What's in a name?

5pm, sometime in March in the year 2000.

Six young men sat on the floor of a sparsely furnished living room in a flat in Bandra. They had spent the past few days working out the details of how to structure their new law firm. That firm needed a name. And there was a flight to catch.

We had agreed that the firm would not carry our own names. We wanted the firm to have an identity beyond the founders and anyway, as we were unknown in the legal profession, our names weren't adding much value. Plus, there were too many of us. With time, the last names on the door would inevitably have dropped off.

So a neutral name it was going to be. Hours of racking our brains had thrown up various terrible options. Gradually, we gravitated towards the idea that the name should hint at the fact that we had three offices. Someone suggested Trillium Legal, based on the 3 petals of the eponymous flowering plant. That was discarded as being too pretentious but it gave us the Tri and the Legal to play around with. "Arre let's just call it Trilegal" someone said. And there it was. The combination of unimaginative lawyers, the decision not to use our own names and the fear of missing a plane are responsible for the name Trilegal.

Postscript: We were unsure of how things would go, so we decided to use our names as well for the first year, as insurance. In under 12 months, our names were permanently discarded, with only the Trilegal remaining. Upamanyu Hazarika, now senior advocate, was initially part of the endeavour, explaining the name on the photograph. The Delhi office still receives mail in the name of the nonexistent Mr. Hazarika Prasad Jaitly, Trilegal.