Advocate of the High Courts of Pakistan
Unified Corporate Advisory & High‑Court Advocacy
Commercial transactions structured for enterprise. Defended with absolute continuity.
Eight areas, carried at equal weight. Each is described by the situation a client is actually in, not by a list of tasks.
For businesses at the point of formation, restructuring or growth: incorporation and ongoing SECP compliance, statutory registers, board resolutions and secretarial affairs, and the commercial agreements that hold the enterprise together. The advice assumes the documents will one day be read closely by someone with an interest in defeating them.
Assessment orders, recovery proceedings and show-cause notices under the Income Tax Ordinance and Sales Tax Act — contested before the Commissioner (Appeals), the Appellate Tribunal Inland Revenue, and on reference to the Lahore High Court. These cases turn on jurisdiction, limitation and statutory interpretation at least as often as they turn on the figures.
Contractual and recovery suits, specific performance, injunctions and writ jurisdiction before the civil courts and the Lahore High Court. Work in this area has included assisting the Hon’ble High Courts in matters raising significant questions of law, producing several reported judgments.
For landowners, developers and purchasers: title diligence before acquisition, joint venture and development agreements between landowners and builders, allotment, transfer and possession documentation, and the recovery and specific-performance suits that follow when a project stalls. Property here turns on paperwork that is rarely read closely until the money has already moved.
For banks, borrowers and guarantors: recovery suits and leave-to-defend proceedings under the Financial Institutions (Recovery of Finances) Ordinance before the Banking Courts, alongside mortgage enforcement, guarantee disputes and the restructuring of distressed facilities. These matters run on a statutory timetable that punishes a late or thinly drafted application for leave to defend.
Custody and guardianship, maintenance, dower, and matrimonial proceedings before the Family Courts. These matters are conducted with restraint. Nothing about a client’s family circumstances is discussed outside the file, and the objective is a workable settlement wherever one is available.
Complaints and defence under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act — online harassment, defamation, impersonation, financial fraud and unauthorised access — including liaison with the FIA Cybercrime Wing and the NCCIA. A growing share of this work is for content creators and public figures, where an impersonation account or a coordinated campaign does its damage within hours. Timing governs the outcome: digital evidence is either preserved in the first days or lost.
Joint venture, EPC, supply, service and distribution agreements, memoranda of understanding and settlement deeds — drafted, reviewed and negotiated, for corporate groups and for individuals negotiating brand, endorsement and platform agreements on their own behalf. Written by someone who argues the resulting disputes, so the clauses that get attention are the ones that hold up under challenge, not the ones that read well at signing.
Most legal services in Pakistan are fundamentally fractured. A corporate firm drafts the agreement, but when conflict arises, the file is passed to an outside litigator who never sat in the negotiation. You pay for that gap twice — once in fees, and once in a weakened case.
Advisory
Choosing the vehicle, the shareholding and the allocation of risk, before anything is signed.
Advisory
Writing the instrument — including the clauses nobody reads at signing and everybody reads afterwards.
Where most practices pass the file to someone else. This line does not break.
Litigation
The counterparty breaches, a regulator issues a notice, or the commercial relationship turns.
Litigation
Arguing that same document in court, with no handover briefing, because there was no handover.
This practice eliminates that vulnerability. By running preventative corporate governance, tax advisory and high-stakes courtroom litigation from a single, continuous desk, your risk is managed by an unbroken line of counsel. We engineer commercial instruments from day one to survive adversarial testing before the superior courts, the specialised statutory tribunals, and the federal regulatory and enforcement agencies.
Faraan Ahmad Cheema is an Advocate of the High Courts of Pakistan and Principal Counsel at Faraan Cheema Law Chambers, Lahore. He holds an LL.B. (Honours) from the University of London.
He advises domestic corporations, international clients and private entities on corporate and commercial law — reviewing, structuring and negotiating both cross-border and domestic transactional frameworks. That work runs across corporate governance and SECP compliance, transactional contracts, joint ventures, engineering, procurement and construction frameworks, supply networks, real estate development, and digital asset protection.
On the contentious side, he represents commercial enterprises, multinational interests and individuals before the Lahore High Court, the Appellate Tribunal Inland Revenue, the Federal Board of Revenue, and the civil and family courts. The Hon’ble High Court has from time to time appointed him Amicus Curiae to assist the bench in matters raising significant and unsettled questions of law, and the practice has contributed to jurisprudence through several reported judgments.
He sits as a retained legal advisor on the panels of leading commercial enterprises. That continuous engagement, and the cross-border work that comes with it, keeps the advisory practice anchored in how commercial decisions are actually taken inside a business — and in preventing risk rather than repairing it afterwards.
Alongside chambers practice he is a Visiting Faculty Member for the University of London LL.B. International Programmes, and an A-Level Law educator.
Most people do not lose a legal right because the law failed them. They lose it because nobody told them the right existed, or that the remedy had a deadline.
Alongside the practice, I direct a public legal-awareness initiative and appear as a legal commentator on national television. It reaches a community of more than 100,000 professionals and overseas Pakistanis. The aim is narrow and practical: that someone facing an unlawful notice, a withheld salary, a fraudulent transfer of property back home, or online harassment knows what has happened to them, what the law says about it, and which door to knock on before the time to act runs out.
Content published on these channels is general legal information. It is not advice on any individual matter, and no lawyer–client relationship arises from it.
Describe the matter in a few lines and I will tell you whether it is something I can take, what it is likely to involve, and what it will cost — before you commit to anything.
