King Stubb & Kasiva (“KSK”) is a full-service national law firm in India with offices in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad & Kochi. KSK has alliances with associate lawyers across all the 29 states and 7 union territories in India and is able to cater to all legal requirements of our clients across the length and breadth of the country. It recently completed 15 years of service. In recognition of this landmark, ILW sat down to speak with one of the founders, Mr Rajesh Sivaswamy, on the victories clinched by the firm or the hurdles it has overcome along the way.
ILW: Congratulations to KSK for completing a 15-year journey. As we all know, Rome wasn’t built in one day. In this journey, we’re sure there might have been several awards received by your firm for the work done. Are there any in particular worth mentioning?
RAJESH SIVASWAMY: Well, from day one, ever since we started the firm, we’ve always felt that the best kind of reward is a satisfied client. The ethos of the firm has never been to look for trophies or awards; we look for accolades from clients instead or when they recommend us to others for the work we’ve done – that’s the most prestigious recognition a firm can receive.
So yes, while we have been recognised by awards and in leading publications, at the end of the day, we aspire to be recognised and appreciated by our clients. There is no higher honour than that.
ILW: What’s the most important milestone that you’ve covered in this journey and how did the firm celebrate the completion of 15 years of service?
RAJESH SIVASWAMY: Since we reached that 15-year milestone right around the time the pandemic started, we didn’t really have time to recognise the event formally. However, we did release a stamp along with the Indian postal service and we feel that’s a very unique way of recognising our progress and achievements so far. Other memorable milestones have always been opening new offices, meeting new partners, and officiating new clients – events that are naturally major cornerstones of progress for us.
ILW: Due to COVID-19, technology has seeped into the legal system much faster than expected. How has KSK coped with this acceleration and what has been the technological growth of the firm been vis-à-vis client access, support for lawyers, etc especially in the last year and a half?
RAJESH SIVASWAMY: Fortunately, we weren’t really impacted by the sudden shift to digital workspaces because of the pandemic. We have been digitising our documents since 2012; scanning and uploading our records; in 2016, we even launched our WFH program to keep things flexible and accessible for employees – in that sense, we were very well-prepared for the onslaught of the COVID-19 crisis and well-poised to handle the work-from-home culture. We have been able to provide good technological support to our team and have continued to do an exemplary job for our clients thanks to this preparedness.
ILW: Law firms sometimes participate in friendly sports competitions conducted between lawyers and judges. Do you have any memories or stories about such events?
RAJESH SIVASWAMY: Well, we really haven’t had the opportunity to play with other law firms yet; it has been very difficult to organise sports meetups because of severe time constraints and the pandemic has made it nigh impossible at this point of time as well. We do hope to address this gap in the coming years.
ILW: What is the story behind the name of the firm?
RAJESH SIVASWAMY: The story of the firm’s name does have a very interesting background because if you look at it, usually law firms (which are legacy firms) usually have the last names of established lawyers. But when we started 15 years back, one of the things we thought was that we wanted a unique identity, a name that carries a story, a name that persists long after we’ve left the room. We thus wanted something that isn’t exactly our name but does reflect us in a very unique way.
In that sense, we transliterated our names – ‘King’ comes from the ‘Raj’ in my name, ‘Stubb’ comes from Jidesh’s and ‘Kasiva’ comes from a combination of the last two letters of Renuka and the first four letters of Siva. We wanted our firm to reflect an eclectic mix of different generations of people and the cultural diversity of our backgrounds.
ILW: Do you think KSK’s international presence has developed well over the years?
RAJESH SIVASWAMY: In terms of international presence, from day one, we were very keen from day one to develop the international contacts we had already built over a period of time, and we have an excellent international footprint now with other firms and offices because of this. We’re also currently looking to expand into the Middle East to Dubai and Saudi Arabia and we hope to build a strong presence there as well.
ILW: Are there any legal luminaries of the firm who have risen to the bench of senior advocacy, authored a book or contributed any notable achievements?
