This interview has been published by Anshi Mudgal and The SuperLawyer Team
Let’s start with your remarkable, successful career of being an Advocate on Record and partner at Triumvir Law. Looking back, what was the initial motivation behind pursuing the career in a law and was there any specific driving factor that you chose this field?
So to start with, my parents, my family is a family of professionals and that is where the work ethic or the drive to be a professional. Both my parents are doctors. Having said that, I was always into multiple different domains. I was always multifaceted, having multiple interests. Was involved in quizzing, debating, in fact was involved in the equity markets, had an interest in the equity markets in very early years as well. And that is where somehow the journey towards law shaped in, because I understood law to be a profession wherein you’ll get exposure to all kinds of environments, all the kinds of businesses, all the kinds of different facets of the world where every case in the legal field is a new case. Every case is unique in its own way, and that is the advantage that the legal profession gives. It keeps things interesting, it keeps things fresh. That’s how my career shaped towards law in the first place.
Also, I was kind of a rebel as a kid, did not wanna get into medicine because of those reasons as well.
Thank you for openly sharing your decision to not pursue medicine despite your parents being doctors. You made it to Gujarat National Law University that shaped your legal and business acumen? Starting with a top law firm in Mumbai to now leading your own litigation practice in New Delhi, how was that journey? As a first-generation lawyer, what challenges did you face, and how did you overcome them?
So, let’s put the first generation thing first. Multiple times in the process there have been days when you think that maybe a profession in the medical field would’ve been better because obviously there would’ve been some legacy that I would’ve carried. But having said that, the work ethic that was instilled or the work ethic that was put into me and the way I’ve seen my parents go about their days right from 8 in the morning to maybe 11 in the night. I’ve seen them working and that’s where the idea of hard work that is required in your professional field came into picture, and that is probably what helped in getting into the GNLU, that is Gujarat National Law University as well.
Everything basically came in a flow, so I started off at LKS – Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan and it was through the college, got college placement, went to Bombay, did tax advisory for a year or so. Tax was considered to be the toughest field of law that existed while we were in college and even today in practice I see there is a niche that’s been created about tax. And a big advantage that my experience that LKS gave me was that I understood probably what people or what lawyers don’t even want to get into because it’s a very specific, very niche field. A criminal lawyer is still comfortable doing civil law. I’ll not say anything is easy or tough, but with due respect to everyone, there are multiple lawyers dealing in different domains that do not actually want to get into tax.
Working at LKS gave me that exposure and gave me that understanding that the toughest, probably the perceived toughest facet of law can also be understood, just by applying yourself to it. Something about GNLU, GNLU is one of those unique law schools which allows you to study multiple domains of law. So there is a BBA LLB which I pursued then there is a B.Com LLB that is going on. There is a BSc LLB as well. There is a BA LLB, normally law schools have BA LLB, BBA LLB so they have multiple facets. Additionally, there are various co-curricular activities, there are Interdisciplinary schools such as Center for Sports Law, Center for Public International Law. So there were a lot of opportunities that came my way thanks to these centers and thanks to these programs that the college provided. While pursuing all these courses, you always have the option to learn more, to understand more assets and not just understand the law in itself, but understand various domains as well.
That is where the institute helped me a lot, besides, GNLU is always very proactive in moot court competitions, in debates, in parliamentary debates in MUNs as well. So that is another facet which helped in developing that personality, the exposure was always there. No matter where I was sitting in a remote corner in the Western part of the country, the exposure was always there to learn more and gain more knowledge in the journey.
You have been representing clients both nationally and internationally in arbitrations, including obviously the cases that you have represented in Abu Dhabi, which was a SAP company in an international arbitration.
What were some significant challenges that you encountered during those cross- border arbitrations and what unique difficulties do you see while you are doing those cross-border arbitrations and the way you strategize to overcome them?
