About

Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured? The ISS India legal team comprises of 12 talented individuals based at the ISS India corporate office in Mumbai. The team is structured on the basis of the SPOC principle for each business vertical and central legal function verticals: litigation, company secretarial compliances and data management. Each member of the team has a clearly defined role to play in the overall legal strategy of the organisation. We partner closely with the ISS c-suite and ISS India business partners to impart legal strategic direction which leads to achieving organisational goals. We focus on giving our internal customers best in class, fully integrated, strategic, risk vision inputs in all legal issues arising. How does the team ensure it remains a true business partner to the company? I often ask myself this question: “How can my law department demonstrate value to the company?” Benchmarking ourselves- only creates more value! •Creating customer delight: We follow the K.I.S.S. principle: Keep It Short and Simple. We are strong proponents of the DRY principle (Don’t Repeat Yourself) which aims at reducing repetitive work and getting it right the first time. The opposite of this principle is the WET principle: Waste Everyone’s Time / We Enjoy Typing.

•Legal role specialisation: Tasks requiring similar skills are grouped together i.e. “Putting the right person for the job”. •Training and education: We have regular trainings and I encourage all my team members to participate in internal training programmes including our legal team knowledge sharing sessions. In addition, I encourage my team members to pursue formal legal education. This helps us as a team to be updated with the latest laws, industry trends and best practices. •Employee growth and development: I encourage job rotation/role swapping which has proven to be immensely useful to members of the team as well as to the company. •Business Partner connect: I connect on a regular basis with the internal stakeholders and encourage regular feedback to strengthen our service level to our internal customers. •Awareness sessions: Knowing that it is important for our stakeholders to understand us and vice versa, we conduct sessions on educating stakeholders on important topics. These sessions are found to be very useful. •Cross-functional collaboration to create and add value to the work we do: The team is encouraged to spend time with cross functional teams and other business enablers to encourage cross learning, knowledge sharing and idea generation.

All of these have immensely helped us as a team to remain a true business partner. Apart from legal matters, has the team worked on other company initiatives? The legal team is a pillar of support to the approximately 55,000 employees that ISS India has employed on rolls of the company. The team is an integral part of all company initiatives comprising of compliance, strengthening the ethics philosophy, and corporate social responsibility projects. I believe that our job doesn’t just start and end being lawyers but being part of the larger purpose, which is community. Personally, I take time out from my schedule to impart training, participate in conferences, visit law colleges, visit management institutes in India and globally as part of the larger purpose of sharing knowledge. These sessions are definitely worthy of my time and I find it part of my larger purpose as a lawyer. Focus on… 8. Disruptive innovation: general counsel look for law partners investing in digital solutions inducting new legal technology solutions where a general counsel or the in-house legal department can view dashboards, metrics, matter status updates, cost estimations, case history, work flow, key information relating to the case. It is now time that such information should be accessible at a click of a button. If the law firm offers a system which is compatible with my organisation, that will be truly a customer delight.

9. Law firms which can act as mediators and can help avert or prevent a litigation battle are considered good partners of a general counsel as they have the best interest of the company at heart.

I am happy to be working with some law firms
who partner with me and my organisation in the above mentioned ways and add value in the work we do.