Across the world’s business markets, the legal profession is stuffed to the brim with the cream of corporate minds, the elite of the elites. But, in India, that wasn’t always the case.

Despite being the first chosen career of icons like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, by the latter years of the twentieth century, the legal profession in India had suffered something of a fall from grace.

‘The joke always used to be that you would only become a lawyer if you were the son of a politician, a gangster, or somebody who couldn’t get in anywhere else,’ recalls Navneet Hrishikesan, director of legal services for service provider, Asia Pacific and Japan, at Cisco.

‘Growing up in the late 70s, 80s or 90s, there was a general feeling in India that the quality of legal education was not very good and that people attracted to the law were not of the calibre that you would like.’

That all began to change with the creation of prestigious National Law Schools, providing a five-year legal degree for those who pass a challenging entrance examination, usually the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT).

‘Over time, the law got a reputation for excellence, it became known to be something people would aspire to,’ says Hrishikesan. ‘For people like us, who joined in the early days, it was a bit of a shock to find people actually knew why we were doing law, as opposed to laughing at you.’

The National Law Schools of India University Act 1986, under which the first National Law School – the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) in Bangalore – was founded, stated that among the school’s objects was ‘to make law and legal processes efficient instruments of social development’.

‘The idea was that you would have people trained in the law who would actually go out and then change the country and help people with problems, with justice, human rights and fight for the downtrodden and the sick. Our illustrious director at law school, the late Dr Madhava Menon, called it “social engineering”,’ explains Hrishikesan.

But as the Indian economy opened up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the wealth of opportunities in the commercial arena began to tempt graduates, who found themselves suddenly in demand. And so the legal profession in India returned to the ranks of the elite.

Beyond the barriers

Social stratification in India is famously such that it is often said that India lives in several centuries at the same time – and the barriers to a legal career for less privileged hopefuls are many.

A legal education of 201,000 rupees a year (for general undergraduate students at NLSIU Bangalore during 2018-2019, for example) is prohibitively high for the average household income of less than 160,000 rupees (figure reported by Centre for Recording Indian Economy in 2015). It is perhaps no surprise that a 2014 survey of first year students at five of the top law schools conducted by Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access (IDIA) found that over 50% came from families earning an average annual income of a million rupees.

But the obstacles stray beyond the financial into the cultural, and even the linguistic, for less privileged aspiring lawyers. Despite not being the majority language in India – which teems with Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati, Urdu and many more tongues – the importance of English for white-collar jobs means that large numbers of students are excluded from law school due to being educated in their vernacular.

An IDIA survey found that only five students from the top five law schools studied in vernacular medium schools, and that more than 70% came from families where both parents spoke fluent English.

‘Those who speak better English find it easier to get into these colleges and also stay in them. They are educated well in English, so they find it very easy to express themselves,’ says Aditi Kamath, executive vice president at IDIA.

And, with the concentration of National Law Schools in cities, children in the myriad of small towns and villages across the country are further faced with transport and accommodation costs, even to access coaching and training for the entrance exam – prerequisites for the rigours of CLAT.

The reality for sizeable sections of the population, not to mention those with disabilities, is that a legal career is not on the radar of students who otherwise have the ability and drive to succeed in one – if only they had the chance.

Planting seeds

IDIA is one organisation which hopes to change all that. Founded in 2010 by legal academic Dr Shamnad Basheer, IDIA works to increase diversity in the Indian legal profession and empower underprivileged communities by creating lawyers from within their ranks.

‘[Basheer] was teaching at one of the national law universities and he realised there was not enough diversity in these schools. He knew of many students who came from towns and villages who wanted to study law but they had no access to a quality legal education. This is when he decided to do something about it,’ explains Kamath.

Comprised of chapters in 21 states, each with 20 to 30 student volunteers from the existing (more typical) law school population and led by a student team leader, IDIA conducts ‘sensitisation’ sessions with high school students, identifying and encouraging those with the potential to get into law school. It then trains them to pass the entrance exam over a period of one or two years and supports successful applicants throughout the process of training to be a lawyer.

‘In India, especially in small towns and villages, people don’t really know what a lawyer is able to do in the real world – the only representation is the lawyers they see on the television and in film. So when we conduct sensitisations for these communities, we make sure we tell them the various things you can do as a lawyer, which is not just argue in a court of law – you can join the public services, you can do policy work, you can have your own NGO and help people in your community. These marginalised groups that our scholars come from have faced a lot of injustice in their lives, so these are things that really push them to be able to say that: “I want to study law to be able to help my community to do better”,’ says Kamath.

‘What we look for more than anything is a passion to do better in your life. The fire in your belly. You can be taught things, but the passion and the drive cannot be taught – that has to come from within.’

After passing an aptitude test based on academic grades and a personal interview, as well as a means test, 50 or so students are enrolled in coaching centres to prepare for the law school entrance tests. IDIA fills out their forms and arranges for the coaching to take place for free, while current student volunteers tutor them in areas like logical reasoning and current affairs. Those needing to travel are given accommodation and expenses for transport, food and lodging. Currently IDIA has 35 trainees getting ready to sit this year’s exam.

The money tree

For those who pass the entrance exam and receive a law school place – like the 64 students currently receiving IDIA sponsorship – IDIA also funds their education. It’s a huge financial undertaking, and the organisation often struggles to find donors. Some leading schools have instituted fee waivers and scholarships for IDIA scholars, and others are in negotiations. Where schemes are not in place, IDIA taps into the legal fraternity in India.

‘At the end of the entrance exam, we know which ones made it through. Once that list is out, we make up their profiles, and we circulate them to our donor group. Usually a lawyer picks one of the scholars and says, “I commit to sponsor this scholar for the next five years of law school.” We have scholars who are being sponsored by a particular law firm or sometimes a corporate group – Citibank sponsors five scholars,’ explains Kamath.

She adds: ‘We still have a few scholars without committed donors though, and we often struggle to match donors with scholars. Donors are also more willing to contribute towards scholars, but not towards organisational expenses like paying salaries, organising events, publicity and outreach, etc.’

‘Every year, we file a biannual progress report to each of our donors, saying, “This is how your scholar is doing right now, these are the grades, these are the internships they were picked up on, these are the seminars they have attended.” At the end of the year, we tell them that “Yes, the scholar was accepted on to the next year and this is how much we need to pay this year.” We write to donors and we attach the entire projected expenses for the scholar for that academic year and they send in the funds.

Holistic support

The legal community also provides practical support to IDIA scholars in the form of mentorship and internships. Mentors are assigned according to the individual needs of scholars, and relationships often continue past law school.

Cisco is one such company that offers backing in this way, assisting with sensitisation sessions, occasional mentorship, and regular internships – although Hrishikesan would personally like to do more.

‘Actually, that’s one of my grouses with the Indian legal education system. In Australia, for example, we have interns with us for up to a year, and the same in Spain. Here in India, course restrictions mean that we are not able to keep them for more than two months or three months at a time, which I think is unfortunate, because to change the legal profession and to change the way we teach our lawyers, I think more practical aspects are what’s required, not more theories from books,’ he says.

‘Particularly in an in-house environment because, unlike a law firm, our deals and our engagements tend to go on for a while, so to be able to actually gain value from it you need to be involved in it for a while. I’m a little frustrated by the fact that the educators in India are not willing to consider different models for their law schools.’

A new world

But IDIA and its professional stakeholders also recognise that there is something even more involved in developing lawyers from underprivileged backgrounds. Although extraordinarily gifted, these students are crossing not simply an academic bar, or even a linguistic one – they are entering into a whole new world.

Yamuna Menon is in her fifth year at NLSIU Bangalore. Academically, she is currently Rank-1 in her batch and was recently selected by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports in India to represent the nation abroad in a youth delegation. But, despite an English-medium education, as an IDIA scholar from a small town in Kerala, fitting in was a process of cultural adjustment.

‘I cannot deny that in the first few months here I actually questioned the decision I made. It was difficult to adapt to this place initially because there were people with a different cultural makeup; their inclinations and interests were different from mine. I was unable to understand things which were happening, like the context, or being part of normal conversations with people for that matter – just like being in a friend circle. They might have a joke and I might not get it,’ she explains.

‘I can never forget my roots and where I come from and what values I hold. But at the same time, I had to make some changes to myself for the professional environment that I am getting into, and I think that’s part of the process. So right now I’m really enjoying it, but adaptation has to take place and, in that journey, I have made some really good friends for the rest of my life.’

‘Mental health is also a part of concern for us, because they are coming to a big city and a big college, where students are well-informed about the world,’ adds Kamath. ‘At that formative age, where you are can be quite intimidating for the scholars sometimes. Some of our scholars do feel a little insecure and get a little bogged down, so we offer help in that scenario also – find them an accredited counsellor and we make sure they feel better.’

Hrishikesan, a classmate of IDIA’s founder Basheer, recalls that the movement could always be characterised as personal.

‘We had a classmate who was very smart and intelligent, but he came from a very humble background and struggled in law school as a result, because ultimately what happens is that the rest are a bunch of these westernised, well-to-do kids who have very little in common with you. It’s difficult enough being a teenager in a new place. On top of it, you are almost forsaken, nobody is really socialising with you, you probably struggle with English a bit, the quality of education is probably high compared to where you have come from and what you have been used to, you don’t read English books at home, and basically you struggle to fit in,’ he explains.

‘I think Basheer took a lot of that to heart, because he looked at it and said, “Ok, it’s not just about helping somebody to get into law school, it’s also about helping them through that process – how do you make sure that people don’t feel left out while they are in college?”’

The future

So, has IDIA set out to create a regiment of socially conscious lawyers, armed to tackle the injustices of society? Not exactly, although it describes its core aim as the creation of ‘community leaders and leading lawyers’. Many current and former students speak of a desire to use their skills to help their communities.

‘There are IDIA scholars who, while they are in law school, have taken on local mafia-type organisations and fought for the rights for villagers around,’ says Hrishikesan.

‘But I think it’s very much left to you, personally speaking, what you would like to do. And I think that’s the right approach. I don’t think there’s an expectation that you have to say no to the commercial sector.’

And the opportunities for graduates are certainly there. Menon harbours ambitions to complete an LLM abroad, perhaps Oxford, Cambridge or Yale.

‘I have had exposure to both [law firm and other organisation] areas. Definitely an aspect of giving back to society and making a difference is something that I can’t do away with but, at the same time, commercial law gives you a lot of opportunities in diverse areas, and I enjoy the same. I believe that there is no need to cut off commercial law from public policy, so I’m trying to balance it out.’

IDIA is up-front about its end-game, which is to ultimately render itself unnecessary – not only through the empowerment of underprivileged communities, but by also creating the circumstances whereby the more typical, privileged students are better equipped to carry the torch themselves.

‘Our idea is to become obsolete after ensuring that law schools – and national law schools particularly – become more diverse, and more people from marginalised and underprivileged communities get up and see that they have this opportunity open for them and that they can do a lot for their own community. We would love it if there was no reason for us to exist!’ says Kamath.

‘We want to produce better lawyers who have more empathy towards other groups, who know that not everyone comes from a privileged background and that people need help sometimes. It is very important to put them in a diverse environment so they can interact with these scholars from other, marginalised groups and find out how, as lawyers, you can work to create a better situation for everyone.’

(If you wish to support IDIA in any manner, write in to [email protected] to know more)

GC: Can you tell me a little bit about your background and how you came to work in the law?

K Satish Kumar (SK): I am a commerce Honours graduate with a professional qualification from a premier institution in law and, in addition, I am a certified cost and management accountant (CMA) from the Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India. The two professional qualifications have helped me a lot in my career progression. Basically, I started off my career thinking to be in the finance trade – I wanted to be a cost accountant or a financial professional in the corporate world. I went into the finance department of a corporation but I always had a passion towards law, and the management thought I had an aptitude and took me into the legal department. In any organisation in the corporate world you will have a very big finance team but the legal team will be very small, so getting recognised for all your work is easier if you are in the legal team. Fortunately for me, I had both the qualifications and having commercial knowledge and a professional degree in finance gives me additional edge.

GC: Was it quite straightforward at the time, making that transition from finance to legal?

SK: It was not a very straightforward move. But I had the qualification in legal and, at that time, the opportunity also – the legal department felt my legal knowledge would be useful to the organisation. So I think I was the right man in the right place – that is how I would put it. The opportunity came, and I grabbed it with both my hands and that’s it. And I haven’t looked back from there.

GC: You have predominantly worked in the software technology sector. Was this an area you were always interested in?

SK: I always wanted to be in the new technology sector. I started my career in the late 1990s when the first wave of the Internet was storming the world. I was very much interested to be in this new technology, and I got my first opportunity with Satyam Infoway back office. I have my footprints in some of the leading software technology companies, like HCL Technologies, Polaris Software Ltd (later on the product division became Intellect Design Arena Ltd) and now with Ramco Systems Ltd – a leading software product company with a global presence. My working experience in HCL Technologies, Intellect Design Arena Ltd and Ramco Systems greatly helped me to hone my legal negotiation skills.