Cross-border arbitrations are a unique ballgame. When we understand a domestic arbitration or when we understand the way arbitration is practiced in India, mostly the arbitrators or mostly the tribunals are either retired judges or some significant authoritative figures who know the system that is applicable in a domestic arbitration very well. The system that is the Indian law very well. When you come to an international arbitration, the ballgame shifts completely. First and foremost, the arbitrators mostly, up to a certain extent, are mostly lawyers themselves.
More importantly, these arbitrators mostly are from neutral backgrounds and neutral jurisdiction. So they per se might themselves not know the procedures that are involved in the applicable procedural law or the substantive law. They might not be privy to the substantive law in the first place.
It becomes very important for the practitioner, for the council to specify, to take the tribunal along with them in the substantive law and in the procedural law because the arbitrator sitting might not correct in a domestic arbitration. An arbitrator might correct you if you’re going wrong in the procedure at least. An international arbitrator, the arbitrator themselves might be new or might be knowing the substantive legal part of it less, and therefore you need to take the arbitrator along with yourself. The second and more important facet is there is always a language or a communication gap that will exist. There is a specific way in which English is pronounced by us, which is Indian English. When you’re sitting in an international arbitration, the accent changes, the pronunciation changes and the understanding of the accent also changes. So it is very important to not just be clear in what you’re saying or what you’re thinking, but also to articulate your thoughts in a much better and a much simpler manner so that it’s conveyed properly to the opposite party, to the arbitrator, to everybody.
This becomes an important aspect there. It is very important to be a very good listener in an international arbitration as well, because you have to be on your toes to decide your strategy later on, and for that you need to understand what your opposite party is saying or what is falling from the tribunal as well. These are the three observations that go besides the legal parts of it, but coming to the legal parts.
The challenges always exist because when you’re doing an international arbitration, the domain entirely shifts. Now, the law that you might be dealing with, the substantive law that you might be dealing with is not the local law of your in-line that you practiced since whenever you started your legal education.
So what happens is that you need to be very aware, you need to be very thorough and very well researched about the laws that you’re dealing with. So for example, the arbitration that you were talking about, the local law was of Abu Dhabi or United Arab Emirates. Now, a lot of facets came from Muslim law. A lot of facets came from Islamic law, per se, Sharia law per se. And when we initially got on to it we were not very privy to it. It did not come naturally to us, so we also had to go through a lot of details. We had to also go through the law in many details. Had it been a common law country, I would’ve said it still comes naturally because following common law, you know, the flow, you know the logic behind things.
But when it comes to a country where the procedure, where the substantial law is entirely different from yours, comes, you need to be very thorough and very well researched in that aspect as well. So these are the few challenges that you face now.
You have an expertise which spans through commercial litigation, international arbitration, as well as white collar disputes, which are often considered very high risk, and obviously confidentiality becomes a very important corner store for white collar crime.
What kind of key factors do you focus on while you are dealing with these kinds of areas of law, which are not only very, very confidentiality centric, as well as privacy centric , because confidentiality is for the whole case, and privacy is for the parties. So how do you deal with all these?
What I basically focus on, whichever field it is, is to break it down to the simplest molecule possible, to the simplest form of a thing possible. And when you come to white collar and you try to break it down, as I see there are two elements involved.
There is one, a business or a company transaction that is happening and a company’s interest that is happening. And the other aspect is basically the criminal laws that are applicable to the same. So when we look at a white collar crime, it is a company doing a monetary transaction wherein the financial interests of the company are involved and maybe some element of criminal law to achieve those financial goals.
When you are defending a company, or the corporate or the financial transaction, it is simpler because the transaction may be good, may go in your favor, the transaction may go against you but what is at stake is only the monetary aspect of it, which while is important to the company’s interest. Does not paramount the personal interest of the directors or the stakeholders sitting in the company. When you deal with white collars, the parameter expands and the personal aspects become more important because there could be a lifting of corporate will, there are criminal laws involved, so there will always be a liability or a penal liability that can arise in the form of imprisonment, in the form of fines, penalties on the directors, on the shareholders, on key managing personnel as well.
