Shainul Kassam

Shainul founded Fortune Law in 2004 having trained as a lawyer at Memery Crystal followed by a short stint in the corporate team of Fox Williams. She qualified into the corporate department specialising in stock market flotations and M&A and aged 29 with three years PQE, she left to set up her own commercial law firm. She was reported at that time to be the youngest female to start a law firm in the UK.

In her first year of trading and initially from her kitchen table she advised on 2 stock market flotations and was a finalist for Entrepreneur of the Year at the Asian Women of Achievement Awards.

Her experience covers corporate matters including the sale and purchase of businesses across a variety of sectors and often involving international buyers and sellers. She also has considerable experience acting for start-ups on a wide range of commercial matters including fundraising issues. A large part of her work comprises a contentious element including advising on complex, high value domestic and international shareholder and partnership disputes and unrest between co-founders and also within family businesses.

She has acted as expert witness for the CPS on AIM boiler room fraud cases and for defendants in proceedings brought against them by the FCA. Her primary focus however is advising individual founders and smart start-ups.

Over the years, having seen a massive gap in the market for legal advice and education for founders and entrepreneurs she devised a 7 hour legal curriculum focusing solely on early stage founders. She now teaches her course in collaboration with Imperial College London on its Executive MBA Programme.

Shainul is an accredited mediator and has worked on a pro bono basis for 13 years mediating both commercial and family disputes. She has held board positions on His Highness Aga Khan National (and subsequently) International Conciliation and Arbitration Board (ICAB) representing the UK and Europe dealing with cross border disputes, policy, documents and process drafting for 20 jurisdictions and hearing arbitration appeals. In her role on ICAB she has contributed to the drafting of the Charter for International Family Mediation Processes an initiative of International Social Service (ISS) an international NGO promoting child protection and welfare.

She has acted as long-standing trustee in a number of charitable institutions. She is currently the Council Member representing the Central London constituency at the Law Society of England and Wales.

Shainul lives in West London with her husband and two young sons with whom she runs, bakes and travels the world.

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