Posted on

Wesley Bizzell, Senior Assistant General Counsel, Altria Client Services Inc

In October 1987, about 750,000 people gathered in Washington, DC for what was called the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. Our community had lost about 50,000 of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters to AIDS; the vast majority were young gay men in their 20s and 30s. A group of lawyers was at that march in Washington, helping these young men create wills and plan for their deaths as pro bono volunteers in their practices. They decided to form a national organization for LGBTQ attorneys, and so the National LGBT Bar Association was born in that moment of crisis.

Although we have seen gains over the last 60 years in terms of LGBTQ rights, we’re really at an inflexion point. There is so much left to do to achieve full equality for LGBTQ citizens and individuals, but there are also additional hurdles being erected – sometimes it feels like daily.

At the federal level, we continue to face an environment where there are no federal legal protections regarding discrimination against LGBTQ individuals – in the workplace, in financial decisions, in public accommodation and even on jury service. Worse yet, at both the federal and state level, policies are being put into place not just to disadvantage, but specifically targeting members of the LGBTQ community – primarily transgender men and women.

A Credit Suisse report a few years ago revealed that 41% of LGBTQ workers in the US said they had not come out openly at work. Even more shockingly, for senior LGBTQ executives in a corporate environment, that number was 72%. With the amount of progress that we as a movement have made over the last 30 years, it can be pretty easy to forget the complicated layers that many people, including attorneys, face when making a decision about when and how to come out. And it’s even more complicated for those in our community who are navigating multiple minority identities.

D&I leadership really needs to be a daily agenda item. I have a sign that hangs above my computer that asks, ‘What good shall I do this day?’. That’s really how I look at it: what can I do to advance the issue in both big and small ways on a daily basis. It can be as simple as ensuring that the language we use in our policies, in our forms, in everything that we do, is fully inclusive. It can include asking more challenging questions, like who is at the table when decisions are being made and why are certain types of people being excluded from that decision-making team?

The National LGBT Bar Association is the largest provider of LGBTQ legal education programs through both our annual Lavender Law Conference, which is now in its 31st year, as well as a year-round, web-based lecture series that we provide to our members. We offer networking opportunities and career development for individuals, and we also have the largest careers fair for LGBTQ law students in the country.

We also engage in advocacy. The Equality Act, passed by the House of Representatives in May 2019, included a provision that the National LGBT Bar Association had been a long-time leader on, which would prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ jurors – individuals who are stricken from the jury because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. For over ten years we have also been the leading organization advocating the ban of what is known as the gay and trans ‘panic’ defense, which is used to excuse violent assaults – and even murder – because the perpetrator alleged that they couldn’t prevent themselves from committing the crime when they found out that the victim was LGBTQ. Sadly, this often comes into play when trans men and women are assaulted or murdered. This year alone, we’ve had five states (CT, NY, HI, ME, NV) enact that ban, adding to the three states (RI, IL, CA) that had previously banned this heinous defense. We also have a bicameral, bipartisan bill that was introduced in June here in Washington DC.

The problem in law firms and corporate legal departments is that the actions to advance diversity are often far too little, and the progress we’re making is far too slow. I think we’ve realized now that there’s no single policy, program, or practice that is going to solve the lack of diversity within the legal community, or the lack of LGBTQ representation within the legal community.

Diversity is not a destination that we reach one day, it’s a journey with multiple milestones. What we need to do is create an ecosystem where diverse individuals can grow and thrive and achieve success and, to do that, there are some foundational requirements. You need inclusive policies that clearly protect all diverse individuals – so you need clear anti-discrimination policies that protect on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, and you need parity in benefits, which should include both married same-sex couples and couples who are in a domestic partnership.

In order to create diversity within corporate legal departments and law firms, we need to expand the talent pool and look at law schools that large law may have historically overlooked, because clearly going to the same pool of law students is not having a dramatic impact on the number of attorneys who are female, of color, or LGBTQ at the partnership ranks of the AM Law 100. This is a complex issue and we need to address it like a complex issue, in a multi-dimensional way, throughout the career trajectory of an attorney from the law school and recruiting stage to the executive committee decisions that are made regarding partnership in a law firm, and regarding the allocation of credit for clients.

