Mandviwalla & Zafar is one of Pakistan’s leading law firms, with a reputation built on performance and precision. From offices in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad we act for clients across the country and beyond it, offering comprehensive solutions to the full range of their legal needs.
The firm was established in 1991 by Mehmood Mandviwalla and Syed Ali Zafar. Both had read law at the London School of Economics and Political Science and been called to the Bar of England and Wales, and both shared a single conviction — that a law firm should be driven, above all, by the needs of its clients. That client-driven vision has shaped Mandviwalla & Zafar ever since.
What began as a banking and finance practice has grown into one of Pakistan’s foremost full-service firms. Our work today spans dispute resolution, litigation and arbitration; corporate and commercial advice; banking and finance; capital markets; mergers and acquisitions and private equity; energy, power and infrastructure; competition, employment, intellectual property and environmental law; and white-collar, tax and regulatory matters — a breadth that allows us to advise on every dimension of a transaction or dispute from a single window.
Our clients include multinationals, banks, corporations and high-net-worth groups and individuals across every sector and every major city in Pakistan. We are also one of the few genuinely cross-border firms in the country, with particular expertise in advising foreign investors on Pakistan’s legal and regulatory framework and guiding them through the establishment and conduct of their business here.
That regional perspective extends across South Asia. As economic reform has opened new opportunities throughout the SAARC countries — Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka — we have advised on investment, banking and joint-venture projects across the region. Our close association with the legal communities of these countries means we are fully conversant with their laws and the developments within them, and we take pride in serving as a genuine information resource on the law of the region for the clients we guide through it.
The firm is led by lawyers of national standing. Its co-founder and senior partner, Mehmood Mandviwalla, began his career in litigation and remains involved in high-profile cases before the superior courts of Pakistan, while his practice today centres on advising on leading transactions — with a particular focus on banking, regulatory matters and mergers and acquisitions — alongside significant disputes. A member of the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn, he has served as caretaker Minister for Law and Prisons in the Government of Sindh and on the Board of Directors of the State Bank of Pakistan for two terms, and he currently sits on the boards of the Deposit Protection Corporation, a subsidiary of the State Bank of Pakistan, and GlaxoSmithKline Pakistan. He is also the Honorary Consul of Sri Lanka in Pakistan.
Alongside him, senior partner Syed Ali Zafar is among Pakistan’s foremost constitutional and commercial advocates — counsel in many of the most consequential cases of his generation before the Supreme Court, the Federal Shariat Court and the High Courts of all four provinces, one of the country’s most experienced arbitration practitioners, and a recognised pioneer of Islamic finance law in Pakistan. Around them stands a team of more than fifty lawyers whose combined experience reaches across the full range of the firm’s practice.
Whatever the matter, our approach is the same. We go to the heart of every legal issue and return with solutions that are commercially astute and legally sound — large enough to bring real resources to bear, and focused enough to give every client genuinely personal attention. Wherever our lawyers are based, the same commitment runs through all of it: clients first; quality and availability; cost-effective advice; a commercially solution-oriented approach; and clarity and stability.
