How can you get started with learning corporate litigation and arbitration work?
The first crucial starter skillset is to learn how to draft various kinds of legal notices and responses to notices for corporate litigation matters and arbitration work.
Corporate clients, SMEs and startups frequently need to draft legal notices or respond to notices received from various authorities, clients, consumers, vendors and suppliers.
They usually struggle to find appropriate assistance to draft effective responses, often leading to delayed responses, or difficulties later on.
If you can draft effective legal notices and responses to such notices, it can be a very effective way to win the trust of new clients for subsequent litigation work as well.
Moreover, with AI, you can multiply your speed and effectiveness.
We will show you how to draft a notice of commencement of arbitration proceedings in a minute.
Here is a list of the 7 most important notices that you must learn to draft in respect of corporate litigation and arbitration work:
- Notice for commencement of arbitration, which must be sent before initiation of arbitration proceedings
- Notice to cure breach of contract – This is usually a precondition under any contract before initiating any dispute resolution proceedings
- Notice for cheque dishonour under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act. There is a corresponding notice under Payment and Settlements Systems Act for dishonour of electronic payment instructions (ECS, etc.).
- Notice for defamation, which is very important to protect the reputation of a business from defamatory statements of customers or marketing and advertising practices of competitors which adversely impact the brand.
- Notice before enforcement of security interest under Section 13 of the SARFAESI Act, sent by a secured lender (e.g. bank) to take possession of property in case there is a default on the loan.
- Notice under Section 8 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, sent by any one who is owed money for supply of goods or services (vendor, supplier or an employee) before initiating insolvency proceedings before the NCLT.
- Notice for infringement of intellectual property, also known as Cease and Desist notices, sent by businesses to infringing parties, typically for violation of trademark or copyright. This is done before initiating proceedings before commercial courts seeking damages.
In addition, you must also learn how to draft an effective response to the above notices.
There are 3 additional categories of notices you must learn to draft responses to.
- Response to notices from income tax authorities, GST authorities and local authorities such as municipal corporations
- Response to notice from RBI, sectoral regulators such as RERA
- Response to notices from consumers for alleged product or service deficiencies
Many of these notices and responses are very similar. Once you learn how to draft 3-4 of them, you can pick up the rest very easily.
Some of you have drafted notices in traditional litigation matters. With some tweaks and training, you can draft commercial notices for your own clients.
Don’t believe me?
Here is a video of how to draft a notice of commencement of arbitration, prepared by Nidhi Dayani, former litigator and our faculty for litigation courses.
You can find the entire downloadable notice of commencement here. Bard provides a usable near-final draft.
Do you want to see the prompts? Here is the entire chat transcript with Bard for your reference:
You need to practise and get feedback yourself In order for you to be able to do this in your career, and then you can unlock massive gains.
You can reduce the time spent in drafting truckloads and boatloads of legal documents, and also produce high-quality legal work.
But you need to know the legal rules, the prompt combinations and techniques, and how to use different AI tools. Every AI tool responds differently to the same prompts.
At this time, I want you to think of one question – what’s next for your legal practice?
I really hope that you get a breather from being overworked and constantly engaged on client deliverables.