[Music] good morning I'm Ahmed Elnaggar and this is Monday legal back to the English lawyers today my guest is Sebina Malik senior legal councel of VA consultancy good morning Mr. Ahmed how are you I'm very good thank you pleas to on your show today thank you very much for coming here and I will ask you the same question I ask everybody what is your morning drink I'd say Marico if you're asking me about coffee but otherwise I am a tea holic oh El gry or English breakfast tea with milk that's that's a very English thing I guess yeah absolutely good I made a quick introduction about you and what you do now but I would like that you take us through your legal Journey where did you start why did you start with the law and until you are here now I'm a second generation lawyer and I actually went into the legal profession as a mature student so prior to joining law school I was working as a TV presenter and uh I also used to negotiate contracts for a production uh business how I my journey into law how I joined the profession so it goes back to my childhood I'm a second generation lawyer in fact it was my father's brother who was the first lawyer in our family and all of us so that's including my siblings my cousins all of the children within the family at that time we all went through his office and gained work experience so usually school holidays we were in working alongside him and uh doing all admin duties and uh all the good work and so from there the journey sort of began and I got some legal exposure but along the way so after 20 years being a a high-profile lawyer within the community my uncle decided to open a TV channel and I then decided to follow him rather than go to law school at that point and I started to present programs and uh slots and he'd sort of guide me help me and I learned my way around media and it was lots of fun and at the same time my brother and my cousin opened a Production Studio and so then I became involved with negotiating contracts with agents hiring models for them hiring cars helicopters background setups whatever they needed to get the videos done they were also doing concerts live concerts so then we needed a big team and we all had our individual roles to play so most of my time was spent between well most of my we weekends I'd say was spent between Manchester and London of drive down and uh do all the meetings have the negotiations and then come back so anyway at this point um loving life work is great and it's a family business setup and it's all very safe and friendly and and and I love uh being in the in the limeline I get to the age of 27 and at this point my marriage fails unfortunately or fortunately whichever way you look at it and I decide to take a different direction in life so I have a young daughter and I think what is it that I really want to achieve in life do I really want to be doing this for the next 20 years and if I want a different direction then how am I going to achieve those goals and no longer interested in the Limelight I don't want to be popular I don't want followers I don't want all these friends because I'm looking at the wider picture of all these people that are within my circle how many of those would actually take a bullet for me if things went wrong and I could count them on two hands so at that point I just shut myself away I did my application for Law School Manchester University I attended the interview I got through and then uh 3 years I spent doing my degree after that I did another year my postgraduation did my LPC and then two years training contract in order to get onto the role and become a qualified sister so as I say age is no barrier it's important that you do pursue your goals you have a dream you want to achieve that and there's many many high-profile people the high-profile businessmen that have achieved success much later in life in the 50s 60s you are as young as you feel as as young as your mind is as young as your heart is and you really do need to keep evolving learning educating yourself as time goes on so potentially in a nutshell that's how I ended up in law I think you have quick introduction to the law as a profession and through the time you did Def fashion and you did the the events by getting involved and getting connected to running transactions like I don't know the contracts that you have been signing between the venue and the organizing the production company the um I don't know hiring the models and and and stuff like this was this the interesting part or what did actually make this change from your mind that you leave I don't know the glamour events TV being a presenter going into the I don't know backside of it which is just the legal work and the documents what was this change I mean why did you do this change the shift in mindset I think the trigger was my divorce and at that point I didn't want my old life I wanted to change so it was just at that point when they say I'm done I was literally done in every direction and at that point I thought I just want to you know when you want to just recreate yourself and be a new person and not be in that old mindset that was the shift so although I was exposed as a child to the legal world I was going to my uncle's office I would sit in the boardroom with him attend meetings we would go to court with him attend hearings well sit in the audience and watch and we would be in the office and watch him have the meetings and take notes and so was very very much involved in law as a child as well we all as I say it was a family business and we were all sort of put through the office and uh and it's