Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?  

I believe in optimising in-house legal resources to control external legal spending. This can be achieved through a combination of identifying, training, and developing good in-house talent and developing and adopting best practices and standards that best suit the organisation’s needs. This helps us in scoping and managing projects to increase the use of in-house resources and ensure that we get the best value out of our external legal resources. In this manner, in my previous role at Mahindra & Mahindra, by building a dedicated M&A and corporate advisory team, we reduced our annual external legal spend on M&A transactions by more than 70%. 

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?  

While I cannot answer this question in much detail because of confidentiality-related concerns, our legal team is principally involved in (i) advising the business leadership on strategic issues and opportunities that might arise from time to time concerning any of our various businesses, (ii) assisting the business leadership in exploring new business opportunities and partnerships, as well as providing transactional legal support in this regard, and (iii) dealing with disputes (or potential disputes), regulatory challenges and many more.   

If you had to give advice to an aspiring in-house lawyer or general counsel, what would it be and why?  

I have two pieces of advice:  

The key part of your job is to assist management in making the right decision (or at least the best one in the given circumstances). This means that it is not enough just to know what the law says or even to come up with a seemingly ingenious way of working around a legal hurdle. In-house counsel must have good, sound judgment. When faced with choices, assume that you, and your company, will have to live for a long time with the consequences of whichever option you take. So, think long term.   

Remember that you are part of a business. Your job is to get the best deal possible for your company, not to win an argument. While it is essential to be a tough negotiator, it is equally important to be seen to be fair-minded and to have a good relationship with business partners and counterparties. Nice guys do not necessarily finish last.