You’ve graduated with a Bachelor in Engineering and then went on to pursue Law from the University of Delhi. What motivated you to switch your stream and pursue law?
It was demotivation that actually motivated me to do law. I was tired of the monotonous routine offered by my previous job and to break that I enrolled in an evening college offered by Delhi University at that time and thereby I entered into law and for some time I was pursuing Job as well as law side by side. But then I quit my job and entered into law and restarted my career as an Intern. Believe me, it is the most difficult task to abandon a good career and restart as an intern in a totally unrelated field and that was the actual motivation to take the law very seriously. Motivation is overrated as I was not that motivated but I had no choice other than to pursue law seriously and improve. It is a consistent effort to become better which actually worked.
You have been actively taking up Pro-Bono cases and have done a lot of free service in your career trajectory? How important is it for Law Students and professionals to take up Pro-Bono cases and help the needy?
At the initial stage, maybe for 2-3 years, you should not think about the fee as the experience you will gain will work wonders in years to come. That will compensate for free or pro bono work. I recommend enrolling with legal service authority in the initial years and helping the society and when you become established in your field then also devote some time to Pro Bono activities.
Not all students manage to get into good law colleges let alone NLUs. How did you, as an engineering student, become fortunate?
It is not about college or fortune. It is about how desperate are you? How needy are you? How much hunger do you have? When something is not working, we blame our college, the circumstances and our background. Instead of improving ourselves, putting hours in grooming our skills, we blame them. Your college or background has nothing to do with it. It is your hunger to achieve more.
Can you walk us through your day in life? What is the life of a Founder of a reputed law firm and a renowned lawyer?
I have to reach 10 AM to court if it is an argument, then have to spend a few hours preparing that too in the morning, so you can say, I have to start at 6 AM or 7 AM in the morning.
Between 10 AM to 4 PM I have to be in court and come to the office at 4 PM or 5 PM then have to start preparing for conferences scheduled for that day. Drafting work and preparation work for the upcoming day is delegated to associates who briefs me by EOD.
At 7 PM when I finish with conferences, I get briefs from associates and plan for the next day.
At 8 PM-9 PM, you-tubing and blogging are scheduled.
On weekends, I focus mainly on Judgement reading and conferences.
How has social media impacted your career?
As a first-generation lawyer, I started blogging in 2014, started youtube 2018 and LinkedIn in 2021 so the impact is huge as 90% of clients come through these platforms.
It is now close to a decade that you have been a Practising Advocate at the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India and also are the Founder of LexSpeak Legal. What kept you motivated all the way long?
Again, I would say motivation is overrated. Someday you will feel motivated and someday you may not. It is consistent efforts and working on different cases, handling challenges that have worked.
Can you share with us what it is like to build a clientele from scratch? What tips would you like to share with the aspiring lawyers?
I was blogging for almost 7 years so it was my source but there are many sources for beginners like offering free legal advice on various online/offline platforms, joining legal aid, acting as proxy counsel for various seniors which in future may refer your matters. Socializing/Networking. Taking lead in legally solving social issues.
What key tips do you suggest to the lawyers representing in the Courts?
Well, I am still learning things so I am not at that level to give advice or tips. But I would like to emphasize that apart from legal skills lawyers should develop allied skills like marketing, accounting, finance, blogging, business management.
How smooth is it to be an in-house counsel? Or is it the other way round?
In my view, neither the in-house counsel role nor the law firm role is completely devoid of challenges and hurdles. Having been a part of both legal worlds I can safely state that each role comes with its own set of challenges and privileges.
However, it is extremely incorrect to assume that in-house counsels are just “glorified paper-pushers”. There is a lot of responsibility that comes attached to an in-house role. When you hire an external law firm, its role and liability are limited to the ‘scope of work’ and ‘exclusion’ clauses elucidated in its engagement letter. My employment contract as an in-house counsel is devoid of any such sections. The legal liability of the organisation/transaction rests on your shoulders; even simple human errors can sometimes cause you sleepless nights due to the potential repercussions they may have. Even if you hire an external counsel, they have limitations either on bandwidth or the complete know-how regarding the commercial dynamics of the deal. There are many matters which are done/resolved without any external help.
So many assumptions have been made over the years regarding my move to an in-house role; that I left the law firm life “to retire”. With quality legal work coming my way at Eight Roads, I feel anything but retired. I can say that the work of an in-house counsel is exciting as well as challenging. Unfortunately, in-house roles are not always given due recognition or respect.
People may have come across some in-house lawyers who may take their role lightly but people equally come across some law-firm counsels who may shirk responsibility. I believe that the generalization of any work role — legal or otherwise, is unfair; it’s honestly up to each individual on how they want to make the best use of the opportunity they have been presented with. I truly hope I am!
You worked in the most renowned law firms like Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas & Khaitan & Co for about 5 years and now working as a Senior Legal Counsel with Eight Roads Ventures (an international VC/PE firm). What major changes have you found in the working approach between the three?
It was an absolute honour to start my career with the likes of Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas and Khaitan. Both the firms are filled with some of the most reputed lawyers, and I had the chance to train under some of the very best.
As a junior, I had the opportunity to work on some complex, high-stake transactions; and even if I wasn’t lead counsel, I got to do the groundwork, research on obscure legal points, and observe and learn from all parties involved.
As the years progressed, so did my responsibilities, direct exposure to clients, and the learning curve was steep. However, as a part of a law firm, my daily work interactions were primarily with other lawyers. While it is the best way to garner more legal knowledge and stay abreast with the constant change in-laws, it also limited my views on how the corporate world truly applied our legal advice to their business.
Within the Eight Roads ecosystem, I am interacting with persons from different spheres globally — investment, finance, HR, communications, founders, company CFOs and so forth daily.
Listening to their various conversations has given me a better understanding of how businesses operate and how best to curate my legal advice. As an in-house counsel, you don’t work “for” the client but “with” the client. You are part of the same team and are equally responsible alongside the investment members for the success or failure of any investment/project. Knowing the law is important but it is meaningless if not practically applied in any given situation. More often than not, I am aware of the commercial nuances of each deal and this helps me negotiate the key legal points, take commercial calls, and reach a mid-way understanding on other issues. There is a more holistic approach to my legal review which goes beyond just the transaction at hand. While the work of an external counsel ends once we close a deal, my work continues well beyond. I must help maintain ongoing collaborations.
Now we know that you work as a Senior Legal Counsel with Eight Roads Ventures, could you highlight your role in the firm?
The role at Eight Roads is a multi-faceted one. I deal with a range of legal issues right from investment agreements, exit documents, tax matters, confidentiality concerns, debt financing, vendor documents, legal notices, insurance, corporate governance to employment contracts.
As part of the Eight Roads’ Ventures India team (ERVI), I help strategize, negotiate and close investments in the early/growth stages of companies operating in fields of healthcare, technology, consumer, and financial services.
I also play an important role in negotiating and implementing fund exits. The legal work at Eight Roads is not merely transactional but also relates to internal fund compliances and portfolio management. Given that Eight Roads is a part of a global platform, my work goes beyond Indian law issues. I regularly encounter matters concerning international jurisdictions and it is very interesting to compare how people commercially and legally view and assess risks associated with VC/PE deals in different jurisdictions.
ERVI also endorses CSR activities and I am honoured to have been given a chance to spearhead these.
A very important aspect of my role is balancing commercial considerations and relationships with founders/partner companies while ensuring I negotiate in the best legal interests of Eight Roads. Many times, I am also required to chase law firms (sometimes even my ex-peers). There may be some commercial implications, which are highly confidential if a deal does not close within certain timelines.
I often joke with my colleagues that the founders and law firms must equally dislike me! Unfortunately, that is the nature of my job and I can only hope that the industry can know me beyond my in-house counsel role — I am not that bad a person (at least that is my view!). I strive to the best of my ability to be practical under the given circumstances and help cultivate lasting partnerships.
Not many young female lawyers reach the height you achieved, what was the story behind your success? Were you the privileged child or had to dig in deep to quench the thirst?
I was extremely privileged to have loving parents who were supportive of my education and career decisions. Having said that, I am a first-generation practising lawyer in my family and had to find my own feet in the legal profession.
I have no godfather in the legal industry. Before joining the three-year law course in Government Law College, Mumbai (GLC), I had completed my graduation in Mass Media from Jai Hind College. It was an altogether different field.
While many of my media classmates had already secured jobs and earned their first salaries, I was studying hard, with no promise of a job and limited financial means.
During my law school days, it was difficult to secure internships with law firms if you weren’t from an N-law school or had influence with a law firm partner. Having been rejected by several internship programs, I remember wanting to give up on my legal profession dreams. I nevertheless studied hard and made the most of the few internship opportunities I did manage to secure.
My real break came on 22 September 2011 (yes, the date is imprinted in my mind) when I secured a job with the Mumbai office of the then Amarchand Mangaldas through the GLC campus placement program. After all the rejections I had faced till then, I was absolutely over the moon to have been selected by one of the best names in the industry based purely on merit. My years of hard work and my family’s faith in me had finally paid off. I couldn’t wait to treat my family to a lavish dinner with my first salary (it was Konkan Café at the President Hotel — my mother’s favourite). The rest, as they say, is history.
In India, working females still have a responsibility to maintain their household. You are on the next level of achievement, how do you balance your professional and personal life?
A lot is written about working mothers and their struggles (rightfully so!). However, there is an unspoken challenge being faced by many working women in India — balancing professional lives while also being the caregiver of aged parents. With age come many illnesses, and unfortunately, India’s professional caregiver services are very expensive and unreliable. Further, not every Indian woman is a part of a large joint family with several helping hands at home. After everything our parents do for us, we would be unjust in abandoning them in their hours of need. Invariably, the caregiving duties fall on the women of the house.
My mother was extremely ill and constantly in and out of hospitals for about a decade which spanned through my law school and the formative years of my career. At that time, we were not working from home, but I feigned sickness and worked from home, hospital, and everywhere else.
I will not lie that it was a struggle to balance my stressful work hours, caregiving responsibilities, and just finding time to unwind; I came close to having a nervous breakdown. However, with the support of my immediate family members, I dragged myself through the hard times and found normalcy in mundane tasks.
Today work from home has helped me find a better balance between my professional and personal life.
During my mother’s caregiver journey, I rarely asked for help and kept my situation under the wraps at the office to continue with the image of normalcy. I have now learned that it is important to be open about any difficulties you are personally facing and not fear being judged or professionally reprimanded — especially women. Even if people return to their office full time, they should be more than encouraged to seek any assistance if needed. After all, each office colleague also has her/his own family and we can make it a safe working space by supporting each other.
Apart from being suit up, what interests you in your leisure time?
The two things I love the most and help with my stress management — spending time with animals and exercising.
For several years, I have fostered and helped with the adoption of stray animals. In the coronavirus-induced lockdown, stray animals in my locality (and all over India) were cut off from their daily food source and were going hungry. With work from home, I was able to feed and take care of the strays in my area every day. This has now become a part of my routine and I feel incomplete without greeting my furry friends. Lately, I have also been researching animal protection laws (or lack thereof) in India. All life forms need to be equally respected and protected by law. My work and views about speciesism, animal rights, and preserving the natural environment would make for a whole separate interview!
Exercise and the endorphins released as a result have helped me emotionally cope with some of the toughest phases in my life. I would especially recommend it to lawyers; our work can be extremely overwhelming. Physical fitness does not necessarily mean an hour of HIIT session or pumping heavyweights at the gym; it may be a brisk walk for 30 minutes around your colony. If you do not exercise, please do not wait for the New Year or a Monday! Please start slowly and you will notice positive differences — physical and mental.
We found that you are an active social worker. Would you like to mention your beliefs about the same?
