Foley & Lardner has hired Jaikaran Jai Singh as a partner for its consumer law, finance and class action practice in San Diego. Singh joins the firm from Dentons, where he was part of a group of partners who arrived in a tumultuous 2015 combination with McKenna Long & Aldridge.
Singh represents clients in high-stakes business and commercial litigation matters, while also providing consumer class action defense counsel. Foley & Lardner recruited Singh by telling him it was looking for a litigator to focus on class action defense work, not just to become a component in a broader business litigation practice, he said.
Foley s size, positive culture and strong national platform are a good fit for me, Singh said. I m excited to feel like a partner in a law firm again, and less like an important employee who provides legal services in a large corporation.
Singh is now one of several former McKenna Long lawyers to have departed Dentons since the two firms combined operations in mid-2015, after having previously called off tie-up talks.
Last year, Dentons informed former McKenna Long partners that they owed their new firm $2 million as a result of an accounting error. Dentons sent letters to more than 20 former partners at Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps a firm that McKenna Long absorbed in 2012 and where Singh worked for 11 years informing them that it would be keeping some of their capital.
Asked about those matters, Singh said that he had a pleasant experience at Dentons, and that the firm a seemingly ever-expanding global legal giant had provided a better platform for his work than the firms where he had previously practiced.
The decision to transition my practice from Dentons had more to do with the unique opportunity presented by Foley, and less to do with Dentons, Singh said. For sure, my national class action practice benefited from Denton s large platform. But Dentons emphasis on global growth was not as well aligned with the focus of my practice. I found a better fit with Foley.
Jay Varon, the chair of Foley & Lardner s consumer law, finance and class action practice group, said in a statement that Singh was one of the top class action litigators in California.
He has a strong record of delivering positive results and bringing a practical, common sense approach to resolving complex problems that considers the client s business needs, Varon said of Singh, who made partner at Luce Forward in 2006.
In his spare time, Singh serves on the board of the San Diego County Bar Foundation, which funds legal services for low-income San Diegans and other charitable endeavors. He called the foundation s mission of providing access to justice an important issue for me.