RAJESH SIVASWAMY: We don’t have anyone who has risen to the bench because we’re still a very young law firm – we do have a lot of lawyers who have become general counsels or senior legal advisers to companies and have been doing fairly well. I have been part of the editorial committee of the Ramaiah – a book referred to by all lawyers and students of the country; a lot of lawyers of the firm have also co-authored books the names of which I cannot recall right now. We’ve also argued several major cases before the SC, not necessarily constitutional ones but landmark cases all the same. But to tell the truth, we‘ve had too many significant transactions and cases to remember. For example, we set up the very first pre-equity fund for the semi-conductor industry before covid for the Government of India and we’ve also carried out a number of cross-border MNA transactions for West Global which is a major engineering company in recent years, among other significant instances.
ILW: As your firm grows, so does your ability to contribute to society. Are there any major philanthropic activities associated with KSK?
RAJESH SIVASWAMY: So, we’ve presently been working very closely with Thompson Reuters – they absorb a lot of companies and NGOs who are doing charitable work within India, and we have been working with them to support a number of NGOs in the company. We also tied up Cummins for a partnership program where we worked jointly with NGOs to raise awareness for the environment, market regulations, the lack of legal awareness on NGOs or downtrodden in society and although we don’t take individuals as clients, we have provided free legal aid to those in need and support such initiatives from time to time. We also do a fair amount of work in philanthropic acts especially during COVID where we as a firm assisted a number of individuals and NGOs who required support.
ILW: How does the firm approach recruiting and aiding employees career-wise? Is there a specific selection process?
RAJESH SIVASWAMY: Well, there are some colleges from whom we’ve traditionally recruited students; unlike larger firms who only focus on Tier I law schools, we actually approached Tier II and Tier III law schools and pick the brightest minds from there. I think this has been good because such schools are overlooked by most firms and a lot of talent there is not visible or go to waste.
What we’ve done with our team is to add their special abilities and hone them – for example, if someone wants to expand their footprint in the field of litigation, we offer them opportunities in the same field to help them grow. We also provide feedback and training sessions for lawyers who are focused on what they’re doing, and we have good relationships with those who’ve left because our intention is to help people grow inside and outside the firm.
ILW: Every great institution has a vision and a mission. What is the motto of the firm?
RAJESH SIVASWAMY: The motto of the firm when we started, and what I think still resonates to a large extent, is “Your legal thought”.
We want to be the firm that is thought of first by clients among all the other choices they have.
ILW: Are any members of the firm on significant committees?
RAJESH SIVASWAMY: Yes, we are on the boards of several committees of the CII and FICII – Jidesh is on the legal committee for CII, the industry body that recommends changes to the existing regime and provides consultative advice to the government from time to time. We have also helped a number of state governments craft their policies when it concerns the law, provided valuable and impactful inputs during the drafting process of their policies and we have good relationships overall with a number of state governments.
ILW: What separates KSK from other firms?
RAJESH SIVASWAMY: I think what makes a law firm special are the people we have and the people we have nurtured over time and what separates us from others is our ability to always be there and always provide spot-on business advice to our clients no matter the time of the day.
ILW: Any bar council elections won by the firm?
RAJESH SIVASWAMY: We have generally steered clear of elections and political elections since we do have the time or energy or resources to do that.
ILW: Where do you see yourself fifteen years down the line?
RAJESH SIVASWAMY: When we started out, we obviously had goals for ourselves: we wanted to be a firm of repute and we wanted to be a firm that provides high-quality advice to our customers. We hope to continue this journey. We are not caught up with the numbers game – the number of offices, the number of lawyers etc doesn’t make a difference to us. Instead, we would want to be a better version of ourselves, to be more available to our clients, to provide more insightful advice to them. We’d want to go where our clients take us and focus on improving our services to our people. The number of offices we currently have are a mere reflection of our client’s requirements so we would always focus on doing what they want.
ILW: And finally – do you have any message on the milestone that you’d like to share?
RAJESH SIVASWAMY: I think the message is that we have come a very long way from where we started, and we have a long way to go yet. It’s been a lengthy but satisfying walk so far and the best is yet to come.
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