Many years ago, I had read a quote by American actor Lily Tomlin which stuck with me — “I always wondered why somebody doesn’t do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody.” It dawned upon me that I had the power to help those in need myself and did not have to wait for NGOs to do the work; NGOs are already inundated with the work pressure.
A small act of compassion can go a long way in improving someone’s life. The act can be as simple as buying Diwali lights and giveaways every year from NGOs instead of an established brand.
As lawyers, we do hold a certain position of power in society and legal aid is one of the most useful services we can offer to non-profits. I have had the privilege of helping a few with their legal affairs; the work is challenging and only improves my legal acumen. There are several causes out there, be it children’s education, women empowerment, poverty, terminal illnesses, environment, and so forth. If each of us picked one cause that we felt passionate about and donated our money and time towards it, our future generations will experience a kinder world.
The covid-19 pandemic was tough for all of us and we can still find its traces now and then. Do you want to suggest anything specific to the readers concerning the same?
Covid-19 has been surreal and its effects devastating globally. Many people have lost livelihoods and many more loved ones. In this light, the pandemic has brought about discussions on an extremely pertinent and unspoken topic in India — grief. The Oxford Learners Dictionary defines grief as “a very sad feeling, especially when somebody dies.” I never felt the need to research the meaning of grief until my mother passed away pre-pandemic pursuant to her illness. To me grief is undefinable.
Fully being aware of my mother’s oncoming death and having mentally prepared for the same, grief took me by surprise after a month of her passing and punched me hard in my gut. I was on my way to the airport for a work trip abroad when it hit me that I will never again receive the hundred “annoying” calls/messages from my mother asking me if I had gone through security, landed safely, had eaten well, and have enough jackets to brace the cold. It was the most damning feeling in the world.
Since then grief continues to hit me in waves, even at some of the most inappropriate occasions with varying intensities. The reason I was so surprised at feeling grief is that none of my close friends or relatives who had lost loved ones ever warned me or confided in me how hard it is to lose someone. Every single person experiences their own, highly curated version of grief, and each version is hard.
While the circumstances are extremely unfortunate, it has been encouraging to see more people come forward and speak about their encounters with grief. Reading other people’s experiences with grief had helped me feel less alone, and I hope to spread more awareness on this issue. In India, Bhavana Issar’s organisation, Caregiver Saathi has created a safe space for family caregivers to exchange stories on caregiving and grief, and I am extremely happy to be associated with it. Mental well-being is necessary to be able to perform well at your job. There is no shame in asking for help. If anything, you will be doing your job and yourself a disservice if you don’t.
Where can we see you in the next 10 years? Are you planning for something big or staying low at the moment?
Hopefully still be alive, healthy and happy — a decade is a long time away! Experience over the years has taught me to take one day at a time. Too many of my plans have been foiled due to unseen circumstances. Then there were plans I never made, and still, life fell into place. I do hope to continue making a positive difference — whether in the lives of animals or human beings (several or even one).
Any career tips to the young minds in the investment sector?
Foremost, I would like to give a general but a very important tip to every young professional out there —please do not compare your career trajectory to others and ever feel less worthy. Yes, it is important to draw inspiration from success stories, but success again is a relative term. Each of us comes from varying backgrounds, societies, support systems (or lack thereof) and we can only try our best.
For young lawyers looking to start/move in-house and particularly enter the investment sector — it is a very exciting space to be in and there is ample opportunity to do good challenging legal work.
Even the pandemic could not dampen the ever-buzzing VC/PE activity in India. India is filled with talented founders and ambitious teams, and it gives great joy to be a small part of this thriving ecosystem. However, move in-house for the right reasons — there is also hard work involved and timelines to meet. Instead of verbose paragraphs, please learn to put legal advice in simpler words. Even I am learning to better my skills every day; learning is a continuous process without an expiration date. Enter the field with an open mind. As stated earlier, in-house is less about interacting with other lawyers and more with persons from different career backgrounds. It is a great opportunity to learn different topics from them while sharing your legal expertise. In the end, find joy in the work you do, and the rest will follow (and if it doesn’t, do not be disheartened, your time will come!).
You have various roles and achievements credited to your name, from working with Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan, Aarna Law, King & Partridge, to being an In-house Counsel at HSBC. Apart from what makes headlines, what would you like our readers to know about you?
I believe my journey so far is filled with highs and lows, acceptances and rejections and good and bad days, but every single event has definitely contributed to it. Apart from being a passionate footballer and football fan and a topper in law college, my legal journey includes various shifts from a Tier 1 law firm to a boutique law firm, from senior designations within the organization, to being the youngest legal head of a Company, to starting off from scratch, from tax laws to corporate and commercial laws and from a fintech startup to a Global Bank. I was also blessed with the opportunity to work with two of the greatest legal minds in the industry, my forever mentors and well-wishers, Mr. KP Kumar (Senior Counsel) and Mr. G Shivadas (Senior Counsel).
I think it’s important for people in the field to know that one’s achievements/experience should never be defined by designations or places of work, rather by the things they have learned along the way (both about law and life), the people they have met and learnt from, the mentors they can look up to and the impact they have had on the people they have worked with.
Having studied law at MS Ramaiah Law College, you established a keen interest in Corporate Law., what drew you towards making a career in law?
I am a first-generation lawyer coming from a very traditional Indian family who believed (at the time) that the only way to make a career and name for yourself was to take up engineering. In fear of disappointing my family, I pursued science in 11th and 12th and even did a year of B.sc post that. It was during this year that I realized that I wanted to be part of a profession where I would be making a difference each day and would stand out from the crowd. At this point, I met a few lawyers who gave me a lot of insight into how the industry functions and from the get-go, it had my attention. It is one of the hardest decisions to leave a course by choice and pursue something completely new and different. There is no way to be completely sure, but you have to believe and listen to that inner voice and follow your instinct. When I took this step, I knew that I had to outperform myself to prove that I made the right decision, and it introduced me to a whole new side of myself. I worked harder than ever before and topped my course. But the best part? I enjoyed every minute of it and met some great friends along the way.
You pursued an LLM in Corporate & Competition Law from Durham University. Could you please tell our readers how the international exposure has helped you gain perspective to improve your skills in the legal field?
International experience is something I would always recommend. Apart from the course structure itself, it is the style of teaching and method of examinations which is something I had never experienced before. It gives you a more holistic view of the subject and helps you think outside the box. It is not just limited to topics which you may study from a textbook and also vastly improves your research skills. This really helped me during my work as I started to think outside the normal course of the law and started to question judgements, articles and the applicability of certain laws itself. Also, my method of research changed vastly, and it was no longer limited to just textbooks, bare acts and case laws, but moved to commentaries, articles on the subject etc., to understand the history and different opinions on the point before I could form my own.
What are the most important things that students pursuing their LLM abroad should keep in mind?
To start off, I would say that it is always better to work for a year or two before pursuing an LLM. This not only gives you work experience but changes the experience of your LLM completely. Your outlook on the subject increase, and you are also able to apply what you have learnt from your previous work experience to excel in your LLM. This also helps while applying for a job abroad, as prior work experience in the field is always an added advantage.
I believe that the overall experience of studying abroad is sometimes lost among students due to the pressure of having to find a job abroad as soon as possible. This makes them miss the little joys and experiences of day-to-day life, which goes a long way in shaping perspective, people skills and attitude – critical for a lawyer! Therefore, my second advice to students would be to make the most of each day. Enjoy the experience, take part in as many extracurricular activities, meet and speak to as many foreign students as possible and make the most of your time abroad.
You started your legal career with Lakshmikumaran and Sridharan (L&S) as an Associate immediately after law school. How has that experience shaped you and contributed to your interest in Corporate & Commercial Laws?
This is actually a very interesting question as L&S had a huge role to play in many career decisions I took. I started my career as an Indirect Tax litigator, working under the smartest Indirect Tax lawyers in the Country. I adapted quickly to the pressure of being in a Tier 1 law firm and started to enjoy the overall experience of finally applying to practice what I had learnt for 5 years in law school. Everything was a new experience. From your first case and client to your first mistake, your first victory in the legal profession, your many defeats which teach you so much, watching your seniors argue and trying to replicate their mannerisms while you argued etc. was such a great and cherishing experience, and when I look back on it now, it paved such an important path to the professional I am today.
At the same time, I wanted to gain experience in different laws and sectors. Since I started off with Tax, I wanted to explore other Corporate and financial laws so as to expand my legal knowledge and horizon. This led me to pursue an LLM in Corporate and Competition Law in the United Kingdom. Upon completion of my LLM, I returned to L&S for a short period before eventually moving out to gain more experience in Corporate and Commercial laws.
You recently joined HSBC as a Counsel providing Global Legal Services to the clients. Could you explain what kind of work an In-house Counsel entail?
Initially, it was a huge change for me, moving from litigation and advisory role in a law firm to an in-house legal team of a Company. The structure of an in-house role is designed in such a way that your clients are the other teams within the same organization, and there are a lot more processes to follow. You need to provide efficient and timely support to your internal stakeholders to ensure the smooth running of the business. It also involves a lot of negotiation and consultation with other in-house Counsels from different Corporates, along with awareness and knowledge of all laws and the constant changes to them.
Currently, at HSBC, I draft and negotiate derivative contracts with our Clients across the world. This was a completely new sector for me and the opportunity to learn something which I had never done in the past. This is what excited me the most, as I always wanted to learn more than just one kind of law. Working in a Global Bank comes with its own excitement and challenges. You get to learn a lot about the Global financial market and the laws regulating the same. It requires a lot of hard work, uneven hours, and it requires you to think on your feet. Everyday is a challenge and an opportunity to learn something new from immensely talented lawyers all over the world. It broadens your entire legal horizon as it gives you Global exposure and gets you used to a tried and tested process.
Your practice areas include Fintech Law, Regulations governing NBFC’s, Corporate and Commercial advisory and litigation, Contract Management, Civil and Commercial Litigation, Dispute Resolution, Arbitration, Consumer Disputes, Corporate and Tax litigation and advisory. Which area, according to you, interests you the most and why?
Having started off with Tax law and having learnt Tax from 2 of the most prominent Senior Counsels in the field i.e Mr. KP Kumar and Mr. Shivadas, I believe that I will always have a soft corner for Tax. Arguably, Tax law is one of the toughest laws in the Country and learning to interpret Tax law always gives you the advantage while interpreting or understanding any other law.
Having said that, I absolutely enjoy what I am doing today, and every law I have practiced in the past has given me a different insight into the profession. Although I do advocate specialization in the field of one’s choice, I do believe that one should get their feet wet in a few areas of law before deciding what they want to excel in.
The pandemic has completely changed the ways industries operate. Will the face of the legal sector undergo a drastic change, keeping in view the challenges entailed by the pandemic?
When it comes to litigation, I believe that physical hearings will always be more prominent than virtual hearings, and I trust that virtual hearings may never fully replace physical hearings. Although virtual hearings did have a positive side as much as one could attend hearings in different cities, from their home or office, I do believe that physical hearings can never and will never be replaced. Therefore, other than E filing of documents, I don’t think there will be a drastic change in the field of litigation.
With non-litigation roles, however, I do think that there will be a drastic change as far as work from home is concerned. I believe more and more companies and firms are switching to a hybrid work from home model, which I believe to be very successful.
Being extremely busy working in a corporate setup, how do you take care of your mental health and strive towards a good work-life balance?
Mental (and physical) health is a growing concern all over the world, and rightly so. I try to take care of my mental and physical health by keeping fit, spending time, and travelling with family and friends.
I always was and still am very passionate about sports, especially football and badminton, and I make sure that I have time to play them both at least once a week. In fact, I still enjoy playing competitive football and recently also represented the Advocates Associate Bangalore in the inter bar association tournament.
I think it is more and more important for organizations to understand the importance of the mental and physical health of their employees and take active measures to ensure that each one of them focuses on the same. However, more than the organization, it is also equally important for each individual to understand the importance of this, to make time to do what they always loved and speak out whenever something is bothering them.
