It has been a busy year for Asia-based in-house intellectual property counsel returning to private practice.
Notable moves Managing IP has covered include Benjamin Bai, who joined King & Wood Mallesons in May after spells at crypto finance company Amber Group and fintech outfit Ant Group.
Just this month, Rouse announced the hire of former TikTok IP manager Oliver Walsh as its anti-piracy head.
But the list doesn’t end there.
Shailyamanyu Singh Rathore, who held leadership roles at Dyson and P&G in India and Singapore, joined India-based IP firm Anand and Anand as a partner in September.
Rathore was Dyson’s regional head of legal in Singapore from 2019 to 2022. He then worked as an IP consultant with the banking company Standard Chartered for a short spell.
Before his stint at Dyson, Rathore worked at P&G in India and Singapore from 2008 to 2019 where he held various IP-focused and generalist roles. He was general counsel for P&G’s India operations from 2014 to 2018.
Rathore tells Managing IP that he is looking forward to leveraging his 15 years of in-house experience to boost Anand and Anand's services across IP and non-IP practice areas.
In-house misconception
Rathore’s move, and others we have seen this year, may come as a surprise to many.
There remains a general perception that in-house positions are more rewarding than private practice work because of a greater work-life balance and predictability of schedule.
However, Rathore says an in-house position isn’t necessarily the comfortable choice people think it is. “That’s a misconception,” he tells Managing IP.
Rathore says he realised after he joined P&G in 2008 that an in-house job was equally challenging as a law firm role. He notes: “It’s just that the challenges are very different.”
He explains: “When you’re in-house, you’re 40% lawyer and 60% business person. You must apply your business acumen to the legal advice you get from your outside counsel to give pragmatic advice to the management.”
An in-house counsel inherits a high level of risk-taking as a part of their role, he notes.
He adds: “On the other hand, law firm practice comes with a different set of challenges. The pressure of building the business and delivering your work on time and according to the firm's reputation.”
Rathore says he and Anand and Anand are looking to change the perception that in-house counsel rarely switch to private practice by hiring more ex-in-housers.
On a personal level, Rathore says his decision to join Anand and Anand was influenced by his desire to step out of his comfort zone.
Business role
Now, he intends to play the roles of a lawyer as well as a “business person” for the firm.
He believes the regional nature of his previous roles has already placed him in a strong position to pitch work to international clients.
“I know how in-house legal teams function at country, regional, and global levels. That's where I think I could support my clients better because I have a good understanding of what their challenges are.”
Additionally, the IP services sector is undergoing a transition, which he says was another driving force behind moving to private practice.
He notes that technology is increasingly taking centre stage in IP.
Rathore says this will mean supporting businesses with their technology-related IP queries as well as leveraging technology in-house to change how law firms function.
“The way we worked in the past is going to change, and I know that I can use my learnings from an international in-house environment to help make changes that could improve practices in India,” he says.
Perhaps that’s why Rathore isn’t looking to limit his private practice work to IP advisory.
He says he is keen to contribute to other practice areas, such as contracts, and corporate and commercial work, and can draw on his time in a generalist role at P&G where he helped support several billion-dollar brands.
At Dyson, he expanded his regional outreach by looking after a broad range of legal issues across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
During his short stint at Standard Chartered, he leaned towards advisory work concerning the overlap of IP with new-age technology such as the metaverse and non-fungible tokens.
Having accumulated a wide range of skills across the three companies, he says his focus now will be building the non-IP part of Anand and Anand’s practice as well as supporting its existing IP practice.
In August, India passed its first-ever data privacy legislation, and Rathore says he’s also looking forward to picking up data protection work.
“It’s a time of change, and I want to be a part of that change.”
