Kunal Vajani, the youngest and first lateral joint managing partner at Fox & Mandal, has resigned to go solo, launching Chambers of Kunal Vajani.
Speaking exclusively to India Business Law Journal, Vajani said, “The decision, far from being precipitous, is the culmination of a considered and indeed inevitable reckoning, where my professional energies are most felicitously and consequentially deployed.
“I [want to] add an ambition to widen my global professional footprint, deepen my engagement with ADR [alternative dispute resolution] in its most demanding manifestations and devote myself with the deserving deliberateness to academic scholarship, writing and the mentorship of a younger generation of practitioners.”
Vajani, who has more than two decades of experience, has also served as a court member (India) of the ICC International Court of Arbitration in Paris from 2016 to 2024.
On expanding his practice areas, Vajani said, “The contentious work shall continue to be anchored in complex civil, commercial, constitutional and white-collar advocacy across multiple jurisdictions, with the particular distinction of a practitioner who has tried cases, rather than merely advised upon them.
“In the realm of ADR, I intend to act with considerably greater frequency as an arbitrator and mediator, not merely in domestic disputes, but in cross-border and treaty arbitrations.”
Vajani adds that clients have reacted positively. “The response has been one of warmth, confidence and most encouragingly, the continuity,” he said.
“It has been a timely reminder that the relationships forged in the heat of complex litigation and demanding arbitrations are not institutional constructs; they are personal compacts, built on trust, on performance under pressure.
“Indeed, the law firms, AoRs [Advocates-on-Record] and the wider legal community have not merely expressed goodwill; they have acted upon it, commencing to brief and instruct me as counsel and nominating me as an arbitrator, with an alacrity that is as gratifying as it is affirming. Their continued trust is at once the greatest validation of this transition and the most solemn obligation it imposes upon me.”
