General Counsel (India & South Asia) – Airbus, India
1. How has the Covid-19 crisis affected the way you work as a lawyer? What are the key positives and negatives that have emerged out of lockdown?
Covid 19 has changed the world order and created a new world. It has also affected the legal fraternity.
As support functions, you need to work with and for the business so a constant engagement is needed to predict, perform and persevere solutioning.
The positives:
- More agility.
- Increase in adaptability to WFH and manage multiple roles, with the boundaries getting blurred at times.
- Reducing commuting time.
- More digital tools and access.
The negatives
- Distance from business/ work colleagues.
- Ability to meet in person which is critical for functions like compliance/ investigations etc.
- Ensuring awareness/ trainings digitally which is possible but it took a while to adapt.
2. Will you and your company continue to use flexible and agile working in future? Will you reduce the size of your physical office space?
There is no plan to reduce physical space and flexible hours was always available for us. It will continue to stay basis need and requirements.
3. How have you employed legal tech during the crisis? What has been successful and what has been lacking?
We have been increasing using G suite. Drive, google meet, hangout are easy to use and can be used by a click of a button including accessing from any device. Further, we created a hub page which had all the legal and compliance material including trainings and initiatives so people could access it easily. We use digital tools for law firm management, payments, regulatory compliance etc.
4. How do you see the advancement of legal tech affecting the legal industry in the next 10 years?
The new world will surely see advancement of technology and the legal fraternity is not far behind. Increasing tools on simplification, access, data, AI and other related areas would be the focus. A lot of simplification and standardization can be done on implementation of simple tools.
5. Has your firm changed its remuneration structure during the crisis? Will the firm consider using a “commission only” or hybrid remuneration model in future?
No
6. Name one key thing that will be different in the legal profession in 10 years’ time.
Seamless and boundary-less provision of legal services and support, be it law firms or companies (subject to regulatory restrictions). The world has shrunk and will continue till access, availability and support is easily possible from anywhere for anything. It will increase the understanding of risk given availability of vast resources and creative solutioning to support business.