In Conversation with Dr. Mukul Shastry, General Counsel at Cube Highways

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?

When I started my career, more than two decades back in the 2000s the role of legal dept. in various Indian corporates was merely as a facilitator between the Company and the external lawyers. Depsite more than a decade of globalization, Indian corporates were not aligned to have large scale legal departments like the western world. However, slowly the need and perception changed. With global giants entering India and gradually making their presence felt, Indian corporate world tasted the best global practices of a fully functional and strategic legal department. Indian corporates started to have a legal department, however, it was generally reporting to CFOs and primarily seen as a cost center. In the past decade or so, when India started making rapid rise in privatization and corporate India became a potent force, handing out large scale employments, and had to deal with a complex legal and regulatory environment, the legal department started getting meatier and important.

The changed in focus on law education with next generation National Law Schools, and the US culture where lawyers dominate the negotiations started picking up and the Corporate India started scouting for General Counsels who were best in the business.  Many law firm partners left their lucrative practices to join as GCs, as the kind of diversity and dynamic challenge they would find in a GC role may not be there in a partner role which mostly is static and confined to limited field of law.

Now the GC has a say in all crucial decisions of the Company, and seen as trusted parter of the C-Suite and the Board. Many times the GCs are in the Board itself, responsible not only for legal, contract, secretrial, compliance or regulatory risks but also for making business, financial and risk management strategies. The breadth of GC’s role in modern Indian corporate is not confined to trditional legal, contract or compliance but now transcends to roles such as financial and tax frameworks, business risk management, privacy or intellectual property risk mitigation, cross border acquisitions, talent management et. al.

Lastly, would also like to add that soon the Advocates Act would be amended and GCs and in-house counsel would be treated at par with advocates. Time is not far when you would be seeing that top GCs would be filling the bench and elevated to Supreme Court or High Court judges. That would be a fascinating time for Indian legal industry as the kind of jurisprudence especially corporate jurisprudence that would be developed, could be unparalled.

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 is absolutely required. Even from Mahabharata days when Arjuna & Eklavya required Dronacharya, Bhishma & Karna required Parsurama and without which they would not have been what they had become. Likewise, you take out any top lawyer in the country they all come from chambers of great lawyers. For example the mercurial maestro Fali Nariman was mentored by the legendary Jamsetjee Kanga, legal whizard Harish Salve was mentored in the chambers of the fabled Soli Sorabjee etc.

The nuances of law that you can learn just by observing a true master, could not be easily learnt from reading even tens of books. Similarly the in-house role is different from litigation or working in law firm. No doubt you have to interpret the legal prescriptions, but most importantly is the skillset and art of presenting it to the stakeholders. One needs to be out of box thinker to find solutions and therefore a young in-house trainee or associate needs to learn that art. Therefore not only mentorship plays an important role in the traditional litigation but also in modern legal roles such as in-house counsels, legal academia, legal journalism or legal tech.

When you are a GC in a large organization your time is absorbed by the day to day affairs and the time to mentor the young minds becomes a scarce commodity. Though I try to spend as much time possible with youngster but to be truthful it is far and few. Whenever any intern or young trainee joins my organization I try to spend some time with them and likewise try to guide the younger colleagues.

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?

The modern world is fraught with extremely complex regulatory environment. DPDP Act is one such example, clubbed this with SEBI – BRSR Core, new Criminal laws, foreign investors with heavy focus on FCPA, ABAC and International sanction, coupled with dynamic changing world with new disruptive technologies like AI, bitcoins etc. Therefore the GC suite must also be an eclectic mix of professionals. Like we are a private equity platform working primarily in road transport and highways. In the GC suite headed by me, in addition to lawyers you will find engineers, CAs , forensic expert, MBA (finance). Soon we may add, subject to our necessary approvals internally, an IT specialists to specifically cater to the disruptive AI technology.

Hence, I may encourage my fellow GCs to equip the team with talent from other field especially from the field of IT as that prepare them to face the challenges that the corporate India is going to encounter in coming times.

I am of the strong opinion that the time is not very far when the AI and machine learning is going to disrupt the legal industry. All the mundane legal jobs of research, drafting, repository of case laws, litigation management, discovery etc. will be done by sophisticated machines. The human brain need to think more intuitive and strategic. The application of legal principles to the factual matrix would be the key and the lawyers who could apply the law better and could think of out of box and on the feet would be greater success than those who are mere rote learners.

Through this medium I will like to encourage young legal minds to open up to new ideas and master the fundamentals of law. Because once your foundation is strong you can build up an extremely exquisite building, lest it is recipe for failure.

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?

As I said the time of AI and legal tech has come. Many law firms in western world are using e-discovery tools to a tee, and even in India it is in vogue. However, now there are many tools for contract management, claims management, litigation management etc. which are in market. Though I still feel the Indian legal tech market is taking baby steps because the marriage between the one who understand law and the one who understand technology is not proper. But these experiments will soon lead to a perfect tool that could easily help in good legal drafting, relevant and expedient legal research, clearly stating which circulars or judgements have been superseded etc.

The most time consuming and frustrating element at present is research, drafting and utterly frustrating formatting. There are now tools in market for all these three. However, what I would love to see is AI backed tools. Like those tools which learn with every usage. Hence, if I use a research, drafting or formatting tool, then I would love that tool to learn in few months, the kind of formatting that I like, the way of drafting that suits my style and research relevant to my industry.

Right now we don’t have tools that learn basis the usage. However, as I said this is just the beginning and soon legal tech in India and the world is going to disrupt the market. May be in few years you will see a different legal industry than what we are seeing today.

⁠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?

The first and foremost is to master the fundamentals of law. The fundamental principles of Indian constitution, contract, criminal law, civil law, arbitration, company law, foreign exchange laws, technology law, maritime or trade law etc. These fundamental principles will help you interpret the relevant law, circular, judgement, contract better.

Secondly, be open and adaptable to learn the business nitty gritty of your client. Especially when you work in-house how much law you know may be secondary, but how much you understand your industry and your business takes precedence. Legal practices which may work in an infra company may not work in a media company. You need to thus understand those nuances and hone your skills accordingly.

Lastly be open and embrace the technology. AI and legal tech is not going to be your adversaries but will be your facilitators. It is simple as when calculator was invented many accountants felt their jobs would become redundant but in fact it boosted the economy and created more skilful jobs. Likewise AI and machine would give a fillip to economy creating more suave jobs for lawyers with merit.