Would you like to accord our readers with any further suggestions?
The legal profession is a roller coaster, and there will always be ups and downs. Try to stay positive through the entire journey, and life will always find a way. Don’t let rejections get you down. Never be afraid to make a shift and trust your instinct. Work hard but also try to enjoy a bit in the process. Most importantly, never let any person or organization change or hamper your identity.
Having completed your graduation from the University of Mumbai in commerce, you pursued LLB. What prompted you to choose Law as a career?
I used to assist my uncle, who is an independent advocate in Mumbai. I started going to court during my college vacations. Those days I would just carry the bags and assist the court clerk. I would wait for matters to reach and inform my uncle when they did. The idea was to do something productive during the holidays.
During that time, I heard Mr. Veerendra Tulzapurkar argue a matter. His clarity of thought and precise articulation of the matter really impressed me. That’s when I decided to become a lawyer.
You joined AZB & Partners as Associate Lawyer immediately after law school. How has that experience shaped you and contributed to your interest in Corporate & Commercial Laws?
I had done an internship with a company secretary firm where we would handle compliance for various corporates. After that, I worked with a law firm that represented the Securities and Exchange Board of India before the Securities Appellate Tribunal. I, therefore, had some experience handling corporate and securities work before I joined AZB.
However, my stint at AZB has been the most significant learning experience in my career. I had to unlearn everything I knew to be able to adapt to the way AZB worked. Professionally I experienced about 10 years of learning in my 3.5 years at AZB. I was fortunate to work directly with stalwarts like Zia Modi and Shuva Mandal. However, my most significant learning was under Mr. Nikhil Sakhardande (who is a Senior Advocate in Mumbai now). He trained me with great compassion and patience and revived my interest and confidence in law.
One of the best things about AZB is that it trains you to be an all-round lawyer. However, when I introspect now, I feel I should have done much more justice to my role at AZB, which I missed on account of my puerility.
You worked with J. Sagar Associates (JSA) as a Senior Associate for almost a decade. Would you share with our readers the array of work you handled and one of the most interesting transactions you witnessed during your time with the firm?
I was part of the securities team at JSA under Mr. Somasekhar Sundaresan, a luminary in the securities practice. Our team was a hybrid between a law firm and a counsel’s chamber. We did our drafting, arguing and filing like a one-stop-shop for securities litigation matters. We also did a fair amount of advisory, documentation, structuring and strategy work, especially in the corporate and securities sphere. We even vetted PR strategies, especially in high stake or ground-breaking matters. I could be appearing in court, advising on takeover regulations and conducting an internal audit for a transnational corporate all in a day. The work culture at JSA was as amazing as the work itself.
It is difficult to pinpoint any one mandate that counts as interesting. No matter the stakes involved, each engagement helped shape our ability to look at the law in a different light.
You have been instrumental in representing SEBI, FPIs (Foreign Portfolio Investors), mutual funds, stockbrokers, and other securities market intermediaries and self-regulatory organizations such as AMFI and NSDL. Could you tell our readers how you approach and navigate through high stake matters?
The fundamental assessment is the understanding of the culture, ability and approach of the client. This enables a clear determination of the end goal in every engagement, which in turn enables a clear strategy and approach. Some clients prioritize their legacy, whereas some prefer to save costs. Each client and each engagement, therefore, require a different approach. Knowing the ability and end-goal of the client enables a legal strategy within the confines of the law to ensure the best outcome.
What responsibilities do you shoulder as a Partner at Parinam Law Associates? How do you strive towards a good work-life balance amidst a busy corporate life and law?
The role requires everything from client interaction to drafting to research to office administration work. It is both exciting and challenging at the same time. Fortunately, we have a great partnership and a great team that helps make the work easy.
The most important aspect of balancing work and life is intention. One must intend to not compromise on their professional duties and must want to have a life outside of the profession. Everything else will flow. For instance, someone who is clear about not wanting to take work home will work on ensuring that it gets concluded during office hours. They will proactively ensure that the work is done in a way that there are no loose ends in their deliverables. They will choose to be clear and precise in their work in a way that there is less wastage of time. They will minimize procrastination. The intention to complete the work within office hours is a wonderful tool to ensure heightened productivity, organized approach and time management. This one switch in the approach that my teacher taught helped me immensely.
What qualities do you find to be indispensable while hiring fresh talent for your team?
Dependability. It is an all-encompassing kind of trait that must permeate all aspects of a professional. Being on time, being well-researched, attention to detail, and being a good team player are all aspects of what makes a professional dependable to the organization, their colleagues, and the client.
A clearly drafted CV with specific clarity about the work experience is easy to spot. We once hired someone based on the clarity of their application email.
One of the reasons I prefer to hire people who have interned with us is that there is a clear insight into their work. For lateral hires, I check with their previous seniors about the general approach of the candidate. The method has worked so far, and I have been very glad for most people we have recruited.
Looking a decade back, from being an Associate to Partner at a leading law firm. Could you share some striking characteristics which helped you with this meteoric rise?
It was hardly meteoric. As I said earlier, there were a lot of things I wish I had done differently that would have ensured less struggle for me. Fortunately, I could approach things better after I met my teacher. He taught me the importance of having the clear intention of being proactive, efficient and clear in thinking. I think it all boils down to being sincere in one’s role, whether it is as a professional or partner. Every person one associate with, looks for dependability in whichever role they are in. Sincerity entails understanding what people I associate with, whether they are partners, clients or colleagues, what they expect from me and doing justice to the association. This approach that my teacher taught me has helped manyfold in being able to handle multiple roles. It has also brought relative peace and structure to my life.
The surge in companies reporting frauds amid an uptick in retail investors’ interest in equities is a dangerous trend. According to you, how can the Indian Government step up in monitoring and regulating the Indian capital and securities market?
There is a lot being done. We have some of the best agencies in the world that look at complex businesses and are proactive in regulating markets. However, recently, there has been a spate of failures, especially amongst stockbrokers, that reduce investor confidence.
More efficiency can come about if regulators were to be more objective about their approach. One often finds that there is a lot of regulatory time and cost spent on matters not requiring intervention. That time and cost can be better spent on matters having more impact on the market. Like any other organization, regulators must confer with external experts on general approach and policy at a Board level to enable better direction.
Increased surveillance measures backed by robust IT systems are a need of the hour. Real-time data assimilation with scope for alerts in case of major deviations may enable timely intervention. Another area of improvement is the scope and nature of the audit. Instead of treating audit as compliance, it ought to be made a sub-regulatory measure. Incentivizing auditors for reporting substantial non-compliance and penalizing them in case of failures will act as a strong deterrence.
The pandemic has completely changed the ways industries operate. Which trends do you expect in the legal industry in the upcoming decade?
One of the most positive developments has been the e-filing and online hearing method. Courts were able to function quite well despite the lack of physical interaction. Having some courts online will enable quicker disposal, better reach and lesser costs, especially for litigants. One hopes that it continues alongside regular courts.
Another aspect is cost savings. The pandemic, like all unforeseen events, has brought awareness on a lot of factors previously disregarded. Work from home, rotating schedules, smaller administrative set-ups, leaner workforce are some of the apparent cost-saving devices that should go a long way.
What would your advice be to all the young lawyers and law students, who are passionate about making a career in law?
It is very important to take the initiative. One must make the most of their prime years in the profession by taking up as much work as possible. This will enable a kind of confidence that only comes with experience. Take up any number of internships or assignments that come your way. Do everything from intellectual property to criminal law to labor law to corporate work. Every assignment and every experience will add up. Also, it is important to not let that chip develop on the shoulder – to shrug it from time to time. Don’t expect high marquee deals and matters every time. If you get it, fine; if not, work on small matters with smaller firms and find your way up. Develop lasting professional friendships. One day it will all seem worth it.
Your successful journey as a barrister in Bangladesh is notable and applauded across the globe. What inspired you to study law? Tell us a little bit about your journey of becoming a lawyer.
My first glimpse into the legal profession was through my father’s eyes. He is a Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh.
Although I was from a pure science background, at the age of 16, I decided to eventually study law. My respect for law and the opportunity it provides for impactful work drew me to the profession. My father was always in a hurry. He wanted us to finish studying, come back, settle down and start practising. So, I opted for a 2 years LLB degree at the University of Buckingham. Buckingham was closely linked to Margaret Thatcher, who as Education Secretary oversaw the creation of the university college in 1973, and as Prime Minister was instrumental in elevating it to a university in 1983 – thus creating the first private university in the UK since the establishment of the University Grants Committee in 1919.
It was a very intense degree, with summer vacations no longer than a few weeks. However, I enjoyed studying, and many would have described me as a nerd back in those days. I wasn’t sure how well I was going to do but eventually shocked everyone with first-class honours’, which opened up further opportunities during my post-graduation.
After my LLB, there was a 9-month gap between LLB and the Bar Vocational Course. During that period, I did an LLM in International and Commercial Law at the University of Buckingham. Afterwards, I went for the Bar Vocational Course and eventually came back to Bangladesh.
Being an alumnus of two of the world’s renowned universities, the University of Oxford and the University of Buckingham, London, is in itself a matter of immense pride and privilege. Could you please tell our readers why is studying at Oxford unique?
I always wanted to get into Oxford. I completed a Bachelor of Civil Law, one of the most prestigious postgraduate law degrees in the world. Only a handful of lawyers in Bangladesh have secured admission and/or completed this degree, and to the best of my knowledge, no Bangladeshi woman till date. The experience there was fantastic. One of the best things about Oxford is that you are surrounded by the best and the brightest so that in itself makes a very intellectual and stimulating atmosphere and a very enriching experience. And not just that, you end up being part of a very elite intellectual network. And you can reach out to this network at any point in your career, should the need arise. The teaching style these Universities have to offer is that they have lectures and round table seminars, but they also have small group sessions. These small group sessions are essential since you get a lot of personal attention from the tutors. It allows you to expand and develop the ideas that are touched upon in the lecture.
On the other hand, talking about irregularities, I felt that prejudice needed to be changed at these Universities/Colleges. Women of colour, brown women, Asian women, whichever way you describe women, deserve to be in these places as much as anyone else. And the decision should be based on nothing but merit. There were quite a few Indians in the BCL course that I was pursuing. I also would be lying if I said that I didn’t feel the pressure because I felt that I was representing a country, especially women. So that made me work harder, it made me take in and absorb as much of the Oxford experience as possible, and also it instilled in me a sense of responsibility. When you get recognition, and you get into a very prestigious University, that gives you visibility. And visibility means 100s and 1000s of people would be looking at you, and you have the ability at that point to provide them with the hope that this is possible, and you can do this as well. That instilled a deep sense of responsibility, which is what keeps me going and keeps me inspired.
The esteemed Bar Vocational Course (BVC) that grants the title of “Barrister” is a gruelling opportunity every student aspires to seize. Although the courts do not recognize the course, why do you think the crowd opts for this course?
I want to give a bit of a background here. In common law jurisdictions, there is a barrister solicitor division. Barristers take instructions from the solicitors, and the solicitors take instructions from the clients. So, barristers specialize in courtroom litigation. But in Bangladesh, this division does not exist, as our lawyers are just one group called advocates. Suppose one does the BVC and becomes a barrister. In that case, he will not get any special exemption from sitting for any bar enrolment exam and would have to go through the same enrolment process as any locally educated lawyer. So, in that sense, there is no added benefit.
However, perception is important. It is perceived to be very prestigious. And the reason is twofold, firstly it’s tradition, as we have had the biggest name in the legal and political arena in the Indian subcontinent who have been Barristers, Nehru, Jinnah. So far as Bangladesh is concerned, most of the legendary lawyers have been barristers. So, that makes it prestigious, and prestige itself gives you a competitive edge.
