India’s CAM opens Singapore office

Indian law firm Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM) opened a representative office in Singapore on 12 February, the first overseas office for the law firm.

“The case for Singapore is kind of obvious,” Cyril Shroff, managing partner at CAM, told Asia Business Law Journal. “It’s been on our mind for a very long time because of the strategic importance of Singapore to the Indian market, and also broadly for the global legal community, because a lot of global firms are now running their India practice at least partly out of Singapore,” said Shroff.

“So, it’s become an extremely key centre for global law firm relationships, as well as for a large number of our financial sector clients, apart from corporates and others.”

CAM’s representative office will do only promotional work for now, but the law firm has applied to the Singapore Legal Services Regulatory Authority for a foreign legal practice (FLP) licence.

“But for the pandemic and the travel restrictions, we would have gone for a proper branch right from the beginning,” said Shroff. “But at this stage, people are not allowed to sort of go across or come in. So, we therefore took the first step of putting our toe in the water with a representative office. And in the course of the year, we will upgrade to a foreign legal practice or a branch.”