In Conversation with Shalinee Kulshreshtha, General Counsel, South Asia, dentsu

Previously viewed as a department solely focused on expenses, legal teams have undergone a significant shift. What are the key factors that have propelled legal teams from a cost centre to a strategic partner within organizations?

You are right. Now Legal plays an important role in strategizing alongwith business leaders on what new business models may be beneficial for the company by analyzing risks, probability and ultimately, doing cost benefit analysis. I believe it’s the thinking of the individual that makes them unique. Law degree comes as an added advantage. Lawyers are able to think through the different business models, leakages, exposures and how to plug them in advance of rolling out a business model. This has direct impact on the profitability of the business.  In my view, key factors would be acceptability (being road blockers to enablers), strategic legal thinking of legal professionals and value brought on the table.

Can you share the impact mentorship had on your professional journey? In your current role, what are the opportunities you get to mentor young talent?

Mentorship plays a very important role in professional journey. I have had many mentors in my journey starting from Shukla Wassan as my first official mentor. It is so good to learn from other’s experience and have someone from whom we can share things in confidence and have a second point of view. I have had a few official and unofficial mentees and have opportunities to mentor them yet learn from them at the same time on the following topics:

1. Navigating in the right direction from a career coaching perspective
2. How to have a better risk appetite
3. How it may be beneficial to experience diverse fields of law in different industries
4. Manage expectations of the stakeholders; and
5. Impactful communication

With the recent surge in data privacy regulations (e.g., Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023), many companies are struggling to comply. Do you think in-house legal teams in the technology industry might benefit from adding specialists in data privacy to effectively address these challenges?

I would think it’s going to be relevant and more than that, necessary for every company as the repercussions are huge. 100s of crores of fine. It could be more for some as compared to others but as GCs, we have to ensure that we are fully compliant with laws of the land. We are building that expertise internally in boosting our internal talent and by providing them sufficient training, tools and platform to gather the expertise. Its another law so one can develop the skills with changing legal landscape or new comers could consider it as a specialization for those of them who prefer to be specialists.

How do you think technology is helping you excel and drive more efficiency in your team? Beyond existing tools, are there any specific legal tasks you find most time-consuming or frustrating that you think future technology could solve to make in-house legal teams more efficient? 

Technology always comes as an aid. It helps simplify and do things faster and eliminate mundane work from our lives where we can train technology to do certain things. However, it has to be used in combination with human mind as we cannot rely on technology fully for it to provide error free results. I keep looking for opportunity in such areas and how we can effectively leverage the legal talent to focus on key and strategic initiatives. I cannot think of anything right now for which we don’t have technology available in market.

What do you think are the three most important skill sets that both recent law graduates and seasoned professionals need to develop in order to excel in these dynamic in-house legal environments?

Corporate communication style: Its very different from how we communicate when practicing in courts or working in law firms. You cant use disclaimer and have to own the problem when finding a solution.

Practical exposure: When graduating we read theory but its very important to understand how it needs to be applied in real life cases.

Looking at the right place: We have 100s of legislations in India. When we work in corporate set up, it is a very important thing to understand which legislations may be relevant to analyze the problem statement.