My former general counsel, Denise Keane, was one of the few female general counsel in the Fortune 150, and always had a passion for diversity and inclusion. She formed a law department diversity committee many years before the company itself formed employee resource groups, so I have seen the value of being a part of an organization that has placed a huge emphasis on diversity and inclusion when the rest of the organization wasn’t as passionate about it.

Our law department diversity committee is made up of individuals throughout the department at varying levels. It includes educational programming that allows myself and my colleagues to hear from speakers who might not look like us or have the same background as us, and helps expand the base of understanding of our entire law department. A little over a year ago, we implemented a reverse mentoring program, which made sure that our leadership team in the law department receives differing perspectives in a way that will helpfully impact its overall outlook and activity.

Altria’s law department is also one of the founding members of the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD), which provides a year-long leadership program for diverse attorneys. It is not only a great professional development program, but exposes those of us who have been fellows – as I was, in 2014 – to a vast network of other diverse lawyers that we can reach out to when we have concerns, need help, or even when we have a legal issue that we’re looking to hire for. Another professional development scheme that I and a few others in the law department have participated in is the Stanford Graduate School of Business week-long LGBTQ executive leadership program, which is geared to helping LGBTQ individuals expand the leadership ranks of their organizations.

A number of my colleagues and, of course, myself are involved in external organizations that place a focus on diversity and inclusion issues. My general counsel, Murray Garnick, does a great job of ensuring that when members of the law department are participating in those activities, it’s seen as part of our responsibility on D&I issues – and we’re not just permitted, but encouraged and supported, in our work in that space.

Last year, Altria signed on to the Business Statement for Transgender Equality. Before that point, we had not taken a public stand on any legislative LGBTQ issue and, since then, we were one of 200 companies that signed on to the Business Coalition for the Equality Act. In July, Altria submitted its own amicus brief to the US Supreme Court on three cases involving LGBT workplace discrimination. Those cases will be heard this coming October.

None of those huge shifts in very prominent public pronouncements about equality would have happened but for the foundations laid previously, which permitted my current general counsel and others to have the power, freedom and strength to say: ‘This is the time to do this and we can do this.’ So that’s exciting, and energizing. You can’t overstate the impact, not just from an external perspective but from an internal perspective, when a corporation takes a bold stand for diversity, inclusion and equality.

I’m a firm believer that there are ways to reach almost everyone. At a basic level, every single person knows what it feels like to be excluded. Some of us have been excluded more than others based on the color of our skin, who we are or who we love. But I think we can build on those individual experiences to show people who may not be as far along as we would like, exactly why D&I matters.

Posted on

Rachel Gonzalez, General Counsel, Starbucks

Rachel Gonzalez

Starbucks has a fundamental business tenet that we are creating a welcoming place for all people, and that means inclusion and diversity is critical to our success. We provide inclusion training and tools to people managers to ensure that we are preparing all leaders to foster a diverse and inclusive culture based on merit, and we provide diversity education for retail partners.

In 2015, we set a goal to increase the female and minority representation of our senior leadership (approximately 50-60 senior vice presidents and upwards) by 50%. We achieved that goal for women in 2018 and, by the end of 2020, we aspire to have 50% women at the senior leadership level and to achieve our goal of increasing minority representation by 50% over our 2015 number.

For two years in a row, we have achieved pay equity for men and women and all races performing similar work in the United States. We also have verified gender equity in pay in China and in Canada.

We have focused very much on youth as well – we partner with community-based youth organizations and educational institutions to try to advance the cause of 16-to-24-year-olds who are not in school or who are not working. We are engaged in our communities in a number of ways. For example, in March, Starbucks hosted a town hall during the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives’ “NOBLE” CEO Symposium held in Houston. The town hall was designed to explore bias in public accommodation with law enforcement organizations, and to discuss the proper use of emergency services in order to mitigate discrimination.

We have a law and corporate affairs diversity and inclusion committee, which has the goal of fostering inclusion and diversity in the global legal profession, and we seek to influence our partners, other businesses with whom we interact – for example, external counsel – and other professionals to inspire, attract and retain diverse talent within the legal community.

