Law and Life: A decade gone by

Like everyone, I spent the Christmas with family and friends over some food and preferred drinks and reminisced over the decade gone by. 

It has been an eventful decade. While lucid, did not happen to me but the unrest for answers got the better of me. Decided to step out of the picture and look at it. Wrenching top 10+1 learnings from the decade (+1 for lady luck) with you.

Waded through enough, to tell you one thing with 100% conviction - growth graphs are steep, some are crazy steep- that makes them snazzy!

1. Professional lessons are the hardest- they have a mix of the cerebral fulfilment and the emotional lag. Without getting the delicate balance, you run the risk of being a successful lawyer without being a humane one;

2. Negotiating Promoter exit: Did a couple, this decade. The exits are, far more sensitive and sometimes hostile because after all, it is at exit that you are likely to get rewarded for the valuation you “hard” fought for. As founders the attachment to the business is at inception and middle of the growth; as investors though, the attachment to the founders comes when the founders want to leave. Strange one, this is!

3. Re-negotiating a closed document: As corporate lawyers, good rounds of negotiations are potentially the closest to a duel you will ever get outside the courtroom. Can’t blame us for not being able to pass over this adrenaline rush!

How about re-negotiations? Same? It’s the same people, the same clause and endless pounding, only in the hope of a different outcome. I am not a big fan of these.

After 9 agonizing months of laboring with the principals, the lawyers and the stakeholders, by when the yang energy got too much to appreciate for me, there was a consensual closure. 

The altered outcome was marginally different from the original- I am not saying this aloud! As R.K. Narayan said in the famous Malgudi Days,

“Gods grow jealous of too much contentment anywhere, and they show their displeasure all of a sudden.”

Humans, play to this illusion.

4. Professional Liability: The unadulterated joy of freelancer lawyer- will always be my favourite! Perhaps the riskiest- but fulfilling. Many envied me, vocally, and since I don’t to a good job of handling vulnerabilities, I often said “anyone can do it”. 

True, anyone can. If you accept- it is hard and sometimes very hard! Where is the law firm and where are the experienced partners of the firm to shoulder the risk- beef up the advice? At a rudimentary level, it is a mortifying thought. How do you hop over? Over prepare. Let me give out a secret, there is rarely anything as over prepare for lawyers.

5. Applied Sciences: Learnings look best, applied. If you look close enough, you will know there is something new you have learnt. In 10 years, definitely. 

Apply the learning(s) at the very first instance you get and with the professional ones, the value is on its way to the next client, already.

6. Acceptance. That’s your life saver, whether it’s a difficult client or the dearest one, breaking away. It is what is being offered.

The plain dictionary meaning is “the action of consenting to receive or undertake something offered”.

7. Change-one size fits all: The client refuses to accept your advice, change the strategy, not the advice. That is the thing about change, when you apply it internally, it is the “master key”.

 8. OCD: At the cost of giving away a piece of me- I tend to lean in on obsessing, more than required and here is what I learnt it’s 100% out of control and “you” definitely are not the one “in” control;

9. The Plan: At the end of 10 years, I have given up on making hard plans, trying to stick to hard plans only hold the potential to break you. My professional journey exhibited a mind of its own- the only choice I was offered was to transition one from the other. Plans look workable, on paper!

10. Pay it forward and stick with “gratitude”. Be grateful, it never goes out of fashion!

10+1. Women Lawyers: It is harder for you (and may remain so for a while)- that is a reality. But, do it anyway!

I want to conclude the decade to say- the world is open, do as you wish, don’t define yourself too soon, keep that for the last. As Ruskin Bond said,

“When all the wars are over, the butterfly will still be beautiful!”

The decade has been fine, very fine as I glance at 13 and sip my wine and deep within know, all that I need- always finds its way to me.