expected in fact we have about 10 lawyers within the family of which the three are barristers and seven solicitors do have Medics as well five Medics and the rest have all gone wanted into business various different businesses so it sort of instilled into my mind as a child but I had a create very creative Street and that was why I went into sort of fashion of media at that point right um going back then as I say to that type of work I was doing yes heavily contract law was very much involved negotiation skills were very much involved and also I grew up in a very extended family unit so my father and his brothers they four brothers and one sister they live literally 5 minutes walking distance from one another the reason behind that is because they moved into a very aent area in the UK they came from abroad they did very well and then they wanted the children the Next Generation to have the best in life and at the same time we were a minority there were not many ethnic minority families living in the area so all my friends white um didn't understand my culture didn't understand my background didn't understand my religion and so my father and his brothers made the decision that we must stay together so the children are together and we can make family decisions whereby we instill culture and religion into the to into the Next Generation and they don't lose that because in a foreign country it's very very easy to step away and so I was raised by my grandma my Grandma had uh well my grandparents in fact both had had a great hand in raising all the grandchildren we would very much be involved with the the cultural side of things through my grandparents because my parents are very modern very liberal they sort of flowed through the times in fact my father as well as running his his day-to-day business he also was a sports agent on the side as a hobby so uh Sports and uh he he sort of dealt with Cricket growing up as I say my father was a businessman and my mom worked alongside him and uh at the same time he was sports agent on the side as a hobby so you know weekends evenings he would play at the local Club Lord and Cricket Club and coach and also he would uh do tournaments around and travel the world very very well-traveled man and uh spent a lot of my childhood playing Cricket with my father within the house we had a game room so snooker pool badminton you know we we we had all the facilities within the house and so I did spend a lot of time doing a lot of sports with my father swimming on the weekends and uh again my uncles were there my cousins were there we were a big family unit my grandparents would take us to MOS on the weekends I have been raised in a Muslim household Sun Muslim and they would take us for umra my father was specifically traveled to the east with onto this Middle East so that we the culture was instilled within us so could quite easily switch from wearing a short dress to putting my Abaya on without thinking about it because it's all cultural MH I could very easily sit on a dining table and use my knife and fog but at the same time my grandma for some reason possibly because she didn't want to do much washing up would sit all her grandchildren on the floor and put a blanket down either in the lounge or in the garden and then she'd have a big platter and we would all eat from that one platter and use our hands at times so that was quite humbling as in you know we did get the mixture and I'm very very grateful that my grandma did have that hand in in raising us and put instilling all that sort of culture into into all our grandchildren we thly enjoyed it so yeah I could quite easily switch and it was nice because uh we would have that private setup in the house which we didn't really show outside to our friends but it was nice just to have that Bond within the family I relate a lot to your um experience having um spending part of your childhood in law firm and with among fellow lawyers from the family because I have a similar experience my three Elder sisters are lawyers my dad is a lawyer as well I entered the law firm at the age of maybe 7 years old and most of his lawyers were the lawyers who work with him at the firm were all treated as family so he had even a lot of other friends and friends of friends who are lawyers within our community so I can relate to that and when I grew up and I decided to go into the profession it was very easy as a decision because I understood how it works from the very ear early beginning and I didn't have one role model I had a lot of images from each one in the family and each one of them had quite a strong position on someone who have a very is very well respected because of his image someone else who have being very very smart and sharp another one who was an Avid Reader and every single trait of of of each one of them have shaped a little bit how impressed I was with the profession and it shaped a lot how much I like it so I relate to that very much and I think having a stable strong family ties also creates something that is very strong in any lawyer's mind because when you have a strong family um household as you said you're always get a lot of guidance and these guidance heighten your morality and principles and religious ties were never apart so all of this H combined makes it a lot easier for a lawyer to have a high moral ground or a lot of connection to Justice and to fairness and these are values that all the lawyers should have so I can imagine that your childhood and upbringing was very much connected to to this and it made it easy for you to switch when you made a change in your