India’s rapid economic growth has resulted in a flourishing corporate as well as SME market. It has resulted in the creation of new opportunities for law professionals to pursue a career in corporate law. Driven by the opportunity to work with big names and promising salaries, many young law professionals have developed a heightened interest in a career as a corporate lawyer.
The past few years have seen India’s traditional law setup pulled out of its conservative confinements and undergoing a massive transformation. Working frameworks, as well as career trends, are witnessing a sea change. A collaborative approach, critical thinking, creative understanding, and inter-disciplinary knowledge are crucial building blocks for a new-age legal professional.
For those pursuing or planning to pursue corporate law as a career, here’s an overview of what organizations are looking for when selecting candidates:
1) Interpersonal Skills
Strong oral and written communication skills are necessary for any lawyer. Not only do you need to be a good communicator when arguing in court, but you should also be able to present your arguments clearly and crisply.
As a corporate lawyer, communication skills become even more of a crucial skill to have. You will be working on mergers & acquisitions, corporate restructuring, contracts, taxes, project financing, etc., and will be required to communicate and negotiate. The ability to convey legal or business terms concisely goes a long way in a successful corporate lawyer’s career.
Understanding client briefs and developing a profound understanding of the concerned issue is extremely critical in how you build the legal framework. Additionally, in large corporate offices, you will be expected to lead the legal front and are hence expected to have top-notch leadership skills.
2) Business and Market Awareness
A good corporate lawyer is expected to have remarkable knowledge of business and the market. Moreover, you must also be aware of the trends in corporate and business law in the domains where your clients operate.
No two corporate transactions, deals, or problems are the same. To negotiate their way around this challenge, a good corporate lawyer must be aware of the types of industries, size of companies, kinds of ownerships/partnerships, etc. associated with their domain of concern.
Corporate lawyers must listen to podcasts or watch online videos about commercial law and brush up their knowledge on the current trends and latest stories. A corporate lawyer’s work revolves around supporting a company’s business and market activities, and they should be able to do that.
3) Strong Legal Expertise
An insightful understanding of statutory laws and regulations governing their clients’ businesses or fields of work is the most indispensable requirement of a corporate lawyer’s career. To assist their organizations with legal transactions and compliances, a corporate lawyer needs to be highly knowledgeable in their field of expertise.
Corporate lawyers also must learn to make sense of a large number of records and fact sheets. Identifying relevant information and presenting detailed information in a simple way sets apart a good corporate lawyer from an average one.
Corporate law is a challenging career and needs constant upskilling and upgrading of knowledge. You cannot, and should not, assume that your academics taught you everything that you need and sit back. A good lawyer is constantly reading new material, studying new cases, scanning important news stories, and keeping abreast of trends and happenings on the go.
4) Critical Thinking
Critical thinking skills are a must for any corporate lawyer. Corporate lawyers deal with a diverse set of challenges and addressing them requires out of the box thinking. Critical thinking imbibes a crucial skill in you – deductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning helps an individual undertake a broad and deep analysis of the issue at hand.
Critical thinking skills must be developed during academia itself. Participating in moot courts and simulated trials help law students build objective analysis and evaluation. ADYPU Online’s Master Level Post Graduate Program in Law includes moot courts, simulated trials, and interaction with legal experts and attorneys to help familiarize students with logically constructed arguments and judgments.
5) High Ethical Standards
Good ethics is the fundamental prerequisite of a lawyer’s career. You must be able to display and adhere to the highest degree of honesty and integrity when it comes to client confidentiality, conflict of interest, money transactions, and professional conduct.
Like doctors, lawyers deal with real human circumstances and have far-reaching consequences on people. Keeping this in mind, lawyers should practice their careers with complete sincerity and compassion.
Practicing law is one of the oldest professions in the world. Law is one of the pillars of democracy, and as a representative of the same, corporate lawyers are a representation of the profession itself. Hence, lawyers must follow a high ethical code of conduct.
Academia in India is designed to equip law candidates with core competencies such as an understanding of the country’s legal framework and constitution. With the world around moving ahead at a dramatic pace, legal education is due for a transformation. To meet this challenge, law hopefuls should be equipped with new-age skills that will help them cope with the requirements of the modern world and workplace.
The skills discussed above are not optional. Future legal professionals will have to be trained in these specialized skills through special programs. ADYPU Online’s master Level – Post Graduate program in Corporate Law is designed to help you gain a complete grasp of laws that regulate among others, the financial and commercial operations of a company. To know more about our program in Corporate Law, visit www.adypuonline.com/laws/corporate-law.
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