Twenty years of showing up
At the first of these I ever attended, a very senior practitioner told me how he had started coming when the whole annual INTA meeting fitted 100 or 150 people into one ballroom. His advice was simple: never throw your business cards around. Make friends, and the work will follow.
He was right. You meet the same people year after year, and slowly something builds. Twenty years on, that is more or less how this practice has grown — on relationships, and on having delivered when it counted. The testimonials of our clients are the evidence of it.
So these weeks go differently. They are spent planning dinners, working out who is free for a drink, catching up over coffee and talking about how everyone's children have grown, comparing notes on how each other's practice and team are getting on, hearing where they are travelling next — and a good deal more that is classified.
The work follows from that, but never directly. When a client needs help in a jurisdiction we do not practise in, we are not going through business cards. We are thinking about who we know there — and that changes what we can promise, and how quickly.
It cuts both ways, which is the part worth saying plainly. When an associate abroad sends a matter to us, how we handle it reflects on them as much as on us; they have spent years building that relationship. Getting it wrong would not only cost us a client, it would cost a friend the trust they had earned. That is a good reason to roll up your sleeves, do the work properly, and deliver on time, every time.
The other reason to go is that a practice has to keep up. The practice of law keeps evolving. It was technology in the 2000s, it is AI now, and it is always the question of how you work with whoever has just joined the team. My grandfather thought my generation was a disappointment, and I am fairly sure his thought the same of his. It is never really true. Things simply change, and a practice that intends to still be here in twenty years has to change with them.
If you are going to be at any of these, we would be glad to catch up.
— Raja Pannir Selvam, Founder & Managing Partner