The Corporate Law Cell is a student run body overseen by faculty in – charge Mrs. Smita Sabne. The Corporate Law Cell was founded in September 2009 by an enthusiastic bunch of students. The Corporate Law Cell since its first academic year (2009 -2010) has grown by leaps and bounds. The vision of Corporate Law Cell for the academic year 2013-14 was to encourage student participation to promote academic writing and research skills. The cell has always intended to facilitate better understanding of corporate laws among students and this year events were organised to supplement regular classroom learning experience.
Extempore Moot Court Competition: To identify and nourish advocacy skills among the students of ILS Law College, the Corporate Law Cell organised an Extempore Moot Court Competition on 14 August 2013. The event attracted attention as it deviated from the traditional path of providing days to students for working on a moot problem.
The problems were released four hours before the preliminary round and thirty minutes before the final round of the competition. The format required students to analyse and prepare their presentation within this time. The competition was indeed a challenge to students sharpened in the art of law, legal reasoning and skill.
62 students of II – IV BSLLLB and I – II LLB participated in the competition. The following students from the final year judged the preliminary round: Malek Shipchandler, Shagun Arora, Karanvir Singh, Adarsh Singh, Neeraja Balakrishnan, Bhavana Duhoon, Saumya Jambhekar, Vividh Tandon, Nikita Hemmige, Sejal Parashar, Ranu Purohit, Pooja Gupta, Manaswi Agarwal and Zainab Lokhandvala (All VBSL). Kamakshi Mathur, Parvathy Tharamel, and Shantanu Singh from V BSL and Aneesa Cheema, Pooja Gera, and Ritika Chatterjee from IV BSL drafted 12 moot problems for the competition based on law of contracts, arbitration and company law. Bisheesh Roy, Nikita Samarnath, Shraddha Sengaonkar, Priyanka Chavan, Divyasha Mathur, Misba Sheikh and Shibani Gokhale assisted in organising the competition.
7 students qualified to the final round of the competition: Anshul Chopra, Namit Oberoy, Kanwardeep Sawhney, Pooja Batra, Ravalee Nath, Rial Verma and Solaiappan Odayappan.
The final round of the competition was adjudged by Shri Vikram Munje, Vice – President, Bharat Forge Ltd and Shri Oscar Vargese Abraham, alumnus of ILS Law College, Pune.
The winners of the competition are:
- Rank 1: Anshul Chopra (III BSL)
- Rank 2: Ravalee Nath (II BSL)
- Rank 3: Rial Verma (II BSL)
Workshop on Legal Writing and Research:
A workshop was conducted on Legal Writing and Research on 27 August 2013 by Mr. Arpit Ratan of ARP Associates, Pune. The aim of the workshop was to provide a forum for discussion about legal writing, analysis, and research. Mr Ratan explained to the students about the skill of critiquing resources and understanding their scholarly value, planning, structuring, and developing an argument and discussed about various strategies for developing a legal research paper. The students enjoyed the workshop and gave a feedback that they learned the elements and components of legal research papers and structures for different styles of legal research papers.
Group Discussion:
On 29 January 2014, a group discussion was conducted on Competition Amendment Bill, 2012 and Competition Act, 2002. Ritika Chatterjee was the moderator for the group discussion. The key substantive and procedural changes proposed by the bill were discussed by the students. The students analysed the effects of changes such as definition of the term group, concept of joint dominance, Mandatory reference by the CCI and Statutory authorities, Fair Hearing, Expansion of the scope of protection grated to IPR laws, Scope of appealable order etc. Though students were of the opinion that the Bill is a positive step by the Central Government, they observed the failure of the bill to address certain key issues under the Act and concepts such as joint ventures and leniency policy. Some of the students were not happy with the focus given to procedural aspects. Overall, it was a fruitful discussion.
Negotiation Exercise:
On 5th August 2013, a negotiation exercise was organised by the Corporate Law Cell. The concept of negotiation and its importance were first explained to the students. The students were asked to act as a lawyer representing their client in a negotiation. Students used various strategies to obtain the best possible deal for their client. The students realized that though the aim is to achieve the best possible outcome for their party, the principles of fairness, seeking mutual benefit and maintaining a relationship are the keys to a successful outcome. Through the exercise the students explored the stages of negotiation and learned how to improve their negotiating skills.
Workshop on Deadly Internship Assignments:
A workshop titled, “Deadly Internship Assignments” was held on 17 December 2013. The aim of the workshop was to familiarise the students with research techniques that might be useful for them while working on internship assignments. Students were divided into five groups and each group was given a query based on Contracts, Company Law or IPR and they were asked to prepare a note. The time allotted was 45 minutes. All the 50 students who attended the workshop successfully prepared a note. Few students were given a token of appreciation for preparing the Best Note. They were Yash Parihar, Gokul Thampi, Saurish Shetye, Satish Rai, Vivek Narayan, and Swarnima Pandit.
Corporate Law Journal:
This year a journal was published comprising of articles on themes relating to corporate laws and policies. The journal was divided into four sections dealing with competition law, taxation laws, mergers and acquisitions and intellectual property rights. Members of the cell worked on the themes in the first semester and submitted their research papers in second semester (January 2014) and the journal will be published in February 2014. The following are the themes:
Competition Law:
- Cartels and its Anti Competitive effects
- Adjudicatory proceedings under CCI
- Competition policy and Economics
- Combinations
Taxation Laws:
- Transfer Pricing
- Arms length rule
- Retrospective effect
Mergers and Acquisitions:
Cross border investments – Legal Issues
Non compete and non solicits within M & A
Mergers & Aaquisition Litigation
Intellectual Property Rights:
- Rights of lyricists over songs
- Use of old song titles as titles of movies – Is it an infringement of copyright or not?
- Online Infringement of Intellectual Property Rights
The following abstracts are selected for publication in the Corporate Law Journal:
- Impact of acquisitions on white collar and blue collar employees – Poonam Pal Sharma
- Legal compliances for an inbound investment for a Joint-Venture in India- Fostering or deterring foreign investments? – Zacarias Joseph and Dhananjai Charan
- Cross border mergers and acquisitions: Legal issues involved – Kaanchi Singhal
- Restrictive covenants: a tool or a weapon – Anurag Mankar
- Legal implications of cross border investments – Chitra Nair
- Rights of lyricists and scriptwriters: Changing contours? – Yojit Pareek and Kabir S. Ghosh
- Protection of performer’s rights – Sanket Kapatkar
- Domain disputes: How they evolved and how they are resolved? – Aishwarya Bedekar
- Reverse payment agreements in the United States and their potential effect on the Indian pharmaceutical industry – Ritvik Kulkarni
- Use of old song titles as titles of movies-is it infringement of copyright or not? – Vivek Narayan
- E-commerce and Competition Law – Tanaya Apte
- Cartels- the supreme evil of Anti -Trust – Aufa Karnalkar
- Transfer pricing in India – Nikita Navindgikar
- Retrospective effect – Sangeetha Ganesh
- Arms length principle – a conventional method in regulating transfer pricing in taxation -Harish Adwant
Corporate Cell’s day to day functioning was managed by the following students from 4th and 5th year –
- Parvathy Tharamel (V BSL)
- Shantanu Singh (V BSL)
- Bissheesh Roy (V BSL)
- Kamakshi Mathur (V BSL)
- Aneesa Cheema (IV BSL)
- Ritika Chatterjee (IV BSL)
- Pooja Gera (IV BSL)
