Listed as one of the foremost lawyers in the world.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Sheela Murthy, of the Murthy Law Firm, has been recognized as one of the foremost lawyers in the world in the field of corporate immigration law, according to the 2013 edition of Corporate Immigration.
Corporate Immigration is a directory which lists all the leading lawyers in that field. It is published by the London-based firm Law Business Research Limited, which is a partner of International Law Section of the American Bar Association, as well as the International Bar Association. To be listed in the directory is considered a high honor in the advocacy circles worldwide.
This is not the first award or recognition Murthy has received. In 2008, she became a member of the United Way of Central Maryland’s Million Dollar Roundtable, the first woman to ever achieve this. In 2009, Murthy was named Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst and Young. In 2010, she received the Business Philanthropy Award from the Baltimore Business Journal, as well as the Maryland Chamber of Commerce’s Small Business of the Year Award. In 2011, she was named one of Maryland’s 50 Most Influential Women, and last year the Murthy Law Firm was named one of the top minority business enterprises in the United States.
Murthy attended Stella Maris College in Chennai, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in history, with a minor in political sciences, in 1982. She then decided to pursue a career in law, enrolling at Bangalore’s University Law College (ULC). After graduating at the top of her class in 1985, she went on to Harvard for my master’s in law (LLM).
After going through her own trials in securing a Green Card for herself and her husband, Vasant Nayak, Murthy became inspired to take up the cause of immigration law. She founded the Law Office of Sheela Murthy in 1994, in Owings Mills, Maryland. Her husband convinced her to create a website to go with the firm, which at that time was a risky move considering the relative infancy of the Internet at that point. Today, Murthy.com is the most visited website in the world for those seeking help on immigration cases.
Murthy re-named her company the Murthy Law Firm in 2005; by that point, it had expanded to where it could legitimately be called a “firm” rather than simply an “office.” They are still based in Owings Mills, where they have about 80 employees, but there are now offices in Chennai and Hyderabad with about 15 more employees there as well.
She and her husband founded the MurthyNayak Foundation in 2001, a charitable organization dedicated to improving the lives and transitional stages of women and children immigrating to the US from India. Most recently, Murthy has been an advocate of passing and implementing the controversial Gang of Eight bill, which was passed by the Senate earlier this summer and is now being debated in the House of Representatives.
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com