A new academy set up to train India's general counsel and in-house legal leaders will steer clear of traditional legal subjects and instead concentrate on the broader leadership capabilities such professionals need, according to Paridhi Adani, Founder Family and Partner (Head – Gujarat) at Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas.
Cyril Shroff, Managing Partner of Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM), and the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding on August 8 to launch the Cyril Shroff-IIMA GC Leadership Academy. The initiative is aimed at research and executive development for General Counsels (GCs), addressing what the founders describe as a long-standing gap in leadership training for legal officers.
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Speaking to ANI about the academy's purpose, Adani said it has been created to help legal officers, general counsel and other in-house legal leaders get ready for enterprise-level leadership roles within their organisations.
According to Adani, existing legal training already covers technical subjects adequately, but there has been little formal preparation for the wider leadership responsibilities that general counsel are increasingly expected to shoulder. She pointed out that today's legal leaders function at the crossroads of finance, capital, technology, policy, regulation and business — a combination for which no structured training currently exists. The academy, she said, is intended to fill precisely that gap by building lasting capability outside conventional legal and technical training.
Rather than relying solely on classroom teaching, the academy is designed to function as a self-sustaining ecosystem that combines expert-led instruction with peer-to-peer learning. Adani explained that the format allows participants to learn as much from one another as from a formal instructor, encouraging an ongoing exchange of ideas and perspectives among legal leaders.
On the curriculum itself, Adani said the programme would move away from conventional legal coursework and instead prioritise high-impact leadership skills. She listed areas such as communication and executive presence, geopolitics, risk advisory, crisis management, and ethics and morality as part of the offering, describing the eventual scope as an extensive one. The intent, she added, is for all these strands to come together on a single learning platform where classroom instruction is complemented by real-world experience shared among peers.
Adani said she hopes the academy will build a lasting legacy of shared knowledge, with each graduating cohort contributing to the learning of the next. Cyril Shroff, the academy's co-founder, has led Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas as Managing Partner and brings more than four decades of legal industry experience. The academy's launch ceremony was held at the IIM Ahmedabad campus on August 8.