Padma Lakshmi’s baby daddy Adam Dell has hired legal eagle Bill Zabel to help him negotiate a custody arrangement with the Top Chef host.

Padma and Adam enjoyed an on-again/off-again romance that ended just before Padma became pregnant in 2009. Despite previously working out an arrangement for shared custody with Lakshmi, the brother of billionaire crappy computer manufacturer Michael Dell wants to win a larger role in the life of one-month-old daughter Krishna. Zabel has repped everyone from George Soros, Jane (Mrs. Jack) Welch, Kerry Kennedy-Cuomo, and Nancy Friday to Howard Stern.

“If Dell has changed his mind, that’s his problem. They [Lakshmi and Dell] already have an agreement,” says a friend of Padma’s.