Dhruva Krishna
Associate
Areas of Focus
- Investment Management
- Fund Formation
- Credit Funds
- Real Estate & Infrastructure Funds
- Fund Manager Transactions
- Financial Services Regulatory
- Emerging Markets Funds Transactions
- Private Equity
- Advises private fund managers, sponsors, investors and other market participants on a range of investment management matters.
- Advises global sponsors on the formation of closed‑end and open‑end funds with private equity, venture capital, real estate and credit strategies.
- Counsels sponsors and investors on complex fund and management transactions, including sponsor‑led secondaries, continuation vehicles and general partner (GP) stakes transactions.
Dhruva advises United States and non-U.S. fund sponsors on the structuring of closed-end and open-end fund products across a variety of asset classes and strategies. Prior to joining Akin, Dhruva was an associate at two other global law firms in Los Angeles, where he assisted on venture capital, private fund and real estate fund formations, secondaries transactions and the sale of several large asset managers. He previously served as a judicial extern at the U.S. District Court, Central District of California.
Dhruva received his J.D. from UCLA School of Law, where he was awarded the Masin Family Academic Excellence Gold Award and the Leon C. Fan Scholarship for Entertainment Law Students, and served as Comments Editor on the UCLA Law Review. He received his B.A. in Ethics, History, Public Policy and Professional Writing with University Honors from Carnegie Mellon University, where he was a Dietrich Honors Thesis Fellow.
Outside of his practice, Dhruva is an avid musician and writer, with a strong interest in the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and law.
- Structured and negotiated a $300 million continuation fund in connection with a sponsor‑led sale of a portfolio of music royalty assets.
- Served as fund counsel on the sale by a global investment manager of its international business and certain affiliates to a publicly traded alternative investment manager, with an announced transaction value of $3.7 billion.
- Represented a private equity sponsor in the formation of its inaugural fund, which achieved a final close with aggregate third-party limited partner (LP) commitments of $875 million, exceeding the vehicle’s target of $600 million and original hard cap of $750 million. Core responsibilities included negotiating with LPs on side letter negotiations and assisting with the subscription agreement process.
- Counseled a private equity sponsor on the final closing of an opportunistic credit fund, a $3.3 billion opportunistic fund, exceeding the target fund size of $2.3 billion.
- Advised a private equity sponsor in fundraising for its flagship fund and middle-market fund, which exceeded their initial targets of $14 billion and $3.5 billion, respectively.
*Representative matters include work completed prior to joining Akin.
EducationJ.D., University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, 2021
B.A., Carnegie Mellon University, with honors, 2017
J.D., University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, 2021
B.A., Carnegie Mellon University, with honors, 2017
Bar AdmissionsCalifornia
California
- Lawyers of Color 2022 “Hot List”
- Panel Participant, Regulation of Algorithms, 26thAnnual Faculty Conference of The Federalist Society.
- Presenter, DOGEing Barriers? Legal Challenges to AI in Government, Regulatory Transparency Project Podcast.
- Regulation Killed the AI Star: Rethinking the Expansive Likeness Regulation Framework (forthcoming, Belmont Law Review, Fall 2026).
- Artificial Intelligence Regulation in the United States, ELGAR CONCISE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AI AND LAW.
- Disparate Impact and Ecosystem Services As Tools For Community Activism, 40 UCLA JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL LAW AND POLICY, NO. 1, 2022.
- Dawn of the Dead: Virtual Avatars & New York’s Right of Publicity, HARVARD JOURNAL OF SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT LAW ONLINE, 2021.
- Deepfakes, Online Platforms, and a Novel Proposal for Transparency, Collaboration, and Education, 27 RICHMOND JOURNAL OF LAW. & TECHNOLOGY, NO. 3, 2021.