What is important in the first place is to understand that most of these people, if there is an element or if there is an allegation of a crime that is alleged might not…, the boundaries of law are so thin and so bleak that they might not themselves know when they have actually transcended the boundary.
Something which might be very obvious or something which might be very simple for someone, that person might have transcended the boundary a bit, and it becomes important in the first place to explain in a very normal, in a very conversational manner, without losing the confidence of the client, that there might be an issue or where the issue first or foremost arises.
Obviously there will be transactions where there is a willful default and there is a willful transaction. But when there is not, it’s important to explain to the client where that particular transaction has happened. In other transactions, there might just be that there is an allegation, but there is actually no substance to the allegation and it becomes important to explain considering the Indian judicial sphere and considering the pendency in India that there will be light at the end of the tunnel. There will be justice at the end of the day. And these are procedural regulatory issues that will be handed in due course of time just by putting the best foot forward or the most transparent foot forward.
One more aspect that is important to be understood is.
Normally when a person thinks of crime, the person automatically becomes defensive. Even as individuals, when these clients are in front of you, it becomes very important to get the truth or the exact truth out of them. So you need to be very careful with what you ask. Sometimes they’ll not tell you the entire thing because either they want to hide something or they don’t consider it to be important themselves.
So it is important for you to ask the right questions, to get the right answers, and then formulate the strategy accordingly.
In addition to all these kinds of legal responsibilities, you also have developed business for yourself, administrative tasks that you have taken up, and you are managing your Delhi office as well.
How do you manage all of this and over the years, how has your role evolved in each of the segments of the organization? What kind of experiences are there in those challenges that you have overcome and the roles that you have kept on changing over time?
The challenge is an everyday thing. It’s still a challenge. It continues being a challenge, and I think it’ll continue being a challenge forever. And that’s the best part of it because every day when you deal with a challenge, you successfully come out of it. You feel you have achieved something which will help you sleep better that night . Having said that, I joined Triumvir Law back in 2021 when it was a smaller organization compared to what we have now, but we were gaining a reputation. The organization was gaining reputation in leaps and bounds back then as well. When I joined, my tasks were cut out very clearly for me, which was to start with making a base for the firm .
And to also handle the litigation part of it because Anubhav, Akash, my partners were themselves getting overloaded with the kind of work that was coming in that is exactly where Anubhab reached out and asked me to join in, being friends since almost 2015, it was a no-brainer to go ahead. Since I left my firm role in 2018, I had only worked as an advocate. It was more about the legal thing, more about the matters, more about the cases rather than about a firm, rather than about running an organization or rather than about thinking of the business aspect of it. So the first challenge that came into picture and the challenge that keeps on probably repeating every day when I deal with it is to consider it to also be a business, to consider it to also be a profession that you are there to grow, that you’re there to make money, and not just to sit there as an advocate dealing with the legal aspects of it. That’s a dilemma that will always be there because unfortunately in India, what the problem is that legal fees are always considered to be a cost or a liability. So you have to make the client also understand how you become useful to the client in the longer run, and that is the transition that you achieve from an advocate to say a contributing member in a firm and a partner in a firm to bridge that challenge.
A lot of my time being in courts, being litigating a lot of my time, always went into the court work because that is how court life is. So starting the day at say 10.15, 10 AM or 10.30 in the morning from court, you never know. Your matter might reach in two minutes, your matter might reach in four, six hours at 4:00 PM as well, and a lot of the time is wasted.
So you have to be very careful how you spend time with increased responsibilities, with the responsibility of building an office, the responsibility of building a base, growing the base in Delhi. Time management has become a key issue. Time management becomes the biggest issue right now, and it’s very important, the way I look at, it’s very important to establish systems for each and everything in place so that almost every exercise is automated to the best possible manner.
Secondly, it becomes very important to have the right personnel to work with you and develop a team to work with you so that 80% or 60% of your responsibility in one facet is covered by the team. And then obviously you are there to oversee, you are there to manage whatever is required. There will be clients who will always require you to be present on board, but it is important to make the client also understand that the team is good enough or maybe better than yourself to handle the cases themselves as well.
