Interview with: Bayar Budragchaa, Senior Counsel

Snow Hill Consultancy LLP Senior Counsel Bayar Budragchaa talks about practicing in Mongolia, where thanks to economic growth clients businesses and investment growing rapidly but that means law firms have to go through challenging times of growing and adopting new skills.

 

What do you see as the main points that differentiate Snow Hill Consultancy LLP from your competitors?

• Mongolia is small nation but attracts investors from all over the world. Therefore we had to be multilangual – speaking English, German, Chinese, Japanese, Korean etc and be proficient to give highly professional advice to our clients in very fast changing legal environment.
• In this regard, we strive to enlist young talents with not only languistic skills to translate but who excelled in their academic surroundings and can already analyze, process, and efficiently provide legal advice to our clients.
• I believe in numbers, so we are one of the largest law firms in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia so that we do not have human resources issues and start to work on client matters from day one without straining our staff.

 

Which practices do you see growing in the next 12 months? What are drivers behind that?

As we speak about investments in Mongolia, which was mainly in mining sector, and perhaps will stay that way for a while another sector is attracting attention. It is banking and financing with introduction of tremendous new technologies. Driving factor behind this is because Mongolians are holding significant amount of cash and businesses are now turning to them to raise investment and so far the banking and financing sector do not disappoint them.

 

What’s the main change you’ve made in the firm that wil benefit clients?

Despite our young talents with languistic skills and good academic background and efficientl providsion of legal advice to our clients, we have also focused much on our internal training so that besides CLE programs of our Bar we provide them with opportuity to learn from each other. Our motto is “If you learned something new and gained some new experience share them with your colleagues”.

 

Is technology chnaging the way you interact with your clients, and the services you can provide them?

Most definitely. When we started our law firm in 24 years ago we used very old internet network (that had to use normal telephone land line) email apps like Eudora, Hotmail etc. Now we have 5Gs and Gmail and countless other chatting platforms where we set up group chats with clients and rather than responding to client’s request or question next day or so we respond instantly. Such a prompt turnaround is attractive to clients.

 

Can you give us a practical example of how you have helped a client to add value to their business?

When one of our clients in 2004 borrowed 10 million USD from his business partner from abroad to set up a joint venture I had to learn to do international transactions combining facility agreements and M&A. He ended up raising over 600 million USD in 2010 on a major foreign exchange, I had to learn fast about foreign exchange rules, lawyers’ contribuition to LDD and others because he still trusted me and relying on my advice and services. So bottom line is “Learn fast yourself to assist and advise your fast growing and developing client business”.

 

Are clients looking for stability and strategic direction from their law firms – where do you see the firm in three year’s time?

As I stated above, businesses age growing very fast and almost every day they face new challenges and issues. Therefore they trust law firms provide them with stabile and strategic direction, though they expect us to learn and keep abreast with them fast, very fast. In three years time I see the firm very changed, technology oriented, AI using young lawyers that will keep learning many new aspects of our profession but also constantly changing and developing business world.