We are focused on a few different sets of activities. We support organizations that promote inclusion and diversity in the legal profession. We conduct an annual survey of our top 25 external law firms with whom we have the greatest legal spend, and based on the survey results, we do an annual recognition and award for the external law firm that has demonstrated the most commitment to inclusion and diversity within the legal community, and also the community in which they operate.

We undertake a series of pipeline programs developing diverse professionals. One of these is the Gregoire Fellowship, which guarantees students summer fellowships at local law firms and in-house legal departments, a mentoring relationship with former Governor Christine Gregoire [and also the former Attorney General of Washington], and help studying for the bar exam. Fellows also receive University of Washington scholarships to help defray tuition cost. Starbucks is a founding partner of this program, which began in 2015 and, additionally, each summer supports an incoming 1L at UW Law for a five-week paid internship at Starbucks. We also have a mentorship program matching a Starbucks attorney with a diverse attorney in their first five years of practice. We recruit for open attorney positions through affinity bar associations, diversity fellowship programs such Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD), and our own diverse networks.

We support the involvement of our legal and corporate affairs partners in affinity bar organizations, and we participate in both in-house and outside counsel fellowship programs, such as the LCLD Fellows Program, which offers development opportunities that include networking, mentoring and leadership training.

We very much feel like our legal department is part of the social and business fabric of Starbucks, and I think legal departments have an excellent opportunity to lead in this space. First of all, the legal profession deserves – and, I think, requires – some additional thought and investment, not only by internal law departments, but also by external law firms, by the government, and by many other sources. We have an opportunity to be at the table when issues arise, or when we are deeply involved in the expression of our brand.

One of the interesting things about our department is that we have expanded our efforts beyond just the legal profession. Our department also consists of corporate affairs, which includes legal operations, global security, ethics and compliance and global privacy, and so when we talk about our inclusion and diversity initiatives, we look at the legal profession and beyond, to try to create best-in-class programs and initiatives that couple with the enterprise-wide goal of creating a welcoming environment.

Starbucks is very transparent about its efforts in the inclusion and diversity space and about our statistics. If you look at our website, you will see a wealth of statistics on the diversity of our partners, and we also seek that information within the legal team, so that we can be as engaged as we would want our law firms to be relative to quantitative and also qualitative programming to advance the cause.

We recently published a civil rights assessment report that was conducted by Covington & Burling under the leadership of former Attorney General Eric Holder, who helped us to better learn about our own practices and policies and how we could further advance our commitment to creating a culture of belonging and welcoming for our customers, partners and also for the communities in which we serve. In looking at that report and applying some of those learnings, we are going through a process of ‘learn and adapt’.

So, within the legal profession, we are embracing, for example, the notion that when we select outside counsel, we look at inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility. We look at them both in quantitative and qualitative measures. We will look at numbers – attorneys, paralegals, who’s an equity partner, who’s an income partner, and so on – and that’s quite important to us. We will look at data that pertains not only to women and racial minorities, but veteran status, people who are openly LGBTQ and people with disabilities.

But the qualitative aspects are also important to us, even if it doesn’t turn up within the law firm’s own internal statistics. So, for example, what are the programs, development initiatives, training, the resources that are made available to attract and to retain and promote diverse talent within that law firm? Is that law firm doing something above and beyond to build the pipeline of diverse talent within law schools? What kind of community outreach efforts might they have? What kind of mentorship efforts might they have, even if they go beyond the four walls of that law firm? We will ask very broad questions about how our firms are strengthening their bench and their talent pool within the legal community more generally, to get under the surface and analyze beyond just what the numbers might say.

What matters to us is whether the firm can demonstrate actual results, for example, improved recruitment and retention of women and minorities, promotions to partnership and expansion of D&I programs. We request that firms staff our matters with a diverse panel of lawyers, that a lawyer from a diverse background serves as the lead or relationship lawyer assigned to the matter, and that diverse lawyers receive origination or other credit.

There’s always going to be more to be done in the future. We’re re-evaluating and stepping back to look at some of our current formulas. For a number of years, we had been utilizing a unique law firm survey, but we’re pivoting back to the ABA model diversity survey because of the importance, we think, of continuity of data and information across the legal profession. I will sign off on new legal service providers to whom we are giving new business, and one of the criteria is inclusion and diversity.