Moreover, it is not entirely without reason. Some may argue that it’s of no use whatsoever. I beg to differ because it does equip you with a skill set that is very relevant to practice, drafting, opinion writing, client interviewing, and advocacy. These are the tools of trade for a lawyer. Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, there is no equivalent course. However, if there were one, then maybe the significance of the Bar Vocational Course would not be as much. So far as skillset is concerned, you get to acquire many transferable skills and very relevant to the legal profession. So that is why I never thought twice about whether I should do the Bar or not. I always knew I was going to do it eventually.
Talking about LLM and BVC, these are two completely different things. LLM is an academic qualification, and on the other hand, BVC is a professional qualification that is supposed to equip you with professional skills like opinion writing, drafting, client interviewing, etc. So, they both have their merits. But if someone wants to argue that the Bar Vocational Course will not add any value to your practice, that is completely wrong and cannot possibly come from a practising lawyer. Because in practice, this makes a huge difference and will give you a competitive edge. In the end, it’s all about what clients want from their lawyers. Clients would want to go to a barrister as opposed to someone who doesn’t have that tag. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the locally educated lawyers are not as good, but I am only referring to the perception, which gives barristers a competitive edge. So, if you want to practise law, then of course, by all means, go for BVC, but if you want to teach law in Bangladesh, then I would say go for the academic LLM, moving on to a PhD.
Akhtar Imam & Associates is one of the most prestigious law firms in Bangladesh. Would you please share with our readers the array of work you handle at the firm?
At Akhtar Imam & Associates, my main areas of specialization include Corporate and Commercial work, both advisory and dispute resolution (litigation and arbitration), and judicial review or writ. Other areas include foreign investment laws, labour and employment laws and banking. I am very privileged to be in this firm. Currently, I am the firm’s managing partner, and with that comes a lot of managerial responsibilities over and above legal work. Because this is one of the leading firms in the country, we have a great list of clients, which gives a lot of opportunity for high-quality work. As for what a day entails, I wish there were more than 24 hours in a day. But unfortunately, that is not the case. Since we are litigation specialists, the day would start with us going to court; the court is till 4 pm, so afterwards, we usually go back home to change and freshen up, then head for the chambers within 2 hours. And then how late into the night we have to work depends on the workload. On a very good day, I would come out by 9 pm, but it would go way beyond 9 pm on most days. I have had to stay in the firm till midnight, take work back home and work throughout the night. This is fairly common in the life of a busy practitioner in Bangladesh, more so for a firm that specializes in both advisory and litigation.
Despite being a successful corporate and commercial lawyer (advisory and litigation), you devote significant time to public interest litigation (PIL) on issues of grave public importance. Why is that?
I sincerely hope I have made some impact, or at least I am on the way to creating some impact. Impact always mattered to me from day one. I think that’s what gives our life meaning and purpose. I am a purebred corporate and commercial lawyer. While I was enjoying my work for the last 17 years or so, and I was making good money, I wanted to do more meaningful work that would give me and my life a sense of purpose. One of the areas that is really close to my heart is health rights.
Most, if not all, of the PILs you have been involved with, are on health rights. Is this a coincidence or a conscious decision? Could you tell us about some of the landmark PILs you have been involved with?
Healthcare is a provider induced service. Since we don’t have the technical expertise, whatever the advice is from our healthcare service providers, we tend to follow it blindly. So, the need for quality service and accountability in the health care sector is of paramount importance. While the pandemic has taught us many things, one of the biggest revelations is that the healthcare sector in Bangladesh and the subcontinent, in general, is very fragile. There is a dire need to strengthen the healthcare services sector. For that, we need, among others, a robust legal and regulatory framework to ensure quality and timely healthcare services and accountability. So, this is one of the driving forces behind most of the public interest work that I do. I want to help create a supportive legal and regulatory framework to regulate the healthcare sector and work on enforcing health rights. There are legislative gaps all over the place in the laws governing the healthcare sector.
We have very few laws that regulate healthcare services, and even those laws are either archaic or inadequate or in dire need of reform. In 2016, I was one of the filing and conducting lawyers of a landmark PIL to establish a legal framework for emergency medical services for road accident victims and protection of Good Samaritans. We got a landmark judgment in 2018, which issued guidelines mandating the provision of emergency medical services for road accident victims. All private hospitals have to provide emergency medical services irrespective of financial ability or the medico-legal nature of the case. That was just the first step. Miles to go before the guidelines are implemented across the country, and legislation follows.
I also filed a PIL for the prevention of medically unnecessary C-Sections, as a response to the alarming rise in the rate of unnecessary C-Sections on behalf of the leading NGO, BLAST. The case is ongoing. We sought formulation of guidelines in this regard. The guidelines have already been formulated and submitted before the court. Hopefully, after fine-tuning, these guidelines will be given the force of law so that all hospitals and clinics are bound to follow it to bring down the rate.
Another landmark Judgment that I managed to secure through PIL is the Judgment directing reform of the Human Organ Transplantation Act 1999, which has made it possible to allow kidney donation for emotional reasons in exceptional circumstances subject to verification to ensure that trading is not taking place. The donor does not have to be a near relative. This Judgment will go a long way in addressing the huge gap between the demand and supply of kidneys in Bangladesh.
At the beginning of your career, you worked for the London office of Baker & McKenzie as a corporate associate. Could you share your experience working at a major corporate law firm in the UK? How is practising corporate law in England different from Bangladesh?
I worked in the London office of Baker & McKenzie as a corporate associate. Exposure was fantastic in terms of world-class corporate law work, and I got the opportunity to represent global giants, but I always wanted to come back home at the end of the day. So, the idea was to gain as much experience as possible, come back home, resume practice because the scope for impactful work in Bangladesh is much more. I don’t think I can make that much difference in the West since it is already very developed. In contrast, in developing countries like Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, the scope for impactful work is so much more.
So far as law practice is concerned, the kind of support structure behind each lawyer, when you work in London or New York, is tremendous and is nothing compared to the support we have here. There are separate knowledge management departments and online legal resources that make a lawyer’s life much easier than in the Indian subcontinent. So, there is a big difference there in terms of the support system available for each lawyer. Hence, life is easier and simpler, and it’s easier to deliver quality work when working in a large law firm with that support system. M & A in Bangladesh is still at a nascent stage. We have had only a handful of major M&As. But of course, the opportunity to make an impact is so much more here than in Europe or America. I am getting the opportunity to plug the legislative loopholes/gaps in this country, which are fairly significant. So, the scope to actually make a difference and the satisfaction you get from those sorts of work is something I would not have had if I had stayed in London.
You’re also a Senior Fellow at the Youth Policy Forum (YPF). Could you highlight YPF’s vision to make youth an integral part of policy dialogue? Tell us about its activities till date.
Youth Policy Forum is a fairly new forum for young people. What’s fantastic about the Youth Policy Forum is that they have had phenomenal growth over the last few years. I have rarely seen a Youth-Led Organization this interested and effective in the sense of reforming the policy-making system of Bangladesh. Youth are generally not that interested in taking an active part in law and policy reform. But YPF has managed to mobilize the youth of today very effectively and engage the youth with the policymakers and experts from all sectors very effectively in a very short period of time. So, I take great pride in saying that I am one of their senior fellows. They have been doing great work in initiating critical dialogues on law and policy reforms on topical issues. And they offer public policy courses in the Bangla language, which is very useful for the masses in Bangladesh since everyone is not proficient in English so as to be able to develop their expertise and knowledge from the English courses available elsewhere. They are doing a fantastic job, and the impact of YPF is being felt amongst law and policymakers.
You have hosted legal webinars for your organization Academy of Law & Policy (ALAP) and have depicted robust involvement in numerous workshops. Tell us a little bit more about ALAP and how it offers opportunities for impactful work. How can young lawyers and law students get involved?
ALAP is very close to my heart. This is currently a registered trust, authored by my father, barrister Akhtar Imam. I am one of the founder trustees and the executive director. All of the trustees, despite being very busy professionals from leading law firms, have all come together under this umbrella, on a purely pro bono basis, because we all share one common interest: impactful work and law and policy reform. So, this is one of the main agendas with which ALAP was set, where we are going to conduct research on issues of topical importance, engage in advocacy work and much-needed law and policy reforms. Bangladesh is a very new country, and the laws are either discriminatory, archaic or inadequate. We are identifying laws that are in dire need of reform, doing the necessary research, and engaging in advocacy to bring about that reform and, of course, PILs on issues of grave public importance. ALAP has been formed with primarily these in mind. To date, some of its works have been the ongoing legal webinar series; we have filed a PIL to improve access to emergency medical services for all types of patients. We are also actively engaging with the regulator on company law reform. Our Companies Act is fairly old and is in dire need of reform. Reform talks have been going on for quite some time but to no avail. We organized a webinar on company law reform in which we invited the Hon’ble Minister of Commerce as Chief Guest. He appreciated ALAP’s efforts in preparing a reform proposal for the Companies Act and has invited ALAP to submit the reform proposal to the Commerce Ministry.
You adjudicated the Bangladesh Rounds of the prestigious Philip C Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition 2021. How would you describe your experience judging the oldest and the most significant international moot court competition in the world? How are these activities effective in the professional development of law students?
I took great pleasure in being a very mean judge to start with. I was very finicky and asked too many questions, interrupting the speakers to assess their ability to handle a difficult judge. But I enjoyed it a lot, giving everyone a difficult time. Jokes aside, what was fantastic about the experience was that it was very reassuring to see the talent pool in Bangladesh. They are, after all, the future of the Bar and the Bench here. The legal education infrastructure leaves a lot to be desired in Bangladesh. They don’t have the best resources and expertise available to teach these kids. Despite all the limitations, their potential, as evident from their performance, was very reassuring indeed. Personally, it was very refreshing to be on the other side, and I also realized how difficult a job judging or doing justice is. Overall, the experience was fantastic, and more of such mooting competitions should be organized in the future.
Your work as a corporate and commercial lawyer specializing in advisory, arbitration and litigation earned you a well-deserved ranking in renowned international legal directories like Chambers & Partners and Legal 500. How do you feel about that?
I am very happy, fortunate and humbled that my work is being recognized. International legal directories are also very useful for legal practitioners in accessing international markets and getting high quality international legal work.
Did you face discrimination or sexual harassment at the workplace at any point in your career? How did you handle this? How do you create a safe space for yourself in this industry?
The entire experience has been challenging to date, despite being a second-generation lawyer. The legal profession in Bangladesh is entirely male-dominated. There is very low female representation in the Bar and the Bench. In the Supreme Court, a woman lawyer is very much a spectacle; who has the confidence to stand up and argue is almost a spectacle, which is not necessarily a good thing. When I am working, I would like to blend in and focus on my work instead of worrying about people. So far as the other challenges are concerned, Charlotte Whitton once said, “Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good.” The legal profession is no exception. I had to work doubly hard and deliver quality work before getting the same level of recognition. And once you are recognized, it’s not like the battle ends there; you just hit the next glass ceiling, which is getting paid as much as your male colleagues for delivering similar quality work. People are much more willing to pay men more for the same quality work.
However, it is not a problem without a solution. Women tend to undervalue themselves. We tend to hold back; we don’t negotiate a higher fee. We want to be liked much more than men do. Once you get recognized and become valuable for your client, negotiate a higher fee, do a little bit of market research, and find out what your male colleagues are being paid for the same quality work and demand that. Coming out of your shell and negotiating a higher fee, that experience would in itself be very empowering; whether or not you eventually get it is a different story. But you will be on the right track.
Your journey will not be as smooth as it is for a man. So, don’t even start your journey with the expectation that you will be treated in the same way. If you are a female litigating lawyer, the client perception is that you are not aggressive enough to make it in an adversarial environment like the court. This can be very demotivating for a young female lawyer. But they have to realize that at the end of the day, clients are all result-oriented. If you deliver results, they will sooner or later gravitate towards you. So, develop a thick skin, and focus on doing a great job.