I also have experience working Fortune 100 companies like Chemoil. I had a different experience, working as a senior legal adviser to Brigadier Waleed Zawawi – one of the royal families in the Sultanate of Oman – but my passion has always been in the technology sector.

GC: What are the major trends in the software industry that impact on your role as general counsel?

SK: There are a lot of challenges in the software industry. Ramco has a global presence – we have presence right from Europe, the Middle East, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and we are taking our footprint to other countries as well. So we have presence across the globe, and that really gives me additional challenge with respect to complying with the requirements of each of the geographies. As a GC of a multinational global company, I cannot say that I am not aware of all the legal regulations in, for example, Japan. And not only the regulatory aspect, I have to deal and interact with lawyers across the globe. When negotiating and closing an agreement, most of the time I have to travel to meet face-to-face with the lawyers.

The other aspect, I would say, is that the business team is present across the globe, and requires support. The expectation from the business team is to support them round the clock. Matching up to the requirement of the business team in different time zones is a challenge on its own. I get calls from early in the morning right through the day, till I settle down to a call from the US late in the evening. I am on my phone right through the day. So a fast-growing product technology company like Ramco Systems is really a challenging environment to be in.

GC: You also have data protection under your remit. What challenges does this particular aspect pose for you and your team?

SK: Data Protection is the new addition to my existing role as the general counsel. With GDPR coming into effect on May 25th 2018 there was a lot of expectation among the clients and within the organisation as to the evaluation of our privacy set up within Ramco. As the general counsel with experience in privacy law, the mantle of chief data protection officer fell on me. I gladly accepted the role and started the journey into the privacy world. Slowly we have mapped ourselves with the privacy laws across the globe such as Australia, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, India, South Africa, Canada, etc.

I think that GDPR has been the forefront of the privacy laws across the globe and, post that, I’m seeing a spate of privacy laws coming up everywhere. But to be very frank with you, I see the Australian Data Breach legislation [the Australian Notifiable Data Breaches scheme] to be the toughest of all the privacy laws.

The challenges that we face in data protection are manifold. Ramco must keep up with protecting not only a customer’s personal information, but also sensitive personal information. Data has grown exponentially over the last decade, and poor security practices continue to put many organisations at risk of data breach. Personal identifiable information (PII) is one of the biggest concerns of data privacy. The veracity and volume of data in our technology-driven world is ever increasing, hence it becomes overwhelming to handle millions and possibly even billions of data records.

The other major challenge that we face is the cost of maintaining data privacy. A single data breach can cost organisations millions of dollars in lost revenue. If the data is breached, the organisation faces intense regulatory penalties from an array of regulatory bodies. We have to conduct a comprehensive risk assessment that, among other considerations, identifies the nature of personal identifiable information collected from the customers, where it is stored and how it is transmitted. We have to establish the data protection and privacy policies and monitor and enforce them continuously.

We have to further ensure that there is clear organisational accountability for privacy and data protection, apart from having a strong coordination among key stakeholders – the compliance team, information technology team, security team, etc. We implement comprehensive training and build employee awareness of risks, particularly what is expected of each employee to protect the organisation. Further, we ensure that the subcontractors have a similar security set-up as Ramco have. We ensure that we do not have misplaced or unverified reliance on third-party providers that have access to Ramco’s own information or that of our client information. We also design and implement robust monitoring and testing of privacy and data protection risks and related controls.

The breach level index for corporates is ever increasing. In Ramco, we have a strong data protection system and maintaining that level is a very big challenge for the office of the chief data protection officer.

GC: Does working for a software company mean you have cutting-edge software tools in your in-house team? Can you give any examples of your use of technology?

SK: Lawyers across the globe are not tech-savvy. Especially in the private practice world, where, at least that I can see in India, they are on the Dictaphone, they are dictating and somebody else is taking notes and then typing it and getting it signed from the lawyers.

But for us, fortunately, we are working in a technology company and that helps us to embrace technology with both hands. We are digitising all of our contracts. We have documents for the past 20 to 25 years, so it is a huge task, and I have paralegal staff who are managing this, to monitor when the agreements are expiring, when to renew, and communicating it to the business teams.

We also sign documents online, so we can track negotiations online – at what stage the document is in, which department has the claim. So email communication is literally removed now. We are tracking all the communications online and document tracking is completely done online. Gone are the days ten years back when I was the legal head at another software company and all the communication and negotiations were happening through email.

GC: Can you tell me about your legal team at Ramco?

SK: I am fortunate to have a very strong legal team at Ramco. Currently we have a strong, four-member team and we plan to expand it. Each member of my team carries more than ten years of experience and the legal team put together have over 50 years of hard-core legal experience. Each member of my legal team is capable enough to head a department of their own. In order to avoid monotony of work or redundancy we allocate all types of work to every member of the team equally.

While selecting the team members, I ensure that the candidate has the right aptitude. Knowledge can be learnt if a candidate has an aptitude. Hence, selection of the right candidate is very critical for the department. I also ensure that my team members learn at least one new legal aspect every day. I have weekly knowledge-sharing sessions within the team so that each member knows and grows together. I ensure that the legal team has a healthy environment and is transparent. Each member can handle any of the tasks in the legal department – be it IPR, litigation, contract negotiation or coordinating with counsel.

GC: What do you see as the big events or big challenges on the horizon over the next year or so?

SK: Over the next year or so, the expectation of business acumen from the legal department is going to increase. General counsel are expected to have an international mindset. There is more expectation of supporting the business team, especially on deal closure and the privacy aspect. The budgeted cost for the team is also going to be a major part.

Looking forward, we are going to see more of artificial intelligence/machine learning in the legal department. In-house counsel will be the first to adopt the AI/ML before it is taken on in a big way by external counsel. Already we are using technology in some form in the department and we are going to see more of such in the coming days.

GC: How do you think AI/ML will be used and will be useful for in-house teams?

SK: Basically, I have experienced candidates in my legal team ranging from ten years post-qualification experience to 15 years. Whether it be a lease rental agreement or a $100 million business agreement, I’m using the same resources. I am sure I can use them in a much more beneficial way in the closure of bigger contracts if I have better artificial intelligence or machine learning software which can take care of the routine stuff – a non-disclosure agreement or a rental lease agreement. I can spend the time of my legal resources for a much better team; an organisation which will increase the top line and give value addition to the company. I am trying to maximise productivity through the technology that is coming in.

GC: When do you think this technology will come in?

SK: In somewhere between six to 18 months, I am looking to have that in my system.

GC: You do quite a lot of pro bono work. What drives your involvement in this area?

SK: I think all professionals should be involved in some activities which give back to the society. We derive a lot of benefit from this society; society has made us what we are today – experienced professionals. We owe something back to the society.

I feel that everyone in their lifetime has one or other legal problem. There are people who may not be able to afford the best legal advice. I think that is when we can step in and make a major difference.Any counselling, direction, opinion or genuine advice will make a world of difference to these needy people. For me, it doesn’t really cost much. But it gives me immense satisfaction when I see the smiling face at the other end after my counselling or legal advice.

I decided to reach people through social media – Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Google were some of the mediums which I adopted to reach the people. It was very successful, I was surprised at the response levels of the people. In a very short period, I had a fan following club of over 7000 people. People approached me with various problems. Some wanted to know the process to adopt a child, some wanted to reconcile with their spouse, property disputes among legal heirs, child abuse, work place bullying or abuse, sexual harassment – all sorts of things. I ensure that just as I give some time to my family, I also give some time to society. I ensure that I give at least three hours on a Saturday and three hours on a Sunday for my pro bono work, and the rest of the day is for my family. This has given me a lot of moral satisfaction.

During my early career, such pro bono legal work provided me a training ground, providing early opportunities for depositions, building client relationships, arguing motions, first-chairing trials and other valuable work experience to build skills and confidence.

Nowadays, charitable and pro bono legal work provides me opportunities to meet people with very different backgrounds and interests whom I may not otherwise meet in my daily life. Fundraising for charities, serving as a board member for a non-profit organisation and the like have connected me with local business leaders and led to new friends.

GC: What differentiates Vashi and Vashi from its competitors?

Vivek Vashi (VV): Since we opened in 2017, Vashi and Vashi has expanded to now have two offices in Mumbai, with a total strength of 21 lawyers. The firm is well positioned to handle various complex and high-stakes disputes across India, focusing on quality-driven dispute resolution.

The firm also encourages advocacy. Subject to client preference, the firm’s lawyers are encouraged to argue before courts, tribunals and regulators. Moreover, the firm provides its associates with state-of-the-art infrastructure and resources, which further encourages and facilitates them to service clients with accurate and prompt guidance.

GC: Which practice areas do you see growing over the next 12 months? What is driving these changes?

VV: The firm works on a broad gamut of domestic and international matters, with our primary focus being commercial dispute resolution. Recently, the firm has capitalised on the evolving areas of domestic arbitration and insolvency, where we are focused on streamlining dispute resolution to provide litigants with speedy and effective recourses to justice. Recent amendments to the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 have brought about a significant increase in the speedy disposal of arbitration proceedings with the introduction of a capped time period for completion of proceedings. This has further resulted in an increase in litigants opting for alternative dispute resolution process as opposed to litigating in court. Similarly, in the most recent amendment to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016, homebuyers have been included in the class of financial creditors which has provided them with a level playing field as against larger developers / builders in a plethora of cases involving delayed construction projects in India. As a result, in the last year alone, our firm has handled substantial matters before the National Company Law Tribunal and Appellate Tribunal.

GC: How is technology changing the way that you interact with your clients and the services you can provide them?

VV: Technology has made lawyers easily accessible to clients in need of urgent and speedy advice. This has made dispute resolution less time consuming and more cost effective for clients. At the same time, evolving technology has largely benefitted the legal profession with myriad sources of news and online databases at their fingertips. This enables lawyers to provide more comprehensive and well-informed strategies and advice to clients. Access to such information through growing technology has also encouraged the legal fraternity to stay abreast of current affairs, growing industries and evolving laws and practices across jurisdictions. Technology has also introduced a competitive element to the profession, ensuring clients receive the highest quality of services at all times from their counsel.

GC: What is the main change you’ve made in the firm that will benefit clients?

VV: The clients’ interests have always been a foremost priority of the firm. As a result, the firm’s practice is not limited merely to dispute resolution; an integral part of the practice is preventative advice which helps clients preserve value. A number of potentially high-value disputes, mainly in relation to in-bound investments, are resolved by early identification and resolution of issues.

The team is also encouraged to work out of their comfort zones in a way that their exposure is not restricted to any one niche practice area, but extends largely to all-round client servicing of their matters and requirements. This not only introduces a higher degree of responsibility in the associates, but also improves their growth, matter management, rapport with clients and, resultantly, secures client confidence in, and loyalty to the firm.

GC: Can you provide a practical example of how you have helped a client add value to their business?

VV: In dispute resolution, as a practice, we provide a cost-effective analysis of most matters to our clients before advising them to pursue litigation as a remedy. This is mainly because the Indian judiciary is overburdened with a considerable backlog of pending matters, and speedy justice is still a pipedream. In many cases, clients are advised and have benefitted from strategic out-of-court resolution of the dispute in its nascent stages, rather than having to incur huge expenses in prolonged and avoidable litigation. Additionally, the firm discourages clients from engaging in a multiplicity of proceedings and / or exhausting resources in pursuing futile litigations merely as a pressure tactic; rather, they are encouraged to consider the merits of their case and have an informed and strategic resolution approach.

Further, it is often the case that larger, financially able litigants solicit advice from multiple law firms on varying aspects of their disputes, resulting in piecemeal strategy with no logical goal in mind. The firm therefore encourages clients to share a holistic view of their matters, so as to enable providing them with comprehensive and strategic advice while keeping their interests in mind and financial resources in check.

Based on such experience, a client has recently engaged the firm to act as its’ legal department, owing to promptitude of turnarounds and quality of work product and advice.

GC: Are clients looking for stability and strategic direction from their law firms, as opposed to purely legal counsel?

VV: It goes without saying that clients require stability and strategic direction from their legal teams; however, clients also need versatility. Using the illustration of the firm, clients do not look to us only to represent and advise them in dispute resolution but also to assist them in related matters. The firm is their first point of call.

India is a predominantly conservative society, with courtship customs that have been passed down for generations. However, times are changing: a combination of improved smartphone technology (and accessibility), affordable internet services and a growing middle class has prompted a cultural shift.

Over the last six years, the Indian matchmaking scene has undergone a complete makeover. Apps such as Tinder, OkCupid, Aisle, TrulyMadly and Woo – to name but a few – are transforming the way a whole generation of Indians are finding love. Although the uptake of this new technology has been slow in rural regions, dating apps in urban cities continue to grow at staggering rates.