We’ve signed a GC pledge committing to ABA Resolution 113, about promoting diversity in the legal profession. We also try to get into this issue through our legal operations team, and we have partners who are actively involved in CLOC [Corporate Legal Operations Consortium], which is focused on optimizing and creating industry standards for the legal ecosystem – and that includes diversity and inclusion best practices. We’re collaborating within CLOC to try to develop a diversity and inclusion framework.

There is no such thing as the silver bullet solution – this is a very complex and longstanding issue, so our general approach is to try to learn what we can and then share our learnings with others. We try to open source as much information as we can; for example when we undertook unconscious bias training, we made that training public because we wanted others to benefit from the investment we had made and to think about how it might benefit the retail community, or society, more generally.

Posted on

Naomi B. Waltman, Associate General Counsel, Litigation, CBS Corporation

Naomi Waltman

Diversity means having people of diverse culture, experiences, and backgrounds in all levels of the workplace, and making sure that those people feel invested and included. I got involved because it’s something that I feel passionate about. If you look at the research, women lawyers make up almost 50% of law firm associates and then, by the time you get to partnership, it’s about 20%. And if you look at racial and ethnic diversity, the numbers are even worse. So, I think that, as a senior lawyer and woman in the law, it’s important to help the next generation of women lawyers succeed.

I have tried to do that in a variety of ways, including mentoring women, connecting women with one another, and speaking at conferences and on panels about diversity and my own career journey. I’ve also spent a lot of time volunteering with organizations whose mission is to foster and promote the advancement of women in the law – for example, I am the deputy global chair of in-house counsel for the Women in Law Empowerment Forum (WILEF).

Last year, I also represented the CBS law department at the Diversity in Law Hackathon at Harvard Law School, sponsored by Diversity Lab, which brought together teams of in-house counsel and law firm partners to address challenges related to diversity and inclusion in the legal profession. Teams came up with innovative ideas for increasing diversity and inclusion in the law, and presented them in a ‘Shark Tank’-style pitch presentation to a panel of judges. Diversity Lab is currently working to implement some of the actual ideas. My team looked at the challenge of enhancing access to opportunities for diverse lawyers, and we came up with an idea called ‘Opp Shop,’ which is an app-based assignment system that gives all junior lawyers in a law firm the opportunity to bid on assignments. The aim is to avoid the ‘hallway staffing’ phenomenon where partners just walk outside their office and grab someone who looks like them to work on choice assignments. With Opp Shop, all lawyers have access to the same opportunities in the firm for assignments.

At CBS, we’re very committed to diversity. CBS has a Diversity Council that dedicates its time and efforts to assist the company in meeting its goals in D&I in both the letter and spirit of those goals. We have many affinity groups, including the Women’s Networking Group and CBS Pride, our LGBT employee resource group. The Diversity Council identifies best practices from across divisions that help build the careers of diverse employees, and works to implement them company-wide, and to strengthen the dialogue across the corporation around the topics of diversity and inclusion.

The law department fits into these efforts by leading by example. The CBS law department as a whole is very diverse, and we have a lot of diverse lawyers at the section head and divisional general counsel level. We also have a female GC of CBS Corporation who is strongly supportive of efforts towards diversity and inclusion. I manage the litigation group, which is comprised of a group of attorneys and legal professionals, almost all of whom are diverse. That’s something we are very proud of and that is very important to us. You can ‘talk the talk,’ but you also have to ‘walk the walk,’ and the makeup of our group reflects our own commitment to diversity.

When it comes to D&I, I think the law department should look to lead by example. We have lawyers in our group who are involved in the CBS Diversity Council, and we also have an active CBS Law Department Diversity Committee, of which I serve as chair of the Speakers Roundtable Subcommittee. We bring in speakers for the law department on diversity-related topics, and we’ve sponsored programs on unconscious bias and how in-house and outside counsel can work together to promote diversity. For example, we put together a panel that featured the GCs of Simon & Schuster, Showtime, and CBS Corporation – all of whom are diverse – candidly speaking about their own career journeys and obstacles they have faced.

