A & J
Legal Consultants LLP

— Islamabad · Karachi

Trade remedies, trade dispute resolution, regulatory and industrial compliance counsel for Pakistani businesses and their international counterparts.

— The firm

A specialist firm with offices in Islamabad and Karachi, advising on the legal architecture of Pakistani trade — the trade-remedy regime, the new Trade Dispute Resolution Commission, customs and import-export regulation, and the regulatory environment within which Pakistani industry operates. Trade and regulatory work is led from Islamabad by Abu Muhammad Azfar Naeem, drawing on his seven years at the National Tariff Commission; industrial compliance is led from Karachi by Jawed Imam.

— Practice

Trade RemediesAnti-dumping, countervailing duties, safeguards
Trade Dispute ResolutionTDRC proceedings, mediation, arbitration
Customs & Import-Export RegulationClassification, valuation, exemptions, appeals
Industrial Regulatory ComplianceSITE, building, environment, labour
Competition LawCCP proceedings, merger control, compliance
Corporate & Commercial AdvisoryCross-border trading enterprises

Read about the practice →

— People

The firm is led by Abu Muhammad Azfar Naeem (Founding Partner · Advocate) and Jawed Imam (Partner · Industrial Compliance).

People → Contact →

— About

The firm

A specialist Pakistani legal boutique operating where trade, customs, and regulation meet industry.

— Note

A & J Legal Consultants LLP is a specialist law firm with offices in Islamabad and Karachi. The firm advises Pakistani businesses, foreign exporters and importers, and international counsel on matters arising at the intersection of trade, customs, and regulatory law. Trade, customs, and regulatory work is led from Islamabad by Abu Muhammad Azfar Naeem; industrial compliance is led from Karachi by Jawed Imam.

The firm was founded by Abu Muhammad Azfar Naeem after seven years at Pakistan's National Tariff Commission, where he conducted the Commission's litigation across the High Courts and the Anti-Dumping Appellate Tribunal and contributed to the drafting of the principal subordinate legislation under the trade-remedy statutes. The practice is built around that institutional experience and around a partnership with Jawed Imam, whose decade of work advising industrial clients in Karachi's Sindh Industrial Trading Estate complements the trade and customs practice with a settled industrial compliance capability.

✻ ✻ ✻

The firm operates on a small number of principles. We work in areas where we have genuine depth and we are honest about the limits of that focus; where a matter falls outside what we can do well, we say so. We prefer to be retained for substantive work rather than to be on a panel of firms a client uses by rotation. We give written advice in the form clients can use — short where short is enough, longer where the matter requires it, and never padded for its own sake. Our fees are agreed in writing before the work begins and are structured to reflect the work, not the prestige of the matter.

Our clients include domestic manufacturers in trade-remedy proceedings, importers and foreign exporters defending against them, industrial groups managing their compliance obligations within and outside SITE, and Pakistani and international businesses with regulatory questions arising from cross-border trading activity. We work in English and Urdu, and correspond with international counsel in either language as the matter requires.

A & J Legal Consultants LLP is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan as a limited liability partnership (LLP No. 0332425).

— Practice

Practice areas

A small number of areas, addressed in depth. The work below describes the practice as it is, not as a wishlist.

Trade Remedies

Trade remedies are the legal instruments by which Pakistani industry seeks protection from injurious imports. They are administered by the National Tariff Commission under three distinct statutory regimes — one for dumped imports, one for subsidised imports, and one for sudden import surges — and each regime has its own procedure, its own evidentiary standard, and its own appellate route. The procedural architecture across all three is unforgiving; investigations turn on injury data, dumping or subsidy margins, and questionnaire responses prepared months before any hearing, and a misstep in the early stages of a case is rarely recoverable on appeal. The firm's founding partner spent seven years inside the National Tariff Commission, and the practice is built around that experience.

We act on three sides of trade remedy work: for domestic producers initiating investigations, for importers and foreign exporters defending against them, and on appeals to the Anti-Dumping Appellate Tribunal and the High Courts.

Anti-Dumping Duties

Dumping occurs when a foreign producer exports goods to Pakistan at a price lower than the price at which it sells the same goods in its own market — its "normal value" — and that pricing causes or threatens material injury to the Pakistani industry producing the like product. Where the National Tariff Commission, after investigation, finds that all three elements are made out — dumping, injury, and a causal link — it imposes anti-dumping duties on the imports concerned, calculated to offset the margin of dumping. This is the most heavily used trade remedy in Pakistan and the area in which the firm has its deepest experience. We act for domestic producers preparing applications and supporting them through investigation; for importers, distributors, and foreign exporters responding to investigations and defending against the imposition or continuation of duties; and on appeals before the Anti-Dumping Appellate Tribunal and writ petitions before the High Courts. The firm's founding partner has appeared in several hundred such matters and was involved in the drafting of the Anti-Dumping Duties Rules, 2022 and in the amending instruments to the Anti-Dumping Duties Act currently under consideration.