At the beginning of my career, I used to get very hurt and demotivated when someone underestimated me without even knowing me or my ability. After a while, I realized that this was a huge asset. If the other side is underestimating me, I can catch them off-guard. I may merrily start capitalizing on that.
What advice would you have for others who want to set off in a similar direction?
Advice for young lawyers would be that there are no shortcuts to succeed in the legal profession. You have got to work very hard and smart. If you are here to make quick money, this is not the right profession for you. Especially if it is litigation, be prepared for a good long 10 years struggle before you start making decent money and being recognized for what you do. You have to treat it as a calling and not just a profession. This is not a 9 to 5 job; it’s much more than that. So, you have to give some very serious thought before you venture out and become a practicing lawyer. When it comes to your clients, make yourself indispensable for them, and then the rest of the journey will be smooth for you. Needless to say, when it comes to independent practice, the sky is the limit at the end of the day. So hang in there!
It’s also very important, especially for litigating lawyers, to find the right chambers. You need to find a chamber that takes an active interest in training lawyers.
As for young female lawyers, my first advice is that there is no shame in self-promotion, so promote the good work you are doing and grab the opportunities that come forward. Secondly, if you are ambitious, embrace that. A lot of female lawyers ask me questions about juggling family and practice. If you are ambitious about your legal career, you have to find someone very supportive of that. If you can’t find one, stay single! For dual-career couples, you need to build a support system of family and close friends so that you can reach out to them as and when the need arises.
Having studied BA.LLB at Kurukshetra University, Haryana. Did any particular incident, interest, or influence prompt you to think of pursuing law?
I had my senior secondary education with non-medical subjects. However, it was after I met my brother-in-law (who was a civil judge in Haryana Judicial Services at that point of time), I was motivated to pursue a career in law. Considering my limited exposure during my school days and being a small-town boy, my parents always wanted me to get an education from a nearby college. Therefore, I applied for 5 years integrated law course at Kurukshetra University and got myself enrolled.
While choosing to pursue Masters of Law (LLM) from King’s College, London. What were the factors involved in choosing commercial law for advanced studies?
While pursuing my law in India, I used to work with my father in his manufacturing business in order to manage multiple things, wherein at first instance, I got to know in brief about the understanding of corporate law and its role in the economics of the world. Eventually, I did a couple of internships in a corporate team of law firms, wherein I got a further understanding of corporate laws in India and their applicability in day-to-day affairs. Accordingly, in order to broaden my horizons and gain specialization in a specific branch of law, I could think of no better option than going in for the study of commercial law.
What were the key differences between your experience of Indian & British law school? Could you please tell our readers how the international exposure has helped you gain perspective to improve your skills in the legal field?
Being in a British law school is altogether a different ball game in comparison to studying in an Indian law school. One of the major differences I could experience in a British law school is the emphasis given to the practical side of the law, wherein one is asked to solve complex legal problems, whereas, in Indian law schools (limited to what I know), a vital role is played on theoretical practice, although I believe this is changing now. Another major difference is that the British law schools lay particular emphasis on a student having read up in advance the designated chapters of the reading list before attending a particular lecture each day so that an informed discussion could take place in the classroom. Lastly, the student-teacher ratio is generally low, and accordingly, the class size is small.
We are looking a decade back, from being a Trainee at PwC and to an International company as a Senior Counsel. How has this journey been for you?
The journey has been challenging yet rewarding so far, akin to a roller coaster ride. Considering my family’s limited experience in law (especially in corporate law) and recession in various parts of the world during 2008-2009, job hunting was a difficult task when I commenced my career. Further, working in different practice areas such as PE/VC/M&A in IndusLaw, Project Financing in Link Legal, Clasis Law, and IT in HCL has been a bit challenging in the beginning due to the said practice areas being completely different. However, with the passage of time and given my aim of gaining a varied experience, such a challenging experience has become rewarding for me.
After having a stint at renowned law firms, IndusLaw, Link Legal India Law Services, Clasis Law, you moved to an in-house role at HCL Technologies Limited. Could you explain what kind of work an in-house Counsel entail?
At HCL, I got to work in a largely similar fashion like I was working with law firms, except that my thought process of reviewing and negotiating a document became different. In an in-house practice, one has to review the document to figure out the risk involved and to find risk mitigation to such risk, from the point of view of securing the commercial interest of the company and minimising the chances of litigation, either by factoring in such risk in financials or to negotiate the document to the limited sense of removing/limiting such risk.
You moved to ANDRITZ, an international technology company serving as a Senior Legal Counsel. How was that decision to switch from a law firm to an industrial company rewarding on a personal as well as the professional front?
So far, it has been the most rewarding experience due to multiple reasons. The foremost is that I get to work on a multitude of contractual litigation issues. Another one is internal legal team support, wherein one can easily adapt to the environment within a span of a few months.
Your experience includes rendering advisory and transactional services in a variety of practice areas, including Project Finance, Private Equity/Venture Capital investments, Acquisitions and General Corporate Commercial. How do you keep the team spirits elevated and make a positive work environment handling high-stakes deals?
While working in a team, I believe that one has to ensure that you are available for support throughout to provide timely support to your team. Secondly, you have to uplift your junior colleagues while educating/supporting them as and when required. I have always ensured that I follow these in order to have high team spirits.
What keeps you busy other than work? Could you tell our readers about your hobbies? Any movies, work of art or books that have had a profound impression on you.
I really like watching content on OTTs (like Netflix, Amazon Prime) and listening to music and podcasts. I am not very fond of reading novels/books except those pertaining to law and finance, as I have a keen interest in the same. Additionally, I like reading columns written by influencers, as it motivates me to keep my life on track.
The pandemic has affected people, work, businesses, etc., around the world. How do you take care of your mental health and strive towards a good work-life balance?
Though pandemic has affected people and businesses (including me as I got infected by COVID-19), however, I ensure that I follow certain practices in order to safeguard myself and people around me, such as physical training for an hour on a daily basis, eating mostly home-cooked food, or food from hygienic places in case I have to, avoiding travelling to public places and busy market places, especially during the weekend. So far as striving for a good work-life balance is concerned, being able to spend quality time with family and close friends and unwinding by spending time with nature personally helps me achieve that.
You have had quite a journey as a law student at National Law University Jodhpur and then as an in-house lawyer with TATA and Siemens groups. How did you come to choose law as a career?
Accidentally. I fully intended to study English or history or even journalism. Then a couple of my friends applied for law school entrance exams, so I decided to give it a shot. I did not know that law school tutorials existed back then, so my preparation was limited to solving collected question papers. I was on the waitlist for some other law schools but got through National Law University Jodhpur.
I was ridiculously underprepared for law school. So much so that I seriously contemplated leaving for the first few months. Many of my batchmates were already familiar with what was being taught in class from law school tutorials and already knew much more than me about law and the legal profession. Some of them even had a clear career plan in mind and knew which magic circle law firms they wanted to join when they graduated. I did not even know what a magic circle was! I kept imagining a bunch of wig-wearing black-robed lawyers standing in a circle holding thick ancient books and chanting magic spells in an archaic language. Of course, I was completely wrong about that – the wig and black-robe are no longer compulsory.
Luckily, I realized – through some amount of trial and error and a lot of help from my friends – that law is mostly general knowledge and common sense. That made it much easier to find my way in law school over the next five years.
Did you ever regret your choice to stay on? How would you describe your time at law school overall?
Never. I made some lifelong friends, had some life-changing experiences, and had a lot of fun along the way. I also managed to learn something about the law. I still rely on the expertise and experience of my fellow alumni whenever I have questions, which is quite often.
It would be unfair to paint a completely rosy picture, though. I also experienced some bullying (including some death threats!) for my political opinions. My room was broken into several times, and my possessions (especially my books) were vandalized and mutilated. One time, I came back from dinner to find that there was a fire in my room. Perhaps it was the recklessness and stubbornness of youth, but I did not take it as seriously as I should have.
It was only much later that I realized that we do not talk about the toxic aspects of law school and the legal profession enough. My silence was part of the problem. Even now, we have barely begun to have the conversation about how to create safe, inclusive and welcoming spaces for everyone. I am glad that my time in law school taught me this important life lesson. Overall, I gained a lot more from the experience than I had ever imagined.
During your time at law school, you held quite a few positions of responsibility in the NLUJ Law Review, the Film Society and the Literary & Debating Society. How did this contribute to your development as a lawyer?
I never really looked at them as positions of responsibility. I always enjoyed extra-curricular activities more than being in the classroom. I was just grateful that law school gave me the opportunity to indulge in all my favourite activities – debate, drama, film and literature. I co-founded the Film Society and the Literary & Debating Society so that I could do just that.
Our school and college life are the best time to find out what we are interested in outside of academics and work. This is what makes us more interesting and helps us to be interested in others. This is especially important for us as lawyers because we work with people all the time, even though we tend to forget it! Law schools already have quite an active extra-curricular calendar in terms of moot courts, sports and cultural events. But there is always so much more that can be done.
The Film Society would screen one movie every week. The screening was open to all, and we had special dispensation to stay up late, so we got quite good audiences. The Literary Society also met once a week to discuss what we were reading and writing. The Debating Society was also quite active – we went to lots of debates across India and – on one memorable occasion – even Bangladesh. I got the opportunity to travel and meet lots of interesting people. This helped me make friends across disciplines, something that does not happen too easily when you are in the law school bubble. It also taught me the importance of finding time for yourself to relax and unwind – in good times and bad. In some ways, I was already a firm believer in work-life balance even before I began my career.
Your career journey began at Voltas Limited as their Legal Counsel in 2009. Most law students aspire to join law firms or litigation practice. What factors made you choose the road less travelled?
Again, luck played a role. I knew that work-life balance would be quite a challenge if I chose to join a law firm or a litigation practice. One of the senior lawyers I had worked with warned me that I should opt for litigation only if I had some financial stability for the next 5-10 years as it would take that long to make a mark as a first-generation lawyer. I did not.
So, I was very lucky that a team from TATA Group led by the then General Counsel decided to come to NLUJ for campus recruitment. They were looking for someone to work on some international disputes for Voltas Limited, which is one of their group companies. Everything just fell into place – I was the right person in the right place at the right time!
I spent two years working for Voltas on some major infrastructure disputes in India, the Gulf and Singapore. I enjoyed every minute of it. I had to unlearn almost everything I knew about legal research and drafting and relearn how to work on a real live dispute with factual backgrounds going back years or sometimes even decades! Over time, the business and project team colleagues started approaching me for contract and claim management topics at the pre-dispute stage. This was when I realized that part of the magic of working in-house is that you can (and should) get involved long before the faeces hit the fan. Our job is to help prevent disputes rather than fighting them! I learned so much about how to think like a business lawyer. I had some great mentors – both from the business and the legal team – some of whom had been in the industry for two or three decades!
All in all, I was very lucky to get an opportunity to work in both national and international environments at such an early stage of my career. A lot of my friends in law firms and litigation were surprised to learn that in-house lawyers got to travel to such interesting places and do such interesting work, plus have a work-life balance! To be honest, so was I.
Looking back, this really should not have been so much of a surprise for us. In law school, the focus is on law firms or litigation as career options. Granted that I should have probably taken matters into my own hands and done my research on possible alternatives. At the same time, law schools should widen the scope of the career advice that they give to law students. An in-house career should not be looked at as “the road less travelled” but as one of the many (often interconnected) roads that are open to lawyers.
I think this has already started – law students today are much better informed about the outside world than I was at the time. Alumni associations and external service providers like yourselves are already trying to explain various career possibilities after law school, such as academics, civil service, entrepreneurship, journalism, judiciary, public policy, strategy etc. However, there is a much broader mindset change that is still required. These career paths are still seen as being somehow less important or prestigious than the big two of law firms and litigation.
