[Music] [Music] hello I'm Ahmed Elnaggar and this is Monday Legal today my guest is Hari Krishna welcome Harry thank you very much for joining us thanks for having me Harry is a very dear friend of mine he is an Indian UK qualified lawyer he practice in United States of America in Singapore in India in UK and in the UAE he is handling complex uh and high-risk uh um matters related to Maritime uh technology and um other more complex legal work you know we'll get to that later thank you very much for joining me I start with asking the same question to everybody what is your coffee uh black black yeah every morning I start my day with a nice cup of joe very good and and you do it yourself or you sort it out from somewhere uh well I make my own coffee every morning uh I don't grind it I I buy ground coffee uh but uh I get organic ground coffee from Ikea wow okay nice a bite and bulk and yeah like three months at a time really really good really good how did you become a lawyer how did this happen like why would you pushed into this or it was my choice what what happened yeah you know this is like uh the one question that you you never get the same answer from two lawyers absolutely um for for me it was always kind of there in the background like my grandfather was a lawyer but he died when I was quite a quite young like I was nine so it wasn't as though there was like a constant figure that you know people were like yeah yeah I mean uh there all these great aunts going oh yeah you should be a lawyer like your grandfather but but there was no immediate presence you know so for most of the time it was uh you know I I kind of gradually got into it like all my time when I was in school it wasn't like I was actively thinking of a career it was just let's have fun see what happens uh what I used to do was and this was big in India back then when I was growing up uh a lot of uh trivia quizzes so you you'd go you'd compete in these quiz competitions and you'd win prizes so from early on I had this thing in my mind that people would ask you questions and if you answered them you'd get prizes or you get money oh my God that's how you got hooked into being the smart guy in the room it yeah well I mean the helpful guy let's say yes yes yes I feel you so that's kind of how you know just answering questions and winning prizes kind of gradually led to me going to law school yeah I accidentally ended up in law school I don't know why they chose me but they did and yeah I mean and again even after I started law school I was in two minds I mean half it through law school I quit I was like I don't want to do this but then I spent a year at home and I was like actually you know what uh it seems like a fun pretty good career let's see what happens I went back and here we are the U is a place where we were we are kind of privileged that they have two legal systems in one jurisdiction how does this affect your profession because you're UK qualified you have have done some work in in different jurisdictions and how how did the UAE being able to cater for civil law and common law lawyers at the same time have helped you become uh a UAE based lawyer excellent question I mean look uh it's a unique jurisdiction um when I grew up in India I had no conception of what the civil law was you know yeah maybe we had we had like uh at at one point of time when I was in law school we had a French lawyer come in and say oh yeah we have a different legal system heard him or her I don't even remember uh and then forgot all about it and then years later I actually before I moved here I was in Louisiana uh went there for an llm and that's when it really uh you know occurred to me that there are these two competing legal systems and Louisiana as you know is the only civil law J jurisdiction in the United States so living there and working there uh and you know uh my girlfriend at the time now my wife she was a big civil law buff and she was doing a lot of research into uh the civil law Traditions she was also very interested in the Middle East and and Arab uh legal traditions and so forth so you know secondhand knowledge I was like oh wow this is really something unique uh but I didn't again think about it too much until I landed here and you know I realized that the two systems don't just work in parallel they they kind of integrate in in all these uh unexpected ways you have the civil law system a lot of people think that the civil law system is somehow uniquely Middle Eastern or Arab but not quite you know the French legal system right in turn inherits uh Traditions from you know the from Roman law uh but but you have the the codified legal system from France on one side and then you have the English legal system and in the UAE uh if you go back in history uh there was a huge British influence here yes um so even now I mean you have the the the uh you have Arab culture and language and traditions on the site and then you have uh a huge influence of the English language and English law uh in the business world you know so so you have contracts governed by English law uh more often than not uh and nobody bats an eyland they're like oh yeah we'll we'll agree to English law yeah the consequences can be they don't understand what they're signing up to exactly and the other way around too you know people go oh yeah we agree Dubai law right you know it's it's not even UAE law Dubai law so you have people agreeing to you know people doing business and uh in English uh they use the English language they they use English law in their contracts but then you have the wider UA