#YWInsiderTalk - Vol. 20

This week on #YWInsiderTalk

Abhishek Nath Tripathi speaks with 𝐘𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐖𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 about how instinct, diplomacy and cross-disciplinary expertise combined with AI and technology are reshaping the role of a business lawyer today.

Abhishek is the Managing Partner of Sarthak Advocates & Solicitors having over 20 years of experience across Arbitration, Insolvency, Mergers & Acquisitions, Private Equity, General Corporate Advisory, Energy & Power, Real Estate, Investment Funds, Telecom and Education & EdTech.

Click on the link to know more: https://lnkd.in/p/gr9fhM3E

YW: Global legal ecosystems often reward not just technical accuracy, but interpretive clarity, anticipation, and diplomacy. How has this exposure shaped your own instincts as a lawyer?

ABHISHEK: Law is nothing but codified common sense. But, what is common is not so common. Law is not just a set of rules to be applied; it is a living framework shaped by context, culture, and people, so what may be common in one context, may not be common in another. Early on in my legal career a senior told me that the ability of a good lawyer is your ability to predict the law, even though you may not exactly know the letter of the law. This ability comes through your understanding of what is common sense in a given context. This is where instinct plays a crucial role.

Exposure to diverse legal ecosystems systems certainly sharpens the instincts necessary to look at the big picture in a transaction, which helps one look beyond technical details and focus on what the situation really demands. This could manifest in a variety of ways, as you are able to predict and anticipate, how the regulator will react, how your counterparty will react, how will judges or arbitrators read the provision, how the contract will unfold in practice as the situations change and how enduring the contract would be. One sided contracts may look good for your client on paper, but they rarely endure particularly when the going gets tough. As a business lawyer one has to be alive to these realities, and the more exposed you are, particularly to jurisdictions which have seen through the entire contract life-cycle unfold, it helps you navigate the discussions better. Diplomacy is an invaluable trait in any commercial law, but one tends to become more diplomatic the more exposed one is.

YW: What's the most significant shift you have observed in the legal industry in recent years and how you have positioned yourself to respond?

ABHISHEK: One of the biggest shifts is how the bar has moved in the competencies one expects in a lawyer. The lawyers we have these days are certainly more aware than the lawyers we had a few decades ago, but that in itself is not sufficient because the client today is also more aware and more demanding. The client walking through our doors today has already done basic research through google or AI tools, some of the contracts that we receive have already gone through the first level of drafting or review through an AI tool. So, we as lawyers have to do more than what an AI tool can do. This simply means that we expect the lawyers to be conversant with technology, it is no longer a special skill which is prized, but a must have basic skill. This is not a doomsday scenario for lawyers, lawyers are not going anywhere, in fact their life is likely to become more demanding.

For example, in a document heavy arbitration with lakhs of pages, one would have not expected the lawyers to be able to go through each and every page, but with AI scanning the documents for you, you may be expected to have gone through every word that is of relevance. To that extent, technology is a great leveler. This is an extra-ordinary demand. As everyone starts using the same technologies, technology will not be the differentiator, it is your ability to build a layer on the top of what technology is offering. That requires one to innovate constantly at much faster pace than one did a decade or so earlier.

We have responded by building cross-disciplinary expertise that combines legal training with digital literacy and practical technology know-how. As a Firm, we are investing heavily in AI, to enable our counsels to offer to our clients what AI cannot offer. We are using most of the tools that are on offer in the market, actively encouraging our counsels to use them. We have embraced AI across our workflow, from faster research to tighter due diligence, which frees the team to focus on strategy and higher-order problem solving. We are also collaborating with some players in the market in working on solutions that can further improve the efficiency that one can achieve through use of AI and technology.

Abhishek Nath Tripathi - #YWInsiderTalk Vol. 20.pdf

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