You then moved to Siemens as a Contract Manager in 2011 and currently hold the Lead Counsel position at Siemens Energy India. How has your in-house journey been so far for you?
To be honest, luck played a role here as well. I was very happy at Voltas. At the same time, living out of a suitcase for most of the year was tiring. I missed home and my loved ones. One day I was at a conference where I connected with some contract managers from the Siemens India legal team. They were looking for someone with contract and claims management experience to work from my hometown Kolkata. Once again, I was just the right person in the right place at the right time!
I spent the next five years working on major railway and metro infrastructure projects as a Contract Manager for the mobility business. As a function, contract and claims management is a lot more collaborative and customer-facing than other legal roles. Ultimately, everyone on the project is working together for the common good of the project. So, you need to build trustful and collaborative relationships with each and every stakeholder. Even if you have the best legal arguments, you do not want to be in a dispute situation where you need to use them! Instead, you need to find commercial solutions that are a win-win for everyone. This tests your legal competence as much as your communication, negotiation and stakeholder management skills. I was very lucky to work with project and business teams where every meeting with external stakeholders was a masterclass in these skills.
One of the best things about working for a multinational the size of Siemens is the sheer variety of opportunities available internally in different functions, businesses and regions. When the senior legal counsel of the energy business left for other opportunities, I asked to be considered for the role. A couple of years later, my then reporting manager also left for other opportunities. I already knew the team, the business and the organization as well as anyone – and they all knew me. Again, I was the right person in the right place at the right time!
The fact that I have been here for a decade now speaks for itself. I do feel like a dinosaur sometimes for having been around so long. But what is really cool is that I have friends in the legal department and the business who have been around even longer than I have. It’s always comforting to know that others have made the same mistakes that you have!
Jokes aside, it’s been an amazing journey – the work has been exciting, the challenges have been stimulating, and the lessons learned humbling (to say the least!). Some days were tough and frustrating, while others were more exciting than I would have hoped for. A few (thankfully very, very few) were boring. Every single day of these last twelve years was a crash course on being an in-house lawyer in a multinational, multicultural environment. Especially the bits that they somehow don’t teach in law school but definitely should (like brevity, effective communication and intercultural stakeholder management). What has made it all worthwhile has been the comradeship and the camaraderie along the way. There’s something to look forward to almost every single day – I’m always either learning something new, working on something exciting or even making new friends in different parts of the world.
Can you walk our readers through a typical workday as an in-house lawyer?
It is a little difficult to describe a “typical day” as an in-house lawyer. This is simply because of the sheer range of subjects that we get to work on almost daily. As business lawyers, we are usually generalists (even if we sometimes have our own specializations). We have to look at anything that comes to our table, especially if it involves a legal issue but sometimes even if it doesn’t! Often, the largest chunk of our time is spent understanding and collating the facts, strategizing on commercial solutions and ensuring alignment between business and corporate functions etc. Some may consider this non-legal work – especially if they believe that a lawyer should only deal with pure legal topics. I disagree; I believe that this is at the heart of what we do as lawyers. We apply the law to uncertain situations to achieve a satisfactory resolution. This means that a solid understanding of legal concepts and the ability to apply these concepts in practice is just basic table stakes for being an in-house counsel.
Another major chunk of what we do as business lawyers is contract management throughout the entire contract lifecycle. We get involved right at the start at the business development or bidding or contract negotiation stages to identify, evaluate and try to mitigate contractual risks. During the contract execution stage, we work with the business to resolve any issues which may arise, preferably without litigation. When litigation becomes necessary, we handle most of the work in-house. We develop the overall dispute management strategy, the arguments and counter-arguments and then brief external counsel to argue the matter.
Every once in a while, there’s also some transactional work. The frequency really depends on the organization. In an organization as large and complex as Siemens, there’s always some restructuring (including mergers, demergers, share transfers etc.) going on somewhere in the organization. I have personally been through 4 internal reorganizations in my 10 years at Siemens. Sometimes, the only thing that changed for me was the details on my business card. Others were more profound and required more work. During this time, we also carved out our healthcare and logistics businesses, both worldwide and in India. Recently, we completed a major transaction for the global carve-out of Siemens Energy and a transfer of 24% shareholding of Siemens India from Siemens to Siemens Energy. This took up most of our time for more than a year.
There’s also a fair bit of corporate work. As a governance function, we act as one of the conscience-keepers of the organization by conceptualizing, implementing, and overseeing internal processes which ensure that we do clean, compliant and sustainable business.
Recently you did an Executive Education Programme from IIM Bangalore. It is often said that in-house lawyers are not only legal advisors but also business advisors. Do you agree with this school of thought?
The IIM-B course was part of a two-year potential development programme organized by Siemens. The idea of this potential development programme – which is currently on its fourth batch – is to bring together a diverse bunch of young people within the organization with the potential to grow and then give them opportunities to learn by doing. I was part of the second batch of thirty colleagues who were chosen for this programme. The highlight was spending five weeks on campus in IIM-B learning strategy, communications, career management, corporate finance, sales and marketing, human resource management etc., from their faculty. Since it was an on-campus programme, the thirty of us quickly became close friends. Looking back, we learned as much from each other as we did from the faculty! What I learned over the course of the two-year programme definitely helped me be a better version of myself, not just a better business lawyer.
As far as being a business lawyer goes, I would go even further than that and say that we are not just business advisers but strategic business enablers. The days when in-house lawyers sat in an ivory tower of their own making, spoke in a strange language called legalese to the business and tried to eliminate all risks through “write-only” legal documents that no one else reads are long gone. Legal is no longer the department of “no” but the department of “yes, and…”. Our business colleagues know that we will provide strategic advice and practical, commercially viable solutions that help the organization to grow sustainably. Our internal processes are built in such a way that legal and business as well as other functions (to name just a few – bid management, project management, finance, risk and internal controlling, sustainability) need to work together from the very beginning to the very end. This is a win-win for everyone. As support functions, we get to be involved from start to finish and have instant access to all the information we need to do our jobs. And the business has instant access to practical and solution-oriented advice. Of course, we are still a governance function and need to take some difficult decisions. This is actually much easier to do as the department of “yes, and…” – when your business colleagues know that you always do your best to find a solution, they respect your decision much more when you say that this is not the right thing to do. Luckily, such situations are quite rare.
You took on a leadership role just a few months before the pandemic hit. How did you stay focused on team management and handling high stake tasks with such a crisis happening just a few months into a new role?
Again, I was just very, very lucky. One of the many benefits of being a relative dinosaur in the department is that I already knew the business and the team very well. We were friends, and we worked well together. I got some great advice when I took over this role, which was to just be myself. After all, what can be easier than leading a team of your own friends? All I had to do was get out of the way so that we could all be ourselves. And it has worked out great.
Of course, the pandemic and lockdown affected everyone both personally and professionally. Professionally, we took the lead on crisis management from a contractual perspective. Luckily, we already had fairly mature project management and contract management systems in place. This helped us to streamline our COVID-related correspondence with customers, subcontractors and other stakeholders through a judicious mix of global standardization at a macro level and hyper-local strategies at a micro-level. The fact that this happened in the middle of a major transaction (the global carve-out of Siemens Energy) was quite a stretch for all of us.
On the bright side, this meant that we were fully occupied at a time that business came to a grinding halt for many organizations. Making the switch to working from home was fairly easy because we had already built a culture of trust, empowerment and proactive collaboration within the team. These are values that you need to build over time; it does not happen overnight. We had been living these values every day, even before the pandemic. We already had a practice of having a mid-week catch-up call where we discuss what we are working on, what is going well (and therefore we should do more of), what could be better (and therefore we should do differently) and where we need support from each other. This was really helpful because we could re-distribute the workload dynamically to make sure that everyone had some breathing space to take care of themselves and their loved ones during – and we tend to forget this – an unprecedented global crisis. In times like these, you have to have each other’s backs. And that’s what we did. And the best part? That it happened organically – because we were already doing it anyway. The crisis was just the backdrop.
Of course, like everyone else, the pandemic affected us all either directly or indirectly. Everyone lost someone – friends, family, colleagues. In times like these, you need to find ways to still have fun as a team. This may seem silly, but one of the things that we realized we really missed as a team were our water cooler conversations over tea/coffee. We built this back into our regular schedule with Friday Fundays – this started as a way to connect with each other every Friday evening over your drink of choice to just chat about our personal lives. The only two rules of Friday Fundays were “we do not talk about work” and “we do not talk about work”. Since we were already friends, the conversation always flowed easily. We felt lighter going into the weekend, having had these chats. Soon, we extended them to old friends in other teams – inviting colleagues from different functions and businesses whom we missed hanging out with. They loved the idea too. Then we started to invite colleagues whom we wanted to get to know better, and they loved the idea even more. From being a way to help us stay connected within our team while we all worked from home, it has now become a way of networking and making new friends across the organization. The contribution to our overall mental health was immeasurable.
You have been quite vocal on the topic of mental health in the legal profession. What measures can we take in the coming years to ensure the mental health and well-being of legal professionals?
Not vocal enough! For example, this is the first time that I am talking about the bullying that I experienced in law school on a public forum. I have talked about this in my personal and professional groups, but I should have been much more vocal about this from the beginning. Most lawyers struggle with mental health challenges in silence, as I did. At the root of it all is the culture of perfectionism in the legal profession, which stigmatizes “weakness”. This is what ultimately leads to impostor syndrome, lack of work-life balance and burnout.
Lawyers see themselves as problem-solving superheroes who always have the right answers to any and every problem. When we quite inevitably fail to achieve the impossible standards that we have arbitrarily set for ourselves, we overcompensate by working harder and longer hours to prove ourselves not just to ourselves but to those around us as well. More office-time, more work, more side projects, more billings, more clients, more revenue, more more more. We feel like we must be workaholics who are available 24/7/365. Why? Because we compare ourselves to others and see that everyone is doing it. There’s no shame in admitting that we have all done this. In fact, it’s important to understand that we ALL do this. A lot of the guilt and anxiety of impostor syndrome is feeling like the only impostor surrounded by otherwise perfect beings. It’s illogical, but it’s true. The first step is admitting it.
How do we overcome it? Well, of course, there are far more mental health resources that are available nowadays than ever before. The problem is the stigma of “weakness” associated with seeking professional help for mental health in the legal profession. So it is critical that we address the root cause of the culture of perfectionism in the profession, which causes such issues in the first place.
One of the best coaches I ever met once told me that “perfect is the enemy of good” and “good is good enough” – it was a small but simple realization which stayed with me. We can adopt a growth mindset only when we stop chasing the impossible dream of perfectionism. Instead of wasting time comparing ourselves to others, we can focus on simply being better than we were before. Made a mistake? That’s okay! Instead of telling ourselves that we are terrible at this (which will become a self-fulfilling prophecy), we can think about what we can do better next time. Is there someone better at this than we are? That’s great! Instead of telling ourselves that we will never be as good as them (which leads to further anxiety and impostor syndrome), we can ask them for help so we can do better.
One simple example – I struggle with timeliness. For example, joining meetings on time used to be a challenge because my calendar was so packed. This is a problem that’s gotten a lot worse for all of us while working from home, with back-to-back meetings becoming the norm. One of the best hacks is to let the problem (our schedules) be part of the solution. Instead of being a slave to my calendar, I started to use it to my advantage. If I had an important task, I would schedule a meeting with myself to complete that task. If someone called me in the middle of working on this task, I would just tell them when I am free next and ask them to schedule for a more convenient time. My schedule immediately became much more manageable.
