Orr Dignam & Co managing partner Dev Mukherjee has reconstituted the law firm, set up more than 150 years ago in the 1860s, with offices in Kolkata and New Delhi.
The firm was reconstituted under 含羞草社区 Limited Liability Partnership Act, 2008. The name Orr Dignam & Co carries the legacy of its British founders, who opened the firm close to the first Supreme Court of Judicature at Calcutta’s (now Kolkata) Fort William. Today, the firm’s original office remains at 29 Netaji Subhash Road in Kolkata, and the new registered office is in New Delhi.
Mukherjee said that apart from him Nandini Sen and Som Mandal had been designated partners at the firm.
Asked about Mandal’s role given his position as FoxMandal’s managing partner, Mukherjee clarified that he was a non-executive partner at Orr Dignam & Co. “While retaining the title of partner for legacy, contractual, or transitional purposes, he is a great moral support and does not participate in the day-to-day management, operations, client work, or strategic decision making of the firm,” Mukherjee said.
Mukherjee added that Sen was an advocate-on-record at the Supreme Court. There are two other partners in the pipeline and the total number of lawyers currently is at around 12.
“The original Calcutta Orr Dignam & Co became near-defunct quietly, not through a formal winding up but through attrition till the 2010s, which meant that the Calcutta Orr Dignam & Co practice went onto a ventilator fading into near non-existence,” Mukherjee said.
At the time of its founding, Orr, Dignam & Co’s partners rose to prominence practising in the major colonial commercial courts and advising trading houses, shipping interests, banks and infrastructure clients. Today the firm’s principal areas of practice include corporate and commercial advisory, litigation and dispute resolution, and mergers and acquisitions.
Speaking about his connection with Orr Dignam & Co, Mukherjee said, “Historically, if I go back a few generations, there exists an affinal relationship with Barendra Prasad Ray, who joined the firm in 1931 and subsequently attained the position of senior partner, becoming the first non-British and Indian head of the firm.”
Mukherjee said his tutelage as a lawyer during his formative years was under barrister Siddhartha Shankar Ray, who was the former chief minister of West Bengal, then the governor of Punjab and later Indian ambassador to the US. The firm used to brief matters to Ray.
In Pakistan, a firm with the same name has offices in Karachi and Islamabad, with Zahir Riaz serving as senior partner. On whether there is any connection between the two firms, Mukherjee clarified that the Pakistan firm was not a continuation of the Calcutta partnership but a post-Partition successor since 1952.
On future plans, Orr Dignam & Co plans to promote its “heritage identity”, highlighting the firm’s Kolkata-Delhi-Mumbai lineage and India-UK legal heritage, as well as build a London-facing desk, in addition to developing a modern governance and compliance practice.
