislations. It created certain relaxations in the insolvency law to provide debtors a chance to survive the pandemic and repay their liabilities when situations turn favourable for all. On the other hand, the conflagrations between India and China amid the pandemic has made Indian government seeking to firewall Indian companies from Chinese capital by curbing ‘opportunistic takeovers/acquisitions’ of several corporate entities, including those in the corporate legal domain.
As a firm, Corrida Legal has not retrenched any workers and is making extra efforts to ensure financial independence to its officials as well as its interns in these testing times.