Countervailing Duties

Countervailing duties target a different problem. Where a foreign government provides a financial contribution to its exporters — a subsidy — that confers a benefit and causes injury to the importing country's industry, the importing country may, after investigation, impose countervailing duties to offset the subsidy. The procedure mirrors anti-dumping in its broad structure but the substantive analysis is different: instead of comparing export price with normal value, the investigation establishes the existence and amount of the subsidy and its specificity to the exporting industry. Countervailing investigations in Pakistan are less frequent than anti-dumping investigations but are increasing in importance as global subsidy practices receive closer scrutiny. We advise complainant industries on the preparation of countervailing applications, exporters and their governments on responses, and clients on the appeal of determinations to the Tribunal and the High Courts.

Safeguard Measures

Safeguard measures are conceptually distinct from anti-dumping and countervailing duties. They do not require a finding of unfair trade. They require only a finding that imports of a particular product have surged — in absolute or relative terms — and have caused or threatened to cause serious injury to the domestic industry producing the like or directly competitive product. Where those conditions are met, the National Tariff Commission may recommend safeguard measures in the form of additional duties or quantitative restrictions, applicable on a non-discriminatory basis to imports from all sources. The regime is currently administered under the Safeguard Measures Ordinance, 2002, which is in the process of being converted into a full Act of Parliament; the firm's founding partner has been involved in that drafting work. We advise domestic industries on whether a safeguard application is appropriate in a given factual setting (and, often as importantly, whether an anti-dumping or countervailing route would be more effective), prepare and support safeguard applications through investigation, advise importers on responses, and act on appeals.

ii.

Trade Dispute Resolution

Pakistan's Trade Dispute Resolution Act, 2022, and the Trade Dispute Resolution Rules, 2026 made under it, have created a new commission — the Trade Dispute Resolution Commission — for the resolution of cross-border commercial disputes between Pakistani parties and their foreign counterparts. The Commission has jurisdiction over export-import transactions, international sales of goods, supply contracts, customs valuation disputes, letters of credit, distribution and agency arrangements, and related international commercial engagements where the claim value is at least USD 5,000. Procedure runs through staged options — negotiation, mediation, arbitration, or Commission determination — and the framework is the first of its kind in Pakistan. We advise complainants and respondents at every stage of the process, from filing through to enforcement. The firm's founding partner is an accredited mediator under the International Mediation Institute and is gazetted as a mediator under Pakistani law.

iii.

Customs and Import-Export Regulation

Customs work in Pakistan sits at the intersection of the Customs Act, 1969, a tariff regime that changes with each Finance Act, and a procedural environment that rewards careful filing and punishes inattention. We advise on classification and valuation disputes, exemption and concession claims under SROs and the Customs Tariff, refund and rebate claims, and contentious matters before the Collectorates of Customs, the Customs Appellate Tribunal, and the High Courts. The practice complements the firm's trade remedy work, since the boundary between customs duty disputes and trade remedy disputes is in practice less clean than the textbooks suggest.

iv.

Industrial Regulatory Compliance

For industrialists operating in Karachi — and particularly within the Sindh Industrial Trading Estate — the regulatory environment is dense and constantly shifting. Plot allotment, lease and mutation, building plan approvals, environmental clearances, factory licensing, and labour compliance each sit with a different authority, each with its own procedure and timing. Jawed Imam leads this practice and has advised plot owners and industrial groups in SITE for over a decade. The work covers the full lifecycle of an industrial unit, from acquiring or transferring a plot through to managing the ongoing compliance load with SITE Limited, the Sindh Building Control Authority, the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Labour Sindh, the Chief Inspector of Factories, and the Sindh Industries Department.

Competition Law

The Competition Act, 2010, and the regime built around it by the Competition Commission of Pakistan, govern anti-competitive agreements, abuse of dominant position, deceptive marketing practices, and merger control. We advise on Commission proceedings — both investigations and defences — on merger notifications, and on the day-to-day compliance questions that arise for businesses with significant market positions or with cross-border arrangements that touch the Pakistani market.

vi.

Corporate and Commercial Advisory

The firm advises Pakistani businesses and their international counterparts on the corporate and commercial law foundations of trading enterprises — incorporation and corporate structure, commercial contracts (including distribution, agency, and supply agreements), shareholder arrangements, and regulatory approvals required for cross-border transactions. The work is closely connected to the firm's trade and customs practice and is shaped accordingly: we are most useful to clients whose corporate questions arise from international trading activity rather than as standalone matters.

— People

People

The firm is a partnership of two. Each partner leads a distinct practice and the work is divided accordingly.

