In Conversation With Raian Karanjawala, Managing Partner, Karanjawala and Company

You studied in Delhi all through and briefly in Mumbai, which he conquers also regularly. What really motivated him to leave Delhi after doing his schooling at St. Columbus and college in Delhi. What made you come back to Delhi?

I've always been a by-product of Delhi. I studied at the Frank Anthony Public School for the first four years and after that, I studied in  St. Columbus. I went on to join Shri Ram College of Commerce and was very active in that college. It was in SRCC where I met Arun Jaitely. During that time  He took me into college union debating and student politics.

So, what took me to Bombay and Government Law College was a third division. What happened was, in that particular year, the law faculty had decided that anybody who had a third division couldn't get admission to law. Also, having had a third division, I couldn't get into either MBA or CA, which were one of my other alternate choices of career. 

So, it was only law and Government Law College, that was then the most enticing. Being a Parsi, I've been a bit of a by product of Bombay, we used to go there for our holidays every summer. So, we were always happy with Bombay and Government law College.

Fali Nariman was a very good friend of mine in college and still is. Fali’s parents put in a word for me and I found my way into Government law College.

Why you never thought of expanding your firm beyond Delhi even after being accustomed to Mumbai

There was a certain pull that Bombay had for me. Also, in my family, my mama and massi never got married. So, I was staying with them, I was like a kid to them and we had a separate flat somewhere. I halfway through shifted there and I used to stay there all by myself and I could have settled down in Bombay because 1) I didn’t have a problem of accommodation, 2) I already knew parts of the Bombay Bar. There were a lot of people who were known to me. I studied in Government law so I knew people in Bombay so, at that time it was a kind of a pull and push, should I stay on or not? 

But, then I said to myself no, I’ll go back to Delhi only, But, let me tell you it was the most fortuitous decision I have ever made. Had I stayed on in Bombay, I don’t think I would have had one-third of the success that I have today because suddenly over the years Bombay lost its charm and Delhi became the litigation capital. I joined Pravin Parekh on the 8th of August 1979. Fali was the person who put me with Pravin. I remember walking into Pravin’s office on the 8th of August. Pravin had a very huge practice. He just said you work when I work and I work 7 days a week, that’s how we started. 

Wonderful! Sir, one of the things which come about you is that whosoever we talk to, they all have a smile when they talk about you, what is your strategy of having the quality legal talent with you because that is something which is a struggle for big firms today in India?

I think I've always said that my friends and my staff and all are all very kind to me. But I think, you have to understand that and somehow it maybe comes from my own personality. I'm not a very hardworking person. In fact, I'm more on the lazy side. If that's how people were to be put into two categories, then I certainly wouldn't fall into the very hardworking. But having said that, I'm always available to any client, my phone is open and so on. So, suppose I do a different kind of work. Now, I think intuitively and instinctively or think through, I realized what the character of a litigating lawyer is.

Litigating lawyers are very different from corporate. A litigating lawyer has a certain amount of inbuilt independence. It's not so much the remuneration of what that's important, but he cherishes the ability to handle things independently and the ability to function within a certain free zone. So in our office, we had introduced a system of timesheets and keep timesheets and it was always a struggle. There was more effort getting somebody to fill a timesheet, than actually getting it done. So, then what we decided was, let's leave people responsible, delegate work to them, they are responsible for it. I remember once Zia was talking to me, a very dear friend of mine. I said the difference between you and me is this, in your firm everybody knows that at the end of the day before you send the draft out, you will look at it. But, at my place, they know, I won’t but they know if something goes wrong, I’ll kill them. So, what happens is early in life, you achieve a certain sense of responsibility. People start realizing that look we are empowered, if we are empowered then we have to deliver and therefore, they all become leaders. 

The other thing is that I give everyone space and I think everyone has a certain sense of freedom. For example, whenever there’s a program or speaking assignment or something on TV, I always encourage my partners to go out and speak and my two daughters to go and speak. There has never been this endeavour to hog everything for myself and frankly, how many places can I be at. 

So, as a result of that I find it over the years, the firm has grown in silos and people are responsible. 

I have seen it in practical experience with myself when you interview a person for a job, I often get it very wrong. People I think will be very good, have often turned out to be pretty bad and people I thought won’t make the cut have often turned out to be very good. It’s just about giving that person an opportunity. 

One thing which really comes out for a litigation firm, people who actually run out and out litigation firm like I also do that when you really have to take senior advocates and that too senior advocates of the stature of Harish Salve and Mukul Rohatgi, there even the large firms struggle to get them on board and one of the things of Karanjawala & Co. is that all the senior advocates find a particular warmth and comfort to be briefed by the firm and that’s an area of exclusivity, how did you cultivate that thing because i’ll just tell you yesterday, we on-boarded Mr. Salve in a matter and I had to do it personally for two hours, the WhatsApp and everything. I was just thinking, for you it would be like happening so many times. This nobody understands it’s a very difficult job. 

So, let me share with you a secret. The answer is very simple, the first thing to understand is the difference between a pure litigating firm and a full-service firm. So what is a full-service corporate firm? It has different silos. So you've got capital markets, you were M&A, you’ve got SEBI, you’ve got different silos and you have to fill them up with talent. All that talent is very expensive because you have to understand that when a firm takes over the IPO, it is the firm partners who are handling everything, they don't go to a counsel, they do everything themselves. So, the amount you have to pay for that talent is very high. Therefore, when you go to have a litigating firm, a litigating branch, you also have to pay the same amount because otherwise nobody's gonna come to you. Now, in order to recover what you're paying them, what you have to do is you have to charge a very high fee, what is the follow up to charging a very high fee, less work?