As the industry thrives, it falls to the business people and in-house counsel to discover ways to overcome legal obstacles surrounding privacy, marketing and IP, in an effort to strike a balance and find success during a period of cultural change – while operating in an environment still very much reflective of traditional customs.

What’s love got to do with it?

India at its heart remains a country steeped in tradition – notably so, considering the melting pot of cultures and customs present. The practice of arranged marriages dates back centuries, but remains a conventional way to find a partner. But in 2014, almost all at once, mobile dating apps from international and domestic companies flooded the Indian matchmaking market.

‘Over the course of 12 months, we had Tinder, TrulyMadly, Woo and Aisle, amongst others, all come up and showcase what they have,’ says Able Joseph, founder and CEO of membership-based dating app Aisle.

Aisle is just one of a number of Indian-owned-and-operated dating apps vying for market share in an increasingly crowded mobile dating space. Its strict prescreening process underpins a curated community that brings together users of similar interests. Other homegrown apps include TrulyMadly, which matches up locals on the basis of interests and preferences, and Woo, an app that focuses on finding matches for well-educated professionals.

‘There was a sense that times were changing and there was a new need that people were having that nobody was really addressing. That is probably what led to a lot of the applications being launched at the same time,’ says Joseph.

He believes this was the beginning of a cultural shift and, since launching Aisle six years ago, he has seen India become wealthier, better educated and more accepting of western customs:

‘I think a lot has changed in India. When we launched, India was still a super-conservative society and, ever since, we have seen signs of incremental change: a small wave of feminism, the #MeToo movement and Section 377 [of the Indian penal code, which criminalised homosexual acts as “unnatural”] being abolished. There’s no doubt that, slowly, India is liberalising itself. All of these directions that we are moving in, in particular the pace of change, I don’t think that sort of speed is seen in other parts of the world.’

Mumbai local Chinmayi Shinde represents a new generation of educated, career-driven women. Working in pharmaceuticals – specifically contraception – for the last four years, she says she has seen a rise in the number of people, particularly women, using dating apps in major hubs like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata.

‘Educated and professional women are more inclined to use such apps, since they are looking for people from a similar background and are open to meeting new people,’ says Shinde.

‘The Metro cities see higher penetration of these apps. Most women move to cities to pursue either education or career. More access to smartphones and cheap internet has helped a lot of people explore the world of internet and apps.’

Swiping right

Despite the fact that dating is still a relatively taboo subject, Indians are swiping right on Tinder more than any other dating service on the market. Heading up in-house legal operations is Jared Sine, chief legal officer and secretary of Tinder’s parent company, Match Group.

‘India for us is a huge opportunity; we see a generation of young members of Indian society who are really exploring who they are, how they date and how they find love,’ he explains.

‘There are some cultural challenges in India because of some of the cultural norms surrounding how relationships and marriages and all those things start – it’s a little bit different than some other areas in the world. So we had to really think about the best way to approach that. In terms of legal, our initial approach was to take the best practices and best standards that we have in other countries, then apply them to what we are doing in India.’

The legal framework governing mobile matchmaking apps in India is very much still evolving. Witnessing this cultural and legal change is veteran matchmaking service, BharatMatrimony. The company has been in the dating market for almost two decades and is the flagship brand of matrimony.com.

‘Matrimony.com is a pioneer in online matchmaking in India, having rolled out their services in 2000. Laws and policies have been dynamically changing ever since. Over the years, our team has built expertise in legal matters related to the matchmaking industry,’ says head of legal and regulatory practice at BharatMatrimony, Ravichandran Subramanian.

‘Dating is a fairly new concept in India, but our team is equipped to deal with any changes in this category.’

Starting as a computer-based service, the company has diversified operations to include a mobile dating app in order to remain competitive.

Laws of attraction

Despite a significant cultural shift surrounding dating ideals in India, local laws still reflect the nation’s conservative roots. A lack of specific regulations requires in-house lawyers to be more strategic when implementing internal polices.

‘There is certainly an element of trying to see where regulation is today and predicting where it’s going to go, then subsequently taking actions to push yourself there,’ explains Sine.

‘That’s a big part of the job of being a chief legal officer, being general counsel. If you’re only focused on today, you’re not looking far enough ahead.’

Joseph draws similarities with the advent of ride-sharing apps when explaining legal reform in the mobile matchmaking industry – something he sees as inevitable: ‘When Uber came to India, there were no laws that restricted it, because all our laws belong to the era where we were all travelling in bullock carts. So there needs to be reform, and it’s very slow, but it is definitely happening and is something we need to be conscious of as a business.’

Despite the current absence of a legal framework specifically regulating dating apps, certain general laws governing computers and the internet do apply. The Information Technology Act, for example, covers issues around wrongful disclosure and misuse of data, including data collected by mobile matchmaking services – data that could be seen as particularly sensitive in India.

The privacy debate

When Sine first joined Match Group in 2016, GDPR had just been adopted by the European Parliament and was still almost two years’ away from enforcement – with many companies yet to firm up their data privacy policies. Fast-forward to 2019 and privacy protection is a contentious issue dominating news headlines the world around. It is an issue that has also grabbed the attention of lawmakers in India.

‘We have always taken privacy seriously. These laws and regulations coming into effect make people think about things a little differently, and we said we should build a global privacy programme that needs to meet all of the applicable GDPR standards. So if you’re a user in the US, or if you’re a user in the EU, if you’re a user in India, if you’re a user in Japan, you have the same protections and the same rights, the same access to data, the same rights to have your data deleted as anyone in another country where the laws may be more restricted,’ outlines Sine.

‘Instead of taking a country-by-country approach, we took a global approach, and it has actually paid off. We’ve now got a programme across all of our companies and all of our brands that brings everybody to the same level.’

Joseph believes it is only a matter of time before dating app consumers begin to push for better privacy protections. On a local level, concerns around privacy are already beginning to develop among the middle and upper classes.

‘When you look at a normal consumer using mobile apps in India, be they Uber or food tech, their concern is not really privacy because they have to deal with their daily sort of things,’ he says.

‘But there is a certain community of affluent Indians who are aware of international laws and who are aware of the privacy issues, in particular with the things that can go wrong. For those people in particular, this is an issue that does matter.’

Marketing matchmaking

One of the major legal issues surrounding the growth of dating apps in India has been marketing. In-house lawyers often have to work closely with marketing managers to ensure campaigns meet strict legal guidelines – not uncommon by international standards, but with its own quirks when considering the culture and tradition apparent in India.

‘In a lot of countries, Tinder just grew virally. In India, there was some viral buzz, but not on the same level we saw in European countries or in the US,’ says Sine.

‘We built a local team there that really started focusing on creative marketing around how we message the story of Tinder. Legal plays a key role in marketing – we have to find a way to make sure our IP is protected and that our marketing messages are accurate.’

Marketing Tinder across television, radio and online platforms was key to the app’s success in India. From a legal perspective, advertising laws in India are not specifically problematic – particularly considering the number of jurisdictions in which Tinder is used. But there’s more to finding success than following the letter of the law, says Sine.

‘There wasn’t anything specific in Indian law that made it difficult or otherwise obstructed our ability to be able to market. There are some countries where if you are an online dating platform it is very difficult to market on television and, fortunately, India is not one of those countries,’ he says.

‘Oftentimes people use laws to try and apply cultural norms that maybe need to be changed. That forced us to think about how we were going to structure these campaigns: what channels are we going to be working with? Are they going to be influencers or are they going to be regular PR agencies? How are we going to contract those companies to make sure we are getting what we need and they’re getting what they need?’

To have and to hold

With the explosion of dating apps across India, protecting intellectual property has come to the forefront of concerns for in-house counsel. Dating service veteran BharatMatrimony has seen the focus shift within its legal team as a result of increased market competition.

‘Over the years, apart from regular legal functions, the legal team has evolved to focus on IP, since it throws up new challenges all the time,’ says Subramanian.

‘We fiercely protect our IP and quickly act upon any violation of our trademarks and copyrights. We have been very successful in doing that and have obtained favourable decisions in many cases at the courts. The low online entry costs, high legal expenses and difficulty in scanning and detecting violations in the vast online space often lead to big- and small-time competitors trying to misuse our trademarks and confuse users by diverting traffic that legitimately belongs to us. Our team works with other teams internally to detect violations and pursue them legally.’

Global conglomerate Match Group has also implemented IP protection practices across its entire business.

‘We deal with the lawsuits, we file for tax purposes, we protect our IP – like the one we filed against Bumble, to ones where we are not the asserting party. Some people look at us because we are a big company, we have deep pockets,’ says Sine.

‘[In India] there were the typical legal hurdles you had to get over, making sure our IP is protected and that we have those elements taken care of and our messages are consistent with the legal requirements on truth and accuracy and all those things.’

As long as we both shall live

Moving forward, as the regulatory framework surrounding dating apps develops in India, privacy remains a forefront issue for legislators and regulators.

‘They want to make sure that people know where their data is being processed, they know what rights they have in relation to who is getting access to their data and ownership over that data,’ says Sine.

‘There are a whole host of new proposals that are being discussed at the legislative level in India that we need to be aware of as a business.’

In particular, there is a push from lawmakers for data collected in India to remain in India. At present, there are no regulations in India that state where and how data can be collected, stored or processed. But regulators in India are currently working towards drafting a comprehensive piece of legislation for data privacy, which could have a major impact for international apps such as Match Group’s Tinder, where all data is stored and processed in the US.

‘We’re aware that those kind of discussions are happening, but we will wait to see how the laws turn out. We are engaged, we are having conversations through our trade associations to make sure our perspective is shared, as well as other perspectives of some of the platforms that are out there,’ says Sine.

‘Our approach is to partner with regulators to try and find common ground in order to help expand not only our footprint as a business, but also the ability for people to have more choice.’

It seems that traditional approaches to dating in India are being superceded by that empowerment of individual choice. As technology continues to improve, mobile matchmaking services will continue to thrive – but how regulators and lawmakers balance a bright future with societal norms will be a delicate decision.

The decision to get into law was decided at the early age of 17. I think what excited or drove me to be a lawyer was the fact that I was always interested in pro bono work and the uplifting of society. I used theatre as a medium to communicate changes to society, I was always involved in street plays.

It was a long journey to becoming the general counsel at The Kraft Heinz Company (KHC) in India. Like most, I started out in private practice and worked as an M&A lawyer. After ten years’, I felt that I had reached my potential in terms of what I could learn in private practice and sought opportunities in-house.

In 2017 I joined KHC and one of the things that I identified with was that we are a meritocracy – we value that and I’m an example of merit in action: when I joined I was the GC for India, but today I’m also on the board of directors, earning that seat after a year. I really value that here, we invest in our people and reward those who perform.

Having a system which rewards on merit is important, because I think that for women, a glass ceiling does still exist. Especially when you get to senior management positions, in a lot of places, there are some very natural stereotypes that get perpetuated – and they’re not necessarily consciously perpetuated, it’s woven into the fabric of the DNA. It’s still an old boys club. Having said that, I think we’re making major growth into looking at this issue seriously and not mere tokenism.

On a personal level, the other thing that attracted me to them was the fact that they have really iconic brands that have stood the test of time. I’m a foodie, so working in a company like that is a natural fit. And how could it be better than working for a company that makes cheese? I love cheese!

At KHC in India, I am responsible for the legal and regulatory functions, corporate secretarial work, as well as corporate and governmental affairs. So it’s three big functions rolled into one. It requires me to be the custodian of the vanguard of the company’s ethics and compliance, along with their litigation and business risks, as well as managing their governmental affairs and making sure that – not only are we maintaining very high standards in compliance, but we are managing the company’s legal exposure.

A typical work day for me could start at seven in the morning to put out a crisis in the factory regarding labour issues, and it could end with me trying to make sure that we’ve signed a celebrity for a brand representation contract. So it can be a very different dynamic every day, with several fires to put out!

LuxLeaks, Cambridge Analytica and the Panama Papers are just a few examples of recent scandals propelled to the public’s attention by whistleblowers. Workers are increasingly speaking up against corruption, fraud, sexual harassment and harm and, in the process, preventing scandals from progressing and even saving lives. Yet some have encountered retaliation or have simply been ignored.

But this is set to change.

Piecemeal action by governments over recent years had already started to strengthen whistleblower (also known as ‘protected disclosure’) laws. However, the European Union’s agreement in April 2019 to implement comprehensive new whistleblowing legislation across its 28 member states marks a significant step change – one which will have practical workplace consequences beyond Europe.

In particular, those multinationals applying a one-size-fits-all global whistleblowing policy will need to decide whether to apply the EU’s higher standards beyond Europe. Considerations will include issues such as whether to make reporting channels available to contractors and suppliers, broadly defining protected disclosures, as well as requiring investigation and the provision of feedback to disclosers within three months.

