Podcast with Aman Yadav, Counsel – Olx Global

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Have you ever wondered what it takes to navigate the legal world when technology and regulations

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are constantly evolving?

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Today on LexDiscuss, we are joined by Mr. Aman Yadav, a legal rock star who has

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not only seen the fast-paced environment of law firms but also navigated the complex world

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of merger and acquisitions.

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This podcast is a two-part series.

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In the first part, get ready for a conversation packed with insights from real challenges

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of working as an in-house lawyer and also hilarious but thought-provoking answer to

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the question, what is the best software a lawyer can have?

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Spoiler alert, it's interns.

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So grab your headphones, legal eagles and curious minds alike because this episode is

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one you won't want to miss.

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So Aman, thanks a lot for joining the podcast.

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Thank you for inviting me Avinash.

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It's completely our pleasure.

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So let me start with a simple question.

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So you almost have a decade of experience as an external law firm lawyer, then you shifted

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to the in-house.

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What was the reason there?

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So in simple terms, it was a number issue.

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I finished 10 years in law practice in a law firm and then I got the 10-year itch which

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many lawyers get and that's when I decided to switch.

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So what is that 10-year itch?

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Can you further discuss that?

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10-year is a number which at least in my mind had been etched for a long time.

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Because I remember we wanted to get a Delhi High Court Bar Association membership.

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You had to be promoted by any other lawyer of the Delhi High Court Bar Association who

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has at least 10 years of experience.

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So I realized that 10 years is a big number in the legal field.

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That is when even the Bar Association starts taking you seriously.

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So I always had that 10-year number in mind and when I reached that number, I decided

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that either I'm serious now.

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So I either continue this law firm trajectory or I move in and to be honest, I had become

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a little bored with being a law firm lawyer because there's not a lot of business that

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you get to see when you're working in a purely consultant role in a law firm.

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So you do meet the clients, but it's not a day in day out.

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So that's when I decided, you know, let's make life a little more interesting.

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Let me go in-house, let me sit with people who are non-lawyers and try to see how things

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happen and maybe I'll try to see more interesting aspects of law and business and which actually

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turned out to be pretty true.

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Wow.

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So for somebody who is also having that 10-year itch like you, what will be your advice?

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How to transition from a law firm to in-house role?

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See, for me, it was a little difficult because the kind of clients we had at the law firm,

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I wasn't doing integral work for them in the sense where I could tell them that, you know,

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I have done series A to D for you and now you need an in-house lawyer and let me onboard

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your ship and join you as an in-house legal head or whatever.

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Right.

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So if you are in a, let's say in a law firm and at a position where you can leverage your

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own clients, where you can tell them that, you know, I've done the initial rounds of

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investment for you.

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I've done at least I've been doing litigation work for you for the last couple of years

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or I've been consulting for you for whatever number of years and you know how good I am

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or how average I am, let me join your team if you feel that I'm a good fit.

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So that's a very easy way of getting in and I know many people who've done that.

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The other is that you do it like a regular person, I mean, you just start going on job

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portals and you start applying.

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Right.

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Third is, you know, reference is anyway there.

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So the easiest way would be just to, you know, jump on board with an existing client who's

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looking out for a legal counsel.

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That kind of makes sense.

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But did you have to kind of prepare something before that?

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How do you prepare for that transition?

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So see, there's no real preparation as such.

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You just have to be ready for a lot of change in how you operate.

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So there's no preparation.

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I always knew that consulting is very finely tuned.

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A law firm lawyer's job is pretty different.

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You get a lot of time and your billing is also at a significantly higher price as compared

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to an in-house lawyer.

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And you get to spend a lot of time on issues.

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And I knew that would not be the case in-house and in-house is a lot of moving parts, a lot

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of quick shifting things.

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So you have to be ready for that change in mindset, purely consulting to in-house.

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In-house is more of an employee role, which is significantly different.

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Okay, makes sense.

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So I'll ask a controversial question.

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So some people believe that people who earlier used to work in a law firm and then transition

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to an in-house role are better.

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And some people believe that the people who have been in-house counsel from the day one

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of their career, they would ultimately become a better in-house counsel.

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What are your two cents on this?

