King Stubb & Kasiva, one of the most sophisticated firms in the country, recently appointed Sanjay Kumar to lead the firm’s Pharma and Life Sciences practice. Lex Witness got into a candid conversation with Sanjay. Here are some of the excerpts.
The complexities of our legal system have created hundreds of legal career options that serve a variety of core and non-core legal functions. From lawyers, judges, and mediators to paralegals, the legal professional’s role is expanding and evolving to keep pace with the ever-changing legal system. Increased segmentation and specialization in the legal profession has spawned a growing number of legal specialties and subspecialties that cater to almost every legal interest. More firms and corporations are crossing international borders and expanding across the globe through mergers, acquisitions, consolidation, and collaboration with foreign counsel. The globalization of the legal profession provides today’s legal professional with a worldview and the opportunity to serve both national and international clients.
I am lucky to work on fascinating and socially significant cases, and the challenges of those cases are commensurate with the reward. Both Drug and general corporate laws are so complex and nuanced that it creates a stimulating intellectual environment. The stakes are so always very high for our clients, so we take ownership and work hard to ensure the business objectives are met within the given timelines. Plus, it doesn’t hurt being my own boss. Thanks to the focus on entrepreneurship within the law firm, this gives me the freedom to think, plan, and execute strategies.
I had the great privilege of working with some of the best International and Indian Pharma and life sciences companies, including GSK, Piramal, Emcure, Dr Reddys, Hetero and Ranbaxy. This time that I spent as an in house lawyer allowed me to interact and work with some of the best Pharma and life sciences minds both in India and outside. I was part of all the major decision making and execution processes of both the India and International strategies at these organizations.
When I met with Jidesh Kumar, our Managing Partner, he informed me that he was looking at building a Pharma and Life Sciences practice and asked for my help in hiring people with domain expertise. We interviewed many people and were not able to find the right candidate and one day he called me and asked me to think about moving to the law firm and heading their Pharma & Life Sciences Practice. I thought this was a good opportunity, especially because I have seen King Stubb & Kasiva grow from being a startup in New Delhi to a national law firm with offices in six cities across New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kochi. Moving to a law firm was also a personal aspiration as I always wanted to explore and experience the world from the other side as I had spent more than two decades being in-house. I now have the platform and also the opportunity to provide my experience and expertise to a larger audience of clients from the law firm side of the ecosystem.
King Stubb & Kasiva has diversity, entrepreneurship, innovation, and inclusion at the heart of its practice of law. They have also been successful in ensuring the ethos, values and quality of the firm is homogenous in all the offices. It really is one firm as against other law firms who work on a franchise model or with the model of multiple offices with common branding, etc.
King Stubb & Kasiva has diversity, entrepreneurship, innovation, and inclusion at the heart of its practice of law. They have also been successful in ensuring the ethos, values and quality of the firm is homogenous in all the offices. It really is one firm as against other law firms who work on a franchise model or with the model of multiple offices with common branding, etc.
Legal professionals must be problemsolvers and innovators, willing to assume new responsibilities, tackle new challenges, master new technology and navigate an ever-evolving legal system. I found all of these in King Stubb & Kasiva. This dynamic legal landscape makes each day unique and fosters an enjoyable, fulfilling work experience. King Stubb & Kasiva has a modern and global approach in handling clients and legal issues which is so much different from a traditional law firm. The firm understands client’s requirement and their expectation and strives to provide them the required legal solution.
Pharma and Life Science (Liability, Pricing, Regulatory, Transactions, Licensing, Disputes, Patent infringement and Trademarks) is my focus.
Lawyers must grapple with conceptually challenging issues, reason with logic and clarity, analyse the case and statutory law, research complex legal issues and master oral and written communications. A lawyer must possess both hard and soft skills. Hard skills are technical abilities related to specific practice or industry that you are servicing as a legal solution provider. They are called hard skills because they are specific, tangible, and often observable. Soft skills in comparison, are less tangible and not specific to any occupation. They include strategic thinking, problem-solving, maintaining self-control, reading others, planning and communicating effectively. These are the skills that play a very important role in the legal profession. These skills can give the lawyer an edge in the highly competitive legal marketplace.
Apart from Pharma and Life Sciences, I also deal with General Corporate, Labour and Employment, E-commerce and IT laws, with special focus on new generation businesses in the Pharma, biotech, clinical research and biology industries. I’ve also had clients contacting our practice for issues relating to Competition Law, Data Protection, Cyber Security, Food laws and Risk Management.
The Life Sciences industry continues to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Globally, the sector is collectively working on developing vaccines and treatments. Vaccines and antivirals will take time to move through the phase 3 trials, before being granted approval from regulatory bodies. This has created opportunities in clinical trial, Pharma regulatory advice, manufacturing and distribution, collaborations, licensing transactions, etc. Along with this, Consumer health divisions of Pharma and Life Sciences companies are seeing increasing demand as consumers stock up “over-the-counter” (OTC) medications and sanitizing products. The DCGI, the Drug Controller and the US FDA equivalent in India has now put a few sanitizing products under Schedule K of the Drugs & Cosmetics Act, which brings it under the price control mechanism. This may impact the sales and promotion of these products. There is also a big need for regulatory advice in the medical devices space, where many goods that were till now sold as FMCG goods have now been brought under the definition of medical devices. Further, significant investments in technology and Artificial Intelligence will lead to true digitization of the value chain, right from Research & Development (R&D) to commercialization, including the use of omnichannel marketing – positively impacting drug discovery, digital clinical trials and interactions with Health Care Professionals (HCP).
Talent Management for King Stubb & Kasiva is about employing the right people to empower and provide them the right opportunities to do the right work, at the right time, at the right place, and at the right price. My views are consistent with those of our law firm. We are also probably one of the few law firms in India which paid all the fee earners fully during the pandemic. We focus on mentoring and training the new recruits so that they integrate into the law firm seamlessly.
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