But you’ll be there whenever you need to be there. Similarly in the administrative part, also in the business development part, it’s important to make the client understand that the primary point of contact will be handy enough and will be a good substitute for me.
When you have those systems in place, it becomes easier with passage of time and that is what we have seen in bigger firms as well.
So you have transitioned from so many roles and kept on learning and enjoying every bit of it. While doing so you have also advised on online gaming platforms, obviously, on legal matters and other forms such as digital wallet regulations and RBI licensing.
Given the kind of nature of the sector and the new challenges that it faces every day, particularly around regulatory compliances, how have you set your agenda of breaking it down again, in your own words to singular molecules and finding those solutions for your clients who are actually involved in these kinds of gaming platforms?
So sports law or say gaming law is a niche field in law itself, which is still up and coming. Having said that, it’s not something like, say, a tax law, which has entirely a different kind of practice. A sports field or a gaming law field is an interplay of multiple different facets of traditional laws.
Basically, there will be some element of the company’s law involved there. There will be some corporate advisory involved there. There will be some element of litigation that will be involved there, and there will obviously be regulatory compliances and tax compliances, so on and so forth that are inward.
For these kinds of transactions when we were handling, the most important part where in the legal bit, the litigation mind came into play was the discourses that the Supreme Court had over a game of chance or a game of skill. So this law had been evolving and is still probably evolving to certain extent, wherein what is considered a game of chance and what is a game of skill, what element of a game of chance will be allowed, what element and to what extent the game of skill will be allowed to say be legalized in a country or be considered legal.
And there will always be games wherein there will be a mixture of both game of chance and game of skill and the important question to be answered in all of these for all of our clients would’ve been that a particular game that they are proposing mostly and specifically in the online domain.
Whether that game is a pure game of chance, then obviously the law doesn’t allow it. You have to remove it, you have to either find a way around it or you have to structure it in a manner that there is a level of skill involved. Secondly, if there is a mixture or an interplay of game of chance and a game of skill, then whether that interplay can be put in a manner to state that it is more of a game of skill, and that is why it can be allowed in the country. Having said that, now where the complexity or where the problem becomes multifold is that sports laws or gaming per se, comes into the state list. Now there is a national list, there is a union list, and there is a state list and there are concurrent list.
So these facets fall under the state list. And every state has different kind of legislations on it. There are states who have legalized or who have allowed certain games. there are states which completely banned even game of challenge and game of skills as well.
Now when you are dealing with an online platform, the other thing that becomes important is where do these games actually happen? Or which are the platforms that you go on? So even today, if you see an Android Playstore, you’ll not find a game of skill also on an online platform, a game like, I don’t want name, but let’s take an example of a Dream 11 per se
or My 11 circle, which is currently the IPL is going on My 11 circle is the sponsor for IPL, Dream 11 has been a sponsor for the Indian team, so definitely the operations that they’re involved in are very much legal, considered to be legal in India. However, still Android Playstore does not have the kind of apps there because there are Android policies or regulatory policies which do not allow Android to have those games on their app store. So that is where the lawyer’s role comes into picture, or our role came into picture to understand what are the regulations? Why are the regulations in a manner, if possible, to make the platforms also understand whether these can be allowed or not, or to find a way around them as well.
And an interesting element that exists in this field is that the tax aspect of this field is still under question. There was a giant casino company in India that has been called by the tax authorities and has been asked to pay taxes on the entire sum that a person gets as winnings and not just the winning aspect itself.
And if you actually calculate the tax on the entire sum then probably the platform will be left or the company will be left with nothing to show in their books and they might even go bankrupt.
So this is an interesting evolving element. We’ll have to see where the Supreme Court takes it or where the laws in India take it, probably, there could be some form of government interference there as well, or the government stepping in to allow certain things. These are the evolving aspects of it, but that is where sports law or gaming law is there.
