In Conversation with Souradeep Mukhopadhyaya on Law School, Law Firms, and Harvard
Interviewee: | Souradeep Mukhopadhyaya(Batch of 2019, RGNUL) |
Interviewer: | Harsheeta Rai Sharma(Senior Editor, RGNUL Cosmos) |
Introduction: Souradeep Mukhopadhyay is an alumnus of RGNUL. An adventurous person at heart, he has been fully alive to every moment of his journey, whether at RGNUL, at Anand & Anand, or at Harvard Law School where he is pursuing his L.L.M. presently. Mr. Mukhopadhyay has an excellent record of achievements such as being awarded the Chancellor’s gold medal at his graduation from RGNUL, being promoted to the role of a Senior Associate within a short span at Anand & Anand and being selected as a Masters Applicant at the most prestigious law school in the world. In this interview, he gives his two cents on his experiences and invaluable lessons learned through them, that should be ingrained by every law aspirant!
Q.1) Sir, you are currently pursuing Masters at Harvard. How does it feel?
Answer: It feels intimidating; something that does take a while to set in. Studying at Harvard is, well, obviously a dream but more importantly, it is like the exposure to so many things at the same time; so many firsts, like sharing a class with people who are judges in their own jurisdiction, who are serving in the military office of the United States, who are professors and have been teaching in various universities across the world, including Stanford. Hence, it is a really diverse mix of people from various countries, and the feeling of being together all the time, discussing and exchanging ideas, is unreal.
Q.2) Talking about your law school shenanigans, how were your five years at RGNUL, apart from bagging the Chancellor’s gold medal that we all envied (jokingly)?
Answer: If there is one word for it, it was amazing. It made me who I am today. When I was working at Anand & Anand, I always used to look back at my college days. It was not all a rosy picture and there were things we would all want to change. But then, such strong friendships that we developed over the five years and the invaluable experiences, right from my first moot court competition to sports competitions and college parties - these are priceless memories.
Q.3) You were academically brilliant. How did you manage all this simultaneously with your studies?
Answer: I think academically, I was not the kind who studied very regularly. My idea was to attend classes. I would attend all the classes and whatever there is to know, I would try and understand it while the classes are on, I mean so that I would not leave much to study at home or in a hostel. I would not say that I did not study at all but most of my exam preparation came just a week before the exams. So, for the rest of the time, I was relatively free. In fact, I spent more time preparing for moot courts than academics.
Q.4) Sir, you delivered a lecture in college on world IP day. We were mesmerized by your ability to express yourself so articulately despite having been short of preparation because of the busy weekend that you had. In law school as well, we need to express ourselves through writing to fetch marks, verbally in the vivas, and even for publications or arguments in court. How do you think law students can develop this art of expressing themselves?
Answer: Yes, expression, as you noted, is very important. It’s really the bread and butter of lawyers. If you are a litigating lawyer, you need it more but that does not mean you will not need to express yourself clearly when you are working as a corporate lawyer or in an organization. For some people, you will find them naturally better at it; they will be good at expressing themselves right from the start and there will be some with room for improvement and will improve over time.
I think one of the ways to improve how you express yourself is to really think about what you want to say before you start speaking because otherwise you just start a sentence and then you are looking for the idea. So, it is okay to take a pause before you start. Another thing is to put yourself in the position of the listener. When you decide how to speak, think about the audience, what they are thinking, what is their level of knowledge, and what are questions will come to their mind. This is how you frame the way you are speaking, the way you articulate things as per the listener. So, the way I am speaking before a judge would be very different from the way I will speak before a senior colleague or before students.
Q.5) You worked at Anand & Anand, a leading IP Law Firm in India. How did you develop this inclination for IPR?
Answer: I first became interested in intellectual property in my second year of college when I participated in a moot based on copyright law and digital libraries. Also, the world itself is now shifting towards 'knowledge economies'. Information is the new oil. It is going to drive human innovation further. So, when we deal with copyright law, it is really a balancing act. It is balancing between the needs of the author who needs to be renumerated for his effort and creativity which incentivizes future authors; and the countervailing interest of the public who need access to information in the form of good literature. Similarly, for patents, it is a balance between the inventor's rights and the rights of the public to access those inventions. This is what I like the most about intellectual property - the balancing act that it tries to play and how crucial it is to our lives. Also, I kept removing things from my list which I was sure were not cut out for me. That is how I zeroed down on IP, information, data protection, and now a few competition laws.
Q.6) Could you take a stroll down memory lane to your working days at the law firm, especially the beginning days? How did you maintain a work-life balance?
Answer: Well, the first time I joined my job in 2019, I knew that working for an average of 12 hours every day was going to be tough for someone like me who I believe is a bit free-spirited. I do not like following very hard schedules especially when the schedules are made by other people. But then I told myself that I must do this, that I am not quitting within a few months. I just powered on, kept going on one day at a time and eventually I found that it was not that difficult anymore. I went to my work every day and never got late. I think it was a mixture of both enthusiasm and fear of failure that kept me going.
Q.7) You have been a senior associate at Anand & Anand, the leading IP firm in India and you were living the dream that was too distant for hundreds if not thousands of IP law aspirants. What made you leave this position and go for Masters?
Answer: I think there are several reasons. Firstly, I never saw myself as a person who is going to be able to work at a law firm continuously, all my life. I wanted to try out a lot of things I didn’t want to be limited by my experiences to just one kind of work. Working at Anand & Anand was an amazing experience. I had good mentors who gave me a lot of varied work from advisory to litigation to appearing before courts and arguing cases myself. However, coming to Harvard for a Master, or any University for that matter, which actually gives you a platform to interact with lawyers from across the world, just enriches your thought process. It makes you a better lawyer and more importantly, a better person because you get to empathize with them along with sharing experiences. I have friends now from countries like the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, and others. The other reason was to actually be able to learn the law. When you are trying to develop a legal field, which is true for some areas of IP, Data Protection, and even Competition Law, having an idea of how other jurisdictions are dealing with similar problems really enriches you. It makes you a better lawyer as well.
Q.8) What piece of advice would you like to give your juniors?
Answer: One piece of advice that I personally have is that we should make the best time in classes. For example, when there is attendance, we start scrolling on our phones, instead of which, we should have a look at our notes so that it gets ingrained in our minds. Another important piece of advice is, do not to stress too much. In law school, it is a natural tendency to feel anxious thinking that everyone else is doing so much better than you and you need to put in more effort. But being worried about the future is just going to take away the present and abstain you from putting in your 100% because half of your energy is going to spend on worrying. It is rather about being efficient with time; dividing whatever time you have into things you want to do things, things you love doing, and the things you think you need to do.
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