life from media and the glamour of being a presenter and being into sports and so on and you had the chance to maybe do 10 other things that probably was much easier than studying law all of a sudden from start and switching to a very hard profession so I understand now I mean the background now makes a lot of sense it's nice to know that you can relate that you had a similar upbringing yeah yeah yeah yeah definitely then I will come to the next to the next question how did your start in the legal field in the UK I mean so as I say it was a three years degree a year LC and then two years training contract and I started my training contract with my uncle okay and whilst I was doing my training contract a job role came up one of the leading firms of Manchester in fact at the time penon LLP was the leading law firm of Manchester and very difficult to get into and and I did submit my application thinking in the back of my mind I'm not going to get this job I'm going to have to complete my training here probably and I just sent it off and didn't think about it a week or so later I got an email request Tes ing to have a a coffee just a general chat it wasn't an interview at all from penon so I agreed I attended and the head of Department took a liking to me to my story and offered me the physici which department was that that was in the litigation Department as as a a traine you have to do four different seats so at that point I was over the moon I'm thinking wow I'm in penon you know done it so approached my uncle and I told him I said you know I've got this offer and I really want to complete my training there I probably won't ever get this chance again please can you just let me go now I'm going to hang my notice in he was very very upset but he could also see that I have more potential at a bigger firm and uh he pushed me to go as well so I ended up there and I learned my way around the four seats I had to do I completed those and then after my training contract finished I ended up the litigation Department however not private client-based they at that point opened uh a department where they was doing third party funding which I understand is not huge in the UAE yet but in the UK it's quite a big area and so I learned how to deal with funders how to deal with insurance companies because we had about 11 or 12 different Books open with different insurance companies and I realized that sometimes claimants have very lucrative meritorious claims that they can't bring to the court doors because of lack of finances or resources and so third party funding was a very Fair way to help claimants bring Justice to the table and to level out the playing field especially if you're dealing with big boys on the other side once I sort of learned my way around third party funding I then came to the UAE to start doing talks about it now my journey in the UAE actually started in 2010 and what had happened at that point was Amna ala reg well she Chief register of of DC at the time and I think her positions changed now she reached out to me and we had a chat on Twitter and uh asked if I'd be interested in doing some Pro boner work for the difc because they didn't have many lawyers it was a handful I think two or three they had so I agreed to join and the four of us then there was three three chaps and myself and we started to run with the the pro bono scheme and I was doing it online based in my home in Manchester where I where I live so I know before you move here I mean you recently moved to the UAE permanently and to and you take taking this um job but you have been in the UAE more than 10 years ago and you've been connected uh to the UAE especially through the thefc prono can you tell us a little bit about that absolutely so in 2010 I was on a Twitter chat with Amna ala she was Chief register of DFC at the time I think her positions changed now and we decided that I'd come and meet to in in Dubai have a coffee and just discuss next steps and the thing is at the time they had limited people that wanted to be involved with pro bono the Mind as a UK lawyer you were pushed to do pro bono work even at University is part and parcel you give and you receive to the and you give back to the community and at that point as I say there were three other lawyers one was a a local lawyer in UAE one was an Egyptian lawyer in London and one was an Egyptian lawyer in Cairo I believe and then I joined so as a British lawyer in the UK the four of us run the scheme I was working from my home it was maybe half an hour to an hour a day not more than that and usually on labor law maybe it was all mainly labor law and as I said inquiries were just dealt with online I think a couple of times I had to speak to someone on the phone just to go into a bit more detail but there were short inquiries and and then if I was ever was in Dubai I would attend the clinics live and give the give advice and at that point as I say nobody really wanted to do any probo no work it was actually something that uh wasn't up and cominging or respected in any anyway in the Middle East at that time so then when the DFC did a huge ceremony and an award ceremony each of us each four of us received an award and Michael hang flew in from Singapore to present the awards and all of a sudden in Dubai it's a big deal everybody now wants to be part of the DFC Pro bonus scheme so I can quite happily say that I was one of the first lawyers to receive that award albeit I was a foreign lawyer working remotely I achieved that and I set a stance for everyone else to start following so yeah yeah that's very significant thank