Nanda & Mehra is a New Delhi chambers advising Indian and international clients on commercial and contentious matters. The practice is deliberately compact: every brief is led by a senior advocate, and clients work with the people arguing their case rather than a rotating cast of juniors. We took that decision early and have held to it. A small chambers cannot take every matter that comes through the door, but it can give the ones it accepts genuine attention — and, in our experience, that attention is what clients actually want from their lawyers.
The work divides between advisory and disputes, and we think the combination matters. Advising a company on its contracts and structure teaches us where things go wrong; conducting the disputes that follow when they do go wrong teaches us which clauses and which decisions actually hold up. Each side of the practice sharpens the other. It also means a client rarely has to start again with a new firm when an advisory relationship turns contentious — the chambers that drafted the agreement is well placed to defend it.
We prefer to resolve matters efficiently where the law and the facts allow, and to litigate or arbitrate firmly where they do not. Advice is given plainly, with the commercial consequence stated alongside the legal position, because a recommendation a client cannot understand is of little use. We would rather tell a client early that a position is weak than encourage a contest that the facts will not support; equally, where a client is in the right and the matter must be fought, we conduct it with the seriousness it deserves. Costs and likely timelines are discussed at the outset and revisited as a matter develops, so there are no surprises late in the day.
Members of the chambers are duly enrolled to practise and appear before the courts and tribunals of India. Where a matter calls for specialist senior counsel, local agents in another forum, or expertise outside our core areas, we brief and coordinate them rather than stretch the practice beyond what it does well. We regard that restraint as part of the service: a client is better served by honest referral than by a chambers reaching past its competence.
An engagement begins with a frank conversation about the matter, the objectives, and what success would actually look like for the client — not every dispute is best measured by a judgment, and not every transaction needs to be maximally defended. From there we agree the scope and the basis of charging in writing before substantive work begins. Through the life of a matter we keep the client informed in plain terms, raise difficulties early rather than at the end, and treat the client's commercial judgment as the thing our legal advice is meant to serve.