Murali Neelakantan, Senior Partner at Khaitan & Co, has recently resigned to join pharma major, Cipla Limited as the company’s Global General Counsel..Murali, who is dual qualified to practice both in India and England and Wales has more than 17 years of experience working at both Indian and International law firms..He is a graduate of National Law School of India University. He started his career at Nishith Desai Associates after which he moved to London to work at Simmons & Simmons. He worked there for six years after which he moved to Arnold & Porter. In 2005, he was made equity partner and co-chair Asia working group at Arnold. Thereafter, in 2007 he moved to Ashurst as Head of India practice..However, after a brief stint at Ashurst, Murali moved back to India in 2008 when he joined Khaitan & Co as a Senior Partner..Bar & Bench spoke with Murali Neelakantan on his decision to move in-house, legal team at Cipla and evolving role of General Counsels. Excerpts from an e-mail interview.Decision to move in-house.Murali: Cipla has been a client and I have been working with the team on some interesting matters recently. During that time, they must have seen something in me to initiate a discussion about joining the leadership team. I have always been keen to understand a client’s business and I find it interesting to be deeply involved with business decisions. This is an opportunity to explore that side of me a little further – work alongside senior management on strategy, beyond providing legal advice on transactions. I have always been keen to challenge myself to explore the limits of my abilities rather than stay with the tried and tested..At a very personal level, I turned 40 last year and lost my father to cancer. Perhaps it was time to be a part of an organisation like Cipla that changes peoples lives..When I left India in 1999, there were very few Indian lawyers with no foreign qualifications in any major international law firm but that did not deter me. When I became equity partner and co-chair of the Asia Working Group at Arnold & Porter in 2005 without the customary waiting period as Counsel and then salaried partner, I wanted to test my ability to build a practice and lead a multi-jurisdiction team. Within the first year there, Arnold & Porter made it to the rankings for foreign firms with Indian expertise. In 2007, I was invited to lead the India group at Ashurst, which had managed to keep its India liaison office for almost 20 years and remained, through all the regulatory turmoil in India, one of the pioneering international law firms in India. Each of these posed a challenge that one did not need to risk but I looked forward to each one of them..When the opportunity to join Khaitan & Co as Senior Partner and a member of the Executive Committee came up, it was something no one else had done before – give up equity partnership in a leading international law firm to manage an Indian law firm with a long history. Many would have felt that it was akin to turning the Titanic around before it struck the iceberg but in the five years that I was at Khaitan & Co, it has come to be recognised as one of the magic circle firms, involved in almost all the major deals in the country and always on the list of law firms of choice for both clients and talent..On the legal team at Cipla.Murali: Cipla has an experienced legal team, with lawyers in India, South Africa, Europe and the US headed by the Chief Legal Officer to support the business. Mital Sanghavi, the Company Secretary has been with Cipla for two decades and ensured that Cipla is on top of all the regulatory changes that have affected listed companies over the years and also supported the acquisition of Medpro in South Africa, a watershed moment for Cipla’s international growth..The Role of General Counsels has changed over the years. The General Counsel is often the go-to counsel for the CEO and the board on law, public policy and regulatory issues. What are your thoughts?.Murali: There are a few international trends that are worth noticing. While on the one hand, lawyers are becoming powerful thought leaders and their career is now not limited to becoming GCs, even leaders of law firms are going in house either as GCs or executive board members. Since directors are expected to conform to the standard of “business judgment”, my own view is that lawyers who expect to be counsel to the management and board should be independent of the board and not be directors. However, those lawyers who are key members of management should be promoted to the board just as CEOs and CFOs who, as directors provide leadership beyond their functional specialisations..There are many examples of this in the West. For example, Alan D Schnitzer, a key member of the executive management team as Vice Chairman of Travelers, a global insurance company is a former partner at Simpson Thatcher Bartlett, a leading international law firm. The managing partners of Freshfields and Reed Smith have, in the last week, chosen to go in-house..There may not be many similar examples in India but if Indian companies look to strengthen the role of the office of General Counsel and have the best legal talent occupy that office, it will make a huge difference to the identification, mitigation and management of risk, add to the universe of leadership talent available and provide lawyers a career path to leadership that they have been denied. It will give lawyers a chance to demonstrate their management and leadership skills and dispel the popular myth that they are cynics, always coming in the way of business..Follow Bar and Bench channel on WhatsAppDownload the Bar and Bench Mobile app for instant access to the latest legal news.