Because then people will come to you in one or two matters, they're not going to come to you for a bulk of matters. So, what happens with us, we get a lot of work because our fees are much restrained, and we are flexible with our fees. We don’t pay our talent that much, so we don’t have to charge that much, so we get a lot of work in terms of volume. So, we live off both quality and quantity. 

Now, when you live up to both quantity and quality. It’s not that Mukul Rohatgi comes to Raian Karanjawala because they have had a thousand lunches together, of course, that is but they have a rapport with my partners, why do they have a rapport with my partners because we brief them every day. They’re in constant dialogue over some matter or the other. 

So, now I have explained it to you why a pure litigating firm always has an advantage over a full-service firm. They earn much more, they are much richer, bigger in size there are many more branches but in court, we are ahead. 

Bombay had to reach out to Delhi for the Aryan Khan bail matter. How did the case come to you?

To be honest with you, this is not the first time that we have handled matters outside Delhi. 

Obviously, a matter has to be of some size and dimension for anyone to want a Delhi firm to go to another city. But we've handled lots of matters outside Delhi and we have done it all the time. There was a time when I was a retained counsel for Star TV i still do a lot of work for them for Star TV. So, Star TV has hundreds of litigations all over the world. Even in the TATA Mistry fight, our firm along with Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas handled the matter. SAM, of course, has a Bombay branch but even in Bombay, we handled the matter from day one. I was the one who retained all the counsels for the TATA side. 

How did the Aryan Khan case come to Karanjawala and Compamy? 

Well, there is no clear answer because Shahrukh didn't call up and say hey, listen, boss, I spoke to someone and they all said you. There are two things, some are the obvious points and some of which I learned later. 

First, you must understand that in a sensitive matter like this, when a high profile client chooses a firm with which he is unfamiliar, suppose he has dealt with the same firm 40 times earlier, he is not going to ask anybody else. But, when you are going to a new firm, the client obviously must be asking around. 

So, the first thing is when a person who handles a lot of Shahrukh’s matters, there are two lawyers who handle Shahrukh’s matters, one is Ajay Wazirani, who had approached us for a possible offshoot of some other matters pertaining to Shahrukh Khan itself in the Supreme Court. So, there was a legal ecosystem. Then, the one who handles this matter is a man called Rustam Mulla. He is a cousin of mine and he has been sending us a lot of work. Ruby and he has been working on many matters together. So, there’s already a working relationship. 

Then, there’s another friend of Kajol, she’s a friend of the family, Kajol and Gauri both, called Kajal Anand. She is a friend of mine also, a social friend. So, Kajal called me up and said, we are thinking of a counsel in the Aryan Khan case and we are thinking of Mukul so, what do you think? I said Mukul will be very good because 1) I think in this matter it will need a physical presence. So, I said let me know if you want us to contact you, Mukul will do that so she gave Shahrukh the phone and I spoke to Shahrukh, Obviously, they wanted somebody who can be closer to Mukul.

In these kinds of matters, this is collective goodwill, either the client knows you and says I am going with you or he inquires around. I’ll tell you why it happens so often in litigation. The difference between a Corporate lawyer and a litigating lawyer is that we have to pass our exam every day. 

For example, a Corporate lawyer drafts an agreement, even if there’s something wrong, it will be discovered 15 years later that there’s a loophole if there’s a fight between the two partners, till then nobody will know, so you can pass off. But, in litigation, when you step into the court and you walk out, the client knows how it was. So, we have to pass our exams every day. 

What is the unfinished agenda that you are looking at in the coming years now? What is there for you personally as Raian Karanjawala? 

Most of the agendas are unfinished. I would obviously want the firm to grow and the second is that I have to hand it over to the next generation. So my children and my partners have to be able to carry the baton forward. I've tried to keep it straight and I've tried to keep it clean. I have tried to keep the firm on a particular path. I just hope and I am sure that value continues. We just walk the straight path. 

you started with a very small enterprise in Maharani Bagh, we all have read about it. and today's youngsters are a little more restless. So, what are the two qualities you see in them and what are the two problem areas you see in today's young law students? 

So, the first problem area for a young law student is that he has entered a far more competitive environment than I did. Today, to excel or to grow or to stand out, they will have to be far better than we were. So, I think in the years to come, after the initial bout of generalization, people will have to start specializing because that's the only way you can stand out. You have to know something better than anybody else for people to come to you. If you're just as good as 25,000 other people, then it's going to be very difficult for people to find you.

Impatient? yes, people are far more impatient, people are far more commercial. Our firm does a lot of pro bono work. Not necessarily only for people who are poor, even for people who are fairly well to do. Even well off people, today cannot frankly afford the normal legal fees. I mean I am not sure if I would be able to bear the cost of heavy litigation if I were involved. Today, everyone is far more commercial.

Secondly, a lot of people are very conscious of what they call a work-life balance. So there must be a work-life balance. I still remember walking in and Pravin looking at me and saying, you work when I work. I work seven days a week.

Wonderful, sir! It was a pleasure talking to you. 

It was really a lawyer’s chit-chat. Time just flew!