The Space: Leadership and law - episode two

Emma Dennis: Welcome to The Space where we break down barriers and perceptions about a career in law by talking to the talented people of Gowling WLG. I am Emma Dennis, diversity inclusion and wellbeing senior manager at Gowling WLG so join me as we get to dive under the surface and understand the diverse experiences and perspectives of our people, how they have got to where they are and what they wished they had known.

Today I am joined by Sunil Kakkad, retired partner and now consultant at Gowling WLG. Sunil is also part of the UK Leadership team and a member of Gowling WLG's International Board. Hi Sunil. Thanks for being here today. It is really good to have you. How are you doing?

Sunil Kakkad: I am well. Thank you, Emma and thank you very much for inviting me to share my experience with you.

Emma: Thank you. I have got a whole host of questions for you because I know you have had a really long and interesting career. So, I wanted to start today by asking you about sort of your early years in your career. I guess the start of your career and what led to the start of your career. So, I know that you came to the UK back in the 70s.

Sunil: Interestingly, I came to England as part of the expulsion of Asians from Uganda in 1972 and the vast majority and I would say probably 90% of the Asians who settled in the UK were either British citizens or had a right to live in the UK, but the term refugee was universally applied to them, so it is correct to say that I came here as a refugee in the broadest sense of the word because Britian was generous enough to take us all in and give us the start in life that we all had, but it wasn't a refugee in the traditional sense if you look at what is happening today in Europe and in the Middle East.

I suppose maybe the best place to start is why law and I haven't got a simple answer for it because actually law was not my chosen profession in the sense that I didn't choose that I should become a lawyer, it was chosen for me, and more than anything by my grandfather who felt that he needed a lawyer in the family and I don't know why because this is my paternal grandfather, everyone on my mother's side is a doctor and she never harboured any ambitions that either I or my brother should become doctors or enter the medical profession.

So, I suppose I stumbled into it largely because of an overwhelming expectation that that is what I should do, and I do not think I had ever thought of an alternative career until I qualified as a lawyer. So having qualified as a lawyer that is what I have for the last 40 plus years. I have no regret about it because actually it has been from my perspective both a stimulating as well as a rewarding profession to be in. Rewarding in the sense of it is constantly challenging the work that I do. I trained as a corporate lawyer and continued to practice as a corporate lawyer until I retired as a partner last year, still chair our Corporate group in the work that we do is challenging. It is very, very time sensitive so you are really living by the seat of your pants. Clients constantly demand solutions that are not obvious, and you have, to find them and the pace at which we do things now is very different from when I started back in the 80s. So that sort of broadly, it wasn't a career choice as much as a path that had been chosen for me.

The irony is that my grandfather who was very, very keen that I should become a lawyer was disappointed when I told him that I was becoming a lawyer because I had decided to become a solicitor, and on his mind, lawyers will be people who wore gowns and wigs and appeared in court.

Emma: Yeah.

Sunil: He regarded I think almost until the time he died which was about just a year before I qualified as a lawyer. So, the sad thing was he never actually saw me qualify as a lawyer but when I started my articles as a solicitor, he was disappointed that I had chosen to go to what he regarded as a less noble profession than the Bar, not realising actually in those days and for a very, very long time after I qualified as a solicitor, the Bar was a difficult place to make a living in. If it was difficult for an Indian in the 1980s to succeed as a solicitor in the City, it was far more difficult to succeed as a barrister. And one certainly needed an independent income or a source of income that was not dependent on your success as a barrister, which I didn't have the benefit of. So, I had no real regrets about having chosen to do what I did once I had decided that that was the path I would follow, but for my grandfather it was very different. I think he had notions of me becoming a bit like Rumpole of the Bailey or something similar. I think he watched too much Crown Court in the afternoons.

Emma: Probably yeah. I think sometimes the impression of what a profession is is based on not always on the reality is it of things you've seen.

