PEOPLE MANAGEMENT, THE MANTRA FROM SUCCESS: THE

CASE OF SINGHANIA AND PARTNERS

High Attrition Rate in Legal Firms and Strategies to overcome

Section 2, Group 13

Member Name Roll No.

AYUSH GOYAL FT202024
DEBANJANA HALDAR FT202030
JOYDIP SARKAR FT202036
MAYANK CHAWLA FT202043
NISARG UMAKANT KANITKAR FT202049
PRIYANKA AHUJA FT202055
Problems faced by the Legal Service Industry:

1. Indian Advocates Act(1961) restricted the entry of foreign law firms to India.
2. The Law Industry needed employees with skill, capacity and knowledge, but there was a scarcity of such
resources.
3. There was a challenge to retain employees with high competence.
4. Firms tend to reduce the number of employees and assigned more work to the existing employees to gain
more profit.
5. Firms lacked the knowledge of direct investment, infrastructure financing, intellectual property rights,
environmental law and human rights.
6. If the liberalization of the legal sector were passed, foreign law firms would enter the Indian Market.

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PESTEL Analysis:
1. Political:
• Even after economic liberalization, various political parties were opposed to opening Indian legal service
market to the foreign players.
• Liberalized Indian Economy.
• Various political parties were opposed to open Indian legal service market for foreign players.
2. Economic:
• Growth in the IT and Infrastructure sector.
• Increased FDI in various sectors in India boosting legal expertise requirement in Intellectual Property rights,
Environmental law etc.
3. Social:
• Lack of educational opportunities to get expertise in legal services industry.
• Companies preference of arbitration over going to court in settling dispute.
• Continued shortage of good quality lawyers.
4. Technology:
• Integration of technology with systems and processes helped legal industry to serve their client more
efficiently.
5. Cultural:
• No influencers find with respect to Culture
6. Legal:
• Under the Indian Advocates Act of 1961, foreign law firms were not allowed to open offices in India.

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Singhania & Partners

1. Created in Nov, 1999 after Singhania returned back to Delhi.

2. The first few clients were America Online, Fedders Corporation, Standard & Poor’s and McGraw Hill.
3. In order to institutionalize the systems put in place, the firm sought an ISO 90025 certification in 1999 itself,
which they got in 2000.
4. Between 1999 to 2002, the firm set up it’s offices in Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad.
5. In 2006, the firm grew to 50 lawyers, 8 of them partners.
6. After the onset of the outsourcing wave, the firm had been approached by potential clients for legal process
outsourcing.

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SWOT Analysis for Singhania & Partners

Strengths: Weakness:
1. Healthy environment to work for the employees. 1. All the decisions for allocation to different projects
Promoted work-life balance at the workplace. were taken by Mahotra. This could be a weakness
2. The firm conducted annual firm retreats to satisfy because a mistake made by her could create a lot of
the happiness requirement for the employees. problems for the firm.
3. The firm maintained an open door policy, 2. For increments an annual performance review was
anybody could walk in to any senior management’s not used, it was given as and when needed. This way
cabin for discussions. a deserving employee might miss on promotions.

Opportunities: Threats:
Recruitment of skilled employees to take advantage It was possible that the firm lose its competitive
of growth in new sectors. advantage as the foreign law firms would have similar
or may have a better HR management method.

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Recommendations:

1. The firm should build a system of Talent Management to address the issue of aligning the employee skills and
knowledge with the requirement of the organization.
2. There is a chance of foreign firms entering the Indian legal services industry. The work culture at Singhania and
Partners is relatively better. This needs to be maintained and possibly improved continuously, also this kind of
work culture needs to be followed by other law firms too. Thus the Indian law firms can keep their competitive
advantage.
3. The firms should provide challenging tasks to its employees according to their competencies and should not
overburden them with more work.
4. The grievances of the employees must be addressed. A feedback system would be helpful in this regard. The
feedback system can also serve as a platform to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each of the employee
in the firm.

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