In conversation with Pooja Sehgal Mehtani, General Counsel, Asia Service Centres & Company Secretary, ASCI | Sun Life

Ms Pooja Sehgal Mehtani you’ve had an illustrious career of over 18 years as an in-house counsel and company secretary where you’ve worked with companies like Degremont, Suez, and now you’re the Director General Counsel, Asia Service Centres & Company Secretary, ASCI at Sun Life. You started heading legal affairs at some of these companies at a very young age and have been recognised as a Top GC by The Legal 500 GC Powerlist. 

How has this journey been so far and where did it all begin?

The journey has been incredible, with its fair share of challenges and opportunities. My professional journey began with my stint as a CS management intern at DCM Shriram Industries, which was my very first opportunity to venture out to corporate life. I spent the first three years of my career with Sanspareils Greenlands Pvt. Ltd. a leading manufacturer and exporter of cricket gear, managing their Corporate and Secretarial Affairs. I spent the next 11 years as Legal Counsel, Company Secretary and Ethics & Compliance officer with the French infrastructure and environmental services group, Suez.  I am currently working with Asia Service Centres (ASC) of Sun Life as General Counsel, ASC.

How did you decide to pursue the CS & Law combination? Who was your guiding North Star in this journey?
I was a Science student until I finished school, but I realised it wasn’t really my calling. I had varied interests and once I finished school, I was evaluating to pursue fashion designing, hotel management etc. I am thankful to my father who helped me figure out what I wanted to pursue as my career. He made me talk to people in these streams so that I could figure out what all it would entail. In this process, we met Professor Dr S.N. Mittal who guided me and after detailed conversations with him, I decided to take up Commerce and eventually CS and Law. Once I decided to pursue CS, I met Dr Akhil Prasad, (Director, Country Counsel India and CS at Boeing) who has been my mentor and guide since then. In fact, my father had taught him and I have been taught by him!

Please tell us something about your family. I understand you have a 13-year old son, are teenagers really a handful?

My husband, my son and I live with my Mother-in-law. I always say we live with her as she has been my strongest support. She is a lawyer as well but gave up her career to take care of her kids. 

My son is thirteen and a boy with varied interests. He is into drumming, music, Lego and sketching. Unlike me, he is interested in the Sciences. What I admire about him is, he knows how to keep himself busy and happy, which I guess is very important. I have always believed that it’s important to closely monitor kids and still offer them the deserved independence. Be ready always to have an open and candid dialogue with them and though with kids, every phase brings its own challenges, a strong relationship makes it a bit easier to handle. Also, a thing to keep in mind is and most importantly in this day and age is that your kids need your support and encouragement more so in situations where they aren’t able to perform or deliver to the best of their abilities.

When we were speaking offline, you mentioned how despite an extremely busy schedule, the workaholic in you finds time to follow your other passions, namely Cooking, Designing, and Art & Aesthetics. How do you make this sound so easy, would you please share your time management mantra with our readers.

One always finds time to do what one wants to. I wouldn’t say I am very good at time management because I keep extremely busy with work, but I somehow find time to cook and read about the areas I am passionate about. I devote time to focus on my interests during weekends, vacations etc. I try to keep at least half an hour, before I finally sleep, for myself, devoted to doing what I would want to do on that particular day.

Also, this might sound sexist but that’s not the intent behind asking this question. My question stems from the inherent social pressure on women to manage it all and I’d like our readers, especially women, to take a leaf out of your book to plan their careers. Do you think it is equally difficult for men and women in demanding professions like yours to strike a work-life balance or do women get the short end of the stick? Have you had to deal with any of these pressures in your career? 

It definitely is a challenge for everybody working to strike a work-life balance. I consider it still tougher for women, who do focus on their household chores as much as their professional lives. I have had situations where I was not able to focus on my home front due to work pressure, but I am fortunate enough to have strong support from my family. On the other hand, my organisation has also always supported me when I have wanted to focus at home. Times are certainly changing; some progress is visible in society at large. I see a lot of men too who have responsibilities at home, and they work towards focusing on both the fronts—work and home.  

