Many in-house lawyers and other members of the legal fraternity took time off their daily schedules last week to participate in “The Legal Counsel Congress India 2010”, a conference organized by The Ideas Exchange in partnership with the Society of Indian Law Firms (SILF) and the Singapore International Arbitration Centre. The two day conference was held on April 8 - 9, 2010 at JW Marriot, Mumbai.

Bar and Bench spoke to Vikas Vij, Managing Director, The Ideas Exchange on the reasons for organising the conference, Vikas said “Recent feedback received from our interactions with the legal community said they were getting “conferenced-out” in terms of subject specific conferences such as “Contract Law”, “IP Law”, “M&A” and they wanted to discuss more operational orientated issues. We therefore decided (after conducting extensive research with a number of senior in-house lawyers) to build an annual platform where the senior legal fraternity could take some quality time out of their day-to-day work to focus on matters relevant specifically to them, and where they would also benefit from networking and experience sharing with senior peers”.

More than 80 General Counsels and Legal Heads attended this conference from various industry backgrounds. Some of the notable attendees were, Rajinder Sharma, President and Group General Counsel, JSW, Rajiv Uberoi, General Counsel, IDFC, Girish Gokhale, Head of Legal, Lafarge India and Samual Mani, Head of Legal, Infosys. The law firm fraternity was also well represented with Lalit Bhasin, President, SILF, Anand Desai, Managing Partner, DSK Legal and various other senior representatives from law firms such as Economic Law Practice, DM Harish & Co. and Nishit Desai & Associates attending the conference.

The conference focused on various issues that in-house lawyers face in today’s globalised world and their changing role within their organizations. The key issues discussed and deliberated at the conference included – in-house lawyers being perceived by their organizations as road blocks rather than business facilitators, strategies for aligning the legal function in partnership with the business, importance of balancing the legal and commercial interest, striking the right balance when working with external counsel, utilizing the internal legal capabilities of organizations, getting the most from external counsel including developing relationships and innovative billing arrangements.

One of the key themes emerging from the conference was the acceptance within the legal fraternity of the changing role of in-house lawyers in India. The changing role of in-house lawyers has also brought with it increased challenges and the conference focussed on some of these issues. The in-house lawyers also deliberated on some of the issues faced by them on a daily basis including justification of fees given to external lawyers and identifying when to work with the external lawyers and then how to identify which firms to work with.

A very important issue highlighted by the in-house lawyers was the fact that at times the external lawyers do not fully understand the objectives of the client and do not offer value or quality advice. “We hire law firms to provide services according to our needs and not according to a template that they have worked for a previous client, this happens so many times and especially in capital market transactions and in most transactions, due to paucity of time, we are stuck with the law firm even though they provide sub-standard work” said a General Counsel of a software services company that went public.

The in-house lawyers feel that the advice received from external lawyers is often too general and full of caveats and therefore, ultimate responsibility for decision making falls back on the in-house lawyers.

The General Counsels, whom most of the law firms see as clients, have raised issues that go into the heart of operations of the law firms. “Some of the Indian law firms are already billing at international rates, but not providing the quality of work that international law firms provide. Also, there is no strict malpractice law in India, which allows them to escape liability even after giving a wrong advice”, said a General Counsel of a real estate company who did not want to be named.

In addition to exchange of ideas and views on various real and practical issues, the conference also provided the participants networking opportunities.