you so much for that I would like that you speak a little bit about your experience during the time you worked in Manchester with the third party funding because as you rightly said it's not something that is very commonly uh practiced in the UAE we've been that some companies are doing it some big law firms are doing it for for specific cases but I would like to learn more how does that work in in UK because it seems like a widely uh used practice yes I'm in a nutshell third party funding means that you have a fun involved so what you would do is initially you sign up with an insurance company to become panel lawyers and to that insurance company for example I have insurance for any legal work whether somebody tries to sue me or I want to sue somebody I've got that package linked to my home insurance so when I buy my home insurance I buy the legal package with it if God forbid that situation arises where either somebody tries to sue me or I want to sue somebody I can just approach the policy and say I'd like to bring a claim or I would like to be defended and they would then tell me that these are the panels lists that are available to you and you can choose I can also then go forward and say I don't want to use your panels listers because I want to use a firm that I'm more comfortable with but you have to give good reasoning to step aside from that uh insurance companies don't always agree and you can then appoint someone that you would like instead and what would happen then is you do not get paid during the life of the claim that that's the thing you're taking a risk and you only take that risk based upon a Bar's advice so right at the at the beginning your lawyer would submit everything to the buers to say that you know this is the case this is what's happened and come we get advice so so long as advice is more than 65% of success in court you would run with it because that's good and so at that point the funders that come in to back the insurance companies they provide all of funding that you need for any dispersements court fees Etc and what happens at the end of the case then is you claim all of that back under common law facility exists winner will claim all the costs back from the loser whereas I in the civil law system that is the case so this is how how third party funding would work and along the way so for example if we've issued proceedings and we are ready now to start trial we'd also then take a different policy out called after the event at policy so in the event if I was defending a claimant and they had third party funding in place and potentially there's still a small percentage where they could lose and so I'm taking a risk at that point I take an at policy out after the event and that would cover my client you just pay pay a small premium for that it could be £1,000 45,000 depending on the value of the claim and you then protect your client against any loss if your client was to lose the at policy would kick in and pay claim's cost to the defend well the potential defendant at the time if the defendant was to win so you know you cover your client off and there's policies available in any event and the thing is the mind set for third party funding is if you can't afford to knock on the court door then you would take funding businesses and corporations need to understand is that sometimes you do not want to disrupt your balance sheet so if you have got a large litigation going on in the court and thousands and thousands of dollars are going out of your your account on a weekly monthly basis quarter you've got your account for that as a loss so why would you not try try third party funding rather than disrupt your balance sheet if that's the case of course there would be merits you have to go through to in order to get the funding not everyone successful but it's it's open there for businesses and corporations too yeah I think it's a brilliant concept and and I can imagine as well that the UAE let's say clients the customers in the UAE corporations here are very much open for such a solution if it's offered to them the question comes here whether uh there are insurance companies who are willing to take on such risk and they are happy to to pay for such um Solutions have you seen any successful cases happening in the UAE within this period uh since I've been here as I say I've not done any third party funding I've only been in the UAE almost four months and a half four months ago I arrived but I have had panel discussions with third party funders based in UAE and they are running the businesses successfully as I say it's not large scale yet word needs to get out more in the market but there's potential and scope to grow so you recently moved to to the UAE like 4 months ago and um you're coming from the UK from Manchester and I can imagine that uh the UAE is quite different as a society and different as well as uh in the professional life so how does this change affect you so far it's not really affected me in a way where I've been homesick which is good and I appreciate that whichever country you travel to there are going to be differences but I've been traveling to Dubai since 2006 it's a hot spot for family vacation we come here a few times a year and as I say since 2010 I've been traveling here for for events and legal forums and I do a lot of public speaking in UAE as well so I think the difference was I'm no longer now coming staying in a hotel for a few weeks and going back I'm actually having to then rent a place and make it home and I think that was the biggest difference and learning to drive on the opposite side