Legal Icons Make Second Edition of BW Global Legal Summit and Legal Leaders Awards a Grand Success

BW Legal World hosted the second edition of the BW Global Legal Summit and Legal Leaders Awards on January 23, 2021. The event saw the participation of some of the most celebrated legal icons of the Indian Legal Industry.   

Hon’ble Justice Deepak Mishra’s stimulating opening keynote address set the tone for intellectually stimulating and thought-provoking discussions with some of the brightest minds in the legal domain.

Justice Mishra stressed on the importance of developing an ability infrastructure while sharing his insights on the two pillars of dispute resolution; Arbitration and Mediation and how they can contribute to India’s economic harmony and human progress.

His interesting discourse was followed by some do’s and don’ts from Senior Advocate Mr Anoop Bose for lawyers looking to enter the noble legal profession. Mr Bose reminded the audience that the practice of law has a public utility flavour and requires integrity of the highest order. Taking the discussion forward, Hon’ble Justice KSP Radhakrishnan focused his talk on the emerging areas of law that lawyers must take into account. After his encouraging words for the young generation, Senior Advocate Mr KTS Tulsi steered the discussion towards digitization of the system in the aftermath of COVID 19.  He shared his insights on how COVID 19 impacted the judiciary, health care and real estate sectors.  Mr Lalit Bhasin shared his views on the perils of the virtual hearing system while Mr Nishith Desai from Nishith Desai and Associates spoke about the future of law firm practice. “Future law firms would not be necessarily very large but using information very creatively is something law firms will get into”, he said. 

Talking about the enforcement of arbitration awards, Mr Hiroo Advani from Advani and Co remarked that if India could enforce arbitration awards within one year, it could potentially change the face of arbitration in India. Senior Advocate Ms Geeta Luthra threw light on the growing menace of sexual harassment and also discussed the importance of creating safe workplaces. She also asserted that media must not go beyond its realm of due process while reporting sexual harassment cases. Her talk was extremely relevant in current times.

Setting the contours of tech regulations in India today, Keynote Speaker Karuna Nundy, Advocate, Supreme Court of India shared her thoughts on what the future holds for us. It is a truth universally known that technology is speeds ahead of regulations. However, at what speed and to what extent should governments and intergovernmental bodies regulate it? To what extent, should there be self-regulation or say regulation by the technology itself, and does that ever work.

The day was not only marked with insightful and intriguing keynote sessions but it also had expert panel discussions on contemporary legal issues.  

Mr Sudhir Mishra, Founding Partner, Trust Legal,  moderated the session on data privacy and security and what do businesses need to know about it. He pointed out that data privacy has become a mainstream and contemporary issue. Mr Duggal labelled the current times as the golden age of cybercrimes. Mr Sudhir Mishra compared the trend of consuming mobile data to opium and remarked how it is affecting our productivity levels. In the another insightfully moderated session, Mr Kapil Chaudhary, corporate counsel from AutoDesk collaborated with Industry experts to bring out the facets of the Rise of LegalTech and how it is penetrating into our work ecosystem. 

The other panel discussions for the day included deliberations on a myriad number of topics from the ease of doing business, white-collar crimes and arbitral bias.

The day-long summit was followed by a virtual award ceremony. This year the awards were presented in 33 categories and cover 34 winners.