Legal veteran Badrinath Durvasula reveals how in-house counsel can climb the ranks at big companies
With more than 35 years of experience in the legal and commercial domain, the author believes there are important steps each legal professional needs to pursue to scale up their performance in the eyes of senior management, and align with management objectives.
Armed with these inputs, the confidence the organisation has in the legal professional grows with each passing year, eventually even leading to the corner office. The learnings are not prophetic words but real-world situations this author has encountered throughout his professional journey with reputed organisations like Reliance Industries, L&T, Adani Ports and Essar Group over the years.
Each of these organisations is a place of learning, as well as a place of unlearning. It is no easy task to handle an organisation experiencing robust growth unless one is equipped with the necessary skillset and a positive attitude.
Understanding business processes
This is rudimentary, but very essential for every legal professional to survive. The legal counsel needs to understand the operations of the company in the realm of production, marketing, suppliers, vendors, logistics, the chain of command and the management’s objectives.
This is no easy task, as most lawyers who join a company think that their job is merely to look at legal issues. What they fail to realise is the situations faced by the others in the company to fulfil their obligations. The delivery schedules could be long, the credit lines weak, the standards of material could be robust and the timelines to deliver can be challenging.
In a way, it is a “know thyself” exercise to understand the legal difficulties of each segment of a production line. The supply chain system of each company is so unique that unless one comprehends the multiple unit delivery schedules, it is impossible to note how complicated the production could be.
Often, legal challenges occur from the supply, delivery or quality side, and a legal professional must be aware if a robust action needs to be initiated to defend or counter these processes like a duck to water. In the author’s experience, this is an area that legal professionals avoid consciously for the complexities involved.
Interaction with key players
Yet another attribute legal professionals need to develop is in the realm of communication with various heads within the organisation. Each unit, say a factory unit, is made up of a set of professionals aligned to a unit of production, who integrate their work from unit to unit, ensuring that the production schedules are adhered to. Even if one unit of the chain lags, the entire delivery schedule takes a beating.
The legal team must make inroads to interact with key stakeholders in these divisions to identify the bottlenecks that can potentially create chokepoints in the system, and offer legal solutions. This is possible by looking at the unit-level agreements with suppliers and vendors to suggest a mechanism that can obviate such scenarios.
It is this author’s first-hand experience that professionals within these divisions work on their own, without informing legal until a major issue takes place, by which time it may be too late to resolve. The legal team should take the initiative to interact with each key member of production to map out the risks. Foreseeing a solution then becomes easier when trouble arises.
Review and benchmarking
The team generally confines itself to its own set of legal documents. To be a successful professional, it is imperative to comprehend business presentations, management outlook, internal policies, board notes and balance sheets for at least the previous three years. These give a great insight into the directional journey of the organisation, its growth path, its expense ratio in certain sectors and cost reductions in others.
Although number crunching is not the objective, it is the trend analysis that helps the professional upgrade to discuss many points on the minds of the management. When meeting directors, this author used to seek their views on their observations and sometimes challenge the reasoning given.
Although they may not be happy with an opposing view, they appreciated the effort to identify potential issues. Further, at a subsequent opportunity, they will not hesitate to solicit the view on key business aspects. In fact, this latent drive is a must in every individual looking for an opportunity to make a mark for themselves.
Project management and nuances
Anything that needs to be set up as a unit is project management. It could be a part of a larger order, or an order by itself. Every project is bound to go through a set of legal challenges that are unique to itself. They include bank guarantees, project schedules, extension of time, liquidated damages, handover, and operations and maintenance for a further period.
Although project work is common, legal professionals avoid a deep dive for multiple reasons. However, very few individuals comprehend project management and its nuances. It is mostly the commercial team that runs this function, but at the slightest discomfort, they run to legal.
Many times, this approach is too late in the day, with fewer options to ring-fence the project and running into either arbitration or litigation. Eventually, to succeed in an organisation, project management and legal skills are imperative.
This author has personally worked on more than 30 major projects, including overseas, where the value of the legal function has contributed millions of dollars in time extensions, waiver of damages and guarantees. Given the huge advantage in adding to profitability, exposure to this facet is phenomenal.
Knowledge enrichment
Yet another imperative is mapping current legal trends, reflected in statutes, judgments of the Supreme Court in particular, addresses by legal luminaries and institutional arbitration outcomes available in the public domain.
Many legal professionals are remiss in not perusing these in their mundane duties of vetting or drafting notices in firefighting situations. A few websites, like Manupatra, can quickly supplement the gaps in understanding. India has a repository of Supreme Court judgments the ratio of which is unparalleled by any other in the world.
These judgments are not specific to a law being argued, but would give a sense of direction in the logic, coherent reasoning and deductive arguments arrived at. By looking at the organisational rules of the International Chamber of Commerce, London Court of International Arbitration, Singapore International Arbitration Centre and Indian arbitration centres, the trajectory of arbitration can be understood to know the timelines and potential outcomes.
Yet another shortcoming is the interaction with law firms of eminence, which are aplenty in India, to know the nuances of trends available. Taxation is one such area.
A lawyer would comprehend the right interaction with law firms. But how many of us really take time to look at this repository of knowledge? Why do we miss the seminars and conferences that delve into the latest topics in our industry? There is abundant law on intellectual property, too, in India, which very few in-house counsel have the hang of. With the advent of AI, we need to race to stay afloat in the profession.
Thirst for leadership
This is the bedrock for any legal professional to scale heights in the eyes of management. No one is ever born a leader, but displaying the trait within the organisation makes them stand out in the function. Initiating an important discussion among the team on a topic, theme or judgment, giving a talk at a company event, writing articles for in-house magazines about an impending law or a case of common interest are a few things to be practised.
Reaching out to colleagues across the organisation, although not an easy task, has to be initiated. Participating in management meetings, audit committee proceedings relating to legal matters, speaking to directors on critical issues, and meeting with the CFO or CEO at regular intervals make the function a dynamic one.
Integrative working
These are not exhaustive, but they would definitely put the function and the individual in an advantageous position to pitch for higher participation and, eventually, to be considered for a critical position at the opportune time.
Most of it would be one’s own professional benchmarking vis-à-vis a few successful lawyers or peers we interact with. And finally, the maxim of fortis fortuna adiuvat (fortune favours the brave) holds true, and the legal function is no exception to reaching the top in an organisation.
