Corporate & commercial
Incorporation and structuring, shareholder and joint-venture arrangements, governance, and the commercial contracts a business runs on.
Chetan Nagendra Law Offices · Bengaluru
Corporate, technology and cross-border law — with AI in the workflow and a lawyer on every line.
CN Law advises Indian and international businesses on transactions, technology and data, regulatory compliance, and commercial disputes. We use AI in the parts of legal work where it is genuinely better, and we tell you exactly where those parts are.
Established practice, Bengaluru
Indian law
Corporate · Technology · Disputes
Our AI policy, in one table
Most firms will not tell you where the machine stops.
We will. This is the division of labour on every matter we run, and it does not change without your written instruction.
Where we use AI
- First-pass review of long document sets and data rooms
- Clause extraction, and comparison against our own precedent bank
- Chronologies, issue lists, and first drafts of routine documents
- Summarising filings, statements and correspondence
- Search across our closed knowledge base
Where only a lawyer works
- Every advice, opinion and recommendation
- Every judgement on risk, strategy and forum
- Verification of every authority, figure, date and cross-reference
- All court and tribunal work, and all client communication
- The decision on what — if anything — a tool is shown
What we do
Full-spectrum commercial legal work, from formation to dispute.
01 Corporate
02 Technology
Technology, data & IP
Product and platform terms, SaaS and licensing, data protection under the DPDP Act, cybersecurity incidents, IP registration and enforcement.
03 Transactions
M&A, venture capital & private equity
Term sheets through to closing: diligence, transaction documents, conditions, regulatory approvals and post-closing integration.
04 Regulatory
Regulated industries & fintech
Payments and digital lending, RBI and SEBI requirements, FDI and exchange control, sectoral licensing and ongoing compliance.
05 Disputes
Disputes & arbitration
Commercial litigation, domestic and institutional arbitration, interim relief, enforcement, and the strategy call on which forum is worth the time.
06 Credit
Lending, recovery & enforcement
Lender-side work for NBFCs and finance companies: security documentation, CERSAI registration, cheque dishonour proceedings, execution and asset protection.
How we work
Scoped in stages. Priced before we start.
Litigation and transactions both have a habit of expanding. We break a matter into stages, put a fixed fee against each one, and take instructions stage by stage — so you can stop at the end of any of them without an argument about what has been earned.
Appearances, disbursements and third-party fees are stated separately and never marked up. Engagement terms go out in writing before work starts, every time.
Talk to us
Tell us the problem. We will tell you whether it needs us.
A first conversation costs nothing and is confidential. If the matter is better handled elsewhere, or not worth the cost of handling at all, we will say so.
AI at CN Law
An AI-first practice with no unverified output.
Two things are meant by "AI and law" at this firm, and they are different. The first is how we work: AI runs through our own process, under rules we publish and are willing to be held to. The second is what we advise on: helping you deploy AI without acquiring liabilities you cannot see.
Part one · Our charter
Six commitments that govern every matter
01
Your confidential information never enters a public model
Nothing from a client file goes into a consumer or publicly available AI service. We use closed, contractually bound systems only, on terms that prohibit training on our inputs. This is the same clause we write into our clients' own NDAs.
02
Nothing leaves the firm unverified
Every authority, statutory provision, figure, date and cross-reference in a document that goes to you, to the other side, or to a court is checked against the source by a lawyer. Hallucinated citations are a known failure mode of these tools. We treat verification as non-delegable.
03
Machine time is not billed as lawyer time
Where a tool makes a task faster, the saving is yours, not ours. Our fixed-stage pricing is built on that basis rather than on hours we no longer spend.
04
You can switch it off
Any client may instruct that no AI-assisted processing be used on its matter. We will confirm that in writing and honour it. It does not change the fee.
05
Privilege and data protection come first
No tool is used in a way that puts legal professional privilege at risk. Client personal data is handled consistently with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, with defined retention, deletion on request, and residency where a sector regulator or your own policy requires it.
06
Judgement is never automated
Advice, strategy, forum, settlement, and what to say to a judge are decisions made by an advocate who is accountable for them. A tool can find the clause. It cannot carry the professional responsibility, and we do not pretend otherwise.
Part two · Advising you on AI
Where AI creates legal exposure, and what to do about it
Most AI risk in an Indian business does not sit in the model. It sits in the contract that procured it, the data that fed it, and the absence of anyone accountable for the output.
