Clarence & Partners

Founder, M&A and Investments

Clarence Anthony is the founder of Clarence & Partners and a senior corporate and transactional lawyer with close to 20 years of experience advising founders, funds, investors and institutional clients on complex transactions, investments and special situations. He is recognised for combining deep transactional expertise with a technology‑led, systems‑driven approach to legal delivery.

Clarence advises on: Private M&A and strategic acquisitions, Private equity and venture capital investments, Shareholder arrangements and exits, Fund‑level and platform advisory, Special situations and transaction‑linked disputes, Senior employment, ESOPs and founder arrangements, and Data‑driven and technology‑led business models.

Clarence is known for a strategy‑led and execution‑focused style of practice, shaped by senior law firm and in‑house experience. He approaches transactions and disputes through a commercial lens, with a strong emphasis on risk allocation, long‑term outcomes and business continuity.

As the founder of an AI‑native law firm, Clarence has led the design and implementation of systematised legal workflows integrating proprietary legal memory platforms and advanced AI reasoning models. This allows him to focus on high‑value negotiation, structuring and judgment, while technology enables rigorous validation, document analysis and consistency across matters.

Clients value his ability to simplify complex problems, manage stakeholder dynamics and deliver advice that is both legally robust and operationally pragmatic.

He is frequently instructed by technology‑focused companies, investment platforms and funds operating in regulated and data‑intensive environments. 

Before founding Clarence & Partners, Clarence was an equity partner at Trilegal and subsequently served as Head Legal Officer at Embassy Office Parks REIT, India’s first listed real estate investment trust. Before that Clarence was a retainer with Juris Corp, Mumbai and Trilegal, Delhi.

Representative Experience - example

Advised a foreign technology company on the acquisition of an Indian technology business operating in a data‑intensive and regulated environment. The transaction involved complex structuring considerations owing to overlapping data protection, sectoral regulatory and shareholder governance issues. Clarence Anthony led negotiations on risk allocation, regulatory representations and post‑closing controls, while coordinating a multidisciplinary review covering corporate, employment and data‑related issues. The matter required rapid restructuring of the transaction format to address evolving regulatory and commercial concerns and was completed within a compressed timeline.

Representative Experience - 2 Acts as external general counsel to a leading investment platform and fund manager, overseeing its end‑to‑end legal and compliance function. Clarence Anthony advises on ongoing regulatory compliance, primary and secondary investments, exits, and transaction structuring across multiple portfolio companies. His role includes negotiating shareholder agreements, resolving contentious investor issues, managing special situations, and implementing process and technology‑led improvements to the client’s legal and compliance operations. The mandate is distinguished by its breadth, commercial sensitivity, and integration of strategic legal advice with business decision‑making.

English, Hindi

Clarence is qualified to practise in India and the UK. He is also a Bombay Solicitor registered with the Bombay Incorporated Law Society

Clarence graduated from Government Law College, with a BLS/LLB degree in 2009