One has to build a position of trust both at home and at the place of work. Be true to your work wherever you are and if you are fortunate to work at an inclusive organisation, you will get support when you require it.

Organisations, on the other hand, should also focus on building a trust-based culture, agnostic of gender, give flexibility with accountability to its workforce. Look at how so much has changed due to COVID-19, organisations adopted work from home at large and have been exercising flexibility. I am hoping this will bring in a change in the way organisations adopt this trust-based culture and flexibility once we return to normal.

While it is encouraging to see the increase in statistics of women in leadership roles and at the c-suite table, would you say things have become easier or does the way to the top continue to be a journey through labyrinths and mazes for women?

Things have started to improve in favour of women as we see more women taking leadership roles. To bring about a real change though, the focus should be on gender diversity and inclusion across all levels and not just at the top. Diversity and inclusion should not be mere noise-making agendas; there should be a focus on the real ground-level problems, which amongst others include cultural and behavioural changes in the organisations across all levels and society at large. Real change would be when it runs in the basic fabric of the organization and we do not have to take up a special agenda to drive it.

Would you please allow us a peek into your role at Sun Life? You head legal operations both for India and the Philippines. What does this entail? 

I have spent around three and a half years at Sun Life. As General Counsel, Asia Service Centres, Sun Life, India and Philippines, I spearhead the Legal and Secretarial functions and have got an opportunity to work on challenging assignments right from the day I joined Sun Life. I am the Company Secretary for the Indian entity as well. Sun Life enables the legal function to be strongly integrated with the business functions, which has helped our team evolve and scale up to effectively and efficiently support increasing business needs. One of our significant initiatives has been to diversify into Knowledge Services Vertical under which specialist lawyers provide legal services for Technology contracts for Sun Life Asia entities. To keep pace with the fast-moving digital and technological advancements in the industry, I am driving automation of processes within the legal department. With Sun Life being on its digital transformation journey, it helps not just our legal department but the organisation at large. I am happy to work at Sun Life as it fosters leadership attributes and allows people to diversify their roles, which makes it a truly progressive organisation.

How do you think Automation, Artificial Intelligence, and Analytics will shape the corporate legal departments of the future?  

Technology is certainly changing and impacting the legal industry. It is altering how lawyers are required to work and drive legal towards automation, digital and innovation agenda. Lawyers now work side-by-side with other professionals, paraprofessionals, and machines. Legal services are best delivered when legal, technological, and process expertise are amalgamated to tackle business challenges. Lawyers will have to adopt technology and its advancements moving forward to scale up and deliver to the changing business requirements of this day and age. It begins with how data is handled in the legal processes, which is essential for digitization and automation of processes. Adaptability and collaboration with distinguished technological expertise and objectives of the organization are also essential. 

The technological advancements will facilitate the corporate legal departments to manage expanded portfolios, increased workload, changing and complex regulatory landscape, risks, and perform the dual role of a corporate defender and business partner.

Has the advent of LegalTech and FinTech made job prospects leaner for fresh law graduates?

I don’t think that’s the case, the law can never ever be taken over by technology. Technological advancements are likely to increase the efficiency of in-house lawyers, enabling them to primarily focus on activities that require legal reasoning and strategy.

In this day and age, other than good legal acumen, what are the other skills you’re looking for in lawyers joining your team? 

Lawyers aspiring to be successful Corporates need to always enhance and augment their legal expertise and be ready to upscale with the changing business needs and technological advancements. They should be collaborative but at the same time should be able to play the critical role of an ethical watchdog while ensuring corporate compliance under the law. Adaptability to change, flexibility and steadfastness are some of the other key skills to focus on.

What in your opinion has been the biggest change or challenge in the legal operations of in-house legal departments amid COVID-19? What has been your strategy to cope with these changes?

With the outbreak of COVID-19 across geographies, organizations globally had to abruptly and adeptly plan to protect their workforce while also maintaining business continuity. In-house Legal Departments have played a significant role to help organisations sustain and deliver in these circumstances. This involved agility, steadfastness and responsiveness on the part of the in-house legal function and requires us to partner with the business, risk, and compliance teams to get together and maintain business continuity along with delivering on our core responsibilities. This was a challenge as well as the key. 

