Reverse Mentoring Helped Me Reinvent Myself: Mr Sudhir Mishra, Founder and Managing Partner, Trust Legal

Juniors guided Mr Mishra to do things differently

Sudhir Mishra, Founder & Managing Partner of the full-service law firm, Trust Legal, is a legal luminary who has constantly re-invented himself in his illustrious professional career. In the early stages of his career, he travelled from one national park to another filing public interest litigation for one NGO in one court to another. By 2009, he felt very much saturated travelling to 250-300 wildlife sanctuaries as well as was attending in 11-12 leading High Courts which are dealing in environmental matters. Then he realised that he should be running a legal firm which will offer a host of solutions to varied clients under one roof. However, the turning point came when his juniors guided him and conceived of ways to do things differently apart from doing different things. He revealed this during a virtual event by BW Legal World on ‘Dialogues with India’s Young Legal Leaders and Influencers’. 

Mr Mishra talks about the early days of his practice

During his session on ‘Journey from Pride to Gratitude of a First-Generation Blockbuster Lawyer’, he revealed, “I got briefly associated with a firm on a consultancy basis and by 2011, I started looking at a situation when I will have a mainstream firm, which will be completely different from a practice I was doing for 10-12 years. Again, that was all self-taught and there is no particular guidance for me except a few advocates who were very fond of me. I will say that in the last 10 years, from intensive environmental lawyering, from District Courts to opposing the bail application of poachers to filing class-action suits, appearing in the forest Bench, assisting the amicus, travelling around the world on world environmental issues, to continue doing it and create a mainstream firm, which today is one of the largest media broadcasting music copyright law firm of the country. “

Reverse mentoring made transition possible 

“So that transition happened because of reverse mentoring and some kind of reverse training. Those were young lawyers who joined me in 2010 onwards and who had different work ethics. And I am very fortunate that some of them, who are 15-20 years younger than me, are my partners today. They do reverse mentoring of mine more than I teach them,” Mr Mishra further added

Interestingly, Mr Mishra’s firm’s litigation practice is growing phenomenally well, with more than 100 cases filed in TDSAT, representing various media and broadcasting giants of the field. The firm’s High Court and Supreme Court practice is highly respected in the field of Environment Law, Infrastructure and Healthcare Laws.

“Today whether it is any business house, including the top 4 corporates, we are their legal advisors. So, the climate change, environmental regulations and the forest wildlife practise stays. Even law firms come to us for tricky environmental advice. And we position and create newer sub-practise areas out of that environmental climate change. At the same time, because we are so driven, whether it is the cryptocurrency registration or a gaming issue, filing interventions in the Supreme Court, or doing an infrastructure arbitration, or doing the litigation of the year, we have done it all in the last 10 years. We are the 37th law firm as per the RSG consulting listing.”

Message to budding lawyers

Giving his piece to budding corporate lawyers, Mr Sudhir Mishra adds, “I would also say some of the characteristics which you should have in order to do blockbuster first division lawyering. The most important aspect would be (to) connect i.e. how you connect with people, how real you are, what is the value system you have, how much humbleness you have, how much gratitude you have how much you think about money. The less you are focussed and rigid on monetary aspects, the more successful you will be. I think the shift in (Years of) 2000 and 2020 that twenty years back, even if you are doing a job or you are joining somebody, your main aim is to be skilled up and make a difference to the society. This is because lawyering is a skilful game. In 2020, when an intern sends an application, at the 18 years of age s/he asks how much you will pay. I think there is some confusion somewhere as money issue is so prominent in their minds.”