I currently head the legal, compliance and secretarial function at Nvidia Graphics Pvt Ltd, a leading technology company. I’m also part of the India Management team, as an Executive Director in the Nvidia Board. Along with my team I provide legal support to the business functions in Singapore, Australia, Thailand and the Indian subcontinent on issues ranging from IP, regulatory, compliance, policy, corporate governance, commercial and disputes. In addition, as a board member, I partner with the leadership team at Nvidia to proactively address business risks, support strategic growth initiatives and ensure that we adhere to a robust compliance and governance framework.
My journey in the legal profession itself started about two decades ago, when I finished law from Delhi University and I transitioned to in house counsel roles within the first few years of my career. Since then I have handled a gamut of areas, managing organization’s legal matters including Employment, IP, Regulatory and Corporate laws. As a GC in India, I have varied work experience in assisting large Indian and Multinational Organizations, across Telecom, Information Technology and Retail sectors. I bring a lot of specialized skills and experience, as a strategic business enabler from a legal, ethics and compliance perspective.
Yes, certainly the role of General Counsels is very dynamic and continues to evolve and expand in today’s challenging times. It has come a long way from being a post-facto trouble shooter to a proactive and trusted, strategic business advisor, as organisations venture into new markets and expand business.
These days a GC does not just operate in a traditional advisory role, responsible to ensure compliance to laws and facilitate dispute resolution, but also needs to focus on enhancing business, financial and risk management strategies of an organization. In today’s fast-paced world with technological and legal evolutions, businesses are looking up to General Counsels to be able to anticipate potential issues and enable business readiness. Information is available at everyone’s fingertips, and therefore it is incumbent upon the GC’s, to build credibility with business teams as trusted business enablers within the legal framework, rather than mere legal repositories.
Key challenges that the GC’s have to deal with irrespective of their industry are primarily to provide legal support and meet stakeholder demands at ‘speed of light’, to keep sanctity of ‘as of yesterday’ deadlines. Operate long hours while controlling costs and keeping ourselves abreast in an ever-changing competitive world with increased regulations and evolving legal technologies. There is heightened complexity and increase in volume of regulatory changes everyday. Therefore, it’s imperative that General Counsels stay competitive. This not only means embracing continuous learning, skilling and adoption of technology and tools but also ensuring there is continuous improvement of the legal function, viz time, cost and value.
In my view, this has to be an interdependent partnership based on trust. When it comes to domain specific legal expertise, firms perhaps have some advantage and the resources to stay on top of the extensive regulatory changes. However, in-house legal teams will always have an edge in terms of their insights on not just legal knowledge but the company’s culture, risk appetite coupled with the business domain knowledge that helps them in translating legalese to business language and articulate operational Do’s & Don’ts to manage regulatory risks. Therefore, the synergies between the two are obvious to me. Whenever law firms and in-house legal teams are aligned on the mission and purpose, with clear communication lines on the expected outcome and work as strategic partners, rather than purely on a transactional-services model, we increase the aspects of realizing maximum synergies. To achieve this the partnership model must move away from being too driven by time and cost to one that is value-based, in order to be mutually beneficial. In-house legal teams often have to deal with an information overload, and therefore it becomes essential to rely on a trusted secondary resource in the form of a law firm, that can distil and synthesize the meta information for our easy consumption. In this regard, some of the law firms are doing a great job and this helps to enhance the trust factor between the GC’s and the law firms.
The first tool that comes to my mind is cultivating a mindset that is not limited in imagination and restricted to upskilling in the legal domain only. Being absolutely comfortable with technology has become a necessity as it enables us, as legal professionals to be more organized and efficient. One can broaden their horizons by undertaking a plethora of domain specific online courses, certifications, enrolling in webinars by industry experts, interacting with the legal fraternity on a regular basis and leveraging on mutual experiences. There are numerous such forums wherein knowledge can be acquired and exchanged. It becomes important to hone those lateral skills and experiences by undergoing relevant trainings, getting certified and participating in professional forums for peer to peer learning.
Cultivate proactive attitude, ability to ruthlessly prioritize key issues, understanding of how to blend legal, business and commercial contexts in a dynamic work environment, attention to details and being an absolute team player. In general, I would advise the person to hone these qualities to further a career as a successful in-house counsel.
Favourite Gadget – Mobile phone
Favourite App – Google maps
Favourite Automobile Brand – Honda
Favourite Writing Instrument – Pencil
Favourite Holiday Destination – Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Favourite Cuisine – Indian
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