In India’s evolving legal landscape like with cryptocurrencies being taxed despite not being legal tender, navigating grey areas is key. With your background in both BBA and law, has this unique combination shaped your litigation practice and business development approach? Do you feel that a business degree like a BBA or MBA offers an edge in understanding the commercial aspects of running a legal chamber?
Has it helped you in strategizing and scaling your practice over the years? And overall, how has this blend of business and law influenced the way you approach the profession today?
Okay, I’ll start from a personal example, and I know a lot of my friends in the legal fraternity who have been doing that, and probably this will also be a suggestion for all the upcoming lawyers , especially once they go independent.
When you start and when you have joined a firm and somebody else is paying you a retainer or a compensation.
And there is a fixed element to it, it becomes easier for you because all you need to do is tell your one savings bank account details to the person that salary or compensation will be transferred there. However, once you go independent or when you’re starting a firm, all of these things, when you’re doing, now, it becomes important for you to understand how a business runs and understand what is the importance of a current account, what is the importance of different business accounts, to separate, as they say, your personal from your professional. When you’re running the practice at a smaller scale, what happens is these lines get blurred a lot. Just like your time, your time also gets blurred a lot. You’re working at your will, so you’re working probably through 24 hours. Anytime, there is no personal time, there is no professional time demarcated.
But over time, it becomes important for you to demarcate it and it’s better or the best for individuals to understand it in the beginning, get those compliances sorted in the beginning itself where a BBA comes helpful to that is BBA is basically Bachelor of Business Administration.
You understand business organizations, business setups, very importantly and very clearly in the first place. When you have a clear cut idea, theoretical idea also what a business organization is and how different business systems work, it becomes easier for you to understand what will work for yourself or what idea can be theoretically good for you, and try and implement that practically as well.
It becomes further more important for you to help yourself understand the client’s requirements or how the client’s organization works as well. When you have that basic idea of how businesses work. Every business might work in a different way. Every corporate client might work in a different way, but you understand where the eventual goal lies, how they distinguish their profits, how a balance sheet is made. From making a balance sheet to arriving at profits and losses to understand where the assets go, where the liabilities go, once you have sorted that out for yourself, it becomes easier for you as a litigator, as well as a corporate advisor to basically get the hang of it.
Secondly, it plays even a bigger role when you’re in a corporate advisory sector, so supposedly we are advising on a share purchase transaction or an acquisition. Certain elements of the company’s law are very intricately connected with the finance aspects, the business administration aspect.
And once you have that basic background, it becomes easier for you to explain to your clients also what different forms of shares are, what are hybrid securities, all of those. And it becomes easier for you also to implement or structurize those transactions for your clients. So that is where the business BBA knowledge comes into picture and helps you with that.
Keeping all this in mind, you were talking about when you start your own firm or when you work individually, you tend to work even for 24 hours. I would request you to talk a little bit more about the kind of mental health impact that it gives when you are under pressure while developing your litigation practice or developing your own firm. How have you taken care of that particular aspect, given the fact that your parents are doctors?
And what is your advice to the new entrants who are so desperate in making it within overnight or something like that, that we just have to make our names bigger?
Just to clarify, when I said 24 hours, I didn’t mean you’re working 24 hours. What I meant was your professional and your personal timings are blurred. Say a person in a job will actually come home, spend time with family, or do something personal, might go to the gym. They have their set patterns as an individual, especially freshly independent, you’ll not have those patterns.
Or when you’re working to grow an organization at that point of time, you might blur those lines and those patterns. That is why you’ll be working in different domains and that’s what we have done and that’s what we keep doing at Triumvir Law as well. When a case needs us, when a transaction needs us to work overnight, we will still be working overnight.
However, the attempt will always be, the aim will always be to reduce that kind of work and to form such systems that will help you in the longer run. As a freshly graduate person, as a person who has started an organization or as a person who has just gone independent, it’s easier to do that in the first place and those blurred lines help you in probably maximizing the results for yourself and to an extent satisfying the clients there. However, these will never be sustainable in the longer run. You’ll have added responsibilities. At the initial phase, your number of clients are also restricted. You can give that amount of time to a client where you can give that attention. Once you have gone a bit ahead in your journey, the number of clients will increase and automatically, if you start being available all the time, it’ll become a problem for everybody. Now, how you tackle it in the first place, you make good systems. I started earlier as well. It’s very important to form those systems so that it becomes easier for you in the longer run.