CBS also has signed onto several amicus briefs in support of policies that advance diversity and inclusion in the workplace. For example, we signed onto a brief regarding the issue of workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Our lawyers are also members, and in many cases officers, of organizations that promote diversity, including the Minority Corporate Counsel Association, Corporate Counsel Women of Color, and WILEF, to name just a few. We’re also involved in pro bono efforts that focus on diversity, such as the Thurgood Marshall Program, which allows diverse high school students to shadow CBS lawyers, and is spearheaded by the head of our East Coast labor and employment group. We also have a mentoring program for in-house lawyers, which is not limited to diverse lawyers, but is an initiative of the CBS Law Diversity Committee. The diversity committee also publishes a newsletter called Diversity Download, which highlights the efforts and achievements of the law department and individual lawyers in the diversity space, and provides information on upcoming diversity-related programs.

We also encourage diversity and inclusion among our outside legal service providers. As in-house counsel, we are uniquely situated to help move the needle on diversity. While I think law firms want to do the right thing when it comes to diversity, as in-house counsel we are in a position to use the ‘power of our purse’ to help nudge them in the right direction.

As head of litigation for CBS, I do my best to ensure that all our matters for which we retain outside counsel are staffed with diverse teams, and that our outside counsel guidelines reflect our commitment to diversity and our expectations that law firms assign diverse teams to our matters. We’ve instituted a system where we can track the diversity of law firm timekeepers working on each of our matters through our billing software. That allows us to hold firms accountable and also to measure how we are doing as a department on diversity. In addition, our outside counsel guidelines state that we expect firms to staff our matters with diverse teams. When law firms come in for a pitch, we reiterate that expectation. Of course, we also expect the diverse team members to play a meaningful role in the particular CBS matter. We also ask firms to fill out an annual survey that asks for a lot of information, including information about the firm’s diversity generally, as well as the diversity of timekeepers assigned to CBS matters.

We are constantly reevaluating our approach, and have had discussions about whether it’s better to utilize a carrot or a stick. We currently use both a carrot and a stick approach. If a firm wants CBS business, they need to commit to using a diverse team – that’s the carrot (awarding business to firms that demonstrate a commitment to diversity); and if firms don’t take diversity seriously, they run the risk of not being given business in the future – that’s the stick.

As for what’s next, I expect that our policies will continue to evolve and become more robust, and we’ll continue to make the business and ethical case for diversity and inclusion with our outside counsel. In the profession generally, I think we are going to see more of a focus not just on diversity, but on inclusion as well. People have been talking about diversity for a while, but I think the inclusion piece has been somewhat lacking, so I think we’re going to see a focus on inclusion as well. There has been progress in the legal field over the past decade, but there remains more to do.

Posted on

Diankha Linear, General Counsel, Convoy Inc

We provide web-enabled transportation services. One example is that we match shippers like Unilever and Anheuser-Busch to high-quality truck carriers in our network. We have an app, like many apps you find on your phone, that connects shippers and carriers. Of course, if you or I just drive a truck off the street, Anheuser-Busch is not going to let us ship their beer all over the country. Shippers want to be connected to a trusted network of carriers. At Convoy, we connect a broad range of high-quality small, medium, and large carriers to some of the best shippers in the industry. These carriers leverage our technology through the Convoy app to unlock more choices. With the Convoy app, they have the freedom to determine where they want to go and when they want to return – while still delivering freight for shippers on time and at a competitive rate.

We can also support the backhaul. When the truck has dropped off goods and is on its way back home with an empty trailer, the driver most likely isn’t getting paid for that, this pollutes the earth, it costs money for fuel, and they’re away from their families with essentially no reward. Our technology helps eliminate waste, because carriers get to choose only the loads that they want to take, and they can work more efficiently. Through our app, drivers can control their own schedules and decide, ‘I’m not going to take that load today because I want to see my kid’s first t-ball game, but I’ll take this one tomorrow.’ They’re going to see loads and be able to select loads that make sense for them. Drivers can feel like they’re actually running their own business.

In terms of diversity and inclusion, our industries – technology and trucking – have historically lagged behind. But, you’d be hard-pressed to find two industries that have more D&I opportunities. At Convoy – and, in fairness, given the status quo in these spaces we might be ahead of the curve – we’re still committed to doing more. The reality is that although we are diverse compared to other trucking and technology companies, there is a ton of work to do. Gender and racial diversity are obviously big opportunity areas in trucking and technology industries. It can be challenging for women and people of color to break into these industries – and even harder for them to thrive. The reasons for this vary all the way from being required to complete a road training with a strange guy who tells you he doesn’t understand why a woman would want to drive a truck, to being excluded and isolated as someone who doesn’t ‘look’ like they belong in the industry.