jurisdiction which is an Arabic language civil law jurisdiction uh and and the two intersect and then you have the free zones right the the the the financial free zones which are again common law jurisdictions so you know and explaining this to the average person outside the UAE that yeah we're a civil law I live in a la jurisdic civil jurisdiction um and but you can have the option to yes to to enter into contracts under English law or you enter into contracts under UAE law but you can can still go to an English language code yes so explaining this is just is difficult is that brings me to the next question which is can you please simplify it as much as you can for our audience we want you to say okay just just give an example you don't have to give a comprehensive answer but we want What occasion where you tell your client let's sign this contract based on the common law and let's sign this contract based on civil law and um which court for example if we are taking the common law would you go for adgm or a DFC court and just just make a simple distinction so that the average person who is not a lawyer can understand this there's a lot of people who want the flexibility that that English law provides English law and English civil procedure provides but at the same time uh the DFC and adgm codes were really designed to support Financial Services businesses they're not necessarily designed to support the average Jo so um so yes on the one hand you have you know uh the advantages that come with the common law you know and and and the English language and so forth but at the same time it can be very expensive simply uh on a on a cost comparison the civil law codes are a lot cheaper um but the flip side is they go through cases at the speed of light so to get a civil law judge in the onow courts uh to give your case the level of attention that one would expect in a common law code uh that's asking for them possible yes I I totally agree with it they they go through cases very quickly I know the uh that the on show codes they're doing quite a bit to uh to change some of these perceptions to improve the quality of service uh in Abu Dhabi for example now you have dual language quotes all the papers are in English and Arabic uh and you can ask for translations into other languages like like like Hindi or Udu or you know so uh if you have the of a you know one of these uh dual language systems and and you're a small client you're yeah a small company or a private individual that's probably the way to go just very generally speaking um but also we have the arbitration centers uh arbitration generally tends to be cheaper than litigation uh again yeah generalizing um so but uh for anything that's more complex uh and and high value I would uh and again I might be biased here but I would definitely say that the common law and and uh either the English language quotes or or arbitration would be better suited than the onow quotes system because it's just a very busy system and you don't get the level of attention that the sophisticated disputes the complex disputes requireed was required I want to go back to your speciality I mean you specialized in Maritime and your uh what inspired you to shipping lawyers always talk about you know uh War Stories We we have loads of them you know I just need to look in my pockets to you know picking stor no how how I got into Mod Time law was this um I grew up like 50 feet from the sea right so every morning i' look out and I'd see ships ships right um and my whole my hometown is All Ships and shipyards uh the Navy and so uh shipping was something that you know everyone was involved in everyone and I knew had something or the other to do with shipping so when I went to law school I was like yeah law is kind of interesting but uh how about shipping okay so you found the connection between the two interesting things and and as luck would have it while I was in law school the the top shipping lawyer in India at the time uh Mr venkateswaran he came to my law school to deliver some guest lectures so I went up to him and I said I really want to get into maritime law would you have any advice for me and he goes how about you come and work for me so that's kind of how it happened so so you know I went straight from law school to work for him and uh I loved it uh so he then said look before you get too busy uh I've been there a year in in Bombay uh working at the Bombay High Court you said if you get too busy your clients will not let you go so why didn't you go get a master's degree abroad because in India that counts for something and like you you need to really see how business is done outside the country and so forth so uh so I went to the US for a master's degree in martime law so the role of your first manager or your first boss in this business uh extended to be one of the mentors he was guiding you to absolutely uh he he was my teacher first because he was doing these lectures on martime law which is how I met him uh and the and he was really my uh my mentor from from day one mentor and teacher from day one and it was never a qu it was never a uh an employer employee relationship it was always this is what you need to do to get better at being a lawyer or this is what you need to do to you know get ahead in your career it was always uh his approach was always like this is what you need to do to help yourself you know honestly I see this in the legal field a lot the the relationship between the employer and employee is never ever existing I I saw my dad mentoring and teaching a lot of his staff a lot of lawyers work with him I never seen him saying this lawyer work for me he always refer to everybody as like working with me and he always gave the very high respect to everyone uh even if they are the paralal at the traine level they was always called them with the sir and master and and gave them a very very valuable respect and I learned this from him is that the relationship between lawyer who are more senior and the junior ones and even the the the training ones have to be extended and and it always like that and I was lucky I was mentored by him and by another Swiss lawyer and both of them have treated me in a very nice and respectable way and I think it's kind of our thing as lawyers that we do not look at the Juniors as they work for us we always see the future that they are going to grow up to be something I really respect the working remotely or working from home uh aspect and I see it as very beneficial that we even the legal industry in general have have developed a lot with with this kind of arrangement but the human interaction the face-to-face interaction when when there's an idea that came to my mind and I speak to the uh junior lawyers immediately to tell them it's good if you write this article it's good if you do this research come and see me how I'm doing this or how am I answering the client seeing me in a meeting face to face understanding the emotional reactions as well it is very important and I I think it cannot be more than 50% remote there must be a face to face interaction if that if that I mean at at you know for for trainees for junior lawyers the the more FaceTime you get the better and and I don't mean FaceTime in the sense of you know in the bigger law firms it's like oh I need to be in front of the partner to show him or her that I'm working uh but but flip that on its head to see okay what can I learn AB by being up close with with these more senior watching how this happens this this takes me to the other one to the other question the next one we have a very stressful job in general deadlines a lot is at stake whether safety of a client or or their money um how do you prepare yourself for tough days for important meetings do you have kind of a special rituals um I wouldn't say I have special rituals uh for me what works is if I try to keep every day the same uh and that's the real rual routine yeah uh because you know uh and this is true of lawyers more than other professionals were creatures of habit you know the again the flip side is the there's a you know lawyers are also more easily prone to mental health issues substance ifs you know so I try to keep things simple you know I I try to eat the same breakfast every day for example you know try not to change anything in the morning you I hate waking up early but I have to you know especially when I'm in a trial or you know in an arbitration hearing goes on for days and days and you have to work late and start early uh but keeping things as regular and routine as possible really helps me uh I I I I I'm not a big believer in Superstition or special rituals or I need to have my special pen or you know there are people who do that it works for them I I actually do something very simple as as you said you know I I choose not to buy any other shirts than white mhm so I only have white shirts I I don't do Stripes I don't do other colors it's just simple my size white thank you very much just to liberate myself from thinking in the morning what am I going to wear the only thing I will choose would be the tie and I match it with my eyeglasses so I just have one pair yeah okay Harry you practiced in US you practiced in India you practiced in UK Singapore and you ended up in the UAE I want you to tell me two things first what do you see is the major difference between practicing law in these jurisdictions like in terms of clients maybe the legal environment how um how how your colleagues do you see any difference between all of them and I want you to tell me the story of you ending up in the UAE in the end so I I I should start with a clarification I wouldn't say I practiced in some of those jurisdictions you just mentioned I uh I mean I lived and worked in uh in the UK in the US here uh but uh the UK and Singapore for example I was living here and working there like conducting you know trials and arbitration hearings there uh and in the UK I'd have to go spend months on and you know dealing with stuff there so uh and in the US I I never qualified as a US attorney I I worked under the supervision of other lawyers uh but really uh in the shipping World it doesn't matter it's all the principles are largely the same this this is how precise as lawyers they cannot just take whatever that is not accurate enough they have to stop you correct you and then they go ahead with the conversation go ahead my all my insurance won't cover it yeah makes sense um no but uh the the biggest difference uh two big differences between the UAE and any other jurisdiction one is volume right uh other jurisdiction the US uh the UK by which I mean England uh Singapore India these are high volume jurisdictions there's loads of cases constantly uh and you know people are running from Pillar To Post you know just keeping up with uh with their schedules with with uh with their trial dates and hearing dates and so forth the UAE has always had lower volume uh and you know uh and and which is why you don't see a lot of lawyers who uh super specialize in just one area you don't have left eyeball surgeons you know uh so so the volume is not as much as other places but the values the the values of the claim sizes tend to be very high because this is a major pass through port uh the port of jabali uh and the offshore energy industry the the onshore energy industry the construction sector these are Mega projects that we see around there there's massive uh uh amounts of Commodities being traded so uh any sector you look at the values are very very high so you wouldn't have the average you know 10 20 $30,000 claims that you see in some of these other jurisdictions uh the the claims tend to be far bigger um the other difference that I see is people tend to be very commercial uh there isn't a lot of patience for uh I want to fight this on a point of principle let's try to settle this that's so you see a lot of out of course settlement here absolutely uh and people don't want to I mean it's uh there's the cost Factor because uh Legal Services uh court fees all of those tend to be quite High here uh even compared to uh you know the usual uh cities that people mention like London or New York uh Dubai legal costs are comparable if if not higher so uh so you can see why people don't want to spend very much uh on on litigation or or arbitration because the costs tend to be higher uh and and that's one factor the other factor of course is people tend to be entrepreneurial the culture here is definitely entrepreneurial Hustler culture where absolutely yes um where people want to move on they want to do deals you know they don't want to get derailed they don't want to stop in the stress and the spend their energy into fight and conflicts and so on and at the end of the day I might be doing uh our fellow professionals at this service here but uh litigation or or arbitration or any dispute is an obstacle to doing business it's something that derails your your professional or business Journey you have to stop what you're doing pay attention to this other stuff you know whereas the sooner you can move on with things better it is and and that's something that uh in the UA you find a lot more people just want to keep moving on uh so it's it's not one one way is better or the other it's just that the system here is set up to encourage people to move move on uh whereas in other systems uh you know you could be backed by Insurance you there are other factors that come into play to say okay why do you not want to settle quickly you know uh or if you don't what are the consequences uh here I would say there isn't that much of a of a net to protect you if you don't move for it has to be a little bit commercial a little bit convenient you have to think think of the economical uh factors before you go to court and this is probably one of the reasons I always try to avoid um going into litigation of any kind and and uh rightly so and and that's why you see that there's such an encouragement of alternate dispute resolution here you see what uh is happening at the federal level and and at the level of each Emirate uh there's a lot of encouragement of mediation for example uh and I would I would recommend mediation to any party that is involved in a dispute because uh if you can try to resolve things amicably with a trusted intermediary why not and and again uh a lot of business people tend to not realize that U an arbitrator or a judge cannot be a mediator they have to find one way or the other absolutely there might be able to encourage the parties to go find a settlement or or give them a nudge one way or the other but at the end of the day their job is to say this is the law these are the facts and this is my conclusion and only one party can win right uh some some disputes can end up with one party winning on some issues and the other party winning on the other there is a win and a loss whereas with mediation it's different it's different it's it's about what works and how can people move on of course with the mediation you can involve a lot of expertise you can save a lot of time you can um actually sit down reduce the amount of emotions reduce the amount of uh hard feelings or negative energy in the room and the involvement of other legal professionals who would like to entertain how angry is their clients yes I I I totally agree with you and in my opinion um I would always try to go to court uh as a last resort so try everything before absolutely it there is no point of just from a conflict or from an misunderstanding into a litigation so let's sit down let's meet let's have a coffee talk about it let's bring an expert let's bring another expert and and try to do all what we can just to resolve it out of court because when it goes to to court it's really not business and it's really not expertise it's just the law when I was in law school my uh alternate dispute resolution Professor used to say that with alternate dispute resolution you have to find uh the solution that people are least unhappy with okay because everyone feels like they're losing something you know when they compromise but what is the least the least unhappiness makes sense makes sense makes perfect sense um You didn't tell me how did you end up in Dubai so uh as I as I told you earlier uh when I was in the states uh I met the girl who's now my wife um and uh she's American she's a lawyer uh I was an Indian lawyer and I I wasn't qualified in in England at the time uh and I had always thought that I'd be going back to Bombay right to the Bombay high court but when I met her things changed because India at the time did not allow foreign lawyers so uh so I was like looking around I wanted a solution right so I went to my professors uh in New Orleans at at Tan University uh and I asked for advice and they introduced me to some people here um to what was then one of the largest law firms in the Middle East uh and they were like oh you know what actually we're looking for Indian lawyers to join us here uh because we're looking to enter the Indian market and uh we need people who understand English law uh and maritime law and India I was like I'm your man exactly yeah a perfect match so I was like like H okay I check all those boxes and boom you know but unlike a lot of people we did not come here thinking we're going to be here for 2 years or 3 years or whatever or we go we'll go back home cuz back home meant different things to go person yes you know so we just stayed until now so uh so yeah and and you know uh and part of just staying here man having kids here who this is the only home they've known and you know and and uh Dubai really encourages you know people coming and putting down Roots so it's it's been great that way for us very interesting very inspiring so you found a perfect match and your first employer found the perfect match so it was meant to be amazing it was yeah do you love your job um sometimes I do okay that took a while yeah I mean look I I I like the the analytical side of being a lawyer to try to find an answer to find try to find a solution what I don't like is what we were discussing earlier that at the end of the day what we help people with as lawyers is uh especially as disputes lawyers is uh is a distraction from their everyday life so you know uh some of my clients tell me openly that I'm one of the last people that like to speak with yeah you know it's like uh I saw an email the other day from a client saying uh I I I wish I could say I look forward to working with you again but I don't want to be in that position again you know so so that's something I don't quite enjoy uh of course when you go uh when you talk to larger clients larger commercial Enterprises there's another aspect to it which is uh dispute management dispute avoidance how do you proactively try to avoid getting into litigation and that's something that I enjoy working on like at the at the stage of negotiating a contract or negotiating a big acquisition that's where uh we lawyers can add value by saying hey uh let's try to predict what could go wrong and see how we can deal with it right uh but again uh it it needs uh it needs a needs buying from the clients to actually invest in that sort of pre proactive dispute avoidance strategy so you always advise your clients to come to you before they decide side absolutely absolutely I mean uh how a chat about their ideas their future plans with the business with the family or whatever just to make sure that you explain the consequences of these decisions yeah yeah yeah you're absolutely right and and the thing is they're also my favorite kind of clients you know uh it's always difficult to work on a case where you know you get a call from a client saying uh I been sued uh can you jump on the team now you know uh whereas if you get a call that says we expect to be sued 6 months from from now can you look through the papers and see where this is headed you're already well prepared absolutely so and and there are both kinds of clients you know so some some people try to you know put things off until the last minute until it's in inevitable that you have to engage lawyers and some people think oh yeah it's it's a good idea to get people involved beforehand right so do you see the UAE cost for common law lawyers is um let's say an obstacle um I I I think it has more to do with uh the the the first thing that you mentioned which is the there are a lot of first generation entrepreneurs here uh and if you look at the history of Dubai uh this explosive growth has only happened uh during the shik Muhammad era since 2006 so it's not a very long time and you don't have as many multigenerational businesses uh as you would find in other uh business capitals of the world so you have some family businesses uh but the a a majority of the businesses here are first generation entrepreneurs so um and that has an impact on how they look at you know Professional Services and uh and I mean and not just lawyers but any Professional Services all right they look at uh accountants and bankers and and insurance at them the same way it's like I want I want as little to do with you lot as possible I'm going to use you when I get in trouble I'm going to give you a call I have your number I'll call you when I need you yeah so so so that that is the next step in the evolution of of Dubai and of the UAE as a as a whole as a business Hub you know to get to that level of maturity where people have been around for a while and have seen this before and it's not the first time that they're going to court you know so the number of times people have told me oh this the first time I've had to engage a lawyer right and and and it's not just something to do with their personal life These are business people you know uh who are running fairly large businesses oh I've not had to do this before so when we get to a place where people have done this before a number of times uh and again that's uh what I see in places like the us one of the world's most litigious societies uh and India where I'm from which is another of the world's most litigious societies so uh you know India in particular where people have been uh in court for like Generations you know where somebody's grandfather sued somebody else's grandfather and other grandchildren of fighting with continuously seen I've seen this