Akhtar Imam & Associates

We are committed to attracting, retaining and advancing the careers of meritorious lawyers from diverse backgrounds reflective of the clients and communities we serve.

Given the low representation of women in the legal profession in Bangladesh, we are committed to advancing the visibility and success of women lawyers at our firm. Our commitment is evident from the fact that our Managing Partner is a woman, who started as an intern at the firm, and women comprise almost half of our workforce. We are very proud to be one of the very few leading law firms in Bangladesh that is led by a woman.

Our Managing Partner, Rashna Imam, acts as a mentor to young women lawyers through participation in different programmes. She was a Mentor in the programme, “Participation of Women in Establishing their Rights (PoWER)” of Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST), a leading human rights organisation. The purpose of the programme was to conduct research on the barriers faced by women in the legal profession and mentor entry level women lawyers and law students so as to empower them to overcome such barriers.

We are very supportive of lawyers with family commitments, particularly new mothers, and offer reduced work schedule for proportional compensation and work-from-home options. This does not in any way affect their career advancement within the firm.

Our firm’s commitment to diversity and inclusion is not limited to the legal profession. Our Managing Partner, Rashna Imam has led a number of landmark public interest litigation (PIL), on a pro bono basis, to establish and enforce health rights of women and the poor and marginalized masses in Bangladesh. Her landmark cases in this regard include the PIL for formulation of guidelines for prevention of medically unnecessary C-sections in private and public hospitals in Bangladesh and the PIL for establishment of a legal framework for emergency medical services for road accident victims and protection of good Samaritans, both of which she filed on behalf of the leading NGO, BLAST, and the case leading to the judgment directing reform of the Human Organ Donation and Transplantation Act 1999 to expand the pool of kidney donors to reduce the gap between demand and supply of kidneys.

In view of her stellar public interest work, in 2018, she was selected, from over hundreds of nominees from around the globe, as one of the thirty-one Asia 21 Young Leaders. In 2019, she was chosen as a Fellow for the Global Programme for Women’s Leadership (GPWL), a joint initiative of Observer Research Foundation (ORF), a leading think tank in India, UK’s Department of International Development (DFID) and Vedica Scholars Programme for Women.

In addition, our Managing Partner is an advocate for women’s rights in general, and regularly appears in television and radio shows to speak on gender-based violence, rape law reform, barriers faced by Muslim mothers to custody and guardianship of children, etc.

We firmly believe that our firm’s diverse and inclusive atmosphere is essential to both the quality of the legal service we provide for our clients and the personal satisfaction of our lawyers and staff.