The modern business world is rapidly evolving to the point where legal issues that arise must be addressed only by a legally savvy professional mind. With the growth and development of business organizations, unexpected situations arise where mutual disagreement may lead to long-term disputes if not handled by an expert legal counsel. There is a need for an intrinsically intelligent lateral thinker – Veenita – who can be any company’s legal advisory partner, advising it precisely and guiding the management to a win-win dispute resolution.
A Founding Partner in the Gurgaon-based law firm, TSA Legal, and having more than 15 years of experience including human resources behind her, Veenita expresses her ideas on the…
Qualities of an Inspirational Leader
“Such a leader must be fair. There are broadly two kinds of Leadership styles generally displayed: Assertive Leadership and Popular or consensus Leadership,” she says and elaborates further. “In business, it is found that Assertive leadership is quite dominating and in limelight, I personally feel that Popular or Consensus Leadership is the one that is more admired and successful in today’s corporate or businesses because a leader needs to be approachable and they need to take people along.”
Apart from these a couple of more intrinsic qualities are important in a Leader.
-
Having a lateral thinking approach.
-
Being a problem solver.
-
Mentoring and giving opportunities to the team to grow and
-
Sharing credit where necessary.
As one notices all these qualities are something that an individual will find in popular leaders in any organization. Moreover, these qualities help the organizations grow sustainably while recognizing the challenges and red flags early in the journey.
With a logical approach and passion in her own leadership persona, Veenita is…
A Chiseled Law Professional
…who has gained a reputation for offering quality and prompt legal services to businesses across varied industries.
Veenita’s core expertise lies in Corporate Governance, HR, and Legal Compliance for MNCs and Startups. She has helped Global Businesses in aligning their Indian Operations with requisite compliances by Designing, Drafting, and Executing the most robust Policies in Employee Management, Contract Management, and Labour Law related issues. She holds command over Labor law compliances including ESI and PF benefits, Minimum wages, Labor Laws for registration, licenses, renewals and the Contract Labour Act. etc. She has been awarded by various corporates for which she worked, for her innovative approach while successfully managing sensitive corporate issues efficiently.
TSA Legal is a modern law firm that helps new-age businesses especially the ones focused on Technology, IT, Mobility and Artificial Intelligence. It offers professional services in Business and commercial law, Environmental Law, Intellectual property rights, International law, Artificial intelligence, cyber law, Litigation and arbitration, consumer protection, etc.
Intertwined Learning of Legal HR
Veenita has more than a decade of experience in Human resource functions in various MNCs. Being able to manage the entire bouquet of services related to HR for large IT companies and Start-ups, she realized that there are many areas in HR that get intertwined with Law and have Legal aspects to it that are either inherent or so involved that the two cannot be separated without making each ineffective and pointless.
It is then that Veenita took up Law as a subject and study. The more she learned, the more she appreciated the nuances that came with it. With a Law degree in hand, Veenita could see how her knowledge of the two exclusive fields could help many businesses.
As part of her role in the Law Firm of TSA Legal, of which she is a founding partner, Veenita started helping start-ups in creating their HR Framework right from the Policy stage to training to best practices and then to effective conflict management. She found that in their zeal to focus on operations, most new-age start-ups either ignore these important aspects or are completely unappreciative of these, which, in the long term becomes detrimental to their survival, to leave scaling up.
Veenita and her team of associates mitigate all such risks for the client by creating a Management Framework with enough Legal inputs and guidelines to sustain any business-related changes or internal challenges that might crop up from time to time.
Widening Perspectives
Veenita, in all earnestness, feels and believes that there are two innate qualities that are appreciated by her clients when it comes to her vertical of services/consulting.
-
Being able to listen and relate to the concerns that are being shared by them with her. At times, it is not easy for the clients to pinpoint what they exactly want, hence Veenita tries to dig in a bit more and understand the root of the concerns being outlined and then advise on the strategy or any course of action that she needs to take.
-
To be able to put things in clear perspective even if it means going against the popular opinion or against the desired outcome that the client wants or thinks he/she wants. While dealing with a workforce that is more aware and dynamic, the role of the management and its policies are always in the spotlight, hence it boils down to professionals like her to take some tough calls and make practical decisions to safeguard the company and its management while also keeping the employees’ best interest in mind.
As for ‘what quality/values her colleagues and employees admire’, Veenita believes it to be the same for all the partners at the firm and the ethos of her Law Firm which is to lay focus on learning, mentoring, and opening new opportunities in learning for the juniors —which is the best-appreciated aspect of the firm as a whole and partners as individuals. She says, “A professional in all of us admire such qualities in a professional set-up.”
TSA Legal – A Perfect Firm
TSA Legal has created its own niche based on its core competence. The team consists of lawyers with an educational background and experience as engineers, technology specialists and IT experts. The team is thus well-versed in Technology and Law. Moreover, the team keeps itself updated on new technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Drone Technology, Bots, etc. and integrates that understanding with the legal issues related to it.
