Legal industry saw a pause for a while during the pandemic, but it also found solutions for the cases and proceeded with online hearings as much as possible. It got difficult for people to understand this way of working. One firm making their clients understand and work with them with constant attention was FortuneLegal.
Fortune Legal is a full-service corporate and commercial law firm. Lawyers of the firm present a proper blend of legal proficiency and commercial insight in providing transactional support services. It gives seamless advice to clients on complex matters both in their litigation and corporate and commercial matters.
In an exclusive interview with Insights Success, Mr. Pankaj Mehta, Manging Partner and Founder of the firm, enlightens us with the current happenings of the legal space. Below are the highlights of the interview.
Please brief us about FortuneLegal in detail.Â
Our practice aims to provide client-responsive advice to assist them in achieving their business objectives, mitigating problems, and maximizing their profits. Our quality service and achievements in a short span exemplify how remarkable things happen when the best minds work together.
Our clientele includes India’s leading business groups, public sector undertakings, banks, Indian private and public companies, and multinational companies from across the world. Those are from the United States of America, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, and the UAE. We also assist private individuals who need high-quality professional advice.
Our firm’s lawyers come from different backgrounds, bringing together a wealth of legal, business, and cultural experiences.
What made you venture into the corporate and commercial law sector?
We did several noteworthy infrastructure projects, including Delhi International Airport, Machilipatnam Seaport project, Mumbai Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail Project (Bullet Train project), real estate laws, and the IT sector.
Our service offerings in the corporate and commercial sectors are precious and notable, making the operation of the fit right. It made it smooth and paved the path for our growth and expansion. I am impanelled with India’s dedicated freight corridor corporation advising on various legal issues for the mega infrastructure project.
The principle of providing extensive and corporate and commercial legal services stems from our experience. The disputes and long-wound litigations arise from poorly drafted or often generic and vague contracts, which lack the provisions of covering potential disputes between parties to an agreement.
We aim to eliminate this core problem and ensure that contracts or legal advisory services cover any potential disputes, be it for established companies or start-ups. They ensure that the firm goes beyond being legal advisors to our clients and attempting to be their business partners.
What kind of offerings does FortuneLegal provides to its clients?
Our firm believes in hand holding the clients from inception and sailing through any transaction’s various phases. We provide services in corporate and commercial laws and foreign investment in India.
It includes joint ventures and collaborations, handling a complete portfolio of the companies from the incorporation of the company, handling all the statutory compliance, agreements about various services and all the related work, trademark, copyright, patent-related registration and litigation, civil and criminal law, opinions on multiple compliances required under laws of India, banking sector, retail, energy, education, IT, media and entertainment laws, cross-border transactions, theft/ fraud/ embezzlement, matrimonial laws/ divorce, child custody/adoption, immigration laws, due diligence, infrastructure and construction law, consumer protection, and labour laws in India.
What kind of challenges have you faced while entering the corporate and commercial law sector?
The biggest challenge we faced was finding footing and being noticed on the map of the highly competitive legal profession. At our inception, big corporate clients preferred firms with big names and infrastructure instead of a new or budding law firm such as ours.
However, quality, and timely deliverables, and the constant endeavour to service excellence for our clients won us the trust of our clients. It marked our presence among corporates and more extensive, more established firms ensuring that clients increasingly started trusting the firm’s professionalism and consistent deliverables and relying on us for their corporate and commercial legal services.
Professionalism is inculcated in each and every team member while maintaining the quality standards for each client irrespective of their size or the magnitude of the transaction being handled by the us.
How much your firm/business was affected in these pandemic times, and what were the steps you took to curb the damages while helping your clients and maintaining the safety of your employees?Â
The pandemic brought about several discoveries and streamlining for the firm. The pandemic strengthened our clients’ trust in the firm and the team as a whole. Despite working remotely for the better part of a year, we were able to maintain high standards of deliverables. We were ensuring timely delivery of the same. The pandemic brought out the best in the team, wherein each team member took leadership of their assignments. The teams ensured that neither work slows down, and simultaneously, the firm grows despite the pandemic raging throughout the nation.
The safety of the clients and our team was paramount, and as much as possible, we followed all COVID-19 guidelines issued by the government. We not only maintained the clients’ faith in our services and reliability, but their trust also increased as they saw that the pandemic had not slowed us down or impacted our deliverables and accessibility in any manner.
What would you like to advice the young generation of legal enthusiasts?
The young legal enthusiasts need to inculcate the hunger for constant learning and sole focus on the quality of work being done, no matter their area of preference in the legal industry. Instead of advising young generation lawyers, I have personally learned how they keep the spirit and passion of the legal profession by constantly keeping them apprised of new laws, judgments, and evolving jurisprudence. This, in turn, help in advising clients and easy sailing through complex transactions.
So, all legal enthusiasts must follow the principle that clients come for quality services. Suppose one is constantly learning and keeping oneself updated and is capable of giving innovative, practical solutions to clients instead of tangling clients in legal nuances and jargon. In that case, the long-term relationship built with clients will always go a long way and help make long-term standing in this profession.
Where do you envision FortuneLegal to be in the long run, and what are your future goals? How do you plan to embrace the changes happening in your industry?
I personally see the firm is on the firm ground of principles, ethics, professionalism, quality service provider, and there is no looking back. The clients’ trust and faith are reimposed again, strengthening our motivation to deliver it more efficiently and professionally. Our firm is set for taking giant leaps in terms of several associates, expanding horizons of unexplored roads of various areas of corporate and commercial transactions. To enliven this vision, we have already started venturing into areas of practice that are not in the mainstream but have immense potential, such as alternative pharmaceutical, education technology, FMCG/Retail, cryptocurrencies/blockchain, and so on.
During the pandemic, we launched a dedicated service offering for start-ups that provide cost-efficient packages of legal services to give start-ups access to high-quality legal services, which they are often unable to access due to the high cost associated with corporate legal services. The corporate industry is evolving, and companies look for innovation in legal services. We have successfully addressed this need of clients by customizing solutions and ensuring that the firm’s growth is linked to the development of our clients in a holistic manner.
What is the current industrial scenario of the corporate and commercial law sector?
I feel that the corporate and commercial law sector is in full bloom. If I look at the government initiative to boost the domestic industries by incentivizing start-ups/ MSMEs, many new clients have reached out to us. The pandemic’s biggest giveaway was the innovating techniques in the corporate sector to maximize growth while being financially stable. This, in turn, leads for legal luminaries/firms to keep them at the same pace of providing innovative solutions within the ambit of the legal permissibility.
The work has increased manifold and is going to be on upward only. The pandemic saw investments happening in new corporate and commercial law sectors, which is a sign of positivity and a harbinger of growth in such sectors. Tapping this will be an art, and those who possess the latest updated legal knowledge will be on edge to be successful.
