John Sze, JTJB’s recently appointed managing partner in Singapore, provides insights into the realm of maritime law and his unique approach to client relationships that sets him apart.
Q: What are your strategic goals for the firm under your leadership in the next 12 months? How and where do you plan to inject fresh ideas and approaches while ensuring the firm’s continued success? What are your long-term objectives and strategies?
Managing partner
JTJB
A: Well, in the near term, I have three objectives: to consolidate, to establish the building blocks for further development and to make an impact.
I think the firm has a good foundation and a good team, but there’s a need to review certain strategic approaches to the way we do things, particularly in work and marketing. In the near term, I want to consolidate and position our firm forward in the right direction. That’s the first. In doing so, I want to also build the right building blocks to enable us to move forward. We’ve got a good team of lawyers, and junior partners. I think we can do great things together, but they need the chance and opportunity and the confidence to be able to develop and that’s what we really want to build from now onwards. Lastly, even as we prepare ourselves, we must continue to make an impact with our clients, with the markets that we are close to and with the legal industry. I want to do this by having greater interaction, building close ties with our partners and our clients and making our firm’s presence felt in industries. Now, legal services is a services industry. The clients will use you if they know what you can do. The expertise that you have and they’re comfortable with you. And this really cannot be achieved by just staying in the office. You need to go out and make yourselves known and make an impact on the industry. So these are the short-term objectives. In the longer term, I would like some diversity in our practice areas. As a mid-sized firm, I want us to stay nimble and grow when we see the right opportunities, and also be able to find the right legal expertise that can fit with us and grow with us.
Q: How do you see the landscape of maritime and shipping law evolving, and what new challenges and opportunities do you anticipate for JTJB in this sector?
A: Yes, this is a sector that’s very close to my heart. I’ve spent 20 years in practice in this particular area and I think it’s a really exciting time for the maritime and shipping industry.
Throughout this period there’s not been a time where I feel that the maritime sector has been so enthusiastic in embracing change and innovation. Although some of these are forced on the industry, for example, regulations that require shipping to go more green, there are a lot more also other voluntary initiatives to improve businesses, new technologies, new greener fuels and moving away from what has traditionally been known as a rather traditional business.
I think everyone, even very traditional companies, are realising that they need to change. And there’s this irresistible momentum. A lot of startups have come into the maritime industry to inject fresh ideas and new ways of doing things. I think everyone is quite keen to learn. We are also learning together how our clients, together with this adaptation of new ideas, technologies, and innovations.
There are also legal challenges that need to be addressed and we are very happy to be working together with our clients on this journey and to adapt basically to this learning, changing landscape.
Q: What are your thoughts on the evolution of AI and legaltech, and how is JTJB adapting to these innovations?
A: It’s a very good question, a very hot topic. I prefer a conservative approach when it comes to AI, but we’re very much all for adopting legal technology and we have already been implementing that. On legal technology, we have moved to the cloud for all of our storage.
We’re doing most of our legal research online, legal database. We are no longer reading textbooks and using a lot of online precedents that are available to us.
So for all of these, we have used service providers to support us on this exercise and are very happy that it has made our lives easier. However, I’m a little bit more hesitant on the issue of AI, particularly on the work that really matters, such as drafting legal submissions, preparing legal opinions and doing legal research. I’m still quite traditional when it comes to that.
Clients rely on us to get it right. They don’t pay us so that we can use AI software to churn out an opinion. Their opinion must be based on our views, based on our research and we are confident of basically getting it right for the clients. That’s what the clients rely on us for. Technology can help us. In some of this legal research, we do use technology, but at the end of the day, my personal view is that lawyers must be good for their advice, right? For the submissions that they make to the court, the contracts that they create. At the moment, I don’t think AI provides us with a sufficiently trustworthy solution to develop these essential outcomes that we deliver for clients.
And so that’s what I feel about AI and I’m sure that it is being developed. And, so we are also closely watching that front as well.
Q: On your profile page is a quote from Peter Pan: “All the world is made of faith, trust, and pixie dust.” Why did you choose this quote, and what does it mean to you?
A: Yes, I must agree it’s quite an interesting quote. I’ll just briefly explain. Faith is really a faith in my team’s ability to deliver on the legal work that they’re entrusted with. Trust is that they will try and they will put in their utmost effort to deliver the best outcome for the clients. But I always feel very strongly that that’s not enough.
Every lawyer would be able to deliver quality products. And that’s why you have pixie dust. As I mentioned earlier, law is a very personal service. The client must trust you. The client must believe that you can do your best, but the client must also form that connection with you and say: well, you are the lawyer for me. So ability is not enough.
You need to make this connection with the client and make the client feel comfortable with you. That connection, that relationship, that little magic that you know, gets you very comfortable with the client and vice versa is what I call pixie dust, because it is a little bit unexplainable, really, that kind of connection. I kind of view it as a little bit of a magic kind of connection.
And, you know, looking at the phrase on its own, I think the whole phrase actually reflects the kind of the way I like things to be done, which is to be succinct. It is short, it is meaningful, right? So, it delivers on all the messages that I want to deliver.