In this age of the whistleblower, employers failing to provide easy access to confidential reporting mechanisms or handling disclosures and disclosers inappropriately risk problems escalating, reputational damage and, increasingly, significant sanctions for breaching whistleblowing regulation.

Recent legislative changes to whistleblowing protections

In 2018, the EU listed ten member states with comprehensive whistleblower legislation in place (Ireland, France, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Sweden, Slovakia and the UK), much of which has been introduced or strengthened over the previous five years (see table on p51).

Other countries, including non-EU states, have announced new whistleblowing legislation or are in the process of implementing change. For example, Switzerland, Poland, Slovakia, Norway, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Australia are all strengthening existing regulation or seeking to introduce new rules on protected disclosures by some sector-specific employees or more broadly. In Asia, Japan’s Consumer Affairs Agency is considering amendments that would see the effectiveness of Japan’s current whistleblower protection laws improve, as well as increase in scope. The changes are expected to go through the legislature in late 2019. Hong Kong has seen increased calls for general whistleblowing legislation following several corporate scandals, and it is only a matter of time before the government responds.

The United States has a long-standing, complex system of whistleblower legislation that includes federal statutes as well as certain state law regimes. Recently, there has been an increase in whistleblowing activity which, is likely to continue. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reported that it awarded more dollars to whistleblowers in 2018 than in all prior years combined. The SEC also has a long-standing policy challenging confidentiality provisions in employee agreements that have the potential to chill whistleblowing activity – a practice that has impacted the drafting of employee-related agreements even for companies not subject to SEC oversight. In a recent development, the US Supreme Court unanimously extended the time for bringing claims in certain cases under the False Claims Act.

The EU Whistleblowing Directive

In April 2019, the EU Parliament agreed to a new directive to protect workplace whistleblowers, revealing breaches of EU law in a wide range of areas including public procurement, financial services, product safety, and consumer and data protection. The law must be approved by EU ministers, after which member states will have two years to make their national rules compliant.

EU states with limited whistleblowing protections currently, such as Germany, Spain and Austria, will be required to introduce wholesale change by 2021. Many others, including Ireland (regarded as having comprehensive rules already in place), will also have to act. For example, widening the scope of protection to volunteers, suppliers and contractors, and introducing a requirement on employers to investigate and provide follow-up reports to disclosers within set time scales.

Practical implications – beyond Europe

Workplace whistleblowers play a significant role in uncovering wrongdoing and alerting employers. Despite this, managers can be wary of whistleblowing channels, fearing malicious reporting.

However, these concerns should not cloud the case for instituting a robust whistleblowing system and embedding a culture of speaking up in the organisation’s DNA. Without this, the fear of suffering retaliation will have a chilling effect on whistleblowers, depriving employers of the opportunity to investigate and address issues away from the glare of publicity and the attention of both government bodies and the courts. A 2017 EU survey found that 85% of respondents would rarely report wrongdoing, fearing negative repercussions.

The changing legal landscape, spearheaded by the EU Directive, requires employers to review existing whistleblowing procedures for compliance. At the same time, employers should take this opportunity to assess their own whistleblowing culture. Like with GDPR, which forced businesses to take an honest look at their data handling and protection policies, this latest EU legislation will prompt many to review key elements of their whistleblowing systems – including leadership, commitment and accountability.

After all, good governance should encourage workers to speak up internally – for the sake of the company’s health, longevity and financial wellbeing.

GC: What differentiates Royzz & Co from its competitors?

Mahua Roy Chowdhury (MRC): Our firm represents the next generation of technology-oriented law firms, wherein our lawyers are either engineers or scientists. In view of this, our team goes beyond the books and is able to provide advice that is in line with the rapid pace of change in technology.

We have designed and built our own portfolio management and tracking software based on the amalgamation of our technical knowledge and wide industry experience. We provide use of these proprietary systems as a value-added service to our clients.

GC: Which practice areas do you see growing over the next 12 months? What is driving these changes?

MRC: The market dynamics have changed with the advent of technology. Disputes related to ownership of technology, violation of digital licences and infringements in cyberspace are on the rise. We are seeing an array of new legal issues arising that were not foreseen in the past. We are also anticipating a rise in infrastructure-related transactions.

Being at the forefront of innovation, we are helping institutes and scientists to monetise their innovation by introducing another vertical to our practice area, which is the IP valuation and monetisation service.

GC: What is the main change you’ve made in the firm that will benefit clients?

MRC: We have expanded our practice areas to provide a full spectrum of legal services to our clients. We have inducted partners and associates in practice areas such as general corporate, India entry, tax, real estate and litigation.

We have opened offices in Delhi and a second office in Mumbai with complete litigation support, too.

In addition, we have changed our process of billing and now use either lump-sum payments or commit not to exceed fees calculated on the basis of our billable hours as a norm. The exception being only in long-haul contentious disputes, wherein we rely on billable hours. This assists our clients to budget and allocate resources accordingly.

GC: How is technology changing the way that you interact with your clients and the services you can provide them?

MRC: Since inception, our firm has been a technology-oriented law firm. We are striving towards becoming a paperless office, too.

We provide web-based access to our clients to review their portfolio and receive additional notifications for deadlines. We also subscribe to several software solutions that assist us in effectively managing our client database, deadline tracking and monitoring the various portfolios.

GC: Can you provide a practical example of how you have helped a client add value to their business?

MRC: Technology being our forte, we often cross-refer our clients and their products. We also update our clients and introduce them to the latest technology, and advise them on integrating the same to augment their reach or improve their products and services.

GC: Are clients looking for stability and strategic direction from their law firms, as opposed to purely legal counsel?

MRC: The role of law firms has gone through a metamorphosis. Clients are asking questions that are no longer limited to the legal aspect, but instead have widened to include business decisions as well. Law firms have to don the legal as well as the business hat to provide the kind of advice that clients expect from us.

GC: What is the firm’s primary focus over the next three years?

MRC: In the next three years, we intend to focus and solidify our position in the new practice areas introduced. We are focusing on empowering our team to become holistic lawyers who can provide out-of-the-box advice to complex situations.

2018 was a good year for Indian entrepreneurs. The world’s third-largest start-up ecosystem saw its base expand by 12-15% and investor funding grow by 108% year-on-year, as well as a rise in late-stage funding – sufficient to give a leg-up to unicorn status for eight companies, according to a 2018 report by NASSCOM and Zinnov Management Consulting, Indian Tech Start-Up Ecosystem: Approaching Escape Velocity.

But just a few years ago, things weren’t quite so rosy. Despite the dizzying success of e-commerce wunderkind Flipkart (sold last year to Walmart for USD$16bn) and its ilk, investment plummeted from $1427m to $583m between Q1 and Q2 2016 (according to CB Insights, October 2016) and businesses started to go under.

‘Investors were investing like anything. The majority of the time it was e-commerce and consumer services, and everyone was putting in money. The field became saturated, start-ups were giving big discounts to gain customers. And that model doesn’t work, because you are not creating customer loyalty,’ says Saugat Dutta, project manager at EY heading the Startup Himachal PMU.

‘The success parameter of a start-up was judged by how much investment it had secured, so it was a case of: “That start-up is very successful.” “Why?” “Because they secured millions of dollars in “investment”. Now, when I read a start-up story, the story is “Who’s that start-up which generated this much revenue within these many months?” – not the amount of the investment they raised.’

‘With any kind of herd mentality, you often will see a lot of people putting in money speculatively,’ adds Dibyojyoti Mainak, consultant GC of Mobile Premier League, a mobile gaming app start-up.

‘You started seeing cases where investments were made that were often valuing companies at far more than what they should have been valued at, even investing in companies without really seeing a business behind it. It became less about the product and more about a certain template of success within the market. So, if one content company has raised money, then you would expect every other content company to also raise money,’ he explains.

But rather than complete collapse, what followed was a process of maturation – building on established tech talent within the country, but with a renewed focus for strategy, sustainability and a global business plan to support those eye-catching ideas.

Laying the groundwork

Significantly, the government’s endorsement of the sector has mushroomed, evidenced by the creation of Startup India in January 2016. The flagship initiative was established to encourage start-ups that meet its criteria (and register) with benefits such as financial help with patent filing and fast-tracked examination, self-certification under certain labour and employment laws, and an income tax exemption for three years. In addition, Startup India has formed a 10,000 crore fund of funds to make downstream investments in venture capital and investment vehicles that target start-ups, promoted the creation of incubation centres and labs to foster both innovation and R&D in education and industry, as well as relaxed public procurement norms which previously excluded start-ups.

‘India has been an agrarian economy for decades. The new government [formed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014] wanted to bring about a shift to a knowledge-based economy. We have been exporting engineers and doctors abroad, so instead the goal was to see if we could use the skills and knowledge base here in India to achieve economic prosperity,’ explains Dutta, who works with state governments on initiatives to support and develop start-up ecosystems.

In order to drive a culture of nurturing the innovation ecosystem to the grassroots level, central government devised a framework to rank states on their efforts to support innovation along several verticals, intended to create competition and encourage each state to take ownership of its start-up environment.

The central government’s push for ‘Digital India’ (which promotes the use of innovative technology in government) and ‘Make in India’ has led to some cross-pollination with state government initiatives. For example, the government of Andhra Pradesh, has started to put all land records on a secure, blockchain-based platform, and is also using drone-based solutions for state security and checking municipal infrastructural compliance. In addition, it utilises Internet of Things solutions for inspecting the cleanliness of government-supported school toilets. Such initiatives have begun to create opportunities for start-ups to cater to technology requirements, facilitated by relaxed public procurement rules allowing state governments to order directly from technology-focused start-ups. The companies gain user validation and also secure a state government contract, boosting their credibility with private sector customers.

And access to innovation is expanding beyond the usual hubs. The city of Bangalore is synonymous with tech-based innovation – it is home to 25% of India’s tech start-ups, with Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR), and Mumbai housing 21% and 14% respectively, according to the NASSCOM/Zinnov report. But the same report notes that an increasing presence of tech incubators, tech parks and affordable work spaces is allowing tech start-up hubs to flourish in cities such as Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune and Kolkata, with additional growth in tier two cities such as Jaipur and Chandigarh.

But, success has not been unqualified, according to some.

‘For you to be a start-up, you needed to get a certification of sorts from, inter alia, one of the recognised tech institutes in the country, or have a registered patent in your name already,’ says Mainak.

‘That essentially cuts out 90% of everybody in India, because we are not a very patent-savvy nation, not to mention [the fact that] the patent regime in India is quite restrictive. You can’t expect a 23-year-old or a 25-year-old who is still in college, mostly on parental money, to have the financial wherewithal, or even the knowledge, to do something like register – it’s a very complicated process. That was a specific problem with the start-up definition – but that’s something the government’s already worked on solving. New notifications brought in in February 2019 relaxed many of these rules, and now require, among others, just a write-up justifying how you are innovative/will create jobs etc,’ he says.

‘Secondly, the Indian bureaucracy is a behemoth which answers to multiple interests/powers. It is not centralised enough for the central government to simply push policy and expect that all departments will follow. I’ll give you one classic example: the government has said that labour and employment compliances are cumbersome, which they are. So they said, “Ok, everybody until about three or five years in, you can self-certify.” Very good. Except then, they brought in a new tax law. Tax is covered by one department and employment is covered by a different department, and what that means is that taxation doesn’t follow that logic, so overall, the number of compliances you have to do has not reduced sizeably. If one goes down, another comes up – it’s a little bit like fighting like a hydra.’

Clearing the way

To exist in this space means grappling with a very particular set of challenges.

At the intersection between India as a jurisdiction and start-ups as an ecosystem is the issue of safeguarding ideas: in India, the process for obtaining patents has been historically sluggish, while time is of the essence for a burgeoning start-up economy working to reach its full potential. Recognising this, Startup India has introduced expedited patent review and rebates on filing fees.

‘India’s IP system has to catch up, people are not getting patents granted for five years in some instances. They file and wait. And, in the mean time, the technology loses its edge. So still, we are shaky, we cannot hope to compete in the international market that way,’ says Dutta.

‘The very restrictive licensing and the restrictive patent and IP regime that we have in India makes it tougher for you to protect your brand. And that’s the first challenge I see: brand protection. Because most start-ups don’t take that very seriously and this is why everybody has a copycat problem. Essentially, there’s somebody else who’s trying to do the exact same thing and often even copying your name,’ adds Mainak.

‘The gaming sector, where I am now involved, is very litigation prone. And it’s not just litigation, it’s prone to action from various different government departments who don’t necessarily understand the business. There’s a lot of confusion regarding whether this is entertainment or whether this is sports, and how we want to see it. Those kind of regulatory challenges are there for many sectors.’

Despite much regulatory relaxation for start-ups, penalties for non-compliance in some areas can be prodigious. Nevertheless, labour and employment, Goods and Service Tax, Shops and Establishments Act and Registrar of Companies compliance, as well regulatory requirements to combat sexual harassment, can be areas that those at the most nascent stages might be tempted to neglect.

