From dispute resolution bottlenecks to knowledge management woes, billing dilemmas and crash helmets, lawyers have a lot on their minds
Lawyers, like other professionals, need to air their grievances from time to time and courts across India have seen their fair share of lawyer unrest. Yet there is cause for concern when lawyers angered by an order of a court resort to demonstrations within the court premises, denunciations of the judiciary and more. The situation in Madurai in Tamil Nadu, where a group of lawyers took matters into their own hands following an order by Madras High Court mandating the wearing of crash helmets by the riders of motorbikes, is both baffling and alarming. Is this indicative of falling standards in the legal profession or does it point to a more deep-rooted malaise affecting India’s courts?
Of course, the judicial system faces many challenges, not least the appointment of judges. The current stalemate in the appointment and elevation of judges to the higher judiciary adds to this challenge, as a result of which long-drawn-out court cases look set to continue to be the order of the day. Arbitrations, meanwhile, can be just as tedious and come with plenty of problems of their own. So how can companies doing business in India break the bottlenecks that stymie the dispute resolution process?
India Business Law Journal’s Rebecca Abraham recently put this question to a panel of experts in an exclusive online roundtable. Highlights of the discussion are published in this month’s Cover story.
Our panellists were the general counsel of Flipkart and Everstone Capital Advisors, a mediation expert and a private practice lawyer. Their views were diverse. Rajinder Sharma at Flipkart insisted that Indian courts were still the best bet for resolving disputes, while PM Devaiah at Everstone Capital Advisors warned that a “mix of subterfuge, court delays and a very slow arbitral process”, was leaving investors wary.
Our panellists also discussed the criminalization of civil disputes, and while all agreed that this was occurring, opinions varied from it being a menace that needed to be acted against to it being a useful tool for resolving disputes. Laila Ollapally, the founding mediator at the Centre for Advanced Mediation Practice, saw it as an indication of “an overreliance on an adversarial system”.
Continuing on the dispute resolution theme, in Shopping for justice we provide an in-depth look at forum shopping, a practice whereby parties deliberately seek out the bench that is most likely to deliver a positive result. The Supreme Court of India describes the practice as a “violative of the judicial process”, but it has nonetheless become commonplace in India.
The ability to present a case to the bench of your choice is currently seen by many as half the battle won. The introduction of electronic scheduling could help curb forum shopping, but does India have the techno-legal expertise and political to will to implement this on a wide scale? Other aspects of e-courts, such as e-filing, appear to be decades away.
Knowledge management software and customer relationship management systems are now standard features of just about every modern office. But the same is not always true of Indian law firms. In Tech talk, we look at how five Indian law firms of varying sizes are dealing with the challenges of finding and implementing the right systems for their diverse requirements.
Their experiences have been mixed. While some report great success with the introduction of the new systems, others say the systems they tried were cumbersome or costly, that their staff resisted the change in working practices, or that customer support by the software provider was lacking. Nikhil Krishnamurthy, a partner at Krishnamurthy & Co, sums up the situation: “The more you put into the system, the more you’re able to generate reports on profitability, trends, billing, client growth … But you need people willing to adopt and use the system and that’s hard in India.”
While some firms balk at the cost of implementing technology, André Meyer of Cloud Solutions says, “the cost is higher for doing nothing.”
In this month’s Vantage point Satjeet Sahota, a senior vice-president at Jefferies International, highlights some of the cultural issues that define the Indian workplace. These include a very direct style of questioning, a leisurely style of working and a loyalty to one’s group, even when there may be conflicts of interest. These characteristics can be “cultural curve balls”, even for those with roots in the country, says Sahota, a British Indian who has worked and lived in India.
Rounding off this month’s coverage is Intelligence report, in which India Business Law Journal proudly presents its ninth annual survey of law firm billing rates. This is our biggest survey to date: 75 law firms disclosed their hourly fees, a 25% jump from last year.
Transparent billing is a key concern for the majority of clients and our survey goes some way to furthering this ideal. Yet as in previous years, none of India’s largest firms participated. We hope this will change in the near future as the level of participation by small and medium-sized firms increases further and client pressure for greater transparency builds. As Vivek Mittal, the head of legal at Lupin Pharmaceuticals, says, “lawyers always advocate fair play and transparency, so they should lead by example”. We look forward to this day.
