Introduction: 0:00
- Introducing Siddharth Manchanda, Partner at IndusLaw and external GC at Unacademy, India’s largest learning platform valued at 3.4 billion dollars.
Finding inspiration to practice law: 1:20
- Pursuing a career in medicine before enrolling in law school.
- Comparing the role of an associate in India and the United States.
- Entering the legal field during the transformation of the Indian economy.
Building a career in India’s tech sector during the Great Recession: 6:40
- Struggling to find an entry-level role during an economic downturn.
- An industry resurgence after micro-level shifts and a focus on building for India instead of global markets.
- Evolving within the start-up ecosystem and learning how it differs from traditional legal work.
Going in-house with Unacademy: 12:59
- Observing the potential of a client experiencing hypergrowth and taking the opportunity to work with trustworthy founders.
- Explaining Unacademy, India’s largest learning platform.
- Democratizing education by offering online entrance exam preparation anywhere in the country.
Key learnings from a first in-house GC role: 17:13
- Learning and unlearning legal lessons as you work at 100x speed.
- Not going all in from a legal standpoint from day one in order to allow the business team to experiment.
- Viewing the business situation from a lens of pragmatism.
- Presenting your point-of-view to leaders with crystal clarity.
Considering the perception of legal within your organization: 22:21
- Struggling to measure your legal team’s output in a way that proves success.
- Developing strategies to assist the core business function, make contracts better, and reduce complaints.
- Looking to tech to find methods for drafting, executing, managing, and analyzing around 1000 new contracts a month.
- Analyzing problem statements to develop effective and efficient SOPs.
Reflecting on the early days at Unacademy: 28:32
- Shifting your team’s mindset away from traditional training to accept tech solutions.
- Understanding that repetitive and manual tasks prevent lawyers from exercising their strongest skills.
- Demonstrating speed and efficiency to prove the advantages of tech and AI in contract management.
Marketing reduced contract drafting time internally: 36:32
- Emphasizing that time saved is time invested elsewhere.
Predicting the future of legal tech: 39:14
- Finding ways to analyze the bottomless wells of data that firms already have.
- Fighting back against resistance to change in traditional lawyering.
- Asking how tech can increase your efficiency at a fraction of the cost.
Using tech experience to change the way you deal with clients: 46:39
- Empathizing with clients through a shared understanding of business perspectives.
- Asking informed questions so that clients know you appreciate their concerns.
Balancing a GC role with a law firm partnership: 49:51
- Appreciating both sides of the legal equation in simultaneous in-house and client services roles.
- Leaning on tech solutions to multi-task and becoming a slave to your calendar.
Advice to companies looking to enter the Indian market: 52:27
- Focusing on what Indian consumers want instead of duplicating what has worked in other countries.
- Keying into the right metric and Indian sentiment to guarantee success.
What you wish you’d know as a young lawyer: 59:00
- Recognizing the importance of soft skills like stakeholder management and learning from clients.