‘Contrary to how the situation was about 15 or 20 years ago in India, when it was easy for somebody to miss out on certain compliances and still the law doesn’t catch up with you, today it has become extremely stringent. The law will catch up – if not tomorrow, definitely three years down the line. The fallout of not doing compliance is way higher than the money that you spend getting compliance done,’ says Janhvi Pradhan-Deshmukh, lead legal counsel at Startup Box, a firm that provides legal, consultancy and secretarial support to start-ups.

‘For bootstrapped start-ups, it’s a little difficult to convince them of certain things. With certain innovative business models, the law is not exactly made for them and, as such, they think that it’s ok to not do certain compliances because they don’t fall exactly under the ambit of the law. But in a start-up, time is more important than money because the start-up world is so dynamic – it changes so frequently, so fast – that to catch the trend, to catch the market is very important. You can’t be wasting time on answering legal notices and replying to queries.’

Running the farm

In recent years, India has experienced a cultural shift – doing away with past attitudes towards entrepreneurialism, and rethinking the concept of failure.

‘When someone wanted to start his or her own business you were looked down upon. If you had not secured good marks and were not academically qualified, or had not got a good job, that’s when you were starting something of your own,’ says Dutta.

‘But now, having a start-up – even having a failed start-up – has started to become a badge of honour.’

This has attracted not just young and ambitious minds, but also experienced executives into the field – and start-up adviser Pradhan-Deshmukh has found that her role is to handle not only legal issues, but to understand the psyche of all types of co-founders.

‘The young generation, they are fresh out of university and have an amazing bunch of ideas. Unfortunately they are a little blindsided by the Flipkarts of the world and they cling to that: “Oh, I’m going to become a billionaire in a short period of time when I sell off the shares in my company, and I will then become a serial entrepreneur and I’ll use that money to invest somewhere else.” It doesn’t work like that. When you come to me with that kind of idea, you have already made up your mind to sell your own baby before it’s actually born,’ she says.

‘But there’s another set of co-founders who have worked in huge corporates at high levels and then they decide, “Ok, I don’t want to work for someone else anymore.” These are the people who are mature. They understand the importance of compliance and legal, they understand the importance of having the right professionals on board – having chartered accountants, a company secretary, a lawyer. Unfortunately, they are extremely fixated on certain things – they sat in senior positions in their companies and they think that they can treat the new business in the same way, or they can tell professionals what to do and what not to do. But again, it doesn’t work like that because the start-up world is extremely different to a company which has been in the market for a hundred years.’

Home-growing innovation

Despite the burgeoning popularity of entrepreneurialism at both ends of the career spectrum, Dutta believes there is more work to be done to fully embed a culture of innovation, particularly among schools and the academic community, where the teachers themselves must be trained to develop a more innovation-friendly mindset.

‘The government of India has started funding to create small tinkering spaces called Atal Tinkering Labs (ATLs) in schools. So the infrastructure is getting there, but who will actually give the soft learning part, the teaching part? That’s missing. The hardware is sitting under lock and key because no one is actually there. In the colleges, also, the curriculum needs to be revised and the professors need to lead from the front in being innovative and entrepreneurial in the endeavours. We will soon have bullet trains, but our curriculum is still stuck at steam engines!’

Incubators, accelerators and innovation spaces are popping up across the country, but although the tech scene is flourishing with an abundance of talent, some believe that a world-leading innovation marketplace is a little way off.

‘Many Indian start-ups are essentially copycats of foreign start-ups. These are not home-grown basic ideas, they are essentially very good copies of what is already listed in the market,’ says Mainak.

‘We are aiming to be on par with Silicon Valley or, now, China. China is now a very serious contender to become a global start-up giant. Everyone is now heading to China because of a lot of unique innovations – they used to replicate, now they are innovating. India is still stuck at the replication stage,’ Dutta adds.

‘Things are coming, but I wish the growth trajectory would be steeper, because I am amazed by how China is doing – they are first pushing money into R&D and now it has started bearing fruits. India needs to do that; India is not pushing money into R&D. Mostly, we are trying to replicate and customise ideas to our socio-economic contexts. I don’t think it’s a bad thing because, of course, it’s generating money and employment, and is innovative at a basic level. But to have an edge over other countries, you need to pursue radical innovations and aspire to be inventive.’

A lawyer in the mix

For most embryonic companies, absorbed by passion for a new idea and the pitfalls of establishing a company, hiring in-house legal support has not been the first priority. But Mainak advocates greater diversity on core teams – including lawyers.

‘In India, the legal system is extremely pyramidical. We have a phenomenon called “grand lawyering”, where essentially there are a very, very small group of senior advocates who corner most of the influence. You will often not have access to these guys when you are a very young company and you can’t afford their rates, which then means that established clients will always have an advantage going into any kind of litigation. This is why it is important for most start-ups in India to ensure that they never get into litigation.’

However, he adds: ‘Most still wait till their first run-in with the legal system or bad/unfair contracts – in other words, whenever the first “crisis” hits.’

In a fast-growing company, investment in company culture and good policymaking often falls by the wayside, and a toxic environment can emerge, incubating issues that further iterations of the organisation will have to face. And neglecting the detail now can cause future headaches, or even financial hits.

‘When you try to raise your third round of funding, or later on when you are listing and you are trying to raise a huge amount of funding and they are trying to do a due diligence assessment, a lot of these issues come to the fore. At this point, it’s a huge pain trying to solve all of these problems – maybe four years down the line the company realises that it hasn’t signed a non-disclosure agreement, or a pensions agreement, or even employment agreements, in some cases. That is when they would bring in somebody legal,’ says Mainak.

‘It’s not the best strategy, particularly with a system that is so regulation-heavy (India remains one of the most regulated economies in the world), so you would do well to have a legal mind right at your board stage, right when you are trying to strategise. Lawyers tend to bring logic and structure, and are able to play devil’s advocate.’

For start-ups rushing to market, or scaling fast on a shoestring budget, it can be tempting to assume that a lawyer will do nothing more than hamstring a fledgling business. But, when the realities of compliance, process, litigation, contract negotiation and management, brand protection and strategy development converge, there is a fertile world of opportunity for advisers to bring a critical eye to proceedings, and weed out potential problems early on.

GC: Can you tell me a little bit about your background and how you came to be working in the law and working in-house?

Nitin Mittal (NM): I’m a qualified law graduate, a corporate secretary and also have a degree in finance. I believe in continuous education and, to that end, I recently also completed a Masters degree in business law from National Law School Bangalore, India’s premier university.

I started my career with a corporate, not a law firm, in corporate law, and the responsibilities on starting that job were multiple – not only law, but also finance, administration, real estate. But, gradually my passion and interest attracted me to the core area of law and I wanted to give my full attention to it because it clearly was my calling and passion.

For the last 13 years, I have been heading the legal function for companies that I have worked for. I am currently working with Phillips Lighting – for the last three years – which has now changed to Signify and, before that, I was with a German multinational called OSRAM for around ten years. Being an in-house lawyer and having worked at companies with global presence, getting exposure to different functions and people with different cultures within different business contexts has really shaped me as an in-house lawyer, and given me a holistic view of complex business issues, and how the external and internal environment changes. So that is how I have grown as a lawyer within the last 16 to 17 years of my career.

GC: What was it that made you want to work for a corporation as opposed to a law firm when you were starting out in your career?

NM: Apart from being a law graduate, my interests were also to leverage my degree as a corporate secretary – and if you want to leverage that degree then you need to work in a corporate. I was not so inclined to work on the litigation side in a law firm, as I come from a business family background. Hence, I wanted to work close to where the business is, and that is why I think I got attracted to the corporate field more than the law firm field.

GC: You’ve obviously worked in the lighting sector for quite a long time. What are the major trends that you’re navigating in that field in India?

NM: The lighting industry has witnessed a major transformation towards LED lighting over the past couple of years, across the globe, since 2014. The ratio of LEDification (as we call it) from traditional lights to LED continues to increase, enabled by several government initiatives, because the government in India is also promoting LED usage to enhance energy efficiency. But this ultimately led to revenue stagnation because the price point was going down drastically. As a result, the LED lighting industry saw the emergence of several low-cost competitors that offered low-cost LED products with no differentiation, which started bringing about even further price pressure – so even though the volume is increasing, the price is decreasing and, overall, the stress on margin is high. This trend peaked in 2018.

The challenge for the industry is to find new areas of growth beyond simple commercial lighting. For example, we have come up with a new innovation called LiFi – light fidelity – which gives you a stable and fast broadband data connection through light waves, as a powerful substitute for WiFi.

Then of course there is applying light to horticulture – how do you use light to drive productivity in horticulture, in plants, in vegetables, in chickens and livestock? How do you bring highly optimised, low-cost connected solutions to increase the penetration of lighting further?

The industry is looking at applying new trends that you see in business models, like lighting as a service, not as a product but as a service, and value-based pricing, with use of artificial intelligence and high automation.

From a general counsel perspective, these will lead to new legal scenarios – contracts becoming more complex, long term, PPP, and more digital and security laws, including specific regulations. You will find the need to have a deeper view of privacy because you need to use the data of customers for connected lighting, and you may need to monetise data. I think with this fast growth and transformation in the lighting industry, general counsels need to be up to date on new technologies, especially on the digital side – in different ways lighting is now more than illumination. We have to be fast thinkers; we have to come up with global solutions to problems that we never faced before. We always have new problems before us to solve. For this, we need to have out-of-the-box thinking, new solutions.

GC: As regards your role at Signify, what are the particular challenges that you’re dealing with at the moment?

NM: The main challenge in my role is to manage multiple issues in legal compliance and governance. We have a very lean team: including me, there are three people and we have to manage a business of more than €500 million. India is the fourth largest market for Signify worldwide. We tend to seek out the complex stuff but there are also minor things at any given point of time. I could be handling multiple regulators, whether there are labour laws, technology laws, competition law, or a complex negotiation, or litigation – civil or criminal – and, of course, compliance. With a small, lean team, I think you have to handle so many things at any point of time plus being updated with a lot of things that are happening in corporate laws, technology, in digital laws.

I think this is the main challenge: how do you gear up to do things that add value? You have to, as a general counsel, recognise how you reduce things which are not productive, which are not adding value to the legal function, to the organisation, and do things which matter the most, which are necessary for the organisation because of the changing industry. What Marcus Aurelius wrote in his book, Meditations – one should prompt oneself ‘Is this, or is it now, something necessary?’ – is very apt for us.

I see numerous situations where law is very equivocal, or core judgments are ultimately in a state of flux. Business demands are dynamic and advice is required to consider all these aspects. The spirit and the intent of the law need to adhered be at all times. So I think managing time qualitatively and tactfully is imperative.

GC: How does your team sit within the wider Signify legal team globally?

NM: India is part of growth markets within Signify. I am the leader of the team, but I also do a lot of things which are direct. We need leaders who are actually very hands on, do direct negotiations with customers, do property and M&A deals directly as well. We have a strong focus on integrity and compliance. My other two team members work on contracts, on business advisory, on compliance, on governance, on various other aspects of business – I think everybody really lives life to the full as part of a global team.

We are fully integrated with the worldwide legal team because globally the legal team is very close knit. They interact often and you can share any problems with them and you can also share knowledge with them. Knowledge sharing is very much a part of the culture in the legal function, and leveraging each other’s advantages and sense is also another key attribute of the function. Last year, I did a complex project in Morocco from India, and led that contract from the legal side, so I think geography is not a limitation right now. A legal team can be situated anywhere, and they can do things for other countries as well.

GC: You have digitised many of your legal and business tasks. Can you talk about that process of digitisation and any key learnings that arose?

NM: It is my firm belief that technology will provide efficiency and also effectiveness to the GC role and for business. We have a contract management tool to ensure that we can have sales and purchasing contracts stored digitally. People can retrieve contracts and it can give alerts when contracts need to be reviewed. We are currently reviewing this to make it more all-encompassing.

Secondly, we have a very big initiative on managing compliance of various laws. India is a complex country with more than 25 states, and each of these states has their own laws. We as a company have two manufacturing locations, multiple offices, and around 200 laws under which we would be governed. How as a company do you ensure that you’re complying with all these laws? So through technology we mapped all these laws through different functions within the company, and all these individuals now get alerts: this is a law that you have to comply with, please upload evidence, please ensure that you are complying. This is monitored through that digital tool, which we give to an external party.

On governance, we also digitised our board meetings so we don’t do them through paper, everything is done digitally. That enables a lot of efficiency at the board meetings. This is also good for sustainability and the environment.

We are also looking at some other initiatives, especially when we do projects – how do we manage projects happening across the country, where we use contractors?