Governance
AI policy and internal controls
Acceptable-use policies for staff, human-in-the-loop sign-off for decisions that affect customers, model inventories, incident escalation, and board-level reporting that a regulator would accept as adequate.
Contracting
Buying and selling AI
Vendor and enterprise terms: ownership of outputs, training-data warranties and infringement indemnities, confidentiality clauses restricting input into public models, service levels tied to accuracy, audit and exit rights.
Data
DPDP Act readiness
Lawful basis and consent notices, data principal rights, significant data fiduciary obligations, processor contracts, cross-border transfer, and breach response — mapped against GDPR where you operate in both.
IP
Ownership of what the system makes
Assignment and first-ownership defaults under sections 18 and 19 of the Copyright Act, training-data licensing, protection of prompts, weights and pipelines as trade secrets, and what your engineers' contracts actually assign.
Sectoral
Regulated deployment
AI in credit decisioning and collections under RBI expectations and the Fair Practices Code; disclosure and fairness obligations; intermediary and content rules under the IT Act; substantiation of AI-related product claims.
Disputes
When the system causes the loss
Allocation of liability between vendor, deployer and user; preservation of logs and model versions; electronic evidence and certification under the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam; and the practical question of who has to prove what.
A note on the technology we use. Our document management, e-signature and workflow tooling is built with Quoqo, our technology partner. Quoqo provides infrastructure and software only. It takes no part in advising clients, has no access to privileged material except as a bound processor, and receives no share of legal fees. Professional responsibility for every matter rests with the firm.
Practices
Areas of practice
We work across the commercial life of a business — setting it up, funding it, protecting what it builds, keeping it compliant, and fighting for it when that becomes necessary.
Corporate & commercial
Formation to exitCompany and LLP formation, choice of structure, shareholder and founder arrangements, joint ventures, board and governance advice, secretarial compliance, and the day-to-day commercial contracts — supply, distribution, services, licensing and channel.
Technology, data & intellectual property
DPDP · IT Act · Copyright · Trade marksPlatform and SaaS terms, product terms of use and privacy notices, data protection compliance and processor contracts, cybersecurity and breach response, trade mark and copyright registration and enforcement, technology transfer and licensing, and IP diligence on transactions.
M&A, venture capital & private equity
Buy-side and sell-sideTerm sheets, legal and IP due diligence, share subscription and shareholders' agreements, business and asset transfers, warranty and indemnity packages, conditions precedent, closing mechanics, and regulatory approvals including FDI and pricing compliance.
Regulatory, fintech & digital payments
RBI · SEBI · FEMAPayment aggregator and prepaid instrument frameworks, digital lending guidelines and outsourcing norms, NBFC compliance, KYC and AML obligations, exchange control and FDI, sectoral licensing, and regulatory correspondence and representations.
Employment & workplace
Contracts · Policies · InvestigationsEmployment and consultancy contracts, ESOP documentation, confidentiality and restraint clauses drafted to survive section 27 of the Contract Act, handbooks and policies, POSH committees and inquiries, workplace investigations, exits and settlements.
Dispute resolution & arbitration
Commercial courts · Arbitration · Interim reliefCommercial suits and summary proceedings, ad hoc and institutional arbitration, appointment and challenge of arbitrators, section 9 and section 17 interim relief, enforcement and setting-aside applications, and execution.
Lending, recovery & security enforcement
Lender-sideFacility and hypothecation documentation, guarantees, CERSAI registration and priority, cheque dishonour proceedings under section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act and section 25 of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, recovery arbitration, objections and claim petitions in execution, and protection of secured assets against competing creditors.
Real estate & conveyancing
KarnatakaTitle due diligence and reports on apartment and land transactions, agreements for sale, sale deeds, powers of attorney and ancillary documents, stamp duty and registration advice, and withholding tax analysis on purchase consideration.
Investigations & corporate crime
Prevention · ResponseFraud and misconduct investigations, whistleblower frameworks, response to regulatory and enforcement action, forensic and evidence handling, and remediation advice to boards.
Cross-border
India-facing and outboundIndia entry and structuring for overseas businesses, coordination with counsel in other jurisdictions, cross-border contracting and dispute strategy, and compliance mapping where Indian and foreign obligations overlap.