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So from what I've seen and the kind of companies that I've interviewed with, most of them,

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If they are looking to set up their own in-house team, then they are very much looking forward

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to people who've been in a law firm because they know that this person has undergone rigorous

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training and it will be easier for them to set up an entire vertical and do it properly.

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Let's say there is a legal aid who has come from a law firm, then he or she would be very

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comfortable working with another law firm lawyer.

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Because the way that law firm lawyers operate, whether in a law firm or in-house is totally

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different.

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Again, I'm a little biased also.

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What I've seen is that when I've hired people for my own team, whenever I've hired people

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who have come from law firms, even tier 2, tier 3, tier 4 also, they ended up behaving

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and operating as better lawyers instead of when I hired somebody who has only seen in-house

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life.

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Because the kind of intensity that you have to deal with in law firms is not present in

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in-house teams.

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Unless the in-house team is again coming back to square one is led by a lawyer who was also

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in-house.

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Okay.

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That's interesting.

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But you have given a very diplomatic answer there.

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I know.

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So, essentially, you are saying that the people who come with a law firm background tends

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to be a better in-house counsel.

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Yes.

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Okay.

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Just clarifying.

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So, yeah, that's a very interesting take that you gave.

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And, you know, I was looking at your profile and I saw that, you know, what a job post

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I think you shared on LinkedIn.

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And over there, you also mentioned that you prefer people with law firm background, right?

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When a fresher comes in or somebody, you know, whom you're hiring, how do you evaluate?

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Like, how do you judge he's a good fit?

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So for me, it's very simple.

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I also end up annoying a lot of candidates, but which is fine, because if they're not

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willing to undergo that one test which I have, then there is no point.

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So I, after speaking to them, after having a cup of coffee with them, when they're relaxed,

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I give them a written test.

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Okay.

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The written test is very basic.

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Okay.

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All I want to see is whether their grammar is good, whether they can write well.

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I want to see that no technology is helping them correct their grammatical mistakes or

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prompting them for finishing their sentences.

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So I give them a piece of paper.

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I make them write basic clauses.

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It also shows me how much they have retained when they were going through agreements.

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So I'll usually make them write an indemnity clause and or an arbitration clause.

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And sometimes I'll make them write a simple letter because that letter eventually ends

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up telling me that when they start writing emails to, let's say, the CEO, if they write

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an email or to the chief operating officer, I know that the email will go in a way which

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the other side will be able to read.

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So it's basically stakeholder management.

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If I know that they can't write a letter straight on a piece of paper, then it's unlikely that

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the email when it gets circulated in the company, it's going to be read well.

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Okay.

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Essentially, you are saying that their communication skills, especially in the in writing has to

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been excellent.

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That's like the number one priority for you.

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Yeah.

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For me as a lawyer, I want to hire somebody who can write because sometimes I feel more

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than anything else.

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We are glorified and highly paid clucks in a sense because the whole job that we have

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is to write and explain things in a way, especially in-house, which is simple enough for people

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to understand.

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And you don't have to take them through the mumbo jumbo.

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So if you can do that, that's the best.

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How about understanding what the business people or the other stakeholders expect from

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you?

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How do you manage that?

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With me or with the candidate?

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Both.

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Because that's also an important part of understanding, right?

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Once you understand what they actually expect from you, then you can refine your communication

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to serve that purpose.

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So when candidate comes to me, I always ask them about their previous company, what business

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they were in and what kind of business problems they were solving as an in-house lawyer.

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And that gives me a very quick understanding of how much they understood the business and

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how deep they tried to get into it.

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Because if they tell me that it was just, you know, contracts would come, I would do

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it.

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I would send it back.

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So usually as your hair grays, you can ask good questions even about the business which

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they had worked in, which you don't know much about, but you can ask a few good questions

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and you'll eventually understand very easily if they went deep into it or if they were

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working superficially.

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When it comes to my own self, whenever I join a new job, even before joining, I pick up

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the laws around it.

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I buy bear rights, for example, when I joined OLX and they wanted me to set up their auto's

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legal department basically.

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So two months before joining, I went to the district court, I bought the motor vehicle

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acts and rules and I started reading it, underlining it.

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So by the time I reached on day one itself, I had a fair understanding of the regulations

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surrounding buying and selling used cards.

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And that's essentially, in your opinion, is the number one priority, right?

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You know, understanding the laws that surround a business, right?

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So the questions that are coming to you are going to be a mix of legal and business, right?