I think the mindset is that technology is there to stay, whether it’s analytics, whether it is blockchain, whether it is artificial intelligence. But the question is how do you use it successfully in a cost-effective manner? And these new technology initiatives also pose challenges, because they should be understood by all the participants and the rationale should be justified, otherwise it will not work. You have to have a buy-in from everybody – if you roll out and people don’t fully understand it, or fully understand the benefit and simplicity that it brings, it will not work in the long term. It is very important that everybody is on the same page when you are rolling out technology initiatives in the company.

GC: Are those technology initiatives used elsewhere in the global Signify legal team, or is that something that you’ve been spearheading from India?

NM: On governance, for example doing board meetings without paper, is very India-specific. Compliance with law, which was a big project that was only India-specific – nowhere in the world has a software which monitors compliance with all applicable laws.

GC: Looking to the future, can you tell me about what you see as the big events or the big challenges on the horizon over the next year that will impact on your team and how you’ll be supporting the business?

NM: I think the biggest challenge I see for Signify is managing the transformation that the lighting industry is facing, shifting from conventional lighting to LED, and now from LED to connected lighting. How will we gear up to offer an unmatched value proposition to the customer and diversify our product and service portfolio to differentiate us as a leader in the industry?

As a legal function in the future, over the next one-to-two years, I think we need to be more agile, more focused on where are we adding value for the organisation and where we need to concentrate more. I think these are the two or three things we really need to get up to speed to as a legal function if we want to support the company in its transformation going forward.

Another project we are doing is basically concentrating on things that we can stop doing, and focus on things that are adding value. I think those things are really important in the future because of limited resources, and focusing more on the changing portfolio of the company.

The battle to build a diverse, highly skilled workforce, particularly at the leadership level, is continuing around the world – and India is no exception.

Female representation within the Indian legal profession is strikingly low. At present, only three female judges (of 31) sit on the Supreme Court of India, and only 6% of high court judges are women.

46% of those surveyed in Monster’s Women of India Inc study felt that there was an obvious perception that women cannot put in the same hours as men in the workplace. Remarkably, only 72% of men surveyed felt that both men and women ought to receive equal opportunities at work.

Although India ranks fifth lowest in the world in having females in leadership roles according to Women in business: beyond policy to progress, a 2018 Grant Thornton report, this figure has risen from 14% in 2014 to 20% in 2018.

But progress is gradual.

Workplace gender and cultural bias

The prevalence of scepticism regarding a female lawyer’s professional capability and counsel is reflective of gender bias at several levels, with female lawyers often labelled as ‘aggressive’ or ‘unfit’.

A high-profile example of this came in 2012, when comments made by a high court judge caused outrage throughout India. Justice Bhaktavatsala of Karnataka High Court was reported as saying that an unmarried advocate arguing a matrimonial case was unfit to argue, as she was an unmarried ‘spinster’:

‘Family matters should be argued only by married people, not spinsters. You should only watch. Bachelors and spinsters watching family court proceedings will start thinking if there is any need to marry at all. Marriage is not like a public transport system. You better get married and you will get very good experience to argue such cases.’

Following a successful petition, Justice Bhaktavatsala was removed from sitting on family matters.

But institutionalised biases remain: an inherent social prejudice or ‘glass ceiling’ subsists for females wishing to advance in the legal field, including in-house. The Women of India Inc study found that 47% of women reported an inherent view that, once married, women were far less serious about their work. And other stereotypes persist.

‘Today, in India, we’re still discussing “Does she have a voice?” and “Should she be taken seriously?” in the workplace,’ says Preeti Balwani, general counsel for India at The Kraft Heinz Company.

‘One of the most critical things that women face is the fact that stereotypes interfere with them being taken seriously.’

She adds: ‘They also judge you based on your appearance – they believe that a certain type of appearance denotes that a woman may be more invested in her appearance than her work.’

Maternity and demanding work-life balance

With the work day – and perhaps night – split between client meetings, case preparation and court hearings, the life of an Indian lawyer, whether at the bar, bench or in-house, does not readily sync with the demands of raising a family.

‘A major challenge would be managing perceptions and the unconscious bias people have towards flexible working hours. For example, when women return from maternity leave,’ explains Shelly Kohli, assistant general counsel for South Asia, Middle East and North Africa at Levi Strauss & Co.

‘Despite being on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, we still feel pressured if we have to leave early or come in late, whether it’s because of childcare or any other commitment. I also feel that there is a challenge in being perceived as high potential working flexible hours – this whole stigma around working only when you’re visible is a very big challenge that women lawyers continue to face.’

‘Whilst hiring a woman, management consider if she’s going to get married and have children in the near future,’ adds Balwani.

The Women of India Inc study found that 46% of women felt that taking maternity leave would lead to a view that they would also quit, with 59% describing the transition back to work as challenging. This was due to various reasons: unaccommodating executives, pressure to leave the company and their commitment to work being in doubt.

But, in 2017, the Indian government modified the 1961 Maternity Benefit Act to increase the length of maternity leave from 12 to 26 weeks to females with fewer than two surviving children. While on maternity leave, a female is entitled to ‘maternity benefit’, a fully paid absence from employment to take care of a child. The amendment also included ‘work from home’, and crèche provisions for companies that employ 50 or more employees.

‘I was thrilled when the 2017 maternity law amendment was finally passed – I think it’s a welcome step,’ says Kohli.

‘These changes actually position India as one of the most progressive countries in terms of providing maternity benefits: enhancing maternity leave from 12 weeks to 26 weeks enables women to combine their professional and personal life successfully without jeopardising their health or job security. I believe there are surveys that suggest that 25% of women lawyers actually forgo their careers after childbirth. These amendments address this challenge quite a bit – it also addresses having crèche facilities and ability to work from home, and I think this will eventually show demonstrable results in the form of more and more women employees coming back to work after maternity leave and helping the retention process.’

But not everyone is uncritical of the changes.

Says Zia Mody, founder and managing partner of AZB & Partners: ‘My thoughts on the 2017 maternity leave provisions are that it provides women with the safety net, which creates a good deal of comfort to them. I think the problem for employers is that they will have to pay six months and if, after that, a woman does not return to her workplace but joins a competitor, well – that’s that!’

Additional financial burden on employers could mean that some corporations are reluctant to invest in female employees, considering maternity leave and other associated benefits as wasted resource.

According to Balwani, there is still more work to be done.

‘The 2017 maternity leave provisions are an improvement on the previous law, considering that the previous law was very rudimentary. The new law has increased the amount of weeks, so without a doubt it’s a step in the right direction. Is it comparable to the maternity leave provisions in countries like Norway? No. We need to look around and see where we stand on the global platform – why is a mother in India at a disadvantage against her peers across the world?’

Gender pay gap

A gender pay gap exists whereby women in India earn on average 19% less than men. According to a Monster Salary Index Report, this gap increases to 30% for highly-skilled occupations. The report also showed that 60% of the working women in India surveyed felt discrimination at work and a third of those felt that they were not easily considered for leadership roles. However, of those surveyed, 71% of men and 68% of women felt that gender equality should be a prime concern within their organisation.

57% of Indian businesses surveyed by Grant Thornton in their 2018 Women in business: beyond policy to progress report, indicated that the Indian government ought to be proactive in its approach and do more to tackle the issue of gender disparity in the workplace and business leadership at a statutory position. Yet, of those 57%, only 31% stated that businesses and government should work in conjunction with each other in the domain of gender disparity.

The introduction of The Companies Act in 2013 made it compulsory for all listed and large public companies with a share of 100 crore or a turnover of 300 crores to have a minimum of one female director on their board in India. This was the first obligatory quota for female board members, covering all fields of employment, including legal.

‘Any kind of regulation such as The Companies Act 2013 requires compliance, and people take compliance very seriously. There has been a significant shift between what started off as tokenism versus actual seriousness about compliance. Some of this was already existent for public listed companies, so it’s still early days, but there is a move in the right direction. It’s too early to judge its success yet. I think if you give it another five years, we’ll be able to really sit back and evaluate whether the Act was successful in driving inclusion,’ says Balwani.

But some, like Kohli, argue that enforcement needs to beefed up:

‘Whilst this law, certainly on paper, helps improve inclusion and gender diversity in boardrooms, I feel much ground really needs to be covered. There has been data compiled by PRIME Database which has pulled up corporate reports filed by companies as of December 2018. It suggests that 118 of the top 500 national stock exchange listed companies do not have an independent female member on their board,’ she says.

‘These are not very promising numbers; I’m hoping that companies will implement this more seriously and that would really help women coming into more senior positions in companies. I think it’s a compliance issue and I would like to see how the authorities would react to this.

The Equal Remuneration Act 1976 requires the payment of equal remuneration to both male and female workers. However, eliminating discrimination in the workplace has proven to be a difficult task in practice.

‘We haven’t yet gotten to the conversations around the considerable pay gap. I think there is a very high presupposition that women don’t understand finance and that we as a gender don’t know how to ask for what we deserve,’ says Balwani.

Despite government legislation, representation of women in the in-house legal community is lagging behind. Female lawyers in top roles, including in-house, are still the exception rather than the rule. While overt discrimination towards women in the legal, and in-house, field has somewhat decreased, a common view is that this progress has largely been restricted to box-ticking.

Legislation alone cannot force headway, and organisations committed to genuine change and development concerning diversity within the workplace have aligned their policies with a genuine belief that diversity is essential for the advancement of society.

Ravi Singhania (RS): how do you pick lawyers for your company?

Nandita Khurana (NK): When picking an outside counsel for our company, we are looking for a firm with an established track record in the practice area in question. We also want them to have an understanding of our industry, business model, company culture, and objectives. In addition, we are looking for lawyers who are genuinely concerned with safeguarding our interests and who can provide practical legal solutions suitable for our business.

RS: What are your service expectations from outside counsel?

NK: In essence, we expect them to be a strategic adviser to the company. We need counsel to provide a confident and well-thought-out solution on the issue concerned. In short, don’t present me with the options; provide me with a solution backed by your logic and experience.

RS: What kind of fee arrangement do you prefer?

NK: Billable hours are a passé. We are living in times of software and apps which provide real-time information and decision-making capabilities for live, short-term and long-term problems, as well as their financial management. We expect outside counsel to work as an extension of our in-house team and thus, expect more certainty and predictability in billings.

We prefer working with most of the outside counsel and law firms who offer alternative fee arrangements, options involving blended hourly rates, fixed fees, retainers, yearly fees, contingent fees, discounts and value-added services. We work on tight budgets and expect our law firm partners to help us manage those legal budgets.

It’s important, too, to find ways to offer more services in that money. For instance, an external legal counsel instantly becomes the apple of my eye if you are updated about my company through reading of our annual reports, news and social media. Be my trusted associate and keep an eye on what might positively or negatively affect my business to get that brownie point.

RS: Do you have different categories of law firms for different types of matters?

NK: We are living in an era of specialisation. Today, you have experts for every ailment. I see the trend is shifting towards boutique law firms that are experts in their fields and area of specialisation, be it infrastructure disputes, intellectual property, competition law, capital markets or aviation.

Therefore, we do prefer experts who have successful track record in their practice area and have experience of advising companies in our sector. It provides a better perspective, as well as saving us billable hours and a lot of spade work to make them understand what we do. A boutique firm with similar clientele in my sector has a better handle on my business, industry trends, competitors and challenges.

RS: What is your process for finding new external counsel?

NK: Word of mouth is one of the most important reference criteria when hiring outside counsel. We have our own due-diligence procedures, like looking at the ratings of legal directories like The Legal 500 and, at times, checking their references from other in-house counsel who have used their services.

Cold calls and legal articles on email are helpful if they are relevant to my particular area of focus, too. Spamming my inbox won’t help either of us. Know your client (or prospective client) before sending that newsletter or requesting for a meeting.

RS: Do you prefer local lawyers more than global firms?

NK: It depends on the kind of assignment and the complexity of matter involved. For multi-jurisdictional matters like M&A and antitrust approvals, we prefer firms which have resources, coordination skills, networks and management capabilities in the chosen countries and jurisdictions.

For local compliance involving both contentious and non-contentious matters, it is always better to hire locals.

RS: Lawyers have been receiving a lot of flak from the judiciary and the users of their services for using too much legalese. What is your take on the lawyer who does not speak legal language?

NK: I always prefer plain talk over legalese in legal opinions. I do not hire an outside counsel to spend hours reading a 20-page memo full of sections and clauses. Keep the language simple, so that I can also explain it to my management and board of directors who are not lawyers. In short, don’t send me an email with an attachment where you could have explained your point in a few words and then bill the company for a memo to client. In my experience, a lot of times I have felt that it was very much possible to explain a legal position in plain English in ten bullet points than a twenty page memo.

At the end of the conversation, Khurana asked where outside counsel feel a lack of support from in-house teams, to which Singhania replied:

For me, the general counsel is the best resource I have about a company. They understand the ecosystem of the business, the board of directors, and the management. We expect them to tell us everything which is relevant in helping them legally. Do not hide vital information and have faith in us.