Sunil: Yeah it is very different if you go back I think to the Victorian times, there was always an expectation amongst middle class families that their children would become doctors or they would become lawyers or they would go into the army or the clergy and it is the same with families who have emigrated to the UK. I did my articles in a firm which was founded by two very, very entrepreneurial brothers who were Jewish, and the vast majority, if not all, of the partners in that firm were Jewish and I remember them telling me that for them the chosen path was always doctor, then accountant, then lawyer and those were the three things you did. I think for Asians and particularly Indians, law was actually the last thing that people considered. By nature, Indians and particularly Gujaratis, which is what I am, are very entrepreneurial, so I think Gujarati parents at the time so you are talking about the 1970s and 80s would have expected their children to go into accountancy because that would then lead to some kind of success in industry. If not, then a doctor or a pharmacist, and law was unusual. So, when I decided to become a lawyer at university, I think I was one of three people in the law faculty at my university when I started and when I left, I don't think there were more than ten people over that three-year period who were of Asian or a Black origin. And then at law school, which is Guildford in those days, you only had three options because they were the Law Society's colleges of law and Guildford was the easiest one for me to get to. I was one of probably ten people doing what we call the Law Society finals in those days, or who were not-White middle class, so that was for, it was quite a rude awakening because you were suddenly in the midst of very, very bright and very able people, but you realised instantly that you were in a very small minority because you were different from everyone else and you had not come through a very traditional background of a private education, having been to Oxbridge or one of the Russell universities, and already had your articles, or training contract we call them now, lined up ahead of coming to the College of Law. So, when I was at law school, I hadn't even secured my articles and it was only fortuitous that I actually managed to get articles immediately after law school.

Emma: When you qualified, did that continue that lack of I guess representation from South Asian?

Sunil: Yeah, very much so, so in the firm that I trained, which at the time was the biggest law firm outside the City, so I think there was only one other lawyer who was of Asian origin and at the time, so just rewinding the choice for me was either to get a training contract with a City law firm which I had tried, I had tried my best but I had got used to, like a lot of people in those days, you would submit applications randomly and I must have submitted 60/70 applications and you would get used to the flood of rejection letters that came through the post every few days. And I think I secured one interview with an insolvency law firm and I knew within minutes of the interview starting that this was heading nowhere and I think they were just going through the motions and felt that they needed to at least put up some semblance of having gone through a process with me but from the moment you entered the building, you knew you didn't belong there and no one actually tried to disabuse you of that notion.

And the other option was to go to a smaller local firm which may have been founded by lawyers of Asian origin and I did not want to do that so I was really fortunate that I managed to get a training contract at Brechers. And despite the fact that I was the only articles clerk in my intake of Indian origin, the only other lawyer who was of Indian origin, actually worked in a satellite office in West London which has quite a vibrant Asian community in Southall, Ealing and Wembley, and he mainly did conveyancing. So, really the only person there who'd been hired was me. It was very much a question of swimming or sinking and you had to decide what you were doing, and I wasn't going to allow people to let me drown so there was no option of sinking. I had to swim, and it didn't matter how strong the tide was against you, you just had to do it.

Emma: Yes, so I'm guessing when you were there, there weren't any senior role models that you could relate to, but did you have any?

Sunil: Yeah, so the two people that stand out, my principal was a guy called Maurice Fireman and he had become a bit of a role model in the sense of how to overcome adversity so but that was a life lesson which I've never forgotten, and he encouraged me every way he could. He took me to meetings. I learned how to gain confidence in front of people that I wouldn't have done had it not been for Maurice and the other big role model for me at the time at Brechers was the head of the Tax team, a guy called Stuart Lightman. And Stuart is the epitome of that successful, profession, again from a Jewish but a middle-class Jewish background. He was a successful tax lawyer despite the fact that he was a tax lawyer is about one of the best corporate lawyers I ever came across and he was the person who really, if I were to pick one person who made me want to become a corporate lawyer, it was him. And I learnt a lot from him, and the biggest lesson I learnt from was to get out of the West End and get into the City. So, out of the ten or 11 people that qualified at the same time as I did, only two were offered jobs so I was one of them and the offer was to work with Stuart in the Tax team and he said don't do that and go somewhere else. And he tried his best to get me a job as an NQ in firms that he knew so I interviewed with people like Linklaters. All these openings were in the Tax team and I wanted to do corporate work, so I eventually ended up in the London office of what is Hill Dickinson today and I joined a fledgling Corporate team that had been started by a partner called Carl Goldsmith, and he is the person who I really regard apart from Maurice and Stuart – and then obviously my parents and I'll come to that in a moment - as being the person who inspired me the most about how to succeed in law and how to sort of lead teams and how to lead people.

