The Professional You

BRIEFLY, TELL US ABOUT YOUR ROLE IN THE ORGANIZATION AND THE MANDATES YOU HANDLE.

Presently heading Legal & Compliance Function of financial entity and mandated to handle overall legal and compliance function of the entity.

As a member of senior management team, my primary role is to support top leadership in their vision by delivering sound strategic advice, be the gatekeeper for all legal & regulatory matters that may impact the entity.

A larger portion is in Corporate governance and attending different Committee, supporting transactional work – creating the legal and compliance strategies that support different business verticals and help them grow in compliant manner. The rest is a mixed bag of handling crisis, deciding appropriate strategy for extending solution in time bound manner, developing & evaluating of new & existing business models and mentoring talent.

TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR JOURNEY SO FAR AS A GENERAL COUNSEL IN INDIA.

Legal as a profession came to me naturally as my grandfather was in the legal profession and it came to me as lineage. However, I grew as a professional & made a conscious choice to start with Apex Court and then later move into corporate world as legal professional.

To become successful legal professional your foundation has to be very strong. My Law School played very crucial role in crafting my career as a professional. While it helps me to understand the basic & it also gave immense exposure to the corporate world and various legal forums.

Live case studies, debates, mock discussion, moot courts are few to name here. It groomed me as legal professional with a business sense. I am very grateful to my parents, family, professors, seniors, and some of those visiting faculties like High Court judges, Supreme court & corporate lawyers who showed me a different world of legal profession and empowered me deal with it and today as a Head Legal/General Counsel credit goes to them also.

DO YOU FEEL THAT THE ROLE OF GENERAL COUNSELS IS EVOLVING IN TODAY’S BUSINESS SCENARIO? AND IF SO, HOW?

The Role of Head Legal/General Counsel is getting momentous because of ease of doing business with regulated and compliant matter. Especially when financial entity is dealing with products or services which are touching every life with maintaining pace regulated by RBI.

The role is taking sift on shouldering the decision rather on advisory. Take the example of recent introduced Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (“DPDP Act”), which is at centre for every organisation. Therefore, Legal is also taken centre position in assisting organisation to adopt data privacy, which has enormous implications. Data collection, importexport across geographies, storage and deletion, per the new developments on data privacy, would require a lot of attention and diligence the inhouse mechanism is to be sanitised with the help of Legal department so as to adopt the new changes in letter & spirit.

WHAT ARE THE KEY CHALLENGES THAT GENERAL COUNSELS MUST DEAL WITH ON A REGULAR BASIS, IRRESPECTIVE OF THE INDUSTRY SECTOR?

Law and Business regulation are local subject differ from geography to geography, unlike other functions like finance or sales, which are more global, so today’s Head Legal/General Counsel should be aware of all applicable law on all geography as a subject, through research and connections across the globe. That is why a Head Legal/General Counsel’s Key challenge is to be able to really understand the various landscapes of Law & regulations across the world and be able to facilitate business growth, especially for global businesses.

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON IMPROVING SYNERGIES BETWEEN LAW FIRMS AND CORPORATE INHOUSE LEGAL TEAMS?

Law firms and external lawyers and backbone for any corporate Legal teams and I believe that the synergies are very good in present days and working as core team. The option of interaction through forum where mixed crowed of inhouse as well as Law Firm & Lawyers shall participate as speaker and delegate shall bring synergies which shall benefit to Legal profession at large.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE KEY TOOLS THAT GENERAL COUNSELS CAN USE FOR CONTINUED LEARNING EDUCATION (CLE)?

Learning is a continuous process and habit of reading helps a lot to any professional including the Head Legal/ General Counsel, particularly in the light of rapid changes taking place in the social, Business and economic life, thereby necessitated upgrading of knowledge-base for Legal professional.

There is no ‘ready to eat’ tools are available for continued learning education for legal professional but yes updates on judgement & articles published on Lexis Nexis, manupatra and SCC Online are some help.

However, the mandatory legal & regulatory training requirement is fulfilled though inhouse IT or Training support vendor developed platform, where also Legal team plays a pivotal role.

ANY ADVICE FOR SOMEONE EXPLORING A LEGAL CAREER AS AN IN-HOUSE COUNSEL?

Learning is a continuous process and habit of reading helps me a lot. Every day two to three judgement/Regulatory Circulars(RBI/SEBI/IRDA), I try to read, analyses and discuss to update myself.

Make reading as a habit, follow new rulings passed by Court relevant to your area of interest and ensure that every amendment in the law is well-researched and understood. Further, inculcating solid drafting skills and understanding of business traits shall go a long way in establishing one as an in-house counsel.