We do not expect GCs to be the legal experts, after all, that is why we are there! But during the conversation and discussion on legal advice and the recommended course of action, at times GCs do not like to be treated like a novice and explained basics of legal position and procedure. When we assume they know it all, at times we’ve found that they were unaware and expected hand-holding. We are there to answer your question and no question is a stupid question; please interject and ask us as much as you want to know.

You mentioned that you look at ranking bodies when hiring a law firm. Therefore, after years of dedicated service, please do give out a positive recommendation to the legal directories and don’t ignore that email from the researcher.

Lastly, I have mouths to feed and maintain the momentum of the work being done for you. Plus, we do not have big budgets and cash flows like big companies. We are tirelessly working to ensure preventive compliance for you, strategies to save you millions in disputes, and managing your mergers and acquisitions. The least that we expect is being paid on time. If we are important to you, it should be communicated to the finance teams as well.

Also, trust me that I have the best interest of your company in mind, so trust my recommendation when I bring you the bad news and you should consider settlement.

There aren’t many people in the start-up space who are lawyers; I realised that I was probably one of the first guys who said at a very early stage that I wanted to be part of the start-up sector, this is where I want to focus, this is the most interesting space.

I graduated in 2015 from National Law School Bangalore. I was hired by a law firm and I spent some time there before I was hired as general counsel of start-up news curation app Inshorts, around the time they raised $20m from Tiger.

Inshorts was facing legal issues over their intellectual property and over their content, and they also had very few internal processes for a company that had grown from 20 to 60 in three months, and planned to grow to 200 in the next few months. They needed someone to oversee that growth – ideally this was not in the domain of legal, but when you are a very small company with a very small core team, you don’t ask these questions. I was tasked with setting up all their HR policies, their committee against sexual harassment, to ensure that basic laws with respect to labour and employment were followed, that basic processes existed. On the legal side, I had to file their trademarks, ensure there were no copyright violations and ensure that the company was well protected as a 360° view.

I was contacted by Mobile Premier League (MPL) last year. MPL is a gaming company and they wanted to build the world’s largest e-sports and digital sports gaming platform. The legal landscape for gaming is very different from what I was doing at Inshorts, but now we’re one of India’s fast-growing apps – we’re eight months old and we have over 25 million users.

With legal, most of those who are involved at the start-up level are potentially younger, with four or five years of experience. As the company grows really big, there is always the question about whether you need to bring in somebody who’s more experienced and, if you were to, would they understand the business as well as somebody who has been involved from the very beginning? Would they have a better understanding of the digital and tech space – which is essentially lacking in India? What is the right balance of experience and youth as a company grows?

When you first join, you are given a shoestring budget and a bunch of things that you need to achieve with that. However, your budget will increase and also what you need to achieve will increase, so you are no longer looking at only protecting the bare minimum – you might now be looking at aggressively trying to protect your brand, for example. That kind of switch is challenging, because you are calibrating and recalibrating your plans completely.

India’s distinct cultural environment has given birth to a rich music scene that is fast-growing and ever-changing, but dealing with its gargantuan population and slowly developing telecommunications infrastructure may be key to a lasting legacy.

The average internet user in India spends 21.5 hours streaming music every week – nearly four hours more than the average listener elsewhere. But translating this enormous consumer base into strong bottom-line figures remains a challenge for the industry across the board.

Relatively speaking, India was an overdue entrant into the digital space for music. The late penetration of smartphones, combined with inadequate digital infrastructure made data consumption a premium service only available to the wealthy elite.

That changed in 2016, when telecommunications giant Reliance Industries and its mobile network subsidiary, Jio, entered the market. Following a significant investment by Reliance Industries into fibre-optic networks across India in the preceding years, the launch of Jio brought with it significant disruption to the domestic mobile landscape – namely, all inclusive and unlimited mobile data.

‘Reliance came in, gave away free data, and immediately changed the consumption habits of the average Indian user,’ says Ali Sachedina, general counsel and head of business affairs at JioSaavn, a domestic digital streaming service and itself a subsidiary of Reliance Industries.

‘Before Jio launched, people in India would send a WhatsApp message, turn off their data and turn it back on to receive a message because it was insanely expensive for the average Indian to have a proper data plan. After the launch, whether you were a doctor or a rickshaw driver, people were able to live stream on their phone – whether that was music or video – giving rise to companies like our own.’

Change the Tune

The sudden availability of free data in India had a dramatic effect on the digital environment. From a standing start in 2016, India now ranks as the largest consumer of mobile data globally, helped by the fact that it also boasts the lowest prices for data consumption.

‘This has given billions of consumers access to the internet and legitimate sources of content, which is really driving the legitimate growth of digital music in India,’ says Sankalp Dalal, head of legal at Zee Music Company.

Established two years prior to Jio’s data revolution, Zee Music Company had already snapped up a large chunk of licences for Bollywood music, but saw marked growth following improvements to the availability and accessibility of mobile data.

Similarly, JioSaavn also finds its roots in Bollywood music. Created as the result of a merger between JioMusic, the digital music arm of mobile operator Jio, and Saavn, an entertainment distributor focused on Bollywood and entertainment, JioSaavn is the strongest domestic player in India, accounting for 37.8% of the streaming market. Crucially, the 2018 merger combined two key business strands vital for streaming businesses: licences and users.

With 104 million monthly active users and the rights to more than 50 million tracks, the combined entity boasts a wealth of perhaps the two most important factors in the business. Those two factors are also inextricably reliant on the ability of the company’s counsel to both establish and navigate the complex web of licences. JioSaavn works with thousands of different record labels and music publishers, requiring constant negotiation by the business and its counsel in a constantly evolving environment.

‘There are three key stakeholders in any licensing endeavour: the finance team, who model and understand what our obligations are from a revenue perspective; the content team, who handle the day-to-day operation of the labels and licensors; and the legal team, who need to align everyone’s wants and needs in the agreement,’ explains Sachedina.

‘Legal needs to work closely with the other teams when forming and reviewing the agreements. We have to consider the various implications, especially when it comes to the revenue element and the limitations on a product or service. We have to ensure that everything is aligned, before effectively expressing that to the licensor.’

As the music industry in India evolves, achieving alignment across the business functions will become increasingly imperative. Like in many growth industries, short-term profitability – particularly when the entities are well funded – is often cast aside in favour of prioritising factors that will lead to long-term revenue growth.

In the digital streaming space, expanding the userbase and catalogue of licences are the top priorities. But, unlike in other industries, the nature of licensing – particularly in a global environment in which other jurisdictions have already reached maturity – means that costs are a major consideration from the outset. Compensation is generally determined in terms of the number of times the property is streamed, meaning that for each user listening to music, there must be an associated model for contributing towards the costs incurred.

‘Margins are getting smaller. A fair amount of our revenue goes to pay content licensors, both on the music publishing and on the sound recording side. It compels us to look at other avenues of revenue generation and ways to add to our bottom line,’ says Sachedina.

‘As legal, we need to look at everything from a risk management, compliance and value-enhancement standpoint. If there’s a new pricing structure we want to address, we have to look at it through a legal lens and how it affects us in our other endeavours. This requires us to have an absolute knowledge of the business.’

Face the Music

On a global level, as the music industry shifts towards a business model predicated on mass consumption via digital streaming – one where artists are compensated based on the number of times their properties are played – the potential of India and its 1.3 billion people is vast, with international players taking notice.

‘In the past, we were able to convince labels and licensors that India operates with a very unique set of circumstances – the userbase is different and their consumption patterns are different,’ explains Sachedina.

‘Now we’re getting to a point where the labels and licensors want us to operate on the same level as other streaming services around the world.’

Driving that change has been the entrance of major global players into the Indian market. Earlier this year, Spotify and YouTube Music both officially came online in India, armed with deep pockets, expansive licences and best-in-class technology – as well as different value propositions for consumers.

‘If there’s one challenge that any music streaming service or content licensor has, it’s YouTube. You can’t argue with its scale or that their rates are so low – after all, it’s hard to compete with free,’ says Sachedina.

‘The challenges from a content perspective are large, but it’s primarily a pricing problem. The issue is with the Indian community itself: getting them to attribute value to a platform or service that delivers music. The difficulty lies in getting your average Indian user to see value in a premium service because, quite frankly, if it’s free – why should they pay for music?’

It is this struggle to compete with ‘free’ that has dominated the conversation around digital music services, particularly in India. Services like JioSaavn offer their platform for free, but give users the option to pay a subscription fee to gain access to a premium service – unlocking exclusive music, offline features and higher quality streams, in addition to eliminating advertisements.

Out of the 150 million active music streaming users in India, those who subscribe to fee-paying platforms make up only about 1% at present.

‘There are about one million paid subscribers, meaning there’s huge growth potential there. But they need to figure out a model which appeals to the Indian consumer. In my view, streaming services in India will need to find a hybrid between subscription and advertising models in the long term,’ says Dalal.

The challenge comes in convincing consumers that the premium option is worth paying for. The widespread accessibility of music on platforms like YouTube and the sizeable amount of pirated music create substantial problems in encouraging consumers to pay a fee for the additional benefits.

‘The traditional model of the free user and the paid user was that you could download music and listen to it offline. But as connectivity increases and improves, the advantage is lost,’ says Vijay Basrur, founder of OK Listen!, a digital platform for independent artists to earn money through streaming.

‘I think a lot of businesses are now trying to have a subscriber model drawn by original content, or an equal system around music which could extend further than any existing pure streaming services. Businesses like JioSaavn, Gaana, Amazon or Apple – everything is part of a broader system play. They have the benefit of bundling the music together with other services, which helps them by not allocating the entire subscription costs.’

Beating the Black Market

Shifting consumers on to platforms for the legitimate and legal consumption of music is a potential game changer for the industry. Both premium and freemium revenue models capture market share that was previously lost to piracy, bringing new sources of revenue into the mix that were unattainable before the advent of streaming.

‘In 2008, music was primarily consumed on phones via Bluetooth and pirated tracks. Outside of that, the industry was purely physical media sold at an incredibly discounted rate – the markup was set at a bare minimum, yet there was still rampant piracy,’ says Sachedina.

‘Piracy was tackled really effectively by Bollywood, where there was a physical product: DVDs, CDs or tapes. They would literally have police going out and shutting down pirate stores.’

The fact that music piracy has primarily moved to the digital realm does make tackling it a more involved process, but Sachedina points to the success of shutting down illegal cricket streams as evidence that it’s a solvable problem.

‘There’s nothing bigger in India than cricket. Hotstar deliver that content exclusively and have been very effective in stopping pirate cricket and World Cup streaming through a combination of both legislative and judicial orders,’ says Sachedina.

‘Music has yet to be given that sort of push, but that is changing. One of the reasons is because music industry organisations that represent us haven’t, until recently, made it a focus. At Saavn, we’ve been proactive in speaking to labels and helping them understand that piracy is a real issue. Not only this, but it’s an issue that, if properly addressed, would be of benefit to everyone.’

Cracking down on piracy has the ability to have transformative economic effects.

In 2014, it was estimated that 99% of all music in China was obtained illegally. Subsequent action by Chinese authorities resulted in millions of songs and a swathe of websites being taken down overnight, as well as commitment to ongoing enforcement.

Since then, China’s music market has transformed. Tencent Music, the music streaming arm of Chinese internet behemoth Tencent Group, counts 644 million monthly active users across its platforms and controls more than 70% of the market. Since its 2016 launch, the business has been spun off and floated on the New York Stock Exchange, with a $24bn market cap.

‘All we have to do is look at China, who were trendsetters with what they did. The proof was in the pudding: there is immense value in tackling piracy,’ says Sachedina.

‘We’re still missing an effective judicial and legislative protocol to address piracy, but the Indian government has been incredibly receptive. They’re getting ahead of the curve, but it will require a joint effort with the industry bodies in India. We need to find a solution that maintains neutrality – not being draconian by implementing a stringent anti-piracy regime that impedes personal freedoms or access to content but, rather, a balancing act.’

While a series of legislative responses will take time to materialise and be enforced, positive signs are being seen from the judiciary in getting on top of piracy.

‘The Indian courts are being proactive,’ says Dalal, noting that even small procedural changes can have a marked impact on the workload of counsel.

‘Recently, the Delhi High Court passed an order so that when infringing websites have been blocked, content owners only need to go to the registrar of the Court to then block any mirrored sites. You no longer need to keep going back to court to ask after an injunction for affiliated sites.’

Clear as a Bell

Barely three years on from Jio’s data revolution, India can now count itself as one of the most attractive markets for digital streaming globally. While revenue models and legislation are yet to reach maturity, the rapid development of infrastructure and subsequent change in consumption habits are causes for optimism.

‘I think we’re only just scratching the surface in terms of music’s potential in India, as now there’s an audience and an ability to reach them very easily,’ says Basrur.

‘There is an issue with revenue: monetisation can be particularly hard, especially when you deal with independent artists like we do. But we have already seen a massive change. If we take ten years as a measure of time, we have witnessed a massive shift occur in just the last two years.’

