Practice Areas

A boutique modern business law firm we aim to be trusted partners of the business firms and are focused to provide legal services covering business laws only. Our lawyers have good exposure of management and financial education in addition to law degrees. It helps communicate with business executives to understand the problems and issues that they seek to consult about. Broad areas of our practice are as follows.

Taxation

Taxation practice is the forte of our firm. Three of our partners have substantial time manning senior Civil Service positions in the Inland Revenue Service and have quality tax and legal education from the top law schools of the world. At the Bar they have represented clients successfully in various contentions case before the higher judicial forums. That allow us to proudly present our services ranging from planning of a tax-efficient transaction to representing our clients before the IRS/FBR and the judicial forums up to the Supreme Court of Pakistan. In addition to income/corporate taxation, and sales tax our tax practice covers federal and professional excises, provincial sales taxes, professional and trade taxes, property taxes, and other local-government taxes.

Our tax practice services include: transaction planning and restructuring; periodic review of accounting process and procedures; review of final accounts for tax provision and computation; preparation of the return and its annexure; handling assessment proceedings; appeals from the commissioner to Supreme Court; liaising with the Central Board of Revenue for finding administrative solutions to the controversial issues and seeking advance opinion of ambiguous statutory provisions; tax-effective salary structuring; and assisting the clients in ensuring timely and cost effective compliance such as withholding taxes and filing of periodical statements

Corporate

Being one of our top two areas of practice, our corporate practice covers a wide spectrum of sub-areas and activities both domestically and internationally. We advise clients covering broad spectrum of corporate issues including negotiation, drafting and execution of variety of corporate contracts and agreements corporate governance, business reorganization, mergers & acquisitions, securitization, corporate finance, SECP compliance and litigation, demergers/spin-offs, winding-up, etc.

Employment And Services Laws

With most of our lead lawyers being from civil services our firm’s affinity with such laws is natural. We advise businesses and government organization on rule based effective service management which would minimize employee-management friction and lead to organization tranquility and productivity. When in tribunals or courts of law such matters are raised, we have successfully represented the employees and organizations both.

Administrative And Constitutional Law

We regularly have to resort to seek constitutional remedies in number of our cases covering administrative law, taxation, corporate law and employment law as we see that due to relatively limited experience of the nation’s legislature and administration with the formal law, many a time legislation itself or its implementation goes beyond the limits laid by the constitution. Apart from seeking constitutional cover for rights, we have to assist the clients and the courts in reaching a decision about the constitutionality of certain government acts.

Litigation

We have two teams of experienced lawyer one based at Karachi and the other at Islamabad who handle the litigation along with other lawyering work. However we are selective in accepting litigation work and prefer taking work involving important legal issues concerning contractual disputes, investment disputes, constitutional/ administrative law matters, service law matters, fundamental human rights, corporate and taxation matters.

Legislative Advisory & Advocacy

Our firm has rich in-house resources to prepare legislative drafts of the legislative bills. Our lead lawyer Aziz Nishtar is currently advising and training National Assembly Secretariat on legislative drafting as part of European Union project on Improving Parliamentary practices in Pakistan. Our teams has prepared numerous legislative drafts of laws and statutory rules. With our team’s diverse skill set and network with professionals and legislators we help clients in general and international development organizations in particular to get the legal frameworks changed to address the society’s concerns such as child rights, women rights, gender justice, health rights just taxation, investment climate, and human rights.

Regualatory Affairs

The firm has a pool of knowledge and experience to deal with specialized laws and regulatory authorities such as Securities & Exchange Commission, stock exchanges, Competition Commission of Pakistan, Privatization Commission, State Bank of Pakistan, PEMRA, NEPRA and administrative ministries both at federal and provincial levels.

Public Private Partnership

We are proud say that we developed the first legal framework for the Public Private Partnership in the country when we are hired by a key multilateral organization to develop PPP framework for the Province of Sindh in 2009. That assignment resulted in legislation of Sindh Public Private Partnership Act, 2010 – the first PPP law in the country. We have in-depth knowledge and experience this area of law and are well versed with fast evolving international practices. We were the lead legal advisors for a number of PPP projects in the country including the area of energy, infrastructure development and industrial projects.

Development Sector

As part of our commitment to contribute in economic and social development of the society we advise governmental authorities, NGOs, and international institutions in helping devise responsive development strategies especially meant to improve governance in the country on one hand and alleviate poverty on the other. We also are committed to work for empowering youth and women by promoting knowledge, skills, and entrepreneurship among them.