Another great hack was to use the meeting reminders to my advantage. Earlier, I would only start wrapping up what I was doing when I got the 5-minute reminder for my next meeting. Now, I use the 15-minute reminder to do that. If there’s too much left to do, I schedule another slot to finish that work instead. This leaves me with enough time to get prepared for the next meeting. And the 5-minute reminder? I now use it to do nothing at all. I clear my mind and focus on being mindful. This may seem like a silly example, but the benefits to my mental health have been immeasurable. You just need to find what works for you.
Of course, this can only work if our workloads (and timelines!) are manageable in the first place. This is a structural problem that can only be addressed if we start setting healthy boundaries while still being flexible. I keep reminding my team and my business colleagues that if everything is urgent, then nothing is urgent. To set reasonable timelines, we need to distinguish between urgent tasks (which are time-sensitive in the short-term) and important tasks (which contribute to your long-term goals) and then prioritise accordingly:
URGENT
NOT URGENT
IMPORTANT
Prioritize tasks with significant outcomes and clear deadlines
Schedule tasks with significant outcomes but no fixed deadlines
NOT IMPORTANT
Delegate or streamline (standardize/templatize) tasks with clear deadlines but which require less expertise
Delete or mechanize tasks that do not add any measurable value
Last but certainly not least, the usual boundaries between our personal and professional lives have dissolved, with hybrid working becoming the norm. That is not necessarily a bad thing. We can embrace the flexibility this gives us to manage our workload better by deciding when we are “in the office” and when we are “at home”. For example, I find it helps me to take breaks in between office work to do household chores like prepping meals, cooking and cleaning. Others may prefer to continue having a clear distinction between office/home, for example, by doing office work between 9-to-5 and taking care of household chores before or after that, or starting office a little later in the day after taking care of some household chores and then working till a little later in the evening. Or vice versa. It all depends on what works best for you. At the end of the day, it’s important to get some “me-time” and “we-time” to focus on ourselves and our loved ones. Some people are calling this work-life integration because you can choose how to integrate different aspects of work-life balance into your schedule in a flexible way.
We can only do this if we – as employers and employees – change our mindset to start focusing on achievements in terms of outcomes rather than activity and office time. We don’t (and we shouldn’t!) have to do this alone.
What would be your advice to law students and young lawyers who aspire to establish themselves as in-house counsels?
I get these questions quite frequently from law students and young lawyers. This is a very positive development because it shows that they are already aware that an in-house career is a viable career option and are actively considering it. I usually try to turn the questions around and ask them what they want and expect in terms of purpose, roles and responsibilities, career growth, compensation structure, flexibility and work-life balance. Based on their responses, I try to explain what in-house life has to offer them.
The most frequently asked question is how to get an in-house role. For example, we get a lot of requests from law school placement committees to attend campus recruitment. We also get a lot of internship applications from law students who tell us that they would be interested in securing a pre-placement offer. Finally, we also get requests for referrals for roles within the organization. I have to explain that in-house recruitment works very differently from law firm recruitment simply because an in-house team is part of a larger business organization and therefore is structurally different from a law firm.
In-house teams have a fixed headcount which increases irregularly over time (rather than annually, as in law firms). This means that it is quite difficult for in-house teams to make recruitment offers in advance. Most in-house vacancies become available as and when the incumbent leaves for other opportunities. Such roles are usually advertised on the organization’s careers page, job aggregator sites and through recruitment consultants. You will then need to do some research on whether this is the right role for you. This is where dinosaurs like us can be of some help. Have you seen an in-house role that interests you and want to learn more about it? Come to us with your questions, and we would be more than happy to help! Not with a referral because a referral for someone you do not know and have not worked with is fairly useless. But to help you understand how you can be the best fit for a particular in-house role and then excel in it:
Know yourself – What kind of career interests you? Do you want to be more of a generalist or specialist? Do you want to focus on doing interesting legal work or take on more and more administrative responsibilities? There are no right or wrong answers because this depends entirely on what works best for you at that time. You can always change your mind and try something else because there will be lots of opportunities to do different things in every organization.
Know the business – As an in-house lawyer, you are a strategic business enabler whose job is to help the business succeed in doing clean, compliant, sustainable and, of course, profitable business. To do this, you need to know the business as well as your business colleagues do – what do we sell? who do we sell to? Who are our competitors? What are our short-term and long-term strategic goals? Law school does not prepare you for any of this. Thankfully, most organizations have technical and finance trainings for non-technical/non-finance colleagues who do a great job in explaining these topics in language that even a lawyer can understand!
Develop your soft skills – Legal competence is a basic expectation of every in-house role. However, what will get you noticed is your soft skills because – consciously or unconsciously – everyone in the organization is constantly evaluating you on these skills. This can be tricky for lawyers because law school does not help develop skills like approachability, empathy, active listening, effective communication, strategic thinking, ownership, curiosity and even common sense. In fact, what we learn in law school can hinder the development of these skills without us knowing it. Again, most organizations have training programs that cover all these skills.
Be the department of “Yes, and…” – Law school prepares us to analyze and avoid risks rather than mitigating them. To be strategic business enablers, we have to find common-sense, practical and commercially viable solutions. Our job is to advise the business to make sure that these risks fit the risk profile of our business and that they are approved at the right approval levels with the right mitigations in place.
Ownership – Take ownership of everything you do. As lawyers, we tend to focus on legal aspects rather than the business aspects of an issue. Finding a commercial solution to a business issue requires different functions within the organization to collaborate. Legal is best placed to help steer this collaboration and be part of the ultimate (hopefully successful) outcome. This will make you the go-to person for everyone in the legal department as well as in the business. If you can also volunteer for some special projects or special topics within the legal department, you will have more opportunities to develop and demonstrate your capabilities to management. You just need to spot the right opportunity or even create them, if necessary.
Make friends – It helps. It really does. Being able to bring my whole self to work and having fun at work gives me the psychological safety I need to be my best self at work. I am who I am today largely because of the friends I have made at work and outside work.
Be the right person in the right place at the right time – I’ve always believed in the old Scouts & Guides motto – “Be Prepared”. Opportunities may come when you least expect them. It helps to think a few moves ahead – what are the skills that I need to do my current job? How can I develop these skills further? What are the skills that I need to do the next job I want to do? How can I develop those skills further? That way, when these opportunities do arise – you are already seen as the right person in the right place at the right time!
When did it dawn unto you that Law is the correct pathway? Could you walk us through your journey in the field of Law?
During my high school days, I was very passionate about my extempore and debate competitions. At that point, I decided to be a lawyer who argues in court (I was introduced to the terms litigation only during law school days). However, since my school days, “stage fright” was unknown to me. Therefore, it was not much of an effort game for me to put across my point of view in an easy, convincing, and assertive manner.
Consistency, persistence, and the go-getter attitude has been a game-changer for me, as I fixed my dream to have my own law firm during my law school days itself. One important lesson that I have been learning all along my journey is never to ignore any opportunity (even the smallest) that comes across your way, as you don’t know what lies on the other side of it.
You graduated with B.A.LL.B. from Vivekananda Institute of Professional Studies and went on to pursue your masters in Insolvency, Securities, and Investment Law from Government Law College, Mumbai, after litigating for a few years. What prompted you to pursue your masters in Insolvency, Securities and Investment Laws?
Firstly, in my final year of law school, I opted for banking laws as my specialisation, which helped develop my interest in various RBI schemes of debt resolutions. Subsequently, I was fortunate enough that my graduation was the same as the year of commencement of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016. My interest was further developed in this subject while handling the first mandate in December 2016 while working with the dispute resolution team of Desai & Diwanji.
In the year 2016 itself, I realised that the insolvency laws provide a fair playing field for all the lawyers and the way the Insolvency Code consolidated various legislations was very intriguing for me. Additionally, I thought it was a perfect combination of commercial litigation and debt resolutions, which made me pursue my masters in this field. During my masters, I realised that insolvency laws could not be seen in isolation without the entire cloud of all the commercial laws. In order to excel in commercial litigations, dispute resolution and debt resolution, insolvency laws seen in isolation are a very small part of it.
You have multiple titles and achievements credited to your name, from working with Desai and Diwanji, Khaitan Legal Associates, being a consultant to the Oyo Group, to starting your law firm Alagh & Kapoor Law Offices. If you were to introduce yourself in a word or two, how would you do it?
I am definitely a “Go-Getter Apologist”.
You have also pursued a diploma in GDPR from Henley Business School, United Kingdom. How do you think GDPR helps in guiding and regulating the way companies across the world handle their customer’s personal information and protect individual’s data?
Though India does not fall within the circuit of the European Union, and thus, even today, GDPR compliance is highly underrated amongst Indian entities. However, keeping in mind the global approach of all the MNCs and even the Indian entities having their offshore offices, all of them have to comply with the GDPR guidelines. Therefore, in today’s time, any entity has to be very sensitive towards protecting their Client’s data as the Client has provided the same under strict confidentiality.
Learning about GDPR was very important for me from a long-term view of managing and running your own law firm. Because of this learning graph, today, We – Alagh & Kapoor Law Offices handles its Client’s data with the utmost sensitivity. Often, the team at Alagh & Kapoor Law Offices provides training sessions to Corporates, assisting them in being GDPR Compliant by providing training sessions.
You joined Desai and Diwanji as Associate Lawyer immediately after law school. How has that experience shaped you and contributed to your interest in the field of litigation?
While I was interning with Desai & Diwanji during the final year of my law school, I was given a preplacement offer by the dispute resolution team of Desai & Diwanji to join them as an Associate. That has been the biggest stepping stone for me as I cannot stress enough how amazing the Dispute Resolution team of Desai & Diwanji is. Starting from teaching me that how a list of dates has to be drafted to giving me opportunities to even appear before the Supreme Court of India at a very young age has shaped me into what I am today. Therefore, I would take this interview as an opportunity to show my gratitude towards the Desai & Diwanji team (Delhi) as I would not have reached where I am today if they would not have shown confidence in me during my early years.
During the formative years of your legal practice in Indian Law Firms and Courts, proper guidance and the right tools are required to manage each step of the process. How important is it for someone to find a mentor when a lawyer sets foot into litigation?
It is one of the most important factors in litigation, especially if you are a first-generation lawyer. I cannot emphasise enough on how important it is to have a good mentor who is ready to invest in you. I have been very fortunate indeed and have utmost gratitude towards all my seniors who have invested their time in teaching me the nuances of the law and the important surviving skills required for the field of litigation.
You have also been involved in multiple non-performing asset (NPA) accounts referred for the insolvency resolution process under the Insolvency Bankruptcy Code (IBC) mandated by the Reserve Bank of India. How has your experience been working under the tenets of the IBC, 2016?
The first assignment that I started working on, under tenets of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, was in the month of December 2016 (with Desai & Diwanji’s Team), when the law was too new for anyone to have a grasp on it. The journey of reading the code from scratch, interpreting the same, enhancing my knowledge along with the judicial interpretation of the code, being updated with the innumerable amendments, notifications, precedents and being vigilant on all the developments, all of it together has been one unforgettable bliss.
To gain an in-depth knowledge of the legal demands of companies, you decided to advise corporates and entered a retainership with the OYO Group as a litigation consultant, wherein you had handled dispute resolution & strategic advisory for contentious litigations. How did this experience help you cater to a larger and more diverse clientele in the future?
Working with law firms gave me an in-depth understanding of the procedural functioning of the courts, the judicial forums of India. It helped me enhance my efficiency in delivering my assignments. However, working as a litigation consultant for a corporate made me privy to the direct demands of corporates and their expectations when they outsource work to a Law Firm. It has also helped me enhance my knowledge about the working of the corporates, including the backhand operations, which further helps me today to better understand my clients’ needs.
Alagh & Kapoor Law Offices is a full-service law firm representing various clients ranging from beauty & healthcare, hospitality, infrastructure, banking & finance to real estate. What piece of advice would you like to give to people aspiring to establish their firm?
