"As leaders of today, we have to give our teams room to grow. Creating shared goals and celebrating both, individual contributions and collective achievements, helps balance standardization with empowerment, ultimately driving team cohesion and performance."
Your career spans global contracting, team leadership, and legal-tech innovation. What’s the one defining moment that shaped your approach as a leader?
While there have been many moments in my 20+ years career that have helped me to evolve as a leader, one that stands out is being asked to lead others in the team. I think it has greatly shaped how I look at things today. The journey as a lead made me realize that empowering others helps in achieving collective success, which is immensely more than what I could accomplish individually, alone. This fundamental shift changed my entire perspective, from focusing on personal excellence to enabling team excellence.
Another element of leading is to accept that it is impossible to be an expert in everything, and to instead, value the support that comes with working as a team.
Each team member brings unique expertise, experiences, and viewpoints which collectively solves problems that cannot be tackled alone. The diversity of thought and approach consistently leads to more innovative solutions and better outcomes. I discovered that my role wasn’t to be the smartest person in the room, but to create an environment where everyone’s contribution can flourish. This is even more relevant with tech innovation roles where new thoughts or new ways of doing things need to be celebrated.
Whether I am managing global contracting projects, navigating regulatory complexities, or driving legal-tech innovation, this people-first approach is now my foundation. Today, I have learnt to listen more than I speak, to ask questions that unlock potential, and to trust my team’s capabilities while providing the support they need to excel.
The ripple effect of that moment continues to influence how I approach every challenge today, always considering not just the immediate business impact, but how decisions will develop my team’s capabilities and prepare them for their own leadership journeys.
Leadership, I’ve learned, is ultimately about multiplication, multiplying talent, potential, and impact through others.
What best practices can you share from your experience of working with a diverse team based out of various geographies and to bring in standardization?
From my personal experience, balancing and celebrating cultural differences with standardization is key when working with a team based out of various geographies. It is also essential to establish clear, open communication protocols across time zones. Rather than building a web of bureaucratic check points, there should be clear escalation channels which can work towards finding solutions.
I also feel, it is important to give freedom for different thoughts. Every lawyer has a different perspective and a unique way of expression. Standardization should not be confused with ‘conformity’.
As leaders of today, we have to give our teams room to grow. Creating shared goals and celebrating both, individual contributions and collective achievements, helps balance standardization with empowerment, ultimately driving team cohesion and performance.
When adopting new legal-tech systems, what suggestions can you give to balance the drive for efficiency with operational risks?
From my personal experience in this area, I suggest to always first begin with mapping the overall end-to-end process that exists today when adopting legal-tech systems. One then needs to again go over the steps to identify what can be eliminated or reinvented/ reimagined in the process. I suggest a phased implementation with continuous honest feedback. It is usually impossible to get everything right in a big innovation project and so being open to changes and reworking on the process always helps. It is also very important to establish clear governance frameworks, maintain audit trails, and provide comprehensive training. But, according to me, the most important element is always, to bring the people on board during the journey. This means having a constant compelling change management and communication plan to support the rollout and changes. This is very important to ensure team buy-in the idea for a smooth adoption to balance efficiency gains with operational success.
Looking ahead, what’s the boldest shift global legal teams need to make to stay ahead in the evolving world of legal and tech innovation?
I believe, the shift that global legal teams need to make is to transform from reactive gatekeepers to proactive strategic partners. We, in Legal, need to assist in shaping business outcomes while safeguarding core legal principles. For example, Lawyers today need to maintain a delicate balance between protecting privacy and maintaining confidentiality while still helping business embrace technological innovations. Further, Legal cannot effectively protect clients from emerging risks without deeply understanding the technologies that create those risks. Legal teams must evolve from the department that says “no” to the team that says “here’s how we can make this work safely and strategically.”
Most critically, Legal as an industry is accelerating its pace of adoption of tech innovation.
Organizations that will thrive will be ones that view technology not as a threat to legal tradition, but as a powerful tool to deliver better, efficient outcomes while maintaining professional integrity. I believe, the transformation isn't optional, it's essential for survival.
About Shweta Prasad:
Shweta Prasad is a dual-qualified lawyer (India and Solicitor of England & Wales) with nearly 2 decades of experience in corporate and commercial law. Her dual qualifications and extensive international experience have equipped her with a unique ability to navigate complex legal frameworks across multiple jurisdictions.
Currently working as an Associate Director at Accenture, she leads a global team managing third party contracts negotiations across the world. She is also involved with technology and innovation. Shweta’s ability to blend legal acumen with cutting-edge innovation positions her at the forefront of the evolving intersection of law and technology.