‘At present, music in India is getting around five billion streams every month. I expect that to rise to at least ten within the next couple of years, opening more opportunities for businesses and customers,’ adds Dalal.

The pace of change that has occurred in India, combined with the only very recent entrance of major global players, means that a maturation and sophistication should be expected as the industry settles in. But in order to capture that potential, ensuring that the regulations and legislation keep pace with innovation will need to be a priority.

‘We are moving at an accelerated rate, but I’m not sure that all of our infrastructure from a legal, compliance and regulatory point of view is in order; at least in a way that’s best for the Indian user,’ says Sachedina.

‘I do think that’s going to take a year or two to get ironed out and dealt with properly, but it’s getting there. I’m very optimistic about the future of streaming and content delivery.’

GC: Can you tell me about your background and how you came to work in the law?

Amar Sundram (AS): I graduated in History (Honours) from Kirori Mal College, North Campus, University of Delhi. After graduating, I joined the law course in the Campus Law Centre, University of Delhi, which was a three-year course. This was one of the best law colleges in India, and as my journey progressed, history took a back seat and law became interesting. I was picked up during the campus placement and selected from 200 students as an in-house law trainee with DCM Shriram Consolidated Ltd, which was a manufacturing set-up in the small industrial city of Kota, Rajasthan.

GC: What made you want to join a company, rather than going to a law firm or becoming an independent litigator?

AS: To be transparent, it was not my preferred option, but it came by as a university placement. I decided to take a chance, to get a view of how being an in-house lawyer works, and what that organisation looked like. My initial thought was that I would stay for six months and then try something else. But the initial exposure was so good – there were a couple of high stakes litigations and I was given a chance to interact with two of the most senior lawyers in India in the Supreme Court. As my interest started developing, my inclination and desire to continue with law as an in-house counsel continued, and therefore I continued with my in-house career.

In 1997, I was elevated to the position of heading the legal department in one of the chemical plants where DCM was expanding, in another industrial city – Gujarat. This gave me an excellent opportunity to learn and interact with regulators and government officials, and get involved in inspections and understanding different components of the business, while interacting with various plant heads for different verticals. Meanwhile, I completed my post-graduate degree in law, an LLM from University of Delhi.

GC: What are the main challenges of your role currently?

AS: Heading the legal and compliance function of a large organisation like EY, with more than 17,000 employees including more than 450 partners spread across various service lines, is in itself a challenge. The ability to articulate the solution, taking care of the concerns and problems and then finding a common business-legal resolution that is acceptable to multiple stakeholders is a challenge I face almost on a daily basis. Instilling a culture of ethics, integrity and compliance by addressing the workforce in town halls across ten cities has been an interesting journey.

GC: What are the major challenges facing the consulting sector currently in India?

AS: This is not specific to EY, but for consulting organisations, like any other organisation that is product-driven, or any specific sector-driven organisation, what is happening today is there is a lot of new legislation and a lot of new regulations have come up. The economy is growing in India, there is a lot of investment and, therefore, new challenges are also being thrown open. The regulators have become very, very vigilant, and therefore the biggest challenge for any organisation that is into consultancy or that is product-driven is compliance. The old-fashioned style of working where organisations felt you can manage the work and not be compliant is history now. Today, organisations have to comply, and they have understood the ground reality that if they are not compliant it will hit their business. So in a consulting organisation, the challenge is more in terms of understanding the regulations and ensuring that we are on the right side of the law.

GC: What do you think has driven that? Why is compliance so much more important now than it was in the past?

AS: Ours is a global organisation, which has a presence across many countries, and globally people are seeing a trend in the change to law. Now law is no more a domain that is internal to a country – there are laws which are global laws, there are laws which have implications outside of one country. Legal has become a truly global function – this was not the scenario some five or ten years back. When organisations become global, the challenges become global.

GC: Can you tell me about your legal team at EY in India?

AS: When I joined EY India some seven years back, there were just two junior lawyers. Now there are 15 competent lawyers in my team looking after the entire legal function for India and Bangladesh, with added functions of compliance and secretarial.

GC: Can you talk about the journey of growing the legal team, and any major learnings you picked up along the way?

AS: The journey was not easy, as the legal department was initially seen as a cost centre. Generating confidence in the entire workforce, including the senior leadership team, of our ability to deliver and prevent litigation (and thus the expense), was indeed a journey well accomplished. Today, the team is competent to handle any problem and has been well groomed to represent the general counsel office. We work like a law firm, and any new legislation or new judgment that impacts the current business or is otherwise landmark is debated amongst the team. Knowledge is shared and each team member contributes.

GC: What’s your proudest moment or biggest achievement?

AS: The fact that the employees and the leadership across various service lines treat the entire legal team as their trusted and reliable advisers. They don’t hesitate to come to us at the first instance of a problem, even if they have committed some lapses, and to open up and discuss the issue with complete confidence and transparency – knowing full well that all their problems will have a solution from the general counsel office.

GC: What was your strategy for developing a close relationship and trust between the legal team and the wider business?

AS: The biggest step I took was to reach out to people – give them confidence, give them a decent hearing. And be available when they need me – so it is not that I am available only when I am available, but I am available when they want me to be available: taking calls, responding to their queries, meeting them, taking that express step to interact, understand the business, understand their problems, understand what they are doing and how law is embedded in their role and functionalities. How we can be helpful and how we can contribute, rather than waiting for them to come up with a problem and then giving a solution. I took the step of reaching out to the people, understanding, and asking them the question ‘how can we help you?’

That was a journey, a gradual process of transformation happened where people started believing that the legal department is fully integrated into the business. Their objectives and our objectives are common: we also want to do business, we also support them within the legal framework. And when the objectives are common, there will be a meeting of minds – and that is how people develop that trust.

GC: What have been your biggest challenges, and what did you learn from them?

AS: ‘Never give up’ is the mantra that I learnt in my career. There is no problem that does not have a solution. I have a policy for all my internal clients: please come to me with your problems; I will embrace your problem as mine and will provide you with a workable solution.

The message for young lawyers, which I give while delivering honorary guest lectures in law universities, is to read and write. A senior IT professional once asked me why people are now choosing law as a career and why lawyers are so successful. My response was that a good corporate lawyer has the ability to see the future direction and the ability to articulate his thought process, which no other professional has.

GC: What do you see as the big events or challenges on the horizon over the next year or so?

AS: The regulatory environment across the world is changing. One regulator is now interacting with another regulator. This is a digital world and the world of data. New legislation is being enacted and the thrust is compliance rather than contravention of law. Issues like insolvency, data privacy, arbitration, eradication of corruption and insider trading law compliances are going to be the main challenge that any organisation in India will be grappling with in the next three-to-five years. Organisations across all sectors will need a strong and competent in-house legal team to address these challenges. Breaches are going to be expensive, and will hit the business hard in this world of ‘media trial’.

GC: How do you think GCs and legal can have an impact in this world of ‘trial by media’? What can they do in this sphere when issues can be less tangible than a financial penalty?

AS: As you have rightly said, financial penalty is just one aspect. The media has become, especially in the Indian context, very, very sensitive and they love picking up news which excites, and which can catch the attention of the people. So reputational risk is something that is paramount to us. We do not want to be seen as an organisation which has issues, which has concerns – we want to be seen as an organisation which is compliant. We are very conscious of our reputation, we are very conscious of how people see us.

Our entire business is based on trust, and that is where the general counsel office has a big role to play – to ensure that the entire workforce, all the employees work, in tandem with the internal policies, they work in tandem with the laws, and any violations or any perceived violations are quickly resolved and people are taken to task. We are very firm in terms of enforcing our policies, we are very firm in terms of telling them: this is the applicable law, this is what the law says and what you are doing is not the correct way of doing it. The objective is to convince them.

In my organisation, people are receptive, they are compliant, because that is how the organisation. In an organisation of large repute we believe in compliance, we believe in not violating the law. That is an organisational culture and gradually everybody gets along with that policy.

GC: Would the legal team be involved if there was bad press arising from some kind of violation?

AS: Certainly, absolutely. If there is any kind of violation, any kind of internal disciplinary proceeding, the GC is always involved and always consulted and we do a very fair and transparent investigation in order to bring out the truth.

Everything is up for grabs at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries – well, certainly from an external law firm perspective. The Israeli-based company – the largest manufacturer of generic drugs globally – recently announced that all existing law firm relationships were under review, with a view to reducing the number of law firms used and to cut costs. While conceptually, that may not seem like anything groundbreaking in and of itself, Teva has taken things further than usual – going as far as warning existing firms that it is more than conceivable that they won’t continue to be instructed.

‘Revenue growth at Teva is flat. Law firms’ rates are going up. We have to do something different – that is it in a nutshell,’ explains David Stark, chief legal officer at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. ‘We took a run at this five years or so ago. Things were hectic back then, and there wasn’t really the ato do it, and it was incredibly time intensive.’

The company’s well-documented cuts took place from late 2017, and the legal team was instructed to align legal spend with the wider business. A year ago, in mid-2018, the process of reducing outside counsel spend began.

‘The company had been in an acquisition phase leading up to this, and when you acquire companies, you acquire law firms.’ When pressed on how many law firms Teva uses, Stark admits it is many hundreds (our own research at The Legal 500 suggests around 700 in total). ‘The ultimate goal would be to use just one, but in the short term, that is just unrealistic. But we can make a significant reduction, even by 50% in year one.’

The process began with Teva writing to all of its outside counsel, informing them of the company’s review process and the reasons underpinning the exercise.

‘We wanted to have transparency, we wanted the firms to know what we were doing,’ says Stark. ‘With some firms, we have very strong relationships. It’s no comment on our current firms, but we aren’t going to move work around for the sake of it. It’s got to be a compelling reason, at a similar or lower cost. Firms that we are currently working with should see this as an opportunity.’

Knowing law firms as we do, this must have come as something of a shock – so how did they react?

‘A mixed bag, to be honest. Firms that are doing a lot of work for us, to be honest, don’t like it. They see it as a big ask, to effectively go through the pitch process again,’ says Stark. ‘Firms that do a little bit of work for us are the ones that are really excited. And firms that we don’t know at all, that we have invited in to tender, are not sure what to make of it.’

But Stark says that the firms that succeed as a result of the lean process will have bigger scope within Teva.

‘We are looking to have fewer people interacting with law firms, but there have to be smarter approaches. Yesterday I was in the office with a senior lawyer at one of our firms, and what he wanted to talk about was rate increases!’

Higher rates seem to be more of the norm at the moment, partly because many clients are letting them get away with it.

‘The economy is on fire, and top firms gravitate to easier clients. We may not be able to afford some firms, so we have to choose our set of firms very carefully. Firms we instruct need to have flexibility and be rate competitive,’ says Stark.

‘At present we have more high-end legal work, so why fool around with low rates? But a lot of that work is coming to an end. From here on, it will be slow but steady progress. It won’t be less money, more work, but instead more certainty around a broader bucket of work for the preferred firms.’

Stark is being deliberately cautious about the amount of external spend that Teva is currently making. While he coyly admits that it is ‘more than $100m’, our own research team has been digging deeper into this. Looking at the firms and types of work that is typically done, we estimate that the actual number will be over three times that, at around $330m. Some firms are estimated to be in eight figures for their fees, so there is a lot at stake for partners if they lost that work.

‘There will be benefits for the company,’ says Stark. ‘We will get some savings. But there are definitely going to be some surprises in store, and there will definitely be some lessons learned.’

Working with Teva and Stark on this process is Smarter Law Solutions. Founded by Trevor Faure, formerly global general counsel at Ernst & Young, Smarter Law consults with companies to cut legal costs and implement lean processes.

Under the Smarter Law led-system, firms that submit to the process are assessed on pricing and other data metrics and, following a period of research and interviews, a far reduced panel of firms will be announced by the end of the year. Just what that process entails is detailed in Faure’s new book, Smarter Law: transforming busy lawyers into business leaders.

I often find myself looking at theoretical books that might have some practical application in the field of law, but this book is based on the experiences of over 200 in-house case studies. What the book allows GCs to do is dip in and out of the experiences of their peers and cherry pick the techniques and applications that will work for their in-house departments. To find out how the kinds of techniques that Teva are using currently, the ‘Win: Win: Win RFP Process’ chapter is a must read. It explains how a tender process allowed a client to pay law firm bidders more than their proposals and still reduce spend by 44%.

In recent months, we have seen a growing movement back to simplicity, from the #bringbackboring campaign, to the simple mantra of ‘people, process, delivery’. The Smarter Law approach isn’t based on the future of law, it is firmly rooted in the here and now. What GCs can do right now to improve efficiencies, working practices and transform the function. The best learning comes from who have done it before. Don’t take my word for it, get a copy and delve into it yourself – you will benefit and you will learn. Available from: gcm.ag/smarter_law.