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And the business questions will be easy provided you know the law around it.

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There is hardly any business which would not have some regulations around it.

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So it's always advisable even before joining a new company to go through whatever the laws

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are so that on day one you have some ammo in your arsenal.

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Absolutely.

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So, you know, for our listeners who don't know anything about OLX Auto, how would you

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explain them?

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What does OLX Auto does?

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OLX Auto is a competitor of Spinney and Cars24.

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We buy and sell used cards on a wholesale basis.

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We have tried to solve a problem which car sellers used to face when they would go into

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the unorganized market.

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You go to a car dealer and you never really know what you're getting into, when you're

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going to get the money, whether the car will be transferred or not, whether the insurance

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will be transferred or not.

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So that is a business problem which OLX Auto was solving.

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Not anymore that what has been shut down, at least when it was there, that was the problem

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statement that we were solving.

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Wow, great explanation there.

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That brings me to the next question, like copying your questions actually, what are

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the biggest legal problems you're solving at OLX Auto and would you care to give us

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a little bit of insights of OLX Auto's acquisition by Car Trade Tech?

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I should clarify OLX Auto's business has been shut down.

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Okay.

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OLX Auto is no longer buying and selling cards.

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Right.

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So this was done last year.

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Now coming to the acquisition part, till I would say August of 2023, OLX Auto was owned

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by the tech giant, Netherlands based called Proces.

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Proces has sold their entire shareholding in the autos and online classifieds business

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of OLX to an Indian listed company called Car Trade Tech.

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So that happened last year around August-September.

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So now what problems or what things OLX Auto is kind of focusing on, are you in at the liberty

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to share that?

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Yeah, so OLX Autos now with that gone, Car Trade Tech had basically bought OLX Autos

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and the online classifieds business.

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So as of now, they are focusing on the online classifieds business, which you must have

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seen the ads, OLX were basically selling anything.

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Anything that you want to sell, shoes, furniture, motorcycle, car, anything used, new also.

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I see a lot of new advertisements also over there.

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You can sell anything over there.

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So the idea is to make it a purely tech company.

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So like an e-commerce marketplace, but not really.

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Right.

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So that's essentially what I was trying to understand.

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So now when I'm going to the OLX website, I bought Nintendo Switch a couple of weeks

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back from OLX.

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Right.

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So when I'm going to that, I'm going to your company essentially, right?

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So my understanding was that OLX Auto related classifieds ads are different and the normal

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OLX ads that we see are different.

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That's not the case.

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No, no, they are the same.

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They are the same.

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So now everything that we are seeing on OLX is something you guys are managing.

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Something that Car Trade Tech, the new owner is managing.

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Right.

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Under the OLX brand.

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Wow.

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That's really amazing.

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So, you know, this is a very interesting space, right?

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So something like, you know, amazing, some weird story that you want to share with our

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listeners.

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So see, there are a lot of weird stories because when you sell, yeah, that's why I told you

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like if any company can have a monopoly on weird stories, it would be OLX because the

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huge number of transactions and the huge variety of transactions you guys are having that is

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really mind blowing.

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But anything that you are at liberty to share, I understand you have a lot of weird stories

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which we can talk about, you know, once the recording is off.

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But I think it's better that we talk about the weird stories after the recording.

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Okay.

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Okay.

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I'll let you leave.

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Because they are a mix of legal and compliance, I should not be sharing them here.

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I know.

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I know.

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I know.

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One of the things is that, you know, once a case has been settled, then if I'm like

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interviewing lawyers from the US, one of the good things that happens is the case has been

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decided by the court of law.

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Now they can actually talk about it.

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It's not, you know, in the litigation, but in India, it takes so much time for that.

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So one weird thing, because it was in the news, I can talk about it.

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Last year, there was a case called State of Haryana versus Pintu.

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And somebody had used Pintu's mobile phone to commit some online frauds.

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Okay.

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Now an FIR was registered against Pintu.

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I don't know who Pintu is.

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Pintu went to the police station, the cops, as usual, harassed him.

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And then Pintu hired a lawyer and the lawyer filed a quashing petition, quashing of the

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FIR in the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

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Okay.

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And now Justice Sangwan passed an order over there, which totally shook the way OLX does

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its business online.