So going back to my parents, I think given what I am saying and in the environment in which I was trying to build a career and succeed, it would have been very easy to give up and the one thing that my parents instilled, and it has really been the constant in my professional life. It has been my parents and subsequently my mother because my father passed away many years ago is never to give up and that has helped me considerably. So, if you are looking at mentors, there is no one better than my parents, but professional mentors, Carl was probably the person who has had the most profound effect on me. So, I qualified in the mid-80s, joined Hill Dickinson. At the time, the mid-80s was a bit of a difficult period and you went to an interview, and they would say "well, what's your experience?" and you'd say just qualified, and they would say no we are not looking for that. So, unless someone took you on, you wouldn't get the experience, but no-one was willing to take you on because you didn't have the experience.

Carl, after my first interview with him and they were looking for a two- or three-year qualified lawyer to join their Venture Capital team and the partner who I was going to work for was looking for a two or three-year qualified lawyer, Carl somehow persuaded the firm to take me on and actually persevered. He taught me all of the basics of venture capital law but more importantly, what he did which I would not have survived and would not have tried without is the confidence to be myself in an environment where there is a sea of faces which are very different from me and not to compromise in my heritage or integrity in anyway, but actually equipping me with the skills that I needed to succeed in that environment and I have never forgotten that. Carl died about 12 years ago and even after he retired, I continued to have a very, very strong and healthy relationship with him until a few years ago with most of his family - so with his wife and his daughters - so it was really from my perspective, the best grounding that I could have had. He was a mentor, he was a benefactor because he always had my interests at heart.

Emma: Amazing. He sounds like he was a good mix of a mentor and sponsor as well with that actively sort of giving you opportunities to learn.

When you look back, was partnership always the end goal for you.

Sunil: I think for all of us at the time and I think even today, it is the wholly grail. You want to become a partner because that is what you entered the profession for. And there are different reasons, in my case, it was never the money that motivated me to become a partner. It was the fact that in order to demonstrate that I had succeeded, I needed to have the badge of a partner, and I became a partner in 1989. I was amongst I think the two youngest partners in the London office of Hill Dickinson so I would have become a partner I think five years after I qualified, but a lot of that was due to the work that Carl had been doing with me from a very young age. You can't suddenly say to someone at seven years, you are going to be a partner in two years, and you now need to develop all these skills. They need to be developing them, but more importantly as partners in the business partners need to be helping them develop those skills from day one, because it is not something you pick up overnight and it is a evolutionary process and it happens over a period of time. You learn by mistakes, you learn by your successes, and eventually you end up having all of the skills and all of the characteristics that we look for when we are looking at who might be a partner in two years' time.

Emma: That is a very good point, you do need to, it is that constant sort of learning, development opportunities that need to happen to get you to that point.

So, you have been a partner for a fair few years.

Sunil: A long time. I think I had people working in the team today who weren't even born when I became a partner at Hill Dickinson.

Emma: I'm just interested if ever that sort of role of a partner, whether you have seen a change in what that looks like over the time that you have been partners at different firms?

Sunil: I think if there is on big distinctinction between when I became a partner and what is partnership today is that quite rightly law firms are seen as businesses. We are a business and ultimately, we owe it to the rest the partnership for the business to be as successful as it can be and because of that there is a pressure today to justify your position as a partner and demonstrate that financial as well we the more non-financial contribution that you are making and the financial aspect of it was probably not as profound as it is today. I think the other change is that as your law firms have become much bigger. So, when I became a partner at Hill Dickinson, the total partnership could not have been more than about 35 partners. When I joined Lawrence Graham at the end of the 20^th century, which does sound like it was a long time ago, I was amazed at how big Lawrence Graham was. At Hill Dickinson, I knew everyone from the doormen through to the senior partner. You knew everyone well enough to recognise them in whatever environment they were in. I struggled for the first few years at Lawrence Graham. I'd bump into people on the road, and subsequently realise maybe a week later when you were at a partners' lunch that the person you had bumped into on The Strand the other day was one of your partners. So that was the sort of the stark contrast and then you look at our business today and we have what 1,500 people in our two offices. So, if you look at relative sizes, it is completely different. So I think that, in my mind there is always been a sort of dilemma about as you become bigger and bigger, how much webbing are you into the business as an institution organisation and the constant challenge of having to remind ourselves that the business succeeds because of collegiality and collaboration between all of us as opposed to just being individual practitioners. So, as opposed to working in silos, working in teams and how together we can benefit more than any of us can individually.

