6 Reasons Corporate Lawyers Must Possess Litigation Skills
June 26, 2019A career in law hardly ever follows a specific path, and this is because the law practitioners tend to switch across the firms and companies and often change their career altogether. For instance, the corporate lawyers move from in-house position to litigation whereas those involved in litigation move to the corporate law firms.
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Value of prior experience
How does prior experience help the legal professionals? Even though the reputed law firms are not going to consider your experience unless you worked in another firm of equal repute, they primarily engage in this tactic as it offers them an opportunity to bargain when most people are more than eager to work in the best corporate law firms in India. It is true that while switching from litigation work to the law firms or from playing a role in the transactional department of the firm to litigation, you do not start from the beginning. As a matter of fact, you are going to gain from your past experience while starting a career in another vertical of law. It has been observed that the past experience provides the necessary support to enjoy the new career.
Whether it is the corporate lawyers in India working in the law firms, the independent litigators, or the in-house counsel, experience of litigation contributes to their potential to work in the field of law. What are the different work options of the corporate lawyer? The following points will demonstrate.
1.Advisory service
The advisory service and the work of structuring conducted by the top corporate lawyers in India make it a must for them to go through the circulars, notifications, and instructions laid down by the regulatory bodies. However, the work of advising a business is challenging as the structure and the model of every business is different.rporate lawyers in India
2.Violation of statutes
The legal professionals working in the top corporate law firms in India must identify the motive of the regulatory provision and offer advice accordingly. The litigators have a better idea of law as a whole and the clients are not keen about letting the proposals go and instead look forward to feasible ways through the objectives that the business proposal can materialize. Basically, a corporate lawyer with no exposure to the work of litigation may conclude that violation of statutes is a criminal liability. On the other hand, a law practitioner with prior experience of litigation work can easily identify how significant it is to file a complaint with the magistrate after the violation of statutes and it is only after the issuing of the process that the trial has to follow, instead of considering the violation a risk of criminal liability.
Apart from this, the experience of litigation work allows the corporate law practitioner to envisage the proceedings from the beginning to the end and the issues that require immediate intervention. It also helps them to understand the kind of evidence that is to be furnished in response to eliminate the possibility of criminal consequences, and finally demonstrate compliance. With experience of litigation work, the strategies are better and well-informed and it may be possible to avoid a lot of hassles.
3.Work of drafting
When drafting the contracts, the commercial litigation lawyer must provide a solution to the parties to ensure the consequences of business. Furthermore, the law practitioner must try to eliminate the chances of disputes and make the contract more acurate via mapping of various scenarios thereby providing a way of risk allocation between the parties. In case of disagreements, clear directions are to be provided to minimize the chances of approaching the courts. The work of drafting contracts becomes more consolidated with prior experience of litigation work.
4.Drafting notices
When the legal professionals in the corporate commercial law firm draft the notices and contracts as litigators, they are going to think how the provisions are going to be approached by the court and how it is going to be implemented.
Similarly, while preparing a debenture trust deed, it is necessary to check whether the provisions have the potential to create a trust that is valid whether it is movable to immovable properties. Quite naturally, the experience of handling litigation work also makes it easy for the professionals of law in this field to envisage the process thoroughly during drafting, thereby preventing a lot of hardships of the client and other difficulties in the future.
5.Mechanism of resolving disputes
Even the best corporate law firms have the propensity to go for arbitration in a majority of contracts without keeping in mind the way in which the process of arbitration functions. Little do they know that in the Indian scenario, the process of arbitration is more challenging than litigation particularly, for drafting the not so high value contracts. A more rational approach is to go to the court for dispute resolution instead of arbitration unless the contract has a high value.
6.Making transactions better
The corporate lawyers can improve the transactions and prevent the loose ends and loopholes with knowledge of litigation.
Following the best path
Businesses involve the lawyers to find out how their objectives can be met preferentially and this is where the litigation experience of the law professionals comes to help. Is an experience in litigation a must to acquire those traits that are needed to perform the role of a corporate lawyer? While acquiring necessary experience in the field of litigation was until now the best solution as there was no other way to think from the perspective of the litigator, today, there are alternative paths as well. You can avail the opportunity of acquiring training in civil, criminal, bankruptcy, arbitration litigation and various other fields, and make the most of these training courses to hone your skills in litigation work.