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They basically ended up taking away our safe harbor protection and the intermediary positives

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that we have under the information technology and those were taken away.

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They were talking about, you know, doing KYC, creating escrow accounts, getting confirmation

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from the buyer and seller.

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It was a totally unworkable model.

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And the beauty of that order was that in a quashing petition, instead of quashing the

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FIR, the order had been passed against a business practice.

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Okay.

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So we had to then take a senior advocate.

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We went to the Supreme Court and we had to explain that this was a quashing petition.

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This was not even necessary.

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Whatever had been done in Justice Sangwan's order.

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So that took a couple of months and we finally got a positive order.

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But that was one time where such a small issue, Pintu's issue, became a very big issue for

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us.

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Right.

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Yeah.

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That's actually a great story.

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I saw that you recently wrote an article on maintaining diversity and inclusivity in organizations.

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So would you care to give your thoughts on that?

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It's very simple.

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egalitarian world and whatever beliefs and practices we had in the past, especially as

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a cheap labor supplier, India as a supplier of cheap labor, that is changing.

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So you see all these new laws coming in, you have women centric laws, you have laws for

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equal wages, you have laws for higher wages, gig workers are being now recognized.

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So those sort of things are happening, but not with the kind of speed that they should

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be happening at.

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So overall, I believe that especially when the four new labor codes come in, whenever

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they kick in, state wise or centrally, that's going to be a game changer.

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So overall, we are moving in the right direction, but I think we're taking a lot of time.

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Yeah, this brings the next question, like there's so many laws that are applicable on

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a company, right?

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Some laws are say, for instance, trigger based, right?

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So as a legal counsel, how you keep a bird eye on the whole organization and making sure

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that it is complying with everything it needs to see my way of doing it is very simple.

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I didn't spend a lot of time.

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I know this is blasphemy on this podcast, but I didn't take a software for it.

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I was maintaining an Excel sheet with the laws that are applicable.

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You're not in minority, I would say.

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I'll give you that benefit.

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And I was using the best software that I could use, which is basically an intern.

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I had interns working on it.

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I had junior level lawyers working on it and we were doing it organically.

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We knew that these 10 are the bigger laws which are applicable and which are also external

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facing in the sense that if there is a non-compliance, then it would blow up into something which

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is coming in news media and all of that.

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So we would maintain a hawk's view on these laws and a bird's eye view on the generic

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laws which are applicable as in when they would come because I believe India has active

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maybe 2500 pair acts.

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It is almost impossible to be ready with each and everything.

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So sometimes, you know, you just have to roll the dice and do the best.

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So you pick up the 10, 20 things which are very essential and the rest you roll with

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the punches.

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Right.

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No, it absolutely makes sense.

329
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It's almost impossible for you to kind of figure it out, right?

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One of the strange things that happened with us recently and this kind of blew up our mind.

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What was happening is that some of our team was using some open source software, right?

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And with that came a little bit of compliance and that something we weren't or we shouldn't

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be doing, right?

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And luckily, it came to our attention before, you know, it was exposed to anybody else.

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But see, that's the kind of problem like we have a really small organization, right?

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I almost have an idea what everybody is doing right now, even though I'm speaking with you

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right now.

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Right.

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But I'm sure that's not the case with you because you won't even know the name of every

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person who is working on a company, right?

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And how do you make sure that they're not doing certain things, which, you know, brings

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up a compliance issue for you down the line?

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A very challenging problem.

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Again, you pick up the bigger things and you create SOPs around them and you hold them

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out.

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The whole beauty of having these SOPs or business guidelines is that for the core business activities,

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whether it be customer support, what you will say, not say.

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So I've worked on FAQs also for the call center.

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So you pick up these bigger things, you make SOPs, you make FAQs and you do it maybe every

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six months and you give it to the business teams and then you let them handle it.

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Now every now and then there will be one small grenade, which you have to diffuse,

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but more or less things work well with this approach.

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But do you think anybody reads those SOPs that you so painstakingly draft?

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So if you keep them very short, crisp, maybe like two, three pager and you have bullet

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points, they will read it.

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If not all of it, they will remember 70%.

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And then secondly, because there is a reporting structure and if something blows up, you can

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always hold people accountable.

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Why did you follow the SOP?

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So that way it more or less ends up working.

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Obviously there are going to be as cases where it didn't go as per the SOP or the FAQs, but

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more or less it ends up working.