At Convoy, we established ‘Women @ Convoy’, which is a group founded by women here. We want to be frontrunners in terms of increasing the number of women in trucking. Our app just might be the solution for women who need the flexibility of being able to choose which loads they take. This is an $800bn industry, so there has to be a way for women to tap into those dollars. Ultimately, as autonomous trucking evolves, we might even see the trucking industry further evolve and create job opportunities that are even more attractive to women and people of color.

At Convoy, we want to stay intentional about our commitment to people. By doing so, I think that Convoy will up-level the role and image of being a trucker. With our platform, people will have a choice in terms of what hours they want to work, how they want to structure their careers, and maybe even hold multiple jobs, such as a teacher who is a Convoy carrier during the summers. I also generally think that the Convoy app itself will make it easier for those who have historically been excluded from the trucking industry. This is because when you think about it, how do most people find a great job? It’s through a friend, or through someone else who they know well. Convoy’s app is like that friend who introduces you to and gives you access to the best jobs. That’s how I hope carriers will think of us.

We are also building diverse teams within Convoy. I’m incredibly proud of my legal team at Convoy. I was the first lawyer here in 2017, and now we have six members of the legal team and growing. A majority of the team consists of women and lawyers of color. Everyone is committed to D&I and actively involved in activities that support these efforts in our community. The way I think about leadership, including with respect to D&I, is that I didn’t come to Convoy to be a lawyer, I came to be a leader. We’re building something. I am at Convoy in part because I wanted the opportunity to influence the culture and, at Convoy, my voice shows up. I’m heard.

I personally don’t believe anything significant and lasting happens in the D&I space unless companies have diverse leadership teams. You can try to do a bottom-up diversification effort, but I’m not convinced that companies can effectively build a sustainable pipeline of gender and racial diversity unless people see leaders at their company who are representative of the diversity that they want to attract. It is very hard to get software engineers who are women and people of color – and when I say it’s hard, that doesn’t mean I think that gives companies an excuse not to do it, I mean it’s challenging and hasn’t been done very well by anyone so far – but it is doable. My position is that tech companies solve really challenging problems all the time, and D&I shouldn’t be an exception.

In my view, a core responsibility of a leadership team is to both ensure that the D&I pipeline is being fed and, importantly, advocate for existing D&I leaders, including up-and-coming senior leaders of that company. I have helped to drive a number of successful D&I initiatives over the years, including as president of the African American Bar Association (Loren Miller Bar Association) here in Washington state, as a member of the Rainier Scholars’ board of trustees, and as a former board chairwoman for Habitat for Humanity Seattle-South King County, and I have come to realize that if the leadership team isn’t on board – if the leadership doesn’t prioritize D&I – it’s simply not going to happen for any sustainable period of time.

I’m really proud of Convoy for our commitment to D&I, including through the efforts of our Women @ Convoy employee resource group. The reality is that we all could be doing better, but I’m really proud that the team is committed to demonstrating D&I leadership.

Posted on

In conversation: Nitin Mittal, market head of legal, compliance and company Secretary, Signify

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.

‘It is my firm belief that technology will provide efficiency and also effectiveness to the GC role and for business.’

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.

Posted on

In conversation: Dibyojyoti Mainak, Consultant General Counsel, Mobile Premier League

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.

Posted on

In conversation: Amar Sundram, National Director – Legal and General Counsel, EY

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.

Posted on

In conversation: Dr Akhil Prasad, Director, Country Counsel – India and Company Secretary, Boeing India

GC: Can you tell me a little bit about your background and what it was that prompted you to work in the law?

Akhil Prasad (AP): I’m a first-generation lawyer. My father was a medical practitioner and my mother was a professor, so neither of them were in the legal field. I faced a lot of failures in my early life. I wanted to do medicine, I applied to many colleges, but I could not get through. Then I switched my CV from science to commerce; I did very well in my Commerce Bachelor’s degree, but then I failed miserably – I could not get admission into MBA colleges. I could clear all written exams, but I could not clear the interviews.