This helps the team in advising its clients, which are mostly in New Age Tech, in creating legal frameworks in their systems to secure not only the technology and the operations but also the business. Frameworks like policies, instruments, agreements, back-end, etc. need to be aligned with the possible legal risks and their mitigation plan. Apart from the framework, the team also creates and delivers various important trainings like PoSH & ICC, Cyber Law, Cyber Security, Data Sanctity, Email communication and its Legal Implications, Social Media in Professional Set-up and implications and many more. Clients appreciate its approach as they know the team understands technology, as well as the law in equal measure hence, TSA Legal is the perfect firm to advise them on key issues.
Changing Perceptions
At TSA Legal, the team understands its work in the service industry and Legal Advisory is its service. The team felt that businesses had a different perception of the Legal Fraternity and thus it tried to break that mental block.
Veenita feels that as the Law Partners of the clients the firm needs to be
-
Proactively involved in client’s business activities so that the risks are understood at a very initial stage
-
Be more open and approachable to create a bond where their teams can discuss any aspect or doubts with TSA Legal team. This approach has kept them in good stead with the New Age Start-Ups.
TSA Legal team works with the clients from the very initial stage by getting involved in creating Management Systems, Framework(s), Policies, Mechanism for integration, Legal Training and implementation of such frameworks with Operations, Risk assessment, Aligning the operations with various Guidelines (Country wise), and of course the dispute resolution (internal as well as external). The team gets involved in various negotiations on behalf of the clients and represents them at various forums as well where they require it. Its service modules are designed in a way that the Startups do not feel the pinch in their pocket while getting access to a pool of experts.
The core belief at TSA Legal is to bring harmony between Technology and Law while giving access to the client to a pool of expertise in one place. A proactive approach by its team and dedicated resources working on issues highlighted by clients is another plus that its clients appreciate. All in all, it is a knowledge-sharing business.
The Legal Tech Factor
The way the technological landscape is evolving and changing every day, it is imperative that it has an impact on all aspects of lives including Law. New-age technologies like AI, ML, Drone Tech, and Cloud Computing are new avenues that have disrupted the way businesses worked. Along with the ease, came the legal challenges. Though in India too, the Govt. and the Judiciary are looking at them to form the guidelines, many geographies like the US and European countries have already developed some laws and guidelines.
The TSA Legal team keeps itself abreast with these changes through study, research, certifications, conferences, and seminars. This indirectly helps its clients as it helps them to remain ahead of the curve. TSA Legal thus lends more clarity to its clients in these matters as it has the in-house capabilities to respond to such queries with a verifiable trail of evidence and precedence to rely upon.
Countering Challenges Holistically
As for challenges, there are two main challenges that Veenita sees
-
Changing landscape of how businesses are being done through virtual and online platforms, and,
-
Managing risks from the global perspective.
The challenge of new-age technology can only be handled if one is well-versed with the tech and associated law (especially its implications). It tends to outline various risks and then create the framework to mitigate those risks for its clients and their clients/customers.
As for the global outreach of today’s businesses, the focus is again on the contracts, geographies, and the law there. TSA Legal has in-house experts in US and European laws, hence the clients tend to get a holistic purview of the provisions of the law in those territories where the prospective business will interact.
A Reverberating Advisory
In her advice to young professionals entering the legal industry, Veenita mentioned that Legal Advisory is a very interesting field in today’s world, and in her opinion, it is the best time for youngsters to equip themselves with diverse knowledge and start consulting in this field. The New-Age Tech and IPR are the key legal buzzwords that will remain relevant in the times to come. She adds that more and more businesses are seeking its advisory in these verticals, not only in India but from Europe, the US, the Middle East, and even Africa. As the investment in startups gathers wind post-COVID, there will be new avenues too for the legal fraternity to lend their expertise to this industry segment.
The firm needs to look at the mindset of today’s youth which is more driven by the newer challenges that reverberate with what is happening around him/her and not that inclined towards the same old litigation work. Veenita says this because almost 98% of the young lawyers that approach TSA Legal for internships or probable jobs, want to work in these domains only (IPR and New-age tech).
Future’s Best Global Law Firm
TSA Legal has been scaling up even during the peak of the COVID-related lockdowns as well, so for 2023, it has made very aggressive plans to expand both externally and internally. While it will be opening more offices in India, TSA Legal is also exploring collaborations in the international markets as almost 15% of its clients and work is pouring from outside India. Internally it plans to expand horizontally with its dedicated teams for AI and Bio-Tech which shall give it an edge in consulting. Its steady progress has been noted and appreciated by the global Legal Community as well.
TSA Legal was recently awarded as ‘One of the Best Upcoming Law Firms,’ at a Legal Conference of South Asian Countries held in Singapore (Nov 2022).
Business wise the firm will be expanding its reach to other industries as well especially FMCG and Pharma as those are the segments that are seeing quite an emergence and beating all the slow-down predictions in Global Markets.