of the road quite yes that can be a challenge so I'm personally here for the last 16 years I believe the first two years for me was trying to understand how everything works even I came from a a civil law jurisdiction like Egypt and I lived also in Cairo my dad is a lawyer and I grew up in a law firm and that is very similar to how local emirati law firms here work and operate but still the U is a very unique place for a foreign lawyer to come and practice here we have three different jurisdictions we have federal courts we have uh huge difference between what the lawyer or an advocate can do and what a legal consultant can do either if even if they speak the same language and got the exact same education so how easy was it for you to move from Manchester from UK to Dubai the UAE I'd say the challenges are present albeit I've overcome them as they have Arisen the main thing is I've not been homesick so far good so that's positive and as I say driving on the other side of the road was the the biggest challenge I faced which is not related to law but you know on a personal level coming from a common law jurisdiction the difference is are huge in a civil law so what I decided to do was join a local law firm as soon as I touch soil and I joined Ral law firm in business bay run by Mr ehab he has two emirati partners he's Egyptian himself lovely chat and I learned the system the civil law system so I just sat with the lawyers I talked to them and I asked them questions I looked at the systems that they were using to do the searches for example if a property disputes Arisen how are they doing the researches as to how far the property developed who the developers are etc etc and how they put the files together the case together to attend court so I was just observing I was learning I was watching asking lots of questions made my connections and within the law firm mhab has all facilities available so in-house accountant in house attendant who will go to the police station if anything happens inh housee local lawyers everything is within the premises so it's very easy for me to just go from room to room and learn what I needed to learn and so again Shi in mindset Shi in Direction learn something new and you can't really make a comparison between the two because they're just so different with civil laws you know it goes back stems back and say from Roman law times and that's the basis for the structure of civil law it's set set in stone and it can't be changed whereas common law is going back to England when the King was ruling and it's legislative and it can be changed and evolved as time goes on the system in itself I've come working as a solicitor so my role would be to make that initial contact with the client take down all the details of the case to then issue proceedings so I would draft the claim form draft the particulars of the claim I'd then serve the defendant review the defense do a reply to defense take my client's instructions draft the witness statements do the directions question do all the the case management steps so that's all on me I do advise to C to the barister so advise the council to say this is what's happened this is what we think you know can you suggest case law on this matter and your thoughts so you know you need to prepare the barister as well before they attend any hearing I don't Advocate myself but the reason why I would approach a bar is to then attend to do the advocacy side of things an EMB Barrister is only as good as the instructions and the evidence that you put forward to them so there's a lot for me to do is Lista and uh coming then here as you say the the roles are very much divided and then the judge is making all the decisions and the lawyers are not doing even half the work that I would be doing sat in the at a desk in UK so as I say I came to to UAE initially and made my connections as soon as I landed in February I was with Ral full-time for 2 months and it was a great learning opportunity and we are still connected and we are still working together and there's lots of collaboration opportunities there but at the same time a month ago I also joined a international law firm in the DFC that's a new area of law that's come about for me as a say um blockchain digital assets web 3 at the moment we are tokenizing assets and so we've started the real estate in real estate you could have a property just hypothetically speaking it could be $100,000 and you can't find one investor to take that off your hands and you really do need to raise $100,000 so what you could do then is tokenize divide it into pieces tokenize it say $1,000 each then the tokens would potentially be your digital registry on the blockchain and sell each one for $1,000 and you got 100 investors you've got you've made your money so it's a good way of of financing when you need to on the blockchain everything is secure because it's digitalized and it can't be tampered with fraud is eliminated and as well as real estate we've tokenized carbon credits again helps the environment we have tokenized in sports law where if a athlete has a contract fans can now buy into that on the blockchain and they can receive a monthly investment in the form of uh interest so all of this is governed by a smart contract I have not come across any lawyers yet that can draft smart contracts so we then have an IT department that does that for us and I suppose the way forward in the future would be for lawyers to also learn coding and become more technically involved with the work because that is the way forward so your your smart contract can be designed in a way where