Emma: Yeah. I think that is a really good point and it is one I have talked about in the past as well. It is that thing that we all need to be together to be the most successful and with that growth, it then takes some time to sort of re-adjust or look at how can we make this work in the best way.

You mentioned earlier Sunil that you have been with the firm since the end of the last century.

Sunil: Yes.

Emma: Firstly, as part of Lawrence Graham then Wragge Lawrence Graham and now Gowling WLG. I'm just interested in what changes, if any, you have seen in the firm over that time?

Sunil: Well, obviously we're much bigger than we are now, and I would have said more international, which we are. We didn't have eight offices and 700 lawyers in Canada back in 2015, whereas since 2016, we have had that. I think for me, the changes are more about what we offer to our clients so as Lawrence Graham we had our limitations, and we were best known for a number of things. We were very strong in, looking at it from my perspective, capital markets and investments funds practice and a very strong real estate practice. So, if you ask people in the City, Lawrence Graham was an almost 300 year old brand when it merged with Wragge & Co and you ask people and that is the two or three things that would spring to their mind would be real estate or capital markets or investment funds, and actually private wealth because we had one of the biggest and probably the most prestigious private wealth practice in, certainly in the UK, but amongst the top in Europe.

I think what we have gained as a result of the mergers is a platform that is more full service and caters to a wider range of clients, a strength and depth in our areas where we were already known or famous for so real estate being an obvious example where the merger of the two real estate firms has created a very, very significant real estate practice in the UK and then allowed the firm to strengthen its international footprint. So, if you look back at the time of the merger, we had a relatively small office, or Lawrence Graham had a relatively small office in Dubai, a small office in Singapore, and a small office in Monaco, which we subsequently shut down when the Private Wealth team left us. Wragge & Co had a big office in Paris, a small presence in Germany, a small office in Abu Dhabi, which it was in the process of closing down, and a small office in China. If you look at what we are today, and internationally we are a stronger business than we were and obviously the addition of Canada has given us a very significant North American presence and very significantly strengthen our US sales initiative.

So, I think there are lots of positives flowing from it.

Emma: We are going to take a short break now and when we are back, we will find out more about some of Sunil's other roles at Gowling WLG and what advice he would give people at the start of their careers.

[music]

Emma: Welcome back to part two. We are going to kick off Sunil with some quick-fire questions to get to know you a little bit more. So, some general questions, what was your first job?

Sunil: I worked in an old-style castings factory when I was 14. So, my first summer job was in the days when people made castings for spare parts and my job was to wear some very heavy-duty gloves and break the castings into individual components, and I was relieved when the three weeks ended that I'd signed up for. The important lesson I learnt from that was find something else that you enjoy doing but more importantly, what you learnt was it was about perseverance.

Emma: Is your bed made right now?

Sunil: Yes. One of the things I like today I had to rush because I had a call at 10.30 and I still made up my bed because it is something I've always done and I feel a bit, it stresses me out if I go home and I have to make up my bed or even worse, my wife has had to make the bed and reminds me about when we are having dinner.

Emma: What is your favourite movie?

Sunil: My favourite movie, the one that I keep on watching over and over again and never get tired of is the Shawshank Redemption.

Emma: Good choice. I like that, I haven't watched that in a while. I might watch that again.

What is your dream holiday destination?

Sunil: Always a beach somewhere…

Emma: Any particular beach or are you not fussy?

Sunil: Preferably, somewhere in Southeast Asia.

Emma: And what is your go to karaoke song?

Sunil: I hate karaoke.

Emma: Really?

Sunil: And I cringe at the thought of people, if we go anywhere and there is karaoke, I find an excuse to leave before it starts.

Emma: So, your idea of hell would be like a karaoke party and someone having put your name in for a song?

