Daring to be different

OVER the past 10 years, RHTLaw Asia has succeeded in delivering value to its clients by being far more than just a local law firm. Azman Jaafar remembers the challenging early days of RHTLaw Asia with fondness. Having left the comfort of the corner offices and boardrooms of their previous jobs, the founding partners and associates of the fledgling law firm found themselves huddled shoulder to shoulder in a meeting room on 6 Battery Road.

"We all worked out of this one conference room. There was a fax machine and two phone lines. It was a very emotional time," recalls Mr Azman, RHTLaw's managing partner, in an interview with The Business Times.

What gave this band of lawyers the confidence to embark on a new venture in 2011 was perhaps the depth and strength of the leadership team, which was led by the firm's founding partners - Rajan Menon, Tan Chong Huat (who was then the managing partner), Anne Chua and the late Subhas Anandan to name a few.

"We had people who joined us who had tendered their resignation without even receiving an offer letter. Those were very poignant moments as it demonstrated the level of confidence that a lot of our younger lawyers had in the leadership," he says.

The founding members were also motivated by the firm's mission to become a leading cutting-edge law firm with global aspirations. As RHTLaw celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2021, that faith has been repaid many times over.

Today, the Singapore-headquartered firm offers clients access to over 2,000 lawyers in 14 jurisdictions around Asia, as well as a suite of complementary professional services such as compliance solutions and corporate finance advisory services. Its success has been driven in part by its enthusiastic and early embrace of technology, as well as a willingness to take the road less travelled to meet clients' needs.

Forging its own path

Likening RHTLaw at its inception to Singapore in its early post-independence days, Mr Azman revealed that the partners thought long and hard about what its value proposition to the market would be. It decided that it would need to develop a broad range of in-house capabilities, as well as adopt a global outlook from day one. "Our immediate priority was to develop something different that would set us apart from our competitors," says Mr Azman.

Unsurprisingly, the first six months of RHTLaw's existence was an intense learning process, with the staff striving to acquire skills in areas such as business development, as well as put in place proper systems and processes.

To build its international capabilities, the firm helped to set up a regional network called the ASEAN Plus Group, which comprises leading Asian law firms. This enabled RHTLaw to give its clients access to regional markets.

A second engine of growth

The firm's partners also realised that there were opportunities in complementary services that it could capitalise on to build a "second engine of growth". "Law is actually a very narrow part of any large transaction. Our clients would always ask whether we could help them with business advisory or specialised consulting services, and so on. So we decided to create an independent business outside the firm that could handle these things," explains Mr Azman.

Over time, experts from other fields were brought in to build up its suite of professional services, from sustainability consulting to wealth management. More recently, it has transformed its traditional corporate services to develop digital asset exchange SDAX and expand its suite of capabilities to offer digital financial services.

Committed to doing good

RHTLaw is focused on doing good through its sustainability and CSR initiatives. To this end, it established RHT Rajan Menon Foundation in 2015, which has to date raised over S$2 million for a range of beneficiaries.

The firm also sought to enhance its commitment to sustainability by organising sustainability forums and awards under its Greening Asean: Initiatives & Leadership (GAIL) programme. It also launched a social enterprise, RHT G.R.A.C.E. Institute, which promotes leadership anchored on ESG principles.

"We didn't predict the future, but our thinking process has always been to think two or three steps ahead. As a result, when people started talking about ESG, we realised that we already had our own green initiatives which we started in 2018," he explains.

Driven by technology

Underpinning RHTLaw's various strategic moves is the firm's extensive digital capabilities. The firm's journey in this area has evolved from the simple digitisation of analogue documents, to digitalising its processes, before embarking on an organisation-wide digital transformation that called for a dramatic shift in mindsets and culture.

"The transformation part is the most challenging because you have to convince people to change the way they do things. But it is essential because what we think is valuable to the client can easily be eclipsed if somebody in the marketplace comes up with a better and more cost-effective way of delivering the same solution," says Mr Azman.

"The thinking must always be: 'How can we do what we do much better?'. And that's been the challenge that we've had since we started thinking about technology as far back as 2014."

The firm has had to move its events online due to the pandemic. But rather than deliver webinars through traditional video conferencing platforms, RHTLaw has adopted technology that allows it to deliver a more engaging, live broadcast conference experience for its audiences.

The next lap

After the tumult of the past year, RHTLaw is working to grow its capabilities as it plans for the next 10 years; whether it's finding new ways to engage clients, collaborating more effectively across its Asean Plus network, or innovating to create value for clients.

"The challenge is not just to maintain our forward-looking stance, but also convincing ourselves that we need to look for ways to differentiate ourselves in the market. That's going to be a constant challenge," notes Mr Azman, who relishes the idea of leading RHTLaw through its next phase of growth.

"At the end of the day, when the crunch comes, you can stand behind or stand in front, and I choose to stand in front. I cannot expect my people to do what I want them to do, unless I'm prepared to do it myself."