you have triggers if x happens then y will also happen happen if a happens then B happens and so for example if uh if you're in a sports contract and if you could put in there if a player leaves I receive x amount so as soon as it leave you'd automatically receive that amount so you just put your triggers in it's much faster it's much quicker eliminate the supply chain so for example if you are in uh although real estate owners a businesses have not really come into the blockchain yet because lack of Regulation and even within UAE we we are working with Regulators so we are working with the by land Department we're working with uh adgm DC rera and having discussions as to how to align regulations so that there's more stability and there's uh more confidence within the market to bring more players into the blockchain and at the same time as I say we've started to do talks about it with the Dubai government and we are available on the stages a very very interesting area for me to get involved in at this stage and it's evolving it's growing and I hope to be a part of the success going forward so yes VA Consultants are doing great work and as well as tokenizing assets and an asset can be anything it could be real estate it could be carbo credit it could be Sports law it could be data that youve receed it could be a form of art anything can be tokenized so I'll take you to a particular asset class which is the one of the most um desirable asset in especially in a place like the UAE and we see a lot a lot of investors of flocking to buy real estate here especially from neighboring countries where they have U maybe conflict or they have financial troubles in their economies they run to save the money by investing in real estate in the UA and that's why the property Market have surged a lot in the last few years when we talk about tokenizing real estate there are a few challenges because of the of the regulations I understand that the band Department still requires to have the ultimate benefit official owner registered and named for each owner whether it's a company or even an individual to be registered with the band Department how do you go about that kind of challenge when we are tokenizing the real estate itself I'm not going to go into any detail I'm sure sure uh but if anyone's interested they can always Reach Out offline and we can have a consult it is possible it could be as I say I don't want to say too much okay on the spot and uh it's just a general sort of overview of what we do because as well as as tokenization we do fintech setups we also do Sports law because of public demand and we have been working on Film Production contracts so one we've completed is done and currently I can't disclose details because we've signed n but we are currently involved in another production at the moment do you tokenize media products as well we will be doing yeah okay so we are it's it's an area of law that we are going to look into so Sports law and media law we are going to expand into tokenizing in that area as well that can be very very interesting it will be so the the moment you close that deal we'll bring you back to talk about it okay we spoke that you work a lot with fex and with uh startups of businesses can you tell us in your personal opinion since you are working here for the last few month and you're you're coming with a UK background which of the two systems would you would be favorable in your opinion for investment or for fintech companies or startups in general who are looking for funding in comparison for civil for the civil law I would say on a personal level common law would Prevail within a contract and my reason for that always uh make a point with the story I'm neutral here yeah so my reason for that would be that you have between London and Singapore business is coming into UA set so all the economy May well the population I should say is around 2 million you've got about 2 billion businesses coming into UA setting up and people are a few hours away so countries which are 3 or 4 hours away people are just traveling in and out there's lots of traffic in and out of Dubai now as I say between Singapore and London all these businesses are coming to set up here want commercial security they want to know that if things go wrong we are protected and they should be given a choice and the beauty of it is thec has and adgm have very much understood this point that if you give the population the choice they will then have that conf confidence within the system and that's exactly what the common law brings it brings transparency it brings confidence it brings a level playground and you know that if I was to well if a client is thinking if I set up a business and things go commercially wrong I know the system I know the common law system and the case management is very very robust the way that lawyers are trained in the common law system is very very robust and also to the point where emirati judges have been trained in common law to sit and make decisions so for that reason and for the economy to keep growing and for businesses to keep having that trust within the system I would say common law should be in place with the option of civil law if if clients want that in place but as I say you know it's it's more of a commercial decision and to bring that Level Playing Field for everyone excited to see what the future brings welcome to the UAE and thank you very much for being part of Monday legal thank you so much I've thoroughly enjoyed it today it's been great fun thank you very much and this is your do from Monday legal see you next week