Theme: Why Our Legal System Needs Super Lawyers
New Delhi, 8th March 2019: Super lawyers are the need of the future. This is the view that got echoed at Lex Concurcus, the annual conference of Jindal Global Law school. The conference, organized at India Habitat Centre by the Office of Career Services was based on the theme: Why our Legal System Needs Super Lawyers.
Explaining the theme in his welcome speech, Professor (Dr.) C. Raj Kumar, Founding Vice Chancellor, O.P Jindal Global University said, “In this time of innovative technology and artificial intelligence, the future of the Indian Judiciary system lies on the hands of super lawyers. In the lines of George Bernard Shaw, I say, the super lawyer is indeed the ideal super person who rises above the good and evil through the integrity and creativity.” He also encouraged the budding lawyers present to broaden their spectrum as legal system now consists not only of classical lawyers, but legal entrepreneurs too, having corporate legal firms of their own.
The forum deliberated on how the future of the legal system is shaping up through the impact of technology and innovations and what the budding lawyers need to do about it. Pavan Duggal, Founder, Pavan Duggal Associates & Head, Artificial Intelligence Law Hub sounded hopeful about the quantum jump the judiciary system will be taking in the next ten years. According to him, “With Artificial Intelligence (AI), block chain and Internet of Things (IoT) changing the world around, the judiciary is bound to evolve dramatically by 2030. And so will be the demand of service from lawyers. With all the information and technological support at hand, the client will already have the data analysis and insights. They would require lawyers to guide them through it and provide necessary support. Hence the future lawyers need to be super lawyers who will be analyst, broadcaster and lawyer, all rolled into one.” In his speech, Badrinath Durvasula, Vice President & Geeneral Counsel, HCC Ltd defined super lawyers as the ones who deliver what they commit, with perfection. Talking about the natures of the executive, legislator, judiciary and regulator segments of the system, he advised “The would-be lawyers will now have to be ‘Jack of all as well as masters of all’ who can win through the survival of the fittest in this era of invention, innovation and realization.”
The next session that followed, was the panel discussion on “Privacy is a fundamental right? – In the era of big data’. Among the panelists, Bharat Chugh, Partner Designate, L&L Partners reminded how the privacy of consumers are being compromised as the big data and algorithm are being used in every sphere to get insights, take business decisions, make recruitments and provide goods and services. While Dhruv Suri, Partner, PSA talked about how social media and voice assistants are picking up information from people and sharing them with third party companies. “The recent data protection bill needs to be made into a proper legislation to address this breach of privacy,” he feels. Jaideep Reddy, Leader, Nishith Desai Associates on the other hand seemed optimistic about the new system that allows people to have a private cloud over their private information to access which the third party companies need permission from them. He also suggested the usable privacy projects that can be helpful for data protection.
The later sessions of the day discussed about artificial intelligence transforming legal profession, the much awaited sport law in India and alternative dispute resolution. The Q&A sessions woven in between also saw great enthusiasm from the law students present.