Sunil: I had to do one with clients a while back, we went to the, it was a skyscraper. I am fairly sure it was in Malaysia, in KL. We went to the top of the skyscraper and in this like private karaoke room and everyone could sing and that was one place that I couldn't make a quick exit.

Emma: Did you sing?

Sunil: I had to sing.

Emma: Do you remember what song?

Sunil: I can't remember. It was so…

Emma: You blocked it out.

Sunil: I've blocked that out of my mind!

Emma: A few more silly questions. These are either/or questions so you just need to tell me which one. Cats or dogs?

Sunil: Cats.

Emma: Would you rather fly or have super strength?

Sunil: Fly.

Emma: Are you more introvert or extrovert?

Sunil: Extrovert.

Emma: A night out or night in?

Sunit: Night in.

Emma: Would you rather travel to the past or to the future?

Sunil: Future.

[music]

Emma: So, you mentioned earlier that you are part of the UK Leadership team now in your current role and, also a member of the International Board. I just wondered if you could tell us a little bit more about what that means.

Sunil: So, joined the International Board just over two years ago in the midst of the pandemic, so the meetings were all by Zoom and the first physical meeting we had was just over a year ago I think in April 2022 shortly before I retired as a partner. And I have always wanted to do that role because I am very, very keen and passionate about the development of our international footprint and I believe that being on the International Board would help me articulate and strengthen our resolve to expand internationally, and that has been something that has been a recurring theme in what I have been doing.

David asked me to join the Leadership team after I retired as a partner and that is more about strategic thinking about the direct action in which the firm develops so working very closely with our Executive Board and our own team, the Operational Management team so that is sort of really looking at emerging themes that might benefit our business in some form or another. AI is very topical at the moment, how are we addressing the challenge that AI places on our business. You know is it something that we want to do, something we should be doing. Similarly, are resources in the way in which we expand limited. You know we haven't got an endless steam of revenue or there isn't a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, so we have to be, how do we prioritise what we are doing in terms of growth both domestically as well as internationally.

Emma: You are also one of the board sponsors for our EmbRACE network and you've done that role for a couple of years now.

Sunil: Yes. I've really enjoyed it. I think I would love to devote more time to it and with everything else that I do, I can't. But I think the role is more about providing support to our two very good chairpersons and obviously you, and the rest of the D&I team, and acting as a voice for them both at board level and at leadership level in making sure that the network remains both important and relevant to our business but has a strong voice around the boardroom table.

Emma: Yes, and why do you think it's important to have that board level support of the networks.

Sunil: We think we need, with any of our networks unless we have got buy in at leadership level with those initiatives it is difficult to see how they will be successful and this is not about the Board supporting everything and anything we do but it is the knowledge amongst the network that the Board endorses what the network is doing, is willing to provide the support that it needs to thrive as a network for its membership. And overall, I think it is important for our business to be as diverse as possible and this is not just about ethnic diversity or gender diversity. I think the business needs to be sufficiently open so that it embraces people from all walks of life.

Emma: What are some of the deals or the big pieces of work that you have worked on that really stick in your head and some of the things that you will continue to look back on and just be like wow that was amazing?

Sunil: So, there are several because obviously over sort of a 40-year span it is difficult to say that there is one deal but if I look at it maybe go back backwards in time from when I retired as a partner, probably the deal, recent deal, that stands out for me is we won a hotly contested beauty parade to act for the IPO of Codemasters, which is one of Britian's leading video games developers and the company that is behind the very successful Formula 1 video game franchise. It was the biggest game IPO of that year and one of the most successful IPOs in recent history. We subsequently, so the team was me, Sam Myers and a couple of associates in our business at the time, so we did that IPO, and then about a year later, did a very big acquisition for them of one of their competitors along with quite a big fundraising. And we thought that we would be on a bit of a roll with that but interestingly, with the development of Meta, suddenly video games businesses became flavour of the month and to cut a long story short, we acted for Codemasters when it was taken over in a contested bid ultimately by Electronic Arts. That was a £1 billion plus deal that we did virtually and all of us everyone working on the team was me, Sam, Jeff Elway, several other of partners supporting different specialist areas. The advisers on our side, the advisers on the other side, all working remotely. I would never have imagined back in 2018 when we listed Codemasters that we would be able to do something like that without everyone sitting in the office for 18 hours a day, seven days a week and yet we managed to do that.

And then going back a bit further, probably one of the most memorable deals I have done is in the early 90s because Hill Dickinson had such a strong shipping trade and commodities business. I was asked by an Italian ship owning family to help them save so they had invested in a luxury mini cruise-liner business which was about to go under and they asked me to, along with others, to help save that business from going insolvency. I was told to go to Geneva for what was a two-day meeting and over the course of the next three months I ended up spending almost two and a half months on and off in Geneva, but the first two days that I went there I remember what exactly the date it was because that they wanted me to go up on the 4^th July but because the patriarch in the Italian family was in New York celebrating Independence Day he was flying back on the 5^th via the UK and he picked me up in his private jet…

Emma: Wow.

Sunil: Going to Geneva. So, a memorable two and a half months in the stifling summer that Geneva can often become…

Emma: And what is like, I know it can be really full on when you are sort of leading up to these deals? What is the feeling like when it is all done, it is all sort of finished over the line.

Sunil: It is a combination of relief and very anti-climatic but you are working up to these great objective of closing the deal and typically at the end of each deal, you're starved with sleep, you haven’t actually eaten very well because you are working from the office and end up eating fast food in my case it almost invariably ended up being pizzas late at night and yeah the only thing you are looking for is finishing the deal, having a celebratory drink with team.

Emma: I've got just a couple more questions. I was interested to know what advice you would give people that are early on in their careers at the moment?

Sunil: I think the most important thing and based on my own experience is learn to be yourself, don't try to be something that you are not. Never be afraid of asking a question. I think people often in our profession, people feel embarrassed about asking questions because they feel that it may come across as being unknowledgeable, you might appear to be stupid. There is no such thing as a stupid question. It is better to ask one than be told an answer that may be obvious than not ask it and then keep on wondering what the answer should be.

I think cultivating relationships where you have going back to what I was saying earlier a sponsor or a benefactor is very important and I think something that I don't think people do enough of is learning by observation sort of learning to learning by however people deal with clients, how they are on the phone. One of the things that I find quite disturbing these days is the unwillingness of, not just our lawyers, but I think it is a generational thing, we have moved into an era where everyone really communicates by WhatsApp or if they are like me, they still use texts. This unwillingness to actually use the phone for what it is which is actually to speak to people and I think you can achieve so much more by just mustering up the courage, picking up the phone.

Emma: Yeah.

Sunil: And more importantly than all of this is actually admitting when you are out of your depth and you need help or support. Again, I think as professionals we feel that we should know everything and we shouldn't be asking for guidance. I am in my 60s and it never ceases to amaze me that there are things I still need to ask my colleagues about and you know I'll be more knowledgeable as a result of that.

Emma: And if we are thinking about people at our firm or other firms that are more senior maybe they are partners already, but they have ambitions from leadership roles to be on the Board one day, what are the things that they should be thinking about to be in a good position to do this or to achieve this.

Sunil: I think the first thing is to actually say you want to do it. Quite a few of us and I'm a good example of it, we stumble into these roles by accident. It is very rarely by design. I don't know of that many people who decided when they were junior partners that they would like to be managing partner or a practice group leader or a team leader, and the second part of that is ask for help and support. You have these phrases about leaders are not born, they are made, and all those sorts of cliches and they may be cliches but they are true. Good leaders become good leaders because they have had the training and the guidance to do that, so I think the first thing is to actually if you have leadership ambitions to make that clear. What is it that you want to do, over what period of time and what support you think you will need to get that.

Emma: And then my final question to you is what's the best thing that has happened to you this week?

Sunil: This week actually having lunch with my son and daughter and being able to spend a couple of hours with them. They bot have demanding jobs. My son's a lawyer so actually being able to spend two and a half hours with them not talking about what I did at work or what either of them do at work and just having a relaxed moment with them.

Emma: It is priceless being able to spend time with your kids as well and have that time.

Well, a huge thanks Sunil for joining us today and for sharing your story and some insights and advice.

We will back next week to get to know more talented people at Gowling WLG. Thank you for listening. Have a wonderful week and remember we all have the power to make a difference.