So I thought, let’s try my luck with law, and thought ‘let’s internationalise law’, which is usually a local profession. And as the luck would have it, I did company secretary in India and UK, Bachelors and Master’s degree in Law in India, a PhD in Commerce and doctorate in Law in India, Solicitor of England and Wales, a Masters of Law from Northwestern University, USA and Business Administration from IE Business School, Spain. So it kept on growing. Now I am grateful that my organisation has sponsored me to go and study at Wharton for the advanced leadership programme.

It has been a long journey of about 25 years, during which I have been fortunate to work as general counsel and a member of the board of directors of some really big names. I started with Xerox (1993-2000), then I did my stint with Electrolux (2000-2002), then I did General Motors (2002-2005), then The Walt Disney Company (2005-2007), Fidelity (2007-2013) and now Boeing (since 2013). It has been a really diverse experience across different industries, a big learning, but it turned me into a corporate lawyer with specialisation in M&A – although, in India, in the legal function, it’s everything under the sun.

GC: Once you made that decision to pursue law, what made you go and work for a corporation rather than work in a law firm or as a litigator?

AP: I initially wanted to go in for practice, but I lost my father very early so it was more that I had to support the family – me and my mother and my wife. I took the rather safe course of a general counsel, so to say, rather than venturing out into a more risky legal practice. It was 25 years ago since I found that the practice side was risky, so I became a corporate secretary, at Xerox. Having been exposed to a multinational like Xerox, I kept on educating myself about various types of corporate law in India, and then international laws, as I grew in my career with different companies. International law became very, very important to me, and then I started to like corporate life more than the practice side, because the corporate side gives you a lot of diversity, a lot of management and business opportunities, and the chance to work with people having diverse capabilities, not essentially within the legal domain. So that was something I started to enjoy.

GC: You’ve done a lot of postgraduate study, including a doctor of laws in media piracy. Can you tell me about that area of interest?

AP: In fact, I have two PhDs: one PhD in Commerce, the other is a doctorate in Law. My PhD in Commerce began when I started my career with Xerox and, in those days – ‘95, ’96 – there was no interconnection of stock exchanges and investors faced lots problems, so my research was about better international practices overseas and how India can learn and adapt, mostly on the investor protection side.

The doctorate in Law in media piracy began when I became the general counsel for Disney, and that was in 2005. Whether it’s music, film or publications, there is rampant piracy in media, so I decided to look at some of the actions that should be taken in terms of enforcement, which should help develop the media business. For example, one of the things I wrote about in my thesis at that point of time was distribution of music. About 95% of music and a large number of films were prone to piracy, so one of the recommendations was that we should have some secure form for distribution of music and films. The music industry has since seen a transformation with digital distribution platforms like those offered by Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Star and others, which are secure distributive forms, and they have minimised the piracy and enhanced consumer experience with digital content. Film and music streaming is big business now, and Disney too is making lots of commitment in this area.

GC: Studying for two PhDs must have been enormously time-consuming outside of your actual day job?

AP: Yes, as I did all my education while working (no study leaves), it did stretch my day to 20 hours a day – it was a lot of effort. But effort well spent, and I think I’m quite happy with what I’ve done so far.

GC: As you’ve touched upon, you have worked in a variety of different sectors. How has that been? Have you found that the legal role differs substantially across those sectors?

AP: I have been very careful in my career that I don’t label myself, so I never repeated an industry. When I looked for other opportunities, I was really fortunate that my employers looked at me as a legal specialisation, who could fit into any business. About 70% of my role was as a corporate lawyer, as a general counsel. But it also gave me a 30% opportunity to learn the business and adapt myself to the legal requirements of that particular kind of industry. Xerox was office automation, Electrolux was white goods, General Motors was automobiles, Disney was media, Fidelity was IT, ITES and private equity and, now, Boeing is aerospace and defence. So I enjoy my role as a general counsel, having worked for different industries and learned about their business aspects, which keeps one’s mind fresh and you are able to learn and contribute better.

I have been very careful in my career that I don’t label myself, so I never repeated an industry

GC: Are there any particular learning points that stand in your mind from individual sectors that have helped you grow as a lawyer?

