Conquering the divide

Asian-Counsel: How did your career lead you to your current role as General Counsel?
Thavakumar Kandiahpillai: I joined private practice back in 1991. I had always thought about moving to an in-house position, but I wanted to first gain the experience of practice and I particularly liked the “R&D” aspect of law that external practice offers. After 9 years, I then wanted to try to learn the “business” or “applied” aspects of law. In practice you are, perhaps necessarily, independent of the businesses you advise, and I have always felt that both aspects – R&D and applied law – are equally important, and that merging the two would be great fun. An opening came up in 2000 to join Shell in Malaysia. Coming from a corporate finance and banking law background, I initially undertook corporate M&A and finance work, including offshore-financing. I then led the Malaysian upstream legal team for about 5 years, before leading the downstream and the gas business teams. In 2006, I moved to this job, and I have found that everything I learnt in practice proves to be useful to this day.

AC: How did you find the transition from private practice to a corporate role?
TK: I found it quite easy as it was something I was anticipating. A good practitioner from a fused profession who is adaptable and able to understand the business aspects of law should not find the transition too hard. After all, there are practitioners who already behave like in-house counsel, and conversely in-house counsel who behave like practitioners! By that, I mean there are practitioners who are very business savvy yet retain independence to the extent the law and ethics require of them, and in-house counsel who want to keep a distance from their clients. I believe the former will find the transition quite natural, whilst the latter is a dying breed – there are very few lawyers in practice today who refuse to help seek solutions and are keen to purely advise on the law, purporting to keep themselves “above it all” – but I have come across such lawyers both in practice and in-house.

AC: What qualities does the Shell Group of Companies in Malaysia look for in candidates for in-house roles?
TK: We have a well-established global recruitment process which is considered one of the best, and has even been adopted by some governments. This process seeks out behavioral and functional competencies and long-term potential. From a behavioral perspective, we assess whether candidates will fulfill our Shell General Business Principles and show leadership skills. From a functional perspective, we test extensively on pure legal skills. Some candidates, particularly external lawyers, are very surprised by the depth of our questions. Testing for long-term potential also requires candidates to role-play as top management.

AC: What would a new legal recruit find most surprising in terms of his or her role and function in the company?
TK: Mostly, new recruits have found the diversity of work and the qualitative and quantitative demands surprising, in addition to the team-work and seamlessness required of them. Practitioners thinking that their work will be less intense when they join us in-house will also be surprised. A very good lawyer who is unable to work in a diverse team, and unable to frequently face intense time and business pressures, will not be able to cope in my team. Great legal skills are a given, and are only the beginning. Maybe that is why we ensure we only recruit and retain top talent.

AC: Do you have any tips for how in-house teams can cope with tighter budgets in light of economic conditions?
TK: At Shell, we start by separating core and non-core legal work. We have to drop certain activities which are “nice to have” and which we would have undertaken in less-challenging times, and our clients understand this. The challenge is to continue focusing on critical legal work, come what may. We also have to ensure our lawyers’ time is allocated as optimally as possible, which includes re-aligning portfolios. Many in-house legal departments time-write and, if done appropriately, this helps spot inefficiencies in resource allocation. Externally-appointed work also needs to be better focused and accurately defined to avoid “surplusage”. In addition to obtaining focused opinions, strategy needs to be decided upfront in litigious matters so that costs, and the legal risks, are clear. AC