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Ajay is an Advocate, and a Solicitor, enrolled with the Bar Council of Maharashtra & Goa. His 25 years of experience is a journey in diverse areas of laws such as real estate, corporate advisory and commercial laws, media and entertainment and others. He also specializes in matters relating to court litigation, dispute resolution and estate planning. His expertise is sought for by several companies, production houses and individuals on account of his sharp commercial mind and business strategies.
INTERVIEW:
Host: Tell us about your firm.
Ajay: We are a very young firm. We commenced operations in the year 2019. Though with all the white hair that you can see, the people in the firm are not that young. I personally have about 25 years of experience backing me in the legal profession and the team which is a very robust team that we have been able to establish over a very short period in time also brings to the table vast experience in various sectors including real estate, dispute resolution, IPR etc.
The intent of starting the firm was to provide clients with a firm with modern infrastructure and having dynamic methods of achieving their goals very quickly. People believe that it takes forever if one gets embroiled in any litigation etc., but that’s actually far from the truth. The way things have been structured in our firm is to focus on the result that the client is to be given.
The partners of the firm believe in constantly providing training to the team so that everybody is at par and everybody is ready to handle the ever-dynamic situations.
Host: The pandemic saw some courts begin moving towards more remote proceedings and availability. How has this impacted your firm?
Ajay: Generally, also it is impractical to assume that moving to virtual courts or to a system where we had to adapt to ever-changing atmosphere has been easy but with the support of the Government, I think we have the Indian Government the way they have structured the courts etc., it has been a good transition, it has been a smooth transition. In fact, post the pandemic also people are now preferring to continue with the virtual hearings etc. In fact, as far as arbitrations etc. go, many of the arbitrations today continue to be in the virtual format.
Actually, I would like to share a small incident that had happened during the entire pandemic. As I have mentioned to you that we do a lot of real estate work pan India, our operations are pan India, so, we are doing transactions for clients which are out of Mumbai. It’s not necessary that the transaction happen within Mumbai. Earlier when the transactions were out of Mumbai every state has a peculiarity that all the documents that are available are in local language of that state. So, all the documents were first brought into Mumbai. People sitting in Mumbai used to find it very difficult to actually go through all the documents, understand the documents in their particular language.
What the pandemic has taught us is that we have now hired people across India, from various states. All we had to do was provide them with a laptop and internet connection and everybody’s mindset is now attuned that we can operate virtually. So, it has just smoothened the entire process for us, to carry out the same work which we used to do. First, we used to tag along all the papers to Mumbai but now people sitting in those various states itself through virtual links are able to do the same kind of work. So, I think this has been a boon for the legal system.
Host: What are the most significant developments in recent years?
Ajay: In recent years, I think, what we have been doing is keeping every team member abreast with the latest developments. We have set up a special knowledge management team within the organization and we pay a lot of attention on training the team members. With the help of digitalization, that has made it even more easy because we are able to draw on sources from all over the country, from all over the world. And, it ensures that our team is abreast with every possible development that is necessary for executing the work at hand.
Host: Time is money in any profession and in legal it’s most of all. How do you ensure a lawyer’s or a law firm’s trajectory is aimed at growth?
Ajay: We are very alive to the fact that time is money as you put it but we do not lose focus of the fact that we are in a service industry, we have to do justice to the client.
So, of course, we have always ensured that every possible tool is provided to every team member in terms of technology, in terms of providing them adequate digitalization etc.
But I think the mantra that we are also providing to every team member is take the statement that time is money not with a pinch of salt but with a truckload of salt because first and foremost for us is the client’s satisfaction and to do justice to the assignment at hand. So, I think we are trying and doing a decent job at achieving a good balance between time is money and making sure that the client is getting the maximum value for the money that he spends.
I think we are ready at this point in time to even, I can’t say to take a loss, or to take a hit but sacrifice on spending a little more time, a little more effort on our client and not getting compensated but making sure that the work at hand gets done absolutely to the satisfaction of the client.
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