How we work
Clear scope. Fixed stages. No surprises on the bill.
Step one
A conversation, at no charge
You describe the problem. We tell you what we think it actually is, what it is likely to cost, and whether it is worth pursuing. Sometimes the honest answer is that it is not.
Step two
Written engagement terms
Before any work begins: what is in scope, what is expressly excluded, who does the work, the fee for each stage, what happens to disbursements, and how GST and withholding tax are handled.
Step three
Stage by stage
Each stage is separately instructed and separately charged. You can stop at the end of any stage. Nothing is bundled in a way that makes it expensive to change your mind.
Step four
You always know where it stands
Documents in one place, status visible, and a note when something changes — rather than silence punctuated by invoices.
Fees
Priced to a deliverable, not to a clock
Most of our work is quoted as a fixed fee per stage or per deliverable. Hourly rates are used where the shape of the work genuinely cannot be known in advance, and then with an estimate and a cap you agree first.
Court and tribunal appearances are charged at a stated rate, effective or adjourned. Where local counsel appears in our place, their fee is passed through as a disbursement with no mark-up. Disbursements are at actuals, and anything above an agreed threshold needs your approval before it is incurred.
Invoices carry our GSTIN and PAN so that input credit and tax withholding can be dealt with correctly.
Confidentiality
What you tell us stays with us — including from the software
Client material is held in access-controlled storage, shared with external counsel only after a non-disclosure agreement is in place, and never placed into a publicly available AI service. Where a matter is sensitive enough that you would rather no AI-assisted processing were used at all, say so and it will not be.
Counsel
Chetan Nagendra
Founder and lead counsel. Chetan advises companies, investors and founders on corporate transactions, technology and intellectual property, and cross-border matters, and leads the firm's commercial disputes work.
He practises across the full commercial cycle — structuring and funding a business, contracting for its technology, keeping it inside its regulatory perimeter, and representing it when a matter goes wrong. He was previously a partner at Indian and international law firms, and has worked on transactions and licensing arrangements involving parties in India, the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe.
- Practice areasCorporate and commercial; technology, data and IP; M&A and investments; regulatory; dispute resolution and arbitration
- QualificationAdvocate, enrolled with the Bar Council of Karnataka
- ExperienceOver 25 years in practice
- LanguagesEnglish, Kannada, Hindi
- Contactenquiries@cnlaw.in
- VerificationEnrolment particulars are on record with the Bar Council of Karnataka and are provided directly on request.
Capability
The kind of work the firm handles
Described generally. We do not name clients or matters, and nothing below identifies a party or an engagement.
Technology acquisition and licensing
Cross-borderAdvising an acquirer on the purchase of an automation technology business and the global licensing arrangement that followed, including allocation of intellectual property across jurisdictions.
Investor-side transactions
Venture and growth capitalActing for venture capital and private equity investors on technology and fintech investments — diligence, transaction documents, and the governance and exit protections that matter later.
Launching a regulated digital product
Payments and platformsBuilding the compliance and contracting stack for new payments and technology platforms before launch, rather than after a regulator asks.
Lender-side recovery and asset protection
NBFC portfolioActing for a non-banking financial company on defaulted equipment finance facilities: asserting a registered hypothecation charge against a competing decree-holder in execution, statutory notices and complaints on dishonoured instruments, and the arbitration route to a recoverable award.
Contact
Get in touch
Write to us with a short description of the matter. We will tell you whether we can help, who would do the work, and what it is likely to cost, before you commit to anything.
Office
Chetan Nagendra Law Offices2nd Floor, Gajanana Towers
11th Main, IV Block, Jayanagar
Bengaluru 560 011, Karnataka, India
Please do not send confidential or time-critical material with a first enquiry. No lawyer–client relationship arises until we have confirmed in writing that we are able to act, and have completed a conflicts check.
Regulatory notice. Chetan Nagendra Law Offices is a law practice in India. Advocates in India are governed by the Advocates Act, 1961 and the rules of the Bar Council of India, which prohibit advertising and solicitation of work. This website contains only the particulars permitted to be published, is intended solely to provide information to those who ask for it of their own accord, and is neither an advertisement nor an invitation to instruct the firm. Nothing on this website is legal advice and no lawyer–client relationship arises from reading it.