AP: I feel that any lawyer will always be valued in the organisation if you are able to do a lot of problem solving, which may or may not pertain to legal problems alone. When you are a general counsel, your capability should be to be able to build up trust and confidence in your business partners, and that personal confidence comes with good research. Always you should have a mind to develop yourself and learn more about your business. The general counsel, sometimes, is the only person who knows about law in the management team, so he or she is a person who has to really translate law into something which can be understood very easily by the management team and other stakeholders. At the same time, the general counsel has to have an open mind to understand the business requirements, because unless you understand business it will not be possible for a general counsel to be able to offer value to the management team. The general counsel has to have a broader mindset: to learn more and be able to contribute more is essential. Further, I treat all my colleagues as my clients and all of them deserve my best services.

GC: Are there any major trends in the aerospace and defence that are impacting on your role as country counsel?

AP: The world is shrinking, and more so in the digital space and the artificial intelligence space. It’s a disruptive, competitive environment. For example, if you look at aerospace, it is not only a domain for very few companies, there are companies like Google, there are companies like Tesla, who are wanting to enter. Then there are the high-growth companies like Facebook and Apple and others. I think, to be successful, it is very essential for anybody, even a lawyer or general counsel, to really understand technology, as it has become a very integral part of any business. So it is essential for all of us to be able to embrace technology and we have to adapt to technology.

The second most important thing is communication, which is extremely critical to be successful in today’s world. A general counsel and his/her team should be able to effectively communicate with all colleagues in the organisation and should be able to explain law in a way they would understand and absorb.

The third thing I would say is responsiveness. Whenever there is a demand or a requirement of your client, it has to be done with urgency, the advice has to be qualitative, and it should be something which reaches your client immediately. In today’s world, anyone who can respond to the client’s need with urgency, quality and solving problems will be highly appreciated. Technology has made our environment faster and world smaller without boundaries, so response to client’s needs should be immediate and with a sense of urgency.

GC: What are challenges that you’re dealing with day to day in your role?

AP: Some major challenges in any industry are the regulations, especially when we are dealing with products or services which are highly regulated. The most important challenge is to be able to navigate business effectively amid the regulatory landscape. Whether it’s business in India, whether it’s in the US, or in China, a general counsel will be successful if they are able to swiftly navigate business across various geographies. Law is a very local subject, unlike other functions like finance or sales, which are more global, so today’s general counsel should make law as a global and international subject, through research and connections across the globe. That is why a general counsel’s biggest challenge is to be able to really understand the various landscapes of regulations across the world and be able to facilitate business growth, especially for global businesses.

GC: What areas of regulation are most impactful at the moment?

AP: Data is supreme for everyone. Therefore, I would say that the most important regulation is one on data privacy, which has enormous implications. Data collection, import-export across geographies, storage and deletion, per the global developments on data privacy, would require a lot of attention and diligence. We are looking at major initiatives that Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, WhatsApp, Microsoft and others are putting in this area, as the world is getting more and more sensitive on how companies manage data, and this has already become a huge risk factor for those who are not able to manage it well. Thus, data protection regulations, would require a lot of attention and focus from the general counsel’s office.

GC: Looking forward, what’s next on your plate over the next year or so?

AP: I am making a very conscious effort that I should be able to provide better and varied services to my clients. My ambition is to learn more on the business and management side, to learn more on the side of products and services that are being offered by my employer. I want to devote a lot of time educating myself on the finer aspects of business and management, and that is where I see I will be devoting my energies – to be able to provide better and varied services to my employer.

GC: Do you ever envisage yourself moving into a more business-related role?

AP: I would definitely like to look at myself on the business side. Having done legal for most of my career, if I am able to become a business leader one day that would be something which I really want to achieve.

GC: Is there another PhD on the horizon for you, do you think?

AP: You never know! You never know, because knowledge definitely helps you. Education and learning is what I will always continue. And what I have seen is, the more you do research, you train your mind and you learn new things, and that new learning automatically gets translated into better services for your client.

Posted on

In conversation: K Satish Kumar, Global Head – Legal and Chief Data Protection Officer, Ramco Systems

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.

‘The challenges that we face in data protection are manifold.’

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.

Posted on

In conversation: Preeti Balwani, General Counsel, India, The Kraft Heinz Company

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!