Team size: 100+

What are the most significant cases or transactions that you have been involved in over the past year?

Recently, we have been involved in multiple contractual wins, concluded long, complex, and arduous disputes and litigations, successfully supported M&A deals, and supported corporate endeavors at the forefront including onboarding of new customers of international importance —ranging from governmental entities to Fortune 100 companies — for large-scale projects spanning multiple territories and industrial sectors with projected deal value exceeding multi million dollars along with managing, reviewing and favorable closure of deals by way of complex negotiations and securing global business deals. We managed over hundreds of global disputes and litigation matters globally with exposure of over a billion dollars including savings from claims and counterclaims against TechM more than hundreds of million. Supervised on IPR Portfolio across jurisdictions like India, Australia, the UK and all countries of Europe as well for Tech M as well as subsidiaries. To enhance efficiency implemented tech tools intra and inter department to effectively manage and track the legal risks along with successfully implemented tools for CLM, litigation portal, legal advisories to name a few.

Based on your experience, what is the key to collaborating successfully with business partners?

Effective and efficient collaboration begins with listening to senior management and key clients to understand their needs and how they think the legal team can best support them. Their views may not always be clearly defined and may sometimes be in conflict, but understanding their needs and expectations will help establish the team’s priorities. Once priorities are established, map the team’s activity to understand what work it is doing and highlight practices that may be diverting resources from your priorities. Analyse the team’s skills, expertise and behaviours, consider whether there are any gaps in key areas and take steps to close them. It is essential to build a process to get regular feedback, establishing clear boundaries is also essential, while lawyers should be encouraged to be proactive, they also need to know when to refer issues back to management or the team. Adopting technology for contract management, billing, legal research, and eDiscovery etc. can make coordination between teams seamless.

How do you motivate and manage the other members of your legal team well?

My idea of building a highly motivated and strong team is backed by the philosophy that it is the growth of every single employee that takes the company to greater heights. I emphasise heavily on growth, learning and development of the entire team. For instance, we groom lawyers on complex cross-border contract negotiations, M&A, regulatory and compliance work for their professional growth and to reduce reliance on external counsel. This has ensured that the legal team’s members possess and update knowledge and expertise on legal systems and international laws, including local laws in countries where Tech Mahindra operates. To ensure effective conflict management besides realisation of career aspirations for team-members, work allocation is done in a manner that all lawyers gain experience in divergent legal areas while giving them ample opportunities to specialise in their area of interest. Ensuring an open channel for good faith conversation for proper conflict resolution and team building helps build a positive atmosphere in the team. Annual global and periodical regional meets, informal and formal knowledge sharing sessions, rewards for exceptional performers, leadership meetings, skip-level meetings, in-house workshops, competency sessions covering negotiation, presentation and communication add to overall personality management and development of team-members. Thus, continuous learning, growth and effective conflict management truly helps in building a strong team.

India is an economy that is rapidly growing and expected to be one of the economic powerhouses of the 21st Century. How do you see the role of GCs there changing in this environment?

There has seen a paradigm shift in the general counsel’s role from being a mere support function to an all-rounded business lawyers cum enablers. Over the years, general counsel have not just performed tasks of a lawyer but have emerged as effective crisis counselours, ethics and compliance officers, risk managers, board advisors and CEO confidante. The transformation is significant, general counsel have become more crucial as members of the senior management of the organisation. General counsel take an active part in reshaping hiring procedures, overseeing environmental compliance, and setting guidelines that shape a company’s culture. In addition to providing legal advice, they act as stewards of their company’s values and drivers of institutional change. In the future I expect it to be more integrated with the corporate side of the business, as the general counsel’s scope of responsibility is expanding. A shift can be expected in the role of general counsel, from providing legal advice and identifying legal risks to getting involved in the business of the organisation by providing business efficient advisory.