At some level, every lawyer is also in the sales business, informed by the need to keep winning work from new and existing clients and mindful of targets for revenue and continuing growth.
But that aspect of the job was a special challenge for Yash Rana, when he arrived in Hong Kong in late 2008 to open an office for international law firm Goodwin at a time when markets were tumbling, deals had dried up, and business confidence was shaken to the core.
He succeeded, though, by first finding a foothold and then going on to build an organisation which advises corporate clients on everything from M&A transactions, public listings and investments to real estate, intellectual property and white-collar litigation.
“Private equity was the ‘tip of the spear’,” says Rana, a partner and the firm’s Asia chair. “It has been an evolution, but we continue to find demand for our services, with growth now coming from technology, life sciences and financial services. There are challenges ahead, with the US and China circling each other warily, but we are confident about business in the region and, over the long term, I think the demographics of Asia will continue to support that.”
However, in working with global investors and private equity firms, it is not enough to simply demonstrate core competencies and be pragmatic and responsive. It is also essential to keep building relationships, ideally by meeting and impressing new people in the course of transactions, and by having a culture which actively encourages lawyers to develop their own practice and bring in additional business.
“It comes with experience,” Rana says. “As a firm, we don’t have specific revenue or collection targets for individuals, but we do seek feedback from clients at the end of a project. If we’ve not been successful [in being appointed] we go back and ask why. Sometimes, it’s a client’s perception about our expertise in, say, Indonesia, but it can be a capacity issue if we’re already working on several different matters for them.”
Rana started out in Mumbai, where his two grandfathers were judges and both parents were barristers, so following in their footsteps seemed a matter of destiny.
“I knew pretty early on I'd be a lawyer; it’s in my blood,” he says. “At home, we had a lot of conversations about my parents’ work. They were arguing cases in court for or against the Indian government. They dealt with seminal cases when banks were nationalised in the 1970s and when judges were transferred in and out of jurisdictions. In fact, my father is still practising at the age of 92.”
A secure upbringing surrounded by friends and extended family led to a scholarship to study economics and business administration at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Before starting, though, Rana stayed with an uncle in New York and, to pay his way, took a summer job as assistant prep chef at a Mexican restaurant in Staten Island, slicing tomatoes, chopping onions, and perfecting the chain’s signature dessert — fried ice cream.
“It was a completely novel, eye-opening experience,” he says. “I'd never met people who knew so little about the world outside New York.”
While at college, he balanced classwork with a succession of part-time jobs, in the cafeteria, the library, the security department, and even selling knives door-to-door. And despite a brief flirtation with the idea of doing a PhD in economics, he stuck to the original plan, moving on to Columbia University Law School for a three-year JD (juris doctor), which he completed in mid-1995.
From there, the logical step was to join one of New York’s well established firms, O’Melveny & Myers, and having chosen to specialise in corporate rather than litigation work, Rana was soon involved in big-ticket mergers and acquisitions.
“I really enjoyed it. I liked the idea of buying and selling companies and, very early on, realised it’s not an ‘us versus them’ contest, but about two companies coming together to work as one.”
However, three years on, when one client, telecoms firm Qwest Communications, offered an in-house role at their headquarters in Denver, it was too good to turn down.
“It was a tremendous opportunity. They’d built the world’s first fibre-optic network. We took the company public and then used the stock to do other M&A deals — until the telecom bubble burst.”
Rana took that as a signal to return east where, through fortuitous timing, former colleagues at O’Melveny were setting up a New York office for Boston-based firm Goodwin, Procter & Hoar. He slotted in quickly, soon building a reputation with investors, tech companies and the private equity community. Nevertheless, it took a certain amount of soul searching when the firm asked him to open an office in Hong Kong.
“I had a wife and two young children and was concerned about disruption to the family,” he says. “We had a pretty nice life in suburban New York and, landing here in November 2008, when the financial crisis was in full force, I saw a lot of challenges ahead.”
However, with reassurances from senior management about sticking it out through any temporary decline, everything fell into place. And now, 11-plus years later, the firm is still here and, after a recent move to larger premises, poised for the next stage of expansion.
“In my job, there’s also the P&L responsibility which includes the need to find, motivate and retain good people,” he says. “In the next three years, we want to expand our practice in certain geographies and find more lawyers with expertise in technology fintech, life sciences and immunotherapy.”
Away from the office, Rana has coached his daughter’s soccer team, been active in the American Club, and taken on regular pro bono work for local charities and deserving organisations.
“It’s an obligation for lawyers to help out with such cases,” he says.
