What a Client Is Doing While Reading Your Note
Here me talk about it here A general counsel opens a client alert on a regulatory change. It is well written, correctly reasoned, and produced by a practice that knows the subject. What are they actually doing while reading it? They are not learning the law. They have a team, they can read the instrument […]
Reading Regulations: The Business of Law and The Practice of Law
Hear me talk about this here Two people can competently read the same regulatory development and reach conclusions of quite different commercial value. Measuring the readings on analytical ability misses the point. The readings are different because they start from a difference in expertise. We examine the difference in this piece so that our readers, […]
The Mid-Market Sanctions Vacuum
Watch in 1 minute video here Three things happened in the same week. ONGC Videsh received OFAC clearance to resume Venezuelan operations and recover trapped dividends. Indian exporters declined the government’s rupee settlement mechanism for trade with Russia, citing secondary sanctions exposure. And the Belgian Prime Minister arrived in Delhi with the Antwerp-Surat diamond corridor […]
Law Firm Content Programmes and What Doesn’t Get Published
Hear me talk about it here Most regulatory developments do not yield anything worth writing. That is not a complaint about the quality of regulation. It is a property of the relationship between what regulators do and what law firms can be instructed on, and it is the reason firm publication programmes so often produce […]
Which Link Holds the Mandate
Hear me talk about it here A regulatory change lands in one jurisdiction and is reported as being about a second. Law firms in both then assume the work is theirs, and frequently neither is right. The party who has to do something about it sits somewhere else again. A surprisingly common error, it is […]
Why Cross-Border Corridor Initiatives Collapse
Hear me talk about it here. On the structural traps between international practice strategy and real-world execution. Most international practice expansion across high-volume trade lanes fails not for lack of market opportunity, but because of a structural mismatch between how legal work originated and how external support is structured. The Vendor Substitution Trap Law firm […]
Where the Consent Process Stops: PN3 and Further Tests
Watch in 1 minute video here First in a series on India’s amended Press Note 3 and the continuous condition it created. India’s March 2026 amendment to Press Note 3 allows investments carrying non-controlling land-border beneficial ownership of up to 10 per cent to proceed through the automatic route. The Department for Promotion of Industry […]
Who Pays for the Long Way Round: Separating Cape Detours from Hormuz Risk
Watch in 1 minute video Major ocean lines and freight forwarders are levying emergency surcharges across global supply chains in response to Middle East disruption. Closer inspection of cargo bills suggests two distinct commercial cost events are being conflated under a single “Middle East Disruption” fee. The Geographic Conflation: Cape Detours vs. Hormuz Risk To […]
A Calendar-Dated Pipeline for Cross-Border Wealth and Banking Disputes
Watch in 1 minute video here Between 8 June and 31 August 2026, Indian banks took in $127.22 billion in Foreign Currency Non-Resident (FCNR) deposits under the Reserve Bank of India’s special dollar-rupee swap facility. That is nearly four times the size of the 2013 Taper Tantrum facility, raised in twelve weeks. The response was […]
A Question You Would Ask Any Client
Watch in 1 minute here In the ordinary course of a week, a law firm managing partner will work out things about a client’s business that the client has not articulated clearly itself. Questions on the practice head’s list might sound like: Where the revenue actually comes from? Who has authority to commit money and […]