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Right.

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No, absolutely.

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You know, this is the biggest challenge, you know, most of the in-house legal councils

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are facing right now because you know, what happens is that as a legal person, you can

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draft the SOPs, but you can't make sure that everybody is reading it.

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And legal is as a subject, everybody tries to stay away from, right?

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They say like, it's your headache.

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That's why we have hired you.

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Right.

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So a lot of our clients, what they're doing is they are creating the chatbots on their

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own SOPs.

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So that becomes really easy for these guys.

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Obviously nobody is going to read everything that you have written.

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Right.

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You very appropriately said that, you know, it has to be like, you know, really crisp,

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but once you have a conversation on that, right, your chatbot can refer and then explain

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it in a stuff which a normal lay person can really understand.

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That is something we are seeing a lot of adoption here because whenever they are in

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trouble, they can just ask that question.

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That brings me to the next interesting question that I want to ask you if you had a genie

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and it could take away the three boring tasks that you are performing right now.

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What would be the three boring mundane tasks?

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Number one would be reading my emails and answering them for me.

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Absolutely.

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Because I sometimes end up getting 300 emails a day.

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I don't even know what to do with them.

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Number two would be when I get an agreement, which has more than 20 pages, summarizing

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it and telling me the risks.

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Number three would be if I'm getting a litigation brief again, sometimes they are drafted well,

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sometimes not well.

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So reading it and telling me where the petition actually or whatever the court brief that

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has been prepared, whatever has to be filed, the filing is in line with whatever the relief

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that we are seeking.

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Is it going to help us or is the drafting so shoddy that we should completely overrule?

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The way court documents are drafted, sometimes they're not really good and going through

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them and then looking at the NHS, you realize that this is totally botched up.

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And that's where I believe the in-house teams end up spending a lot of time.

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We're basically playing tennis.

401
00:21:38,620 --> 00:21:42,620
The external lawyer in an investment agreement is, if there's an investment agreement, he's

402
00:21:42,620 --> 00:21:46,140
sending the draft to you, a hundred pages, you're looking at it, but you're not going

403
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through it fully.

404
00:21:47,180 --> 00:21:50,380
You can see things and you have to send something back.

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Sometimes you end up missing things.

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So over there, the software would be very important, you know, summarizing things and

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telling you the salient parts.

408
00:21:56,620 --> 00:21:59,780
Similarly with litigation briefs, whatever you're going to file, if the software can

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catch it, that would be the best.

410
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So that's what I would want the genie to do.

411
00:22:04,260 --> 00:22:05,260
That's a great request.

412
00:22:05,260 --> 00:22:06,260
Even I would ask.

413
00:22:06,260 --> 00:22:11,100
So when you talk about 300 emails, right, per day, are they actually that many?

414
00:22:11,100 --> 00:22:14,460
300 emails is a typical number for you.

415
00:22:14,460 --> 00:22:20,300
I mean, maybe it's 270, but on some days it's easily when you do a lot of small ticket

416
00:22:20,300 --> 00:22:24,460
transactions, the grievances are a lot.

417
00:22:24,460 --> 00:22:29,160
And when I used to work for the classified steam and the auto steam, too many issues

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which come up.

419
00:22:31,380 --> 00:22:33,100
And these are all legal issues.

420
00:22:33,100 --> 00:22:34,100
These are not like...

421
00:22:34,100 --> 00:22:39,700
I mean, you could say that because ultimately if your vendor is not doing something, it's

422
00:22:39,700 --> 00:22:45,820
very easy to delegate it to the legal team and tell them to basically show your teeth.

423
00:22:45,820 --> 00:22:49,380
It's very easy for the business teams to delegate it to the legal team, which is fine, which

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is how sometimes things work.

425
00:22:51,700 --> 00:22:55,020
Wow, great stories there.

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00:22:55,020 --> 00:22:59,380
So this was the first part of podcast with Aman.

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Stay tuned for the second part in which we will go into the heart of this topic and learn

428
00:23:06,620 --> 00:23:13,220
his initial impressions of generative AI and what are the use cases where he thinks generative

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00:23:13,220 --> 00:23:14,740
AI can be implemented.

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We will also discuss how he evaluates a person coming in for an interview and lastly will

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have an amazing and interesting rapid fire round.