The managing partner and six lawyers who left Singapore firm Harry Elias Partnership in February have set up a new firm with the help of clients and other law firms.
Inca Law, an acronym of the founding partners’ surnames – Harry Elias’ former managing partner Latiff Ibrahim, head of criminal litigation Shashi Nathan, head of insurance Lynette Chew, and constructions partner Kelvin Aw – opened earlier this month with the backing of the local legal industry and the lawyers’ clients, said Ibrahim. “We’ve been very busy [with] marketing, networking, attending conferences and visiting clients and other law firms,” he said. “We were floored by the goodwill and best wishes extended by clients and other law firms.”
After news of their departure from Harry Elias broke the lawyers decided to set up their own practice despite receiving offers to join other firms. “A few established Singapore and foreign law firms kindly offered us to join them or enter into some working arrangements, but when we explained our desire to run our own boutique practice they were very understanding and supportive, and left the door open for future collaborations,” added Nathan.
Clients assisted the start up boutique in finding office space in Singapore’s competitive property market. “Initially we worked from home and our clients’ offices, then one of our clients offered a partially fitted-out office at the heart of the city in Raffles Place,” said Aw. “Another client assisted us to fit out the office. For two months we were running a law firm with all kinds of people – ID designers, contractors, IT engineers, telephone technicians – all around us.”
It is understood the lawyers brought their old clients from Harry Elias with them. “The clients have been great and supportive, they know that ultimately it is the lawyers who services them that matters and not the firm,” said Chew.
As ALB reported in February, the lawyers’ departures came after disagreement on Ibrahim’s leadership style in promoting new partners and seeking merger and alliance partners to grow in order to compete with foreign law firms arriving with Qualifying Foreign Law Practice (QFLP) licences in 2009.
“It is the medium-size firms who are going to be affected the most by the QFLPs, especially those who are not willing to deal with the issues head-on. For us all foreign firms present opportunities for collaborations on a case to case basis. That desire – to establish close working relationships with well-reputed local law firms in some ASEAN cities – remains strong ...” said R Ravindran, a former MP who joined the firm as a consultant from Harry Elias.
The firm is currently collaborating with two other firms on corporate and real estate work, until that capability is formed in-house.
Perhaps the greatest challenge – and the most amusing – was coming up with a unique name to separate the firm from the competition: “We didn’t want future directors to feel that they are not part of the firm; English names were just not us, and there were too many local law firms with Latin names (one that came up was shared by a cleaning company, so that was quickly rejected),” explained Ibrahim. “Then in the list of names that we all had proposed was “INCA” – the initials of the 4 founding directors. We tested it with a few key clients and close friends and after the initial friendly ribbing about ancient civilisations, Machu Picchu and so on, they all loved it. The rest is history.”
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