Abishek Ganesan

---

Founding Partner

Abishek Ganesan is the founding partner of Abja Advisory LLP. His practice covers intellectual property, general corporate advisory, commercial contracting and emerging technology, with particular depth in the media and entertainment industry and in sectors where Indian regulation remains unsettled.

He began his career in white-collar criminal defence at one of India's foremost practices in that field, on matters conducted under the scrutiny such cases attract. The training proved more durable than the subject. Defence work teaches a lawyer to assume that every document will one day be read aloud by someone hostile to the client, and to build the file accordingly. He drafts that way still, which is why his agreements tend to hold in the places other agreements give.

He moved to corporate practice in order to be useful earlier — at the point where exposure is created rather than after it has crystallised. His work now runs from incorporation and capital raising through licensing, commercial contracting and regulatory positioning to crisis response and settlement, with particular concentration in media and entertainment, and in sectors where Indian regulation is unsettled or absent. Where the law has not yet caught up with the business, the position has to be constructed from principle and recorded well enough to be defended later. That is the work he is most often brought in for.

His method is consistent across all of it: read the transaction before the draft, form a view, state it plainly, and put the reasoning where the client can find it. He regards the purpose of legal advice as enabling a decision, not documenting a hesitation.

Abishek holds a Master of Laws (LL.M.) with a specialisation in Intellectual Property and Technology, together with a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.), from Government Law College, Mumbai. His continuing research concerns the treatment of copyright in the context of artificial intelligence, which he regards as the most consequential open question facing the creative and technology industries.

He is an early and deliberate adopter of artificial intelligence within legal practice itself and has built the firm's internal processes around it. The purpose is allocation rather than novelty: automating the mechanical portion of legal work allows professional time to be spent where judgement is genuinely required, and allows a boutique firm to serve its clients at a standard and speed ordinarily associated with much larger institutions. He writes and speaks on the intersection of law, technology, culture and business.

• LL.M (Intellectual Property and Technology) 
• Bachelor of Laws (LL.B)
• Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA)

• Intellectual property 
• Commercial contracting 
• Corporate advisory 
• Emerging technology 
• Strategic advisory and risk 
• Dispute avoidance

Advocate, Bar Council of Maharashtra & Goa · Enrolment no. 5523/2020

English, Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi