CEO Insights India

In an age when there are several options for alternative delivery of legal services, legal advisors that take the time to understand their Clients’ legal requirements and how they might impact their overall business, and those that are available and solution oriented, will set themselves apart.

CEO Insights’ team connects with one such extraordinarily skilled, client-centric legal advisor, Varun Vaish (Associate Partner, Atlas Law Partners), who is going beyond legal deliverables to create a growth-oriented experience for his clients. He is an expert in Real Estate and Construction Laws, Acquisition and Resolution of Stressed Real Estate Assets, Foreign Exchange Regulations, Private Equity Investments, Corporate Restructurings, SaaS Contracting and emerging Fintech, Web3/Cryptocurrency/NFT Regulations.

Varun has been a corporate lawyer for over a decade and along the way has been associated with some exceptionally well recognized institutions in the field of legal education and practice. At Atlas Law, Varun has been part of a growing corporate restructuring and stressed asset acquisition practice and plays a crucial role in advising clients on navigating India’s changing regulatory landscape. Let’s hear from him.

Being a student of the University of Oxford, what did you learn from the campus beyond academics?
The amazing part about studying at the University of Oxford is that one not only gets the opportunity to study one’s subject from some of the greatest minds in legal academia, but also interact with gifted individuals from other disciplines. I’ve had the opportunity to interact with and befriend, scientists, public policy graduates engineers, historians, economists, and MBA students, just to name a few. This, I believe, is the biggest

benefit that an educational institution can provide helping broaden one’s horizons through cross disciplinary learnings. The learnings I imbibed through long chats with fellow students in the beautiful gardens of Oxford far outweigh anything I absorbed in its lecture halls. It was then that I realized that the law, through integral, is a small part of the functioning of larger society. It is merely a tool to help society change, grow and function with some semblance of order. This perspective helped me become a more solution oriented lawyer who appreciates that the law is primarily a means to helping government, society, and indeed businesses, achieve their goals.I bring that perspective to each of my firm’s client’s while advising them on how to steer through India’s legal landscape.

As an Associate Partner with Atlas Law Partners, how would you describe the organization? What are your focus areas?
Since its inception in 2016, Atlas Law Partners has grown into a full-service law firm that advises on several complex high-value transactions, consistently delivering high quality legal services across tight timelines. The Firm has become the go-to law firm for new and emerging businesses as well as established business houses seeking cost effective legal advice from experienced lawyers who provide transactional expertise along with personal attention and availability. The difference we bring to transactions is that we provide our services with a lot of personal attention of partners which traditionally might not be the case for larger firms. I believe the ability to run transactions for large businesses, with a relatively lean team of high skilled lawyers, while at the same time maintaining a collaborative and congenial work atmosphere, has been Atlas' biggest strength.

What is your leadership style and mantra for delivering successful outcomes?
I believe law firm work culture in

India has evolved some what. We cannot be hierarchical anymore. I have imbibed my leadership style from observing the senior partnership of my firm through whom I have learnt that that the best leaders are those that follow a collaborative approach to leading a team, as opposed to merely delegating tasks. They make their team members understand that they have ownership over their tasks and that producing a satisfactory outcome should be thought of as a collective opportunity of the entire team, as opposed to the burden of a few. This is something that I have imbibed as my leadership style as well. Apart from this, I personally believe in leading from the front and being seen to be doing as much work as the associates who work alongside me are. I always encourage junior lawyers who work with me to believe that there is an opportunity for them to perform better, while holding them to a higher standard. And, I have noticed, when they start expecting better from themselves, they get into the process of demanding excellence not only from themselves but their co-workers as well.


How do you plan to invest your time to help the organization grow?
At Atlas, we give a lot of exposure to young associates to make them understand that this profession is in large part about understanding clients’ expectations, being available for them and building a sense of trust within them. This I try to put it into practice every day while helping to build the firm’s operations. We help our people to understand that the business of law is very different from the practice of law this profession is so much about understanding people and building relationships with them. By consistently training our associates in this key aspect, I plan to help Atlas grow.

Varun Vaish, Associate Partner, Atlas Law Partners
Having a degree from the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR), Hyderabad, and the University of Oxford, U.K.and extensive experience in the Real Estate Sector, Varun is advising clients on commercial transactions at a global level.