Many years before I started working at Lawsikho, I was working with a boutique financial services provider in India.

At one stage, they were looking to set up an entity related to commodities trading in Dubai.

I had been working with the legal and compliance department of that company for a very short period of 8 months and I was tasked with getting the entity set up in Dubai.

I needed to get some documents verified with the UAE Embassy, and I remember that I had spent many a day visiting the embassy and coming back without the expected results.

The management was getting impatient because they needed the entity very soon and they weren’t getting the results.

On the other hand, the Head of Commodities was quite ahead of me in finding out how an entity could be created in Dubai.

I have no idea how he did it, but he actually got someone from the Dubai Metals and Commodities Centre (DMCC) to visit our office in Goregaon, and then, forming the entity was as simple as completing certain documents before him.

A business guy did what a lawyer was expected to do.

However I couldn’t get the work done due to my lack of knowledge.

It should have been possible for me to figure this out - it was my job.

One more of my roles required me to learn international business laws.

My first job out of India was with a company which had operations in 19 countries of the world. I was involved with incorporating and closing down entities in many countries in this role.

Over the period that I was working with that company, I saw how crucial it was for them to start operations in different countries at the right time.

There was a huge reliance on the legal and compliance departments for ensuring that all requisite requirements for starting operations in such countries were met.

If you are working in the in-house legal and secretarial department of a company which is expanding its global footprint, there is really no alternative for you but to learn how international business laws work.

You will also need to understand the legal systems of that specific country quite well.

If you fail to gain such knowledge, it is very much possible that the local consultants or employees will take you for a nice ride.

Now, even Indian companies are expanding to foreign markets in increasing numbers everyday.

For example, did you know that Flipkart actually has its holding companies in Singapore?

Or, that the parent company of Zoho is headquartered in the US, although most of the operations are in India?

Hundreds of Indian companies are flipping their ownership to have the global parent company incorporated abroad, for various reasons, such as meeting FDI related requirements, lower taxation, better payments regime and availability of global private equity.

Several other Indian companies are establishing presence in international markets in Africa, Dubai, Singapore, South East Asia, US, Africa and Europe.

They are setting up new offices and companies in these destinations and even acquiring foreign companies.

There is a huge need for lawyers and company secretaries to assist companies with legal work around “market-entry”.

Such lawyers and company secretaries have the opportunity to secure the highest paying in-house jobs, international positions and maybe even a seat at the board.

It doesn’t matter if you are not qualified to practice law in a foreign jurisdiction - companies pay lawyers, CS and CAs a premium if they can help them with market entry work in foreign jurisdictions.

This work is creating tremendous opportunities for Indian lawyers, and is bound to increase manifold in 2021.

Who is this for

• Corporate lawyers who want to explore in-house counsel jobs in leading Indian and global companies
• In-house counsels who want to move from companies with national operations to MNCs
• Indian lawyers who want to work in foreign countries
• Independent practitioners who want to increase their income and perform freelance work for Indian and global clients
• Lawyers who want to work remotely for international clients
• Law students who want to perform international freelance work, secure paralegal work from foreign lawyers or work abroad
• Lawyers and law students who want to pursue an LLM

What you will learn:

• Why do more Indian companies want to expand internationally now?
• Which major companies have established offshore presence? How did they achieve it?
• Which are the most popular offshore destinations to establish presence in and why?
• How can you decide which country is the best for your entity to establish a presence in?
• What are the challenges faced by a business founder or a CEO at the time of international expansion and what do they expect from lawyers and CS?
  • How to figure out an appropriate business structure in a foreign jurisdiction
  • How to decide composition of management of the foreign entity
  • How to comprehend a foreign legal system and hierarchy of foreign courts
  • How to work with key regulators
  • How to structure inter-corporate relationships between the foreign entity and the Indian company for various purposes
  • How to work with foreign consultants
  • How to infuse capital, repatriate profits, etc. with minimal tax implications
  • How to negotiate, execute and enforce international contracts
  • How to protect and enforce intellectual property internationally
  • Technology, payments and data-protection framework of foreign jurisdictions

• What does market entry related legal work involve for lawyers and CS?
• How to find the right external consultants in a country
• How to create the right corporate governance systems in a new entity
• How can you acquire skills for performing international market entry related work?
• How to build your brand and obtain international opportunities and foreign paralegal work