Once you go ahead, you get, as I said earlier, you get a good team with yourself who can take away the day-to-day load from your shoulder and your inputs are required only when something new crops up in the middle. So that is where in the longer run, preparing the fresher talent in a manner that they can also independently work. They can apply themselves independently, but the work in the system becomes important.
And most important advice to everybody will be to choose the people that you work with very properly and very wisely. I am blessed to have the kind of people that I work with, the kind of partners, the kind of team that I work with. They ensure that whenever that break is required, somebody’s there to follow up, somebody there to fill in your shoes so that you can take the burnout break. You can always enjoy that rejuvenation and be back at work while somebody’s handling the work as well. That’s the advice. That’s how I saw it in my family. That’s what I see in my partners. That’s what I see around me.
All of us have some kind of interests, which are beyond the legal sphere. Always work on your interests. You might say a specific sport, you might not be good at it. You might be very good at it, but play that sport. I heard an influencer say this, and I was very impressed by this dialogue.
It was actually not an influencer. I don’t remember who but yeah, in a podcast I heard this, especially in your twenties and thirties, go to that concert you wanted to go to.
Attend that cricket match that you want to see, attend that stand-up comedy show that you want to do, whatever is your interest. Follow that as well along with your work because eventually in life you will have to compromise on that as well. So when you have that kind of time, take time out from your professional life that will help you make your professional life better in the longer.
And although I’m sure after this answer, my partner will be complaining to me that you do nothing of that, but this is what it is.
Keeping that in mind, I would request you to suggest or rather talk a little bit about how you have transitioned along with the technology because obviously without technology today we would not be having this conversation.
How do you see the technology has helped you have a better representation, have better way of learning and the kind of disruptive tech that is happening today, especially AI, IOT, blockchain? How have you equipped yourself with the new understanding of this and where do you see that our legal field is moving towards, along with these kinds of technologies that are infiltrating our law fraternity as well?
Just a disclaimer, I am very bad with modern technology. When I say very bad, I’m trying every day to adapt to more things, but not at the pace where the generations that are coming ahead will be. Having said that, we are trying to do whatever we can to reduce our burden or to reduce our workloads, and that is probably the whole aim of implementing technologies in your daily life or in your professional life. So how we normally do it or how we are trying to do it, to start with was a big transition from those hefty files to basically an iPad and a cloud account where, all your files, all your devices are scanned and stored, so you don’t need to carry those empty files to courts.
And in the recent past, we have seen the courts also transcend towards promoting. And I have personally seen in court, in the Supreme court before the former chief justice actually asking senior designated lawyers also to follow a practice of reading the briefs on iPad and not on paper files so they can also transcend towards the newer technologies.
That’s the basic beginning and we are still trying to harness and maximize that sphere. So that is the first place saving a lot of paper. Obviously with our workload, we are only supposed to carry one iPad now and not the entire set of files, so that is where it helps in the first place.
Secondly, now thanks to the digitization of all the records. And neutral citations present, like the entire databases shifting to technology based data share bases. We are not required to maintain those libraries that were earlier a compulsion. Now they have over time become a luxury of sorts.
So it is more of an interest or a hobby kind of a thing to maintain that library. Having said that, thanks to the tools that are available and thanks to technology. It’s become much easier for us to operate on devices rather than those volumes or those libraries.
Just to add what you are saying, we have incorporated an AI platform with us. We are trying to automate the contracts that we do, to basically reduce the amount of time that we spend on it and to get the regularities sorted. That is how AI is transforming for us as well. The regular stuff is always there where we use whatever AI tools are available for say emails or drafting basic things, but in the longer run we are also looking to incorporate AI outputs into our deliverables as well.
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