My one advice would be to be competitive while quoting the fees and provide the utmost efficient services to the best of your capabilities, which would justify the trust that your client has shown in you while giving you the assignment. Please be open to taking any and every kind of mandate that comes your way. Keep in mind to work consistently on enhancing your networking skills. In the end, it is non-negotiable to be updated on current affairs/precedents/legal developments and to keep brushing your drafting skills.
The pandemic has not only affected the way we work but also the way we manage our clients. What are the top three leadership challenges you have faced while working amid the COVID crisis?
I might sound a little unrealistic in my approach towards my work, but the pandemic has been another stepping stone for me. With deep cuts in the pockets of the corporate sector, boutique law firms with competitive fee quotes and equally efficient services were need of the hour. During the pandemic, the advice I received from my seniors in the legal fraternity has also played a very important guiding factor for me. Starting my own youtube vlog on insolvency laws (during lockdown) was very challenging as well as knowledge enriching for me.
All the challenges that I have faced, from building the trusts of corporates (being young and new market players) to adopting the new litigations technologies of virtual hearings, all have been a very knowledge enriching and learning experience for me; and it continues to be. My top three would be:
Networking by virtual meetings;
Making sure that your team does not lose motivation; and
Being consistent in your efforts, focusing on long terms goals.
How do you take care of your mental health and strive towards a good work-life balance? Do you still get time to pursue your hobbies amid a busy schedule?
To be honest, the only thing that has made me conscious about my mental health is the outbreak of the pandemic. And to cope up with the same, the only successful habit I could develop is reading a lot of good books (for example the 5 AM club), that motivates you to further develop efficient habits and help you in being more organised. One thing that we will have to ensure on our own is striving a work-life balance and making sure to leave few hours of your day just for yourself. I prefer it to be early morning. The amount of change a 20 mins early morning workout can bring to your day is highly underrated.
What would your advice be to all the young lawyers and law students who are deeply passionate about making a career in Law?
Being a smart worker does not mean you can escape being a hard worker. The only prerequisite to excel in the legal profession is to really have a passion for excelling and achieving in it. Choose law only if you are passionate about it. Don’t expect easy and quick money without having your decent share of struggle. Be open to learning from the experience of your seniors in the fraternity. At last but definitely not the least, be updated.
In the end, I would like to mention that you might come across a lot of people who might demotivate you or may question your career decisions. However, if you are passionate about your work, do not listen to anyone and follow your heart.
Did any particular incident, interest, or influence prompt you to think of pursuing law? What other options would you have considered for your career, if not law?
I am a commerce graduate from DU and have taught computer science and worked in the data processing department of a listed company. Although I enjoyed working in IT, I used to get stuck to my screen with minimal human interaction. I remembered the charming subjects of mercantile/business law and taxation law during my university years which triggered my interest in studying law. I thought a legal career associated with commercial enterprise would be tempting. As a qualified Company Secretary, I could appear before all tribunals and courts besides the High Court and Supreme Court. As someone without any legal background, I believe it was my destiny that allowed me to change tracks swiftly.
Reminiscing about your college days, are there any anecdotes you would like to share?
The jam-packed life became the norm for me. After my BCom and IT degree, I worked as a computer instructor. The same was true during my time as a law student when I used to work from morning till evening and then attend college. As a working student, I couldn’t take preparatory leaves for my exams, so I adjusted my timetable accordingly. I decided not to pursue academics after the age of 26/27. Even with a fear of burnout, I was willing to go the extra mile and become an able and self-reliant person. My CV was decorated with my working experiences and educational qualifications.
One should be abreast with what’s happening around. It will change the way you look at things, and the world will become a better place to live and work. I was never a textbook person; the course material was enough for me. People generally lose a lot of time in reading unnecessary stuff, whereas everything in the exams is based on the study material and past question papers and trends.
You had started your career as a professional working with management information systems, data processing and other company secretarial functions. Could you describe this transition from being a Company Secretary to a Corporate Lawyer?
During my CS, I learnt about industrial law, HR law, economic legislation etc., and this was the primary reason for doing the course. Although I was interning as a CS, I was still inclined towards the legal profession especially, because of the research, drafting and presentation aspects involved in law. The qualification of CS definitely helped me in developing a macro perspective on the legal field and familiarize myself with the legislative and legal ecosystem.
After spending half a decade at Lakshikumaran & Sridharan, you set out to establish your firm, Lexport, in 2000. How did your initial years in the practice shape your outlook? What were some of the challenges that you faced while setting up your firm?
This is a very nostalgic question for me. I was 27 and was determined not to approach the clients I previously worked with. I wanted to work with integrity. I was broke and did not have money in my pocket but had ideas and an utter zeal to do well.
When you start afresh, getting clients and work is arduous. The first problem was to reach out to clients. I decided to be patient, and with a chair, table, scooter and address I began my journey. Eventually, I started getting a few assignments and met people through events or professional conferences. I am a social person, so even if I meet people for a brief moment, I make sure to establish a connection. People’s perception is extremely important. If they find you competent, they would be more likely to offer you work.
Could you please share with our readers your journey of over two decades with Lexport. What piece of advice would you like to give to people aspiring to establish their firm?
I shaped my career in a manner that both my academics and professional experience would be used. I had 5-years of experience before starting Lexport, and in those 5 years, I have put as much effort as people put in 15 years. I gave my 200% to everything I did. At 27, even if you’re competent, you tend to get underpaid. Eventually, we get better at our jobs, build credibility and start attracting bigger roles. Whatever makes you happy gives you peace, and things that do not make you lose love for others are enough to stay happy. The monetary aspect of it is definitely important, but it isn’t something you should lose sleepover. A massive space with a good seating arrangement is unimportant since nothing would be enough, and people’s needs would never end. These days youngsters look at work commercially. I’ve seen some very bright people do routine/repetitive work for an extra buck at random places. While some are built for that field, others just chase it for money. It is about stability and consistency, so be there for 3 or 5 years, you will surely learn something. Money will eventually come and go, but satisfaction, pride and happiness will make you a complete person.
The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021, has been tabled and will most probably be taken up for discussion in the monsoon session of this parliament. What is your opinion might be some of the tax implications if Cryptocurrency were to be regulated and brought under the Indian tax regime?
Technology keeps on changing, starting from the earlier era until today; we have seen our lives changing in one aspect or another. Today, the IT revolution has emerged. Being from an IT background, I have seen the change from a dumb PC to what it is today. The concern here is data integrity, and it needs to be secured. Logically, you can only have physical security or some systematic security like passwords etc., and all these can be breached.
Before coming to the concept of Cryptocurrency, we need to understand blockchain. It is a distributed ledger technology, where your data is residing in bits and pieces in different systems and hard disks around the world and each bit/piece is pointing/cross-referencing towards the other thereby creating a web structure for a database. If you hack into one computer, you would not have access to complete data. So as a database, security and storage concept, I believe it is a path-breaking technology. Thus, many applications came based on this distributed ledger technology and finally the Japanese gentleman Mr. Sutaki I think used this technology for establishing a digital currency. There are several different concepts, it is just a digital currency, and the underlying assets are being traded against that currency based on its value. It is interesting to note that this currency is not physical. This is a logical currency residing in your machine.
The moment Cryptocurrency emerged and people started honouring it, the countries were threatened, as their domain of monetary policy through their central banks was being taken away. Therefore, some countries adopted it, and some were skeptical. If you look at the RBI circulars, they are non-committal. They are neither saying it is illegal nor banning it. At the end of the day, the Government wants to regulate cross-border transactions and levy taxes.
In some countries, there are even ATMs where you can withdraw money from the cryptocurrency account. Therefore, formal and informal systems are shaking hands. In India, we should regulate this, but if we kill the idea of Cryptocurrency, then India would lag behind. In a global economy, you cannot do much, and if it’s a system or technology that has to work, it will work. If you want to regulate something, go for it. Nobody knows about its existence and true nature; it’s just an enigma. It is an interesting subject which is here to stay. The country should accept and regulate it but shouldn’t prohibit and/or over-regulate it. Don’t ban or prohibit the idea of Cryptocurrency because if you do so, people will move out. At the end of the day, what matters is whether we want to be a secluded economy or an integrated economy. Don’t kill the hen, which lays golden eggs.
Taking insights from your illustrious career in the legal profession, what is one essential skill or trait that you believe every lawyer should adapt to?
Make a choice and stick to it. We have a habit of over-thinking, and we keep on shifting, and eventually, we realize that the first thing we picked up was the best. Being ambitious is fine, but don’t be over-ambitious or impractical. Your skills are your driving force, not your qualification or what others are doing. Different people have different skillsets, backgrounds, tastes and professionalism, so never compare yourself with others. Find out what your strengths and weaknesses are and plan accordingly. You should learn how to communicate with people. Try to improvise your skills and then choose your subject area wisely. You will eventually come across an interest, which will become your passion. Otherwise, be a lawyer and do whatever comes your way. Don’t be rigid and try to mould your life in a positive manner by seeking and accepting good opportunities. There is a lawyer in every family; though it is good, there is limited scope in this area. You need to be good; otherwise, you will waste your opportunities.
How did your IT and other experiences come together as an aid?
As an intern in a law or consultancy firm, I was well acquainted with PowerPoint and other similar software back in 1995. Therefore, I could be involved end-to-end in every presentation and was even given the opportunity to present, keeping me much ahead of my peers as far as my learning was concerned. Furthermore, graphics and pictorial presentations helped me to explain complex matters with a small diagram, which would otherwise take a thousand words to explain. And back in the days, I could make such graphical representations even in respect of court matters. Furthermore, programming requires a structural and logical approach and is similar to writing a pleading, where you need to take step after step, first the title, then facts, grounds and finally the prayer. So that systematic approach helped me in my legal profession.
How do you ensure that your employee’s mental health is in check during this pandemic?
In the beginning, the lockdown was a little harsh since nobody was used to working from home. Some employees had issues coping up with the arrangement; therefore, we tried to fill the gap with happiness programs, made more interactions and even got a few motivational speakers. I tried to counsel a few who brought their problems to me, assured them that they need not worry, and asked them to discuss their difficulties. If people don’t confide in me, I wouldn’t be able to help, and therefore both the person and the work would suffer, hence creating an unhealthy and unhappy environment.
The pandemic has affected people, work, businesses, etc., around the world. How did you cope with the challenges entailed?
At the beginning of the pandemic, the entire workflow and money inflow stopped. Managing daily chores became an issue with people forced to stay at their homes. Fortunately, a couple of years back, we moved all our data to Microsoft one drive. We were also using software for workflow management. We replaced the desktops with laptops and had software packages, which helped us keep up with the assignments and meetings. After an initial 2 to 3 months shock, we got used to the arrangement. We weren’t using our office much and therefore shifted to our own premises to reduce infrastructure costs. Today we have a very flexible work policy, where people have to master their work, need to perform well and meet deadlines. Even the clients are happy to meet online, making it a very comfortable situation by working from home. People have to complete their assignments on time, and if there is not enough work, they can learn new skills sitting at home, which will help them grow in the profession.
Lawyers have to consider themselves as professionals first. They have to keep in mind the interests of the clients at all times and also keep abreast with new learnings every now and then. Their growth needs to be continual. If they are not working harder, their journey might be tough ahead.
What advice would you have for law students & young lawyers who want to set off in a similar direction?
Be very clear about your priorities. Pick a profession only if you are interested in that area, and refrain from showing off things. You should do your work passionately and sincerely and not just for mere name and fame. Do not rush after things because it takes time to become successful.
Work sincerely and inculcate good ideas into your daily life. Try to stay humble and grounded, as these will help you reach new heights. Overconfidence and overthinking kills people’s time and efforts. Set goals in life and work towards fulfilling them with your heart and soul. Things may take time to come on the right track, but nobody would want to lose you if you are good at your work.
