About

The legal team at the Indian multinational conglomerate Larsen & Toubro provides support to strategically important projects for the company in the Middle East such as the Al Rayyan FIFA 2022 World Cup Stadium (Qatar), the new Abu Dhabi International Airport (UAE), the Salalah International Airport (Oman) and Gold Line of the Doha Metro Project (Qatar), among many others. Its work on such projects ranges from non-contentious work like undertaking detailed legal risk analysis of tenders and reviewing, drafting, negotiating and vetting diverse contractual agreements, to involvement in contentious matters including preventing disputes at an early stage, ensuring procedural compliance, and end-to-end conflict management.

The team’s efforts in the Middle East are led by a team of three lawyers who work as a close-knit unit and jointly contribute to securing the company’s best interests. ‘This approach has assisted us in finding practical solutions that bridge rich experience, sound industry knowledge and innovation’, Middle East team lead Anand Ayyappan Udayakumar says. Besides providing ongoing support to the pre-tendering stage of the company’s infrastructure projects in the region, Larsen & Toubro’s Middle Eastern legal functions has implemented internal innovations to make its work more efficient. For example, the team has built and regularly updates its own customised and detailed database of external counsel and has adopted and implemented a proactive dispute management approach. With regards to its approach towards non-legal staff, the team have diligently shifted focus from awareness to absorption. ‘Hence in addition to conducting regular seminars/webinars and issuing periodical internal circulars, we actively engage in sequentially interacting with different teams and their employees in varying levels of seniority,’ Ayyappan explains. ‘During these interactions, we focus on highlighting best practices which take into consideration current changes in law and judicial attitude having practical implications, previous shortcomings which could have been avoided, and conflict avoidance approaches. This approach has specifically been of benefit to our frontline teams involved in bidding and execution of projects’. Larsen & Toubro’s Middle Eastern legal team has also implemented a system to utilise the feedback from the tendering and execution teams that allows the lawyers to understand the practical implications and then accordingly highlight specific legal risks and possible solutions in potential public and private tenders.