in Egypt as well putting in mind all the development that the UAE is doing and the changes and the um development that's happening in many of the UAE courts uh we see that more and more they're accommodating more languages they are accommodating the technology into the legal system accommodating even documents and accepting uh some documents not to be translated anymore because the norm is is to accept it in a certain way where do you see the future of the legal industry in the UAE specifically uh in in common law jurisdiction where can it develop even more for the future and what could be your advice to uh junior lawyers who want to be well equipped for this new um development thank you excellent question um as we've been talking about you know there's a lot going on in the UA right now uh one of the things I should mention is the speed at which this country adopted remot remote hearing technology in the courts right where during the co lockdown the rest of the world the courts had shut down uh the UAE cods just went onto Microsoft teams and remote hearings within a span of like two weeks or something yeah few days and it was on um so the the speed at which things change here is remarkable uh it has its downsides for example in the last 18 months we've seen so many new laws just wholesale rewrite of legislation because the laws that were passed 50 years ago when this place became one country they have not necessarily kept up to date so let's do a 21st century rewrite for the next 50 years great idea the challenge that comes along with that is we have all these lawyers you and me included starting from scratch starting from scratch exactly absolutely so so in terms of what I see over the next 12 to 18 months a lot of us will get to grips with what the law actually says right so absolutely um so I think uh 2024 is going to be the year of better legal advice because the other thing is uh a lot of lawyers like you and I you know people have come here and have been working here for the last 10 15 20 years have have been used to working in a constant state of flux so it's you know constant firefighting you know moving on to the next challenge and the next challenge uh so if if as we expect the next few years are going to be relatively uh stable in terms of law making and in terms of uh adapting to these new laws new changes um I see that there will be an opportunity for lawyers to upskill themselves right rather than just focus on the immediate Here and Now what does my client need today to taking a broader view of what do I need to do for myself and for my clients for the over the next 10 years as you know I'm involved with the International Association of young lawyers yes uh and and we're both involved with the Emirates legal Network yes so you will see and uh this is my prediction for the next few years we'll see a lot more of professional networking and professional upscaling uh because it's solely needed you know it cannot be a place where you know it's it's the other side of the the coin of you know you only go to a lawyer uh in an emergency where do you see the AI contributing to the UAE and the legal uh Society I mean specifically the legal society and the legal profession in the UAE um I I I do think that AI has a role to play uh I'm not quite sure where exactly yet because legal research uh using AI is still up in the air uh with hallucinations and what have you yeah uh but if you uh if you have uh tailored uh models uh and we we're seeing some of those uh I don't know the correct uh technical terms for it but uh ra rather than using you know these large language models people are actually adapting them using closed libraries yes uh and and the accuracy levels are vastly increased so there are some law firms that are rolling these out to their clients for them to use to negotiate contracts to assist with legal research and so forth uh with this period I would like to do a very small game with you so I'm going to ask you a question and based on your answer uh we will compare it to the answer that the AI is going to come up with so who would win in a custody case of a pet in the UAE um would it be the one who bought the pet or the one who is walking the pet every day uh the one who bought the pet uh because the UAE does not recognize uh beneficial ownership it only recognizes registered ownership you don't have a concept of trusts under on show Law so I think whoever whoever's names on the documents is going to win don't you think the um best interest of the dog will be in uh in as a a factor that will make the civil law Court uh change their opinion well I mean if if it had to do with compensation probably but in terms of who gets the dog I don't think so the one with the receipt yeah okay so let me ask the same question to chat gbt the outcome of a pet custody case such as for a dog would typically depend on various factors and there is no straightforward answer as to whether the person who bought the dog or the one who walks it every day would win the court may consider aspects like the welfare of the animal proof of ownership the ability of each party to provide care and and emotional attachment however it's important to note that the legal framework regarding pets in the UAE might not be as extensively developed as in some other jurisdictions legal advice from a professional familiar with the U law would be necessary for a much more understanding of such cases and in other words Chach we don't know okay I get it Harry thank you so much for being here with us this is your legal dose of Monday legal see you next week