Our legal team’s strategy was to be integrated and collaborative with business and support functions. It would not have been possible if we were not equipped to deliver from remote locations or did not have effective management of data and records. On the one hand, there was the resilient and efficient approach of the legal team members that allowed them to focus on deliverables day in and out; and on the other hand, was the support and trust of the leadership in the legal team that helped us navigate all these challenges.

Negotiate. Mediate. Litigate. What’s your take on the dispute resolution mechanism in India, ADR and the potential of ODR. 

The judicial system in India and the litigation before Courts continue to face challenges where timely delivery of justice is delayed. I am definitely supportive of ADR as it offers procedural flexibility and a solution-oriented approach focusing on the interests of both the parties. It can be a more economical and efficient method as compared to litigation. Arbitration is relatively faster and reduces costs to an extent but over the years arbitration also has become cumbersome. Mediation is much faster and a more economically, viable option. Most probably, the current pandemic situation will further increase the backlog with courts; therefore increased awareness about ADR and resorting to these methods will definitely help reduce the burden of courts. Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) in India is still in its infancy stage but is definitely the need of the hour and the way forward, more so looking at the requirements stemming out of the current pandemic situation. Development of ODR and other such platforms will find wider acceptance as it will provide quicker resolution mechanisms and has the potential to serve as an area of employment for thousands of arbitrators or advocates.

The legislative changes by way of the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Act 2019 (“the Amendment Act”) were introduced as an attempt to promote institutional arbitration in India and with a view to making India a friendly destination for domestic and international arbitration. To me, the Amendment Act looks flawed in more ways than one viz., The Arbitration Council of India brings in greater government control and interference; International commercial arbitration has been excluded from the ambit of timelines; and then an absolute and express confidentiality provision also seems challenging. Moreover, foreign-registered lawyers and academics are not qualified to be appointed as arbitrators under the Amendment Act—how will the international community consider India as an attractive destination for arbitration?

What are some of the key issues faced by technology industry at this time?

COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant complete/partial lockdowns brought about different challenges and issues for various sectors. Some of the key issues which the technology companies have had to grapple with include evolving government policies and industry practices, corporate governance and disclosures, compliance with OSP regulations, obligations under outsourcing and master service agreements, disruption in businesses and supply chain leading to inability to fulfil contractual obligations and invocation of  Force Majeure and doctrine of impossibility clauses, Privacy and data protection, Information security, Issues under employment laws.

The prolonged work from home for employees and isolation from the society also led to various new issues to deal with for organisations—the primary one being taking care of mental health and well-being of its employees.

Apart from the above, in the cutting edge technology industry where innovation is way ahead of required changes in law and is outpacing change in regulations, some of the key areas of focus remain around data collection, management, and compliance with data protection regulations. 

Ms Mehtani, is there anything you’d like to share with our readers, any golden piece of advice from the treasure trove of your experiences in the industry, success mantra or tips for lawyers wanting to move to an in-house role?

Lawyers moving into in-house roles have to be ready for a continuous journey of learning and unlearning each day. Successful in-house Lawyers should develop sound business knowledge and understanding of an organisation’s culture and strategy. Something that is basic but very important indeed is to avoid the use of typical ‘Legal jargon’ so to say, that may hamper engagement across functions and levels. 

Most importantly, in-house lawyers have to operate as business partners and business enablers adopting a solution-oriented approach. Adaptability to change, resilience and pro-active approach while providing sound legal advice and highlighting the risks is crucial. One would also need to focus on building relationships, stakeholder management, creating visibility of the In-house Legal Department so that lawyers can connect at various levels of the organisation to bring about legal awareness.

Thank you so much for doing this interview with us, Ms Mehtani. As a parting note, would you please recommend to our readers your favourite book or movie/series that left a lasting impression on you.

My all-time favourite series is ‘Breaking Bad’ and current favourite movies are ‘Parasite’ by Bong Joon-Ho and Joker by Todd Philips. I like watching shows/documentaries or reading about Food, fashion and travel as well as reading Autobiographies!

Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with BW Legalworld and for sharing your perspicacious views with us Ms Mehtani.