Abu Muhammad
Azfar Naeem

Founding Partner · Advocate

Azfar is the founding partner of A & J Legal Consultants LLP. His practice is in trade remedies, trade dispute resolution, customs and import-export regulation, competition law, and corporate and commercial advisory.

He read law at the University of London, graduating in 2018. From January 2019 until May 2026 he served at the National Tariff Commission, latterly as Senior Legal Adviser, where he conducted several hundred matters on behalf of the Commission before the High Courts and the Anti-Dumping Appellate Tribunal, and contributed to the drafting of the National Tariff Commission (Procedure) Rules, 2022 and the Anti-Dumping Duties Rules, 2022. He has also been involved in the legislative drafting underway during the current revamping of Pakistan's trade-remedy regime, including amending instruments to the Anti-Dumping Duties Act, the conversion of the Safeguard Measures Ordinance into an Act of Parliament, and proposed amendments to the rules made thereunder.

His practice now extends that institutional experience into private representation. He appears in trade-remedy investigations and appeals, judicial review of administrative action, and matters before the Trade Dispute Resolution Commission. He is an accredited mediator under the International Mediation Institute, having completed the Musaliha International Centre for Arbitration and Dispute Resolution's 40-hour programme in 2025, and is gazetted as a mediator under Pakistani law.

Azfar has nine reported judgments to his name, including a writ petition in which he successfully defended the appointment of the Chairman of the National Tariff Commission. A full list of reported authorities appears below.

He works in English and Urdu.

azfar@ajlegal.pk
+92 334 5484719

— Reported authorities

Zahid Hussain v. National Tariff Commission Writ Petition 3910/2023 — 2025 PTD 1532

M/s Sohail and Company v. ADAT Writ Petition 4643/2022 — 2024 PTD 872

M/s A-R Ubaid Associates v. Federation of Pakistan Writ Petition 4937/2018 — 2025 PTD 1439

Dawn Convertec (SMC-Pvt) Ltd v. National Tariff Commission Civil Miscellaneous Appeal 12/2021 — 2025 PTD 724

M/s Amal Steel v. Anti-Dumping Appellate Tribunal Civil Miscellaneous Appeal 125/2023 — 2024 CLC 1002

Tasneem Enterprises v. National Tariff Commission 2025 PTD 1039

Essa Steel v. Federation of Pakistan Writ Petition 3055/2024 Defended the appointment of the Chairman of the National Tariff Commission.

M/s Ejaz Brothers v. Federation of Pakistan Writ Petition 1695/2024 — 2025 PTD 1050

M/s Tape Town v. National Tariff Commission Appeal 674/2025 — 2025 PTD (Trib) 1313

ii.

Jawed Imam

Partner · Industrial Compliance

Jawed leads the firm's industrial compliance practice. He has advised plot owners, manufacturers, and industrial groups in Karachi's Sindh Industrial Trading Estate on regulatory and property matters for over a decade, and the practice remains his sole area of focus.

His work covers the full lifecycle of an industrial unit operating within SITE. On the property side, he advises on plot allotment, lease, mutation, transfer, and the preparation and processing of documents before SITE Limited, together with building plan approvals and utility matters arising under SITE Limited's tenancy and supply functions. On the regulatory side, he advises industrial clients on their dealings with the Sindh Building Control Authority, the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Labour Sindh, the Chief Inspector of Factories, and the Sindh Industries Department.

His client base ranges from small family-run manufacturers to larger industrial groups, with the work shaped by what each client actually needs rather than by any uniform retainer. Jawed is not enrolled as an advocate and does not appear in court; clients requiring contentious representation are directed to the firm's litigation practice or to external counsel.

He works in English and Urdu.

jawed@ajlegal.pk
+92 332 3675387

— Insights

Insights

Notes on the practice — client alerts, trade-remedy commentary, and short pieces on developments in Pakistani trade law.

— Note

The first pieces will appear here shortly.

In the meantime, enquiries about specific developments — the Trade Dispute Resolution Rules, 2026; current anti-dumping investigations; the conversion of the Safeguards Ordinance into an Act — may be directed to office@ajlegal.pk.

— Contact

Contact

The firm operates from offices in Islamabad and Karachi. The work is divided between the two.

Islamabad

— Trade, customs, regulatory

c/o Daftarkhwan | North
Plot 94, Street 7
I-10/3, Islamabad
Pakistan

azfar@ajlegal.pk
+92 334 5484719

Karachi

— Industrial compliance · Registered office

Plot No. Z-4, Manghopir Road
SITE Area, Karachi
Pakistan

jawed@ajlegal.pk
+92 332 3675387

— General enquiries

For matters not directed to a specific partner, please write to office@ajlegal.pk. We respond within two working days.