Pratibha Jain, Managing Partner of Nishith Desai Associates` New Delhi office, will succeed Devaiah as General Counsel of the Chez Everstone Group on May 1. She will also be responsible for general affairs. The Dubai-based Freshfields corporate team that advised on the transaction was led by partner Rob Cant and senior partner Maha Osman, with additional support from partner Al-Waleed Al-Kiyumi. Financial advice was also provided by Haris Meyer Hanif, partner in Dubai, with Vincent Daniel-Mayeur, partner, and Thomas Métayer, lawyer from our Paris office, who advised on tax aspects. Sara Sayeed, Senior Partner, and Fiona McHugh, Partner in our London office, provided advice on transaction compliance. After finishing my studies and everything I did my law studies at Delhi Campus Law Center and everything, then at the beginning three years, I was in a law firm. Then, after completing my 12-year practice at the Delhi Supreme Court, in other courts across the country, inside and out. So it`s been like that for 15 years, and I`ll give you the little letter I made. During that time, I basically had all sorts of civil, criminal, and entrepreneurial things to expose myself to. We ourselves have done a lot of practical work and we have organized both sides on a pan-Indian basis.
After that, something suddenly happened in 2010, and then I immediately joined the General Counsel at Legal of a steel company in Mumbai. And after that, I joined another group where I had a lot of contacts in all the infra-verticals, practically all kinds of highways, other things. Then in the media, in another EPC company in Delhi. So, for the full journey of JSW Steel and SL Infra, GMR, Zee Entertainment and then Adani. So, that`s how I am now Of course, I took a break. So it was a little trip. But during this trip, an interesting part of the whole trip is that we had certain types of cases in the legal profession that only involved individuals or the public sector or government in the areas of employment, ADR, property or crime. So, if you`re primarily a lawyer, you`re generally expected to only be exposed to litigation. But in the 90s, when the country opened up, under the government of Narsimha Rao.
So it`s a new era that has begun, and that`s where we got lucky at the time when countries launched this kind of initiative and the company came from abroad from different companies. This time, as a young lawyer and law firm or private practice or in the organization, even in metropolises, cosmopolitan cities and everything that we were the first to have all kinds of exposure in the law firm or in the organization, it was a wonderful time. From there, since the 90s, of course, if you look at the legal side, we have, as a lawyer, I have received a lot of attention and opportunities and it is a complete change from normal daily litigation to a business world and so young lawyers have a passion to join over the last two decades. I mean, he had become a lawyer, but that`s not a good thing or it`s generally not acceptable in this society. “The concept of a group general counsel” at Adani Group is completely new and as such, “I will not inherit any role,” Devaiah told the India Business Law Journal, adding that he would oversee the legal function in all areas of the group`s business. For example, if you see that 30 years ago, there was nothing in the field of intellectual property. Now, intellectual property, patents, trademarks or designs protected by copyright and all these things have become one of the most important sectors on the legal side. On the contract side, a lot of contract management has developed. Among the disputes, if you see that arbitration itself is a huge field, many experts in other many arbitrations, because now, after being changed from time to time to three times the new arbitration laws, it has evolved according to the International Convention.
So now arbitration itself is a huge area, a great exposure area and you can contribute to it, you can solve. So litigation, arbitration, intellectual property, contract management, there are many branches. How have you experienced the evolution of the legal profession over the past three decades? Adani Group has appointed PM Devaiah as the group`s first General Counsel. Devaiah began working at the company`s headquarters in Ahmedabad on April 5 and moved there from Bengaluru after 14 years with private equity firm Everstone Capital, where he was vice president and general counsel of the group. Everstone, which manages more than $5 billion in assets, has about 25 employees in its legal group. The legal profession and the entire ecosystem have changed a lot. Many colleges and universities have opened. Well, if you are a lawyer, if you are a legal advisor, if you are in a company that even organizes, I work in an organization or in a private practice or a law firm, wherever the importance of a lawyer has increased, they have a value that is both monetary and respectful, that is the important, social aspect, that I wanted to mention. Throughout this trip, we were fortunate to receive different types of exhibitions. Personally, I exposed myself as a corporate lawyer for about 15 years from day one.
After that, when I had the chance to act as head of the legal department or GC, and then different organizers, four or five organizations, no matter what I wanted to do, I did it, which the previous speaker also suggested and mentioned, that we have to be part of the real company for today, the company is very, very important. As soon as you are a lawyer, in-house, general counsel, junior or mid-level lawyer, you need to understand the whole company because management`s expectations are very different. You have to adapt, give them the right advice, quick advice, from time to time, be regular and be more and more up to date. That is what I mentioned earlier, which is that it was a legal dispute, a dominant position. Well, it`s a little different where you have different other branches popping up. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer is an international law firm. We have long successfully supported the world`s largest industrial and financial companies, institutions and governments in their complex projects, transactions and challenges. Whether from our own 28 offices in the world`s leading economic and financial centers or with leading local law firms, our more than 2,800 lawyers provide comprehensive business law advice and pool their expertise to provide essential legal and industrial solutions to our clients. Build an exceptional profile so that your rankings are recognized by legal buyers Market sources identify him as an influential lawyer, explains one of them: “He is very sharp in his knowledge of the field, has a very clear eye on the risk profile of his parent companies and is very responsive to give advisory strategies.” Jalundhwala handles the Group`s corporate, regulatory and tax matters and is regularly involved in high-profile litigation and transactions, overseeing legal matters within the Group`s various stakeholders, including mining, oil and gas, logistics and power generation.
So it has become very, very interesting to come to this site and even awareness is present in young people as we interact during interviews and participate in different meetings in other ways. So you interact with the lawyers, the junior lawyers, and then you feel what they expect because they didn`t know they didn`t know the previous history or the nature of the work culture. So they`re young lawyers, they`re certainly doing much better, with more involvement in technology, a new field, and so they`re contributing more and more to it. As GC all the time, we were a focal point and a big change towards the company by the time we entered the legal profession. So it was a great experience to work with 4-5 big countries, one of the big companies and to have a great team, in general I personally had a team size of 15-20 to 60. So a lot of experiences, a lot of stories and that`s how the trip happened and that`s how we`re moving forward.
