Corporate and commercial law in India started very late when the country opened its door to the world in 1992. When companies from all over the world started heavily investing in India, there were hardly any lawyers specialized and practicing corporate law in the Indian Judicial system. Though the law firms in India existed since the beginning, they became popular when corporates started to enter the Indian market.
We ventured around the country to handpick some of the most trusted corporate and commercial law firms in India. Soon, we came across N South Advocates, a law firm founded a couple of years after India’s ‘liberalization’, is now one of the forerunner practitioners of corporate and commercial laws in India.
Ranjeev C Dubey, Founder and Managing Partner of N South Law, showed us how complicated corporate and commercial law can be. Shedding light on the corporate world and working on corporate law, here are some of the highlights from our conversation with Ranjeev C Dubey.
Describe your company/firm/profession in detail.
We are a Gurgaon based law firm with a 22-year long continuous presence in Gurgaon. In the main, we offer corporate commercial advisory and representations, and litigation and alternate dispute resolution services.
We specialize in complex corporate litigation including specifically corporate control shareholder litigation. Our 30-year long experience in this area finds reflection in the 2003 litigation strategy and tactics book ‘Winning Legal Wars’ which even after 19 years remains the seminal book on the subject with no peers.
Greater detail of our services may be sourced at https://www.nsouthlaw.com/
Brief us about the featured person and shed some light on his/her professional tenure.
Ranjeev C Dubey is a practising lawyer with 42 years of professional experience. Starting out as a litigation lawyer in Delhi’s trial (Tees Hazari) Courts, he transformed into a corporate lawyer in 1992 and has practised both corporate law and litigation ever since. In 1999, he established his own law firm in Gurgaon, N South Advocates.
Ranjeev Dubey for decades has been a leading speaker at think tanks and industry forums on the interface between law, commerce, and political philosophy. A few of his speeches can be found at https://www.youtube.com/user/rcdfanclub.
His legal column Fineprint has been published successively by Business World and Business Today since 2004. In addition, he has written intermittently for other magazines and online sites. A comprehensive list of his writings may be found at http://ranjeevdubey.com/articles.html.
He has so far published three books: “Winning Legal Wars” (Macmillan, 2003) on litigation strategy and tactics; “Bullshit Quotient” (Hatchette, 2012), a set of essays deconstructing India’s political, legal, and commercial landscape, and “Legal Confidential” (Penguin, 2016), an autographical work that is, in essence, an expose of the real world of the Indian lawyer.
What made you venture into the corporate and commercial law sector?
‘Corporate law’ as currently understood did not truly exist as a practical area of law practice when I first joined the Bar in 2000. The legal world transformed in 1992 in the wake of Narsimha Rao’s ‘liberalization’ and the world opened to India. Foreign corporations arrived in large numbers and inquiries for corporate lawyers increased exponentially. At the same time, foreign lawyers started to materially contribute their expertise to Indian business.
The syncretic nature of those times meant that new business models appropriate to Indian conditions developed quickly in tandem with local skills. I joined a law firm in 1992 primarily to leverage my trial court skill. Soon enough, I found it possible to also practice corporate law as well. Soon, large value project work came my way and I accept projects in first the power generation business, then the oil exploration business and finally Telecom. By then, there was no looking back.
The corporate and commercial space was interesting to me at the time because it had a pioneering spirit to it. There was little domestic domain expertise in this area and the opportunity was equally available to all lawyers. Forms, practices, and procedures were being developed as India liberalized and laws started to be fashioned even as we practice. In a sense, the corporate lawyers of those times helped ‘create’ the corporate legal and regulatory regime that we have in India today. Even then, I was aware of the privilege that I was being offered, and I took it without hesitation. I am grateful for the journey that I was then able to undertake, and experience.
More details of my personal profile can be found at www.ranjeevdubey.com. This includes references to my three books – Winning Legal Wars, Bullshit Quotient and Legal Confidential – the first of which is now a free download (www.winninglegalwars.com).
What kind of offerings do you provide to your clients?
Main-stream corporate commercial advisory and litigation services. In the corporate commercial space, our offerings include Business structuring and M&A (including Joint Venturing, Private Equity and Startup Funding), Corporate Finance (including Project Finance), Corporate Contracting, Real Estate Project Advise, Entities seeking advice under Society and Trust laws, and of course IPR and Privacy laws.
In the litigation area, we represent clients across the country using our extensive network of specialists in courts from the trial to the Supreme Court of India. We practice civil and criminal litigation. We also have a substantial presence in a variety of national-level tribunals including NCLT, NCLAT, DRT, Competition Commission, NCDRC, etc. as their corresponding state-level tribunals, as applicable.
In the Alternative Dispute Resolution area, we offer both domestic and international arbitration services under inter alia ICC, UNCITRAL, and SIAC rules. And you can get detailed information about our services at www.nsouthlaw.com.
What kind of challenges have you faced while entering the corporate and commercial law sector?
The main challenge was the change in mindset. In 1992, I had trained as a litigation lawyer and had 12 years of experience. Litigation requires a lawyer to be incisive and hyper-critical and possess destructive, deconstructive skills, designed to defeat the logic of the opposition’s argument. Corporate law is a kind of bridge-building, a skill designed to overcome obstacles, to connect dots that seem too far apart. At the same time, it is the art of the minefield navigator, who is able to slip-slide successfully through obstacles and find a way to reach the other side. These two areas of law – litigation and corporate practice – require diametrical opposite attitudes and stances.
I have written about this extensively in my third book, ‘Legal Confidential’.
How much your firm/business was affected in these pandemic times and what were the steps taken by you to curb the damages all the while helping your clients and maintaining the safety of your employees?
Our litigation practically came to a halt and was reduced to a fraction of its previous size. Corporate law continued at a much slower pace, but it was attended by declining revenue streams. We shut down the office for many months (though I continued to attend office every day throughout the Lockdowns). We have never maintained office hours so ‘Work from Home’ was not a challenge for us. We were always available for our clients.
What would you like to advise the young generation of legal enthusiasts?
In simple words: Be patient, climb that hill, pay your dues, get your power, and you will unerringly fulfil your goals.
I feel the best way for me to represent my views is encapsulated in an interview we did last year here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-oz39pEOYE. Here I have an extensive section on messages I have for young lawyers.
Where do you envision your firm/business to be in the long run and what are your future goals? How do you plan to embrace the changes happening in your industry?
A new generation of lawyers is now spearheading the post-pandemic phase of N South’s journey. They all have 6-10 years of legal experience and are far more clued to the new winds that are changing the legal landscape. They will now drive its destiny. My job as a facilitator is to create an environment that optimizes their potential while seamlessly preserving the long-established relationships.
The shape of law firms, in the long run, is a difficult problem to address. For myself, I believe the world of juggernaut law firms with their high establishment costs and stodgy; business processes are steadily becoming less defensible as a business model. We need more flexible, faster, nimble entities now, driven more by assignment specific business collaborations than they are by physical offices and armies of high-priced lawyers.
My aim would be to anticipate and drive change, rather than embrace the change that others carve.
What is the current industrial scenario of the corporate and commercial law sector?
It is getting better, inevitably. You cannot hold a vast population of hungry entrepreneurial lawyers down forever. But the frame in which legal service is offered and consumed will change. In what way, we will find out in time. If I was to ask the legal community for anything, it is only that, can we please have a judicial system that can deliver on all its functions? Right now, we are very far from that place. On that depends the fate of today’s lawyers.
