About

Mustasan Jaleel Basharat Mir has noticed major changes in the in-house legal market in the Middle East over the past five years, with major new roles appearing and a corresponding shift of responsibilities towards Middle East-based companies’ and their legal departments. ‘Both large business houses and small and medium enterprises in the Middle East have realised the importance of in-house lawyers’, he says, ‘and how hiring in-house counsel can be cost-efficient and better deliver legal services while building industry specific legal expertise’. He himself has a multitude of in-house career highlights to look back on. In particular, he recalls being involved in engaging with the company’s upper management as particularly rewarding: ‘Working with VPS Healthcare C-suite executives continues to help nourish my understanding of diversified group business portfolios as well as their distinctive regional needs and concerns, each segregated from the other’. He relates that his time in the UAE after coming from a common law background has undoubtedly involved a lot of hard work, but that ‘performing under pressure got the best out of me’. Having completed his schooling in Kashmir where most of his education came ‘under candle light, since there use to be no electricity for two to three months at a stretch throughout winter’, Basharat can look back on an extremely eventful career in which he has reached the upper reaches of his profession. Basharat today is one of the best reputed lawyers in the MENA region and the GCC in particular.