Puneet Bhasin is a practicing cyber lawyer in Mumbai. She has a flourishing practice before the Adjudicating Officer (under Information Technology Act) and has also advised several e-commerce businesses. She is a graduate of Government Law College, Mumbai and also has a LLM in Business Laws from Mumbai University.

Recently we talked with Puneet, when she told us how the NUJS Business Law Diploma course helped her in advising startup clients.

Over to Puneet.

I started practicing in 2011 and founded Cyberjure Legal Consulting. I specialize in E-commerce Laws, Cyber Crime litigation matters and Intellectual Property Rights in Cyber Space. I completed by B.L.S.LL.B. (5 years law course) from Government Law College, Mumbai. I have recently completed by LL.M.(Business Laws) from Mumbai University. Additionally, hold a Post Graduate Diploma in Cyber Laws and am a Certified Cyber Crime Investigator. For two years after passing out of law college, along with practicing I used to teach Cyber laws to lawyers and IT professionals in the Post Graduate Diploma in Cyber Laws at Asian School of Cyber Laws, however, I discontinued teaching there in 2014 due to increased work load and rise of cyber crime cases which demanded more time.

My work involves a lot of variety. There are different types of cyber crime cases like email scams, internet banking frauds, online matrimonial frauds. Also, there are mainstream civil and criminal cases involving digital evidence. I have represented major nationalized banks and E-commerce companies in cyber crime cases filed against them.

Cyber Laws has two sides to it, both litigation and corporate law related work. I work with a large number of e-commerce start-ups and most of them simply come with a business idea, so we invariably start with the co-founders agreement or MOU when the business is in the planning stage, then get them incorporated and get all the legal compliances in place. Thereafter, we handle all the cyber law compliances, Intellectual property rights registrations draft the terms of use, vendor agreements and privacy policy and cyber security of the portal. In most cases my association with the E-commerce companies continues on a retainership model.

Cyber laws is a very new field and that is why it offers a variety of cases. It is very dynamic because the types of cases and the modus operandi changes in short periods of times with advancement of technology and new hacking techniques.

I read about the NUJS Business Law diploma course on Facebook and I checked the curriculum and realized that the content could help me understand and work with start-ups. As at that point of time e-commerce was a nascent field and most players in it were start-ups, so being a cyber law consultant for them meant advising them right from scratch about how they should structure their company, keeping in mind an exit strategy.

I wanted to learn the practical aspects involved in structuring start-ups along with understanding investor trends and FDI concepts as there have been a lot of foreign investments in the e-commerce sector, so an understanding of the same was necessary for me to be able to advice my clients well.

The course was brilliant and was value for money from my perspective as it enabled me to provide niche advice to my e-commerce start-up clients. I wanted to learn the practical concepts of taxation and investment laws, and I learnt more than I expected. I definitely think legal practitioners practicing in courts can benefit from this course, because today lawyers are performing multiple roles of litigators, consultants and social services. I am a litigator and a consultant, and the course equipped me with the knowledge of business functioning in order to enable me to advise my clients well.

The modules on taxation, investment law, financial laws, structuring companies were very much relevant for me and my practice. These modules equipped me with information I needed to advise clients (especially e-commerce startups). Although I specialize as a cyber lawyer, I realized that as a retainer with companies, legal queries that I handle are not restricted to only cyber laws, and cover the broad spectrum of business laws too. Hence, even if one intends to specialize in cyber laws, it is important that one has a strong understanding of business laws in general, for success.

I have already recommended this course to many fellow lawyers. Specialization in one field is good but additional knowledge of allied fields opens up new avenues, as in my case it opened up the new avenue of not just cyber law compliances for E-commerce start-ups, but also handling all the legalities of their project from inception.