IEL Elite

Overview

Drawing significant praise for its practical and timely advice, Trilegal’s employment law offering is split between the firm’s Bengaluru and Gurugram offices. Atul Gupta in Bengaluru is a key contact in the group, which is a member of the Employment Law Alliance, affording it a truly global reach.

The department considerably bolstered its offering in November 2022 through the lateral hire of Veena Gopalakrishnan from AZB. In addition, Mumbai-based Apeksha Mattoo was promoted to the partnership in September 2022.

The department’s client base comprises a host of major household names – particularly from the TMT sectors – as well as eminent international law firms that rely on the group to assist with the Indian law aspects of critical mandates.

The team is excellent: always on time, super fast, and the quality is fantastic. A real gem.

In March 2022, the firm signed up to the UN’s Women’s Empowerment Principles to further its efforts towards promoting internal diversity.

Specialisms

The team’s workload regularly involves assisting with the employment aspects of strategic commercial decisions. For example, Gupta led the advice to Zee Entertainment Enterprises on its merger with Sony, on compliance with labour regulation across several states, as well as the post-merger integration of employees.

In another example, Gupta assisted StockX with its establishment of operations in India, which involved the engagement of employees through an employer of record to avoid delays in setting up. After the entity was incorporated, the team assisted StockX with the transfer of staff to its Indian subsidiary.

The group has also been notably active with preparing clients for the overhaul of the country’s labour legislation. Bangalore-based partner Swarnima has advised a host of household names on issues relating to the changes to the legislation. For example, she advised Walmart and TIAA Business Services India on how to amend their compensation and benefits packages to ensure employees did not experience a reduction in take-home pay following a new definition of “wages”.

Swarnima has also acted for clients, including LinkedIn and Google, on the incoming prohibition of contract workers for companies’ “core activities”. Her support included a definition of what each client’s core activities were, which contract workers would be impacted, and a restructuring of the affected workers.

Other areas of activity include advice on sensitive matters that have the potential to cause significant reputational damage. This includes workplace investigations linked to whistleblowing claims.

For example, the team was appointed to advise a software company on an investigation into allegations of bias and prejudice that a prospective candidate made against its recruitment team. The complainant had threatened to disclose their experience on social media. The timing of the complaint suggested that a senior employee, who had referred the candidate and had a long-standing dispute with the recruitment team, may have colluded with the candidate to file the complaint. At the time, the senior employee was also facing internal proceedings after several complaints had been made regarding their conduct.

The group has also been active in assisting its clients with new ways of working following the covid-19 pandemic. This was demonstrated in advice to Splunk Technology on a framework policy designed to allow its Indian national employees in the US to work remotely from India.

Another notable instruction for the team was its advice to PayPal on the launch of a financial wellness platform to provide employees with instant salary advances, with the aim of reducing employee cashflow challenges between paychecks.

Clients