With over 25 years of experience in the resolution of corporate commercial disputes, Sitesh Mukherjee has handled a huge variety of cases. His client list is diverse – with companies from the power, infrastructure and banking sectors. Sitesh is an invitee in industry sub groups of leading chambers of commerce in India, such as CII and FICCI. He is a member of the executive committee of the Energy Bar Association. He is also a member of ICC’s (internation chamber of commerce) Commission on Arbitration and ADR.
Sitesh is recognized in Chambers and Partners, Legal 500 and Asialaw Profiles. He has also won the prestigious Dispute Management Lawyer of the Year award at IDEX Legal Awards in 2017.
When Sitesh was a young boy in Dhanbad, his father, an electrical engineer who worked with Tata Steel would often come home and give him written texts of lectures delivered by Nani Palkhivala, one of India’s foremost jurists and also at that time a Director of Tata Steel. Right there, I believe, his involvement with words began! Sitesh’s admiration for the legendary jurist helped him grow a political and social consciousness at an early age. He started developing a keen sense
of fairness.
Sitesh, a first generation lawyer, is experienced in handling a variety of corporate commercial disputes, including high stakes arbitrations in diverse industries such as power, infrastructure and banking. Even in this world of high stake corporate commercial disputes what keeps him going is a genuine belief in being on the right side of the law, in word as well as spirit. You can see that in the enthusiasm he displays when talking about his own counsel practice which he is starting with small and young team!
Sitesh joined Trilegal in 2009 to start their Disputes Practice. He started with 3 lawyers and built the team ground up. Today, the Disputes Practice at Trilegal boasts of over 50 lawyers and 6 partners!
Leading from the front, Sitesh always encouraged his team to understand the commercial drivers of the business that they were dealing with, and to constantly grow their domain knowledge. In his words,
Find the books and commentaries and read all that there is on the issue at hand! While searching through for the principle that will apply to your case, you will come upon information which is going to build up your knowledge. Google is friendly and will give you the exact information you’re looking for, but it is the additional, seemingly peripheral knowledge that you gather from reading, that will truly set you apart as a lawyer and empower you to grow. After all, we lawyers never retire!
Learn more from elimination, says Sitesh, and I totally resonate with that statement!
As a young partner I expected the same level of commitment and quality of output from everyone. It is over a period of time I learnt that each one has their own learning curve. Identify that and then set expectations. Allow them to take time to figure out their potential.
The mantra Sitesh follows is “commitment to improve”. You compete against no-one but yourself – that knowledge itself is enough to push you to discover your boundaries and limitations, and then push you beyond that.
The most exciting part of being a lawyer is to be able to strategize. Connect the dots of established rules from one sphere to another. Based on the current knowledge, think innovatively, find solutions and strategies
As he begins the journey of his own Counsel practice*, the enthusiasm in his voice is so real! A brilliant and principled lawyer, his strong belief in justice, starting out as a young boy, has brought him to a new stage in his career.
As he looks back, “it’s been a journey full of learning.”
On a lighter note he says, “I’m re-building my ability to gather knowledge rather than being given all the information” He is spending this time to study case files, notes and judgements.
Sitesh also spoke to us about what is in store for the practice of Law – the new trends in a profession that is one of the oldest and how the legal and judicial system has plans of bringing in innovations to improve litigant experience and speed up the process.
*Counsel Practice is to present before the courts on a variety of legal cases whist being engaged to do so by other lawyers and law firms
