With the recent announcement of the free trade deal between the EU and India, and other FTA agreements in the pipeline, the economic backdrop for Indian lawyers is changing. There are both opportunities and challenges. Here we take a step back to talk about some of the big picture economic trends in India that will affect Indian business and investment and how top Indian lawyers can strategise around them, both for clients and their own firms.

• AZB & Partners, Zia Mody, Managing Partner and Dipak Dasgupta (Leading World Bank Economist for 30 years, and Principal Economic Adviser to the Government of India (2010-13) in conversation with Reena SenGupta, Executive Director, RSGI.

The world of the Indian trade lawyer just got a lot more complex – and interesting. But all elite commercial lawyers in India now need to understand the intersections of law, trade, economics and geopolitics as they advise clients. From mastering trade defence instruments to polycentric litigation, in-house lawyers have gone from giving advice on compliance to advice on survival; private practice lawyers are strategic advisers, and architects of India’s diversification. As legal practice becomes more interdisciplinary, more dependent on international experts and more akin to strategic stagecraft, how can Indian lawyers both master the issues, know who best to work with and enable India Inc to thrive.

• ELP, Suhail Nathani, Managing Partner; Trilegal, Karan Singh, Founding Partner; Saraf & Partners, Mohit Saraf, Managing Partner; Sujoy Mazumdar, General Counsel, UPL
• Moderator: Yasmin Lambert, Managing Director, RSGI

Indian law firms and legal teams are moving from experimentation with AI and digital tools to embedding them into core legal workflows and decision-making. The Information architecture and knowledge maturity of organisations has been critical to successful AI adoption. Hear from CIOs, law firm practitioners, iManage and Harvey about how to implement successful digital strategies, drive adoption and usage, the inordinate benefit of power users, best use cases and how to measure ROI.

• iManage, Neil Araujo, CEO & Founder; Harvey, Amanda Tsatsis, Manager Legal Engineering; Khaitan, Rohit Shukla, CIO; AZB, Vaidhyanadhan Iyer, Partner (Private Capital); Premji Invest, Vardaan Ahluwalia, General Counsel
• Moderator: Mina Jenkins, Associate, RSGI

In-house legal departments in India are growing rapidly in scale, influence and strategic importance. The General Counsel is evolving from legal risk manager to strategic adviser, constantly adjusting priorities to reflect the operational and strategic challenges faced by multinational business. How do Indian general counsel use AI and see the evolving client-lawyer relationship? If they had magic wands, what changes would they make to their in-house legal functions and their external law firms? Facilitated by RSGI, the session will also include examples of best global practice from the US and Europe.

• Mahindra Group, Naveen Raju, General Counsel; PwC, Ankur Jain, Partner; Swiggy, Avantika Bajaj, General Counsel; JSW Group, Ananya Sharma, Group General Counsel
• Moderator: Toby Weston, Associate, RSGI

Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas and O.P. Jindal Global University, recently concluded a partnership to look at the impact of AI on legal training and education. Here, Cyril Shroff, founder of CAM and Sidharth Chauhan, Associate Professor & Associate Dean at JGLS, discuss what they hope to achieve in their partnership, how they see the opportunities for young lawyers in an AI world, the skills they will need and how best to acquire them. Moderated by Yasmin Lambert, Managing Director, RSGI

Get insights from India’s leading commercial practitioners from a range of practice areas as to how they are changing the way they lead and manage their teams: from training them to be influencers to using AI to delivering exemplary client services. Paradoxically, stand-out success in an AI world will require lawyers to double-down on their ‘soft’, more human skills. They will have to make the transition from delivering ‘services’ to delivering ‘experiences’. But what does this mean in practice? Some of the top RISE lawyers do this as second nature, but can these skills be taught? And what else will clients want from their external counsel?

In a series of conversational vignettes, four RISE lawyers talk about how they remain relevant and competitive with their clients.

• Arbitration: Shaneen Parikh, Partner, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas + Vivek Mittal, General Counsel, Hindustan Unilever
• Private Capital: Ashwath Rau, Senior Partner, AZB & Partners + Hardik Shah, Partner, KKR
• Capital Markets: Prashant Gupta, Partner, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas + Lopamudra Rao, General Counsel, Meesho Limited
• Competition: Nisha Uberoi, Partner, JSA + Vaibhav Rao, Director Mergers & Acquisitions, Schneider Electric
• Moderator: Reena SenGupta, Executive Director, RSGI

21st Century Lawyering in India: Reena SenGupta, Executive Director, RSGI & Avaneesh Marwaha, CEO, Litera

The global profession is at a crossroads in its history. AI is an existential threat to law firms’ business model, the nature of the client-lawyer relationship and is even changing the type of person who will thrive in the sector. – with uncertain trading conditions and threats to the rule of law and generational changes, the commercial lawyer needs to cultivate a different mindset and set of skills.

Resight India’s new RISE assessment methodology for individual practitioners provides a blueprint as to how individual lawyers will thrive in this new world. Reena guides us through the how and why.

The individual lawyers rated using the RISE methodology are announced in: Arbitration, Capital Markets, Competition, Cyber, International Trade and Private Capital.

Announcement of the Rise Lawyers in: Arbitration, Capital Markets, Competition, Cyber, Infrastructure, International Trade, Private Capital