Interview with: Ben Dominic R. Yap, Managing Partner

Managing Partner Ben Yap shares what differentiates C&G Law from its competitors, the practices that he expects to see growth in 2025, and where he sees C&G Law in three years’ time.

 

What do you see as the main points that differentiate C&G Law from your competitors?

1. Shared vision among our partners since our founding in 2007, which is reflected in our mission and vision statement:

We are committed to delivering to every client legal service that is excellent, timely, and of best quality, observing the highest standards of integrity and trustworthiness in every matter we are entrusted with. We are also committed to delivering to our clients novel solutions and strategies that are resourceful, effective, cost-efficient and of value, updating ourselves on and anticipating their growing and diverse needs, and working with them as their strategic partner and trusted adviser in nurturing and expanding their business. 

 We are also committed to developing lawyers and staff who share the same passion, commitments, values, and principles.

 Our commitment to excellent, effective, and focused counseling sets us apart, and shall make us, year after year, our clients’ trusted partner for all their business decisions and a top law firm of choice in the Philippines.

This, as well as our merits-based approach towards all our lawyers and staff, have allowed our firm to grow from just our 6 founding partners in 2007 to a firm of 16 partners and over 70 lawyers today, which ranks us among the ten largest law firms in the country. I’m not aware of any other firm that has grown has quickly over the same period.  We are also still growing today.

2.Our partners (even our senior partners) are all hands-on, working practitioners; and our clients see this and value this. Our partners do not just attend the pitch to the clients. We actually lead our teams in delivering the services required by the clients, thus giving our clients the benefit of our years of experience.

3. We preach and practice collaboration, including among our partners across our different practice areas; and our clients see this and value this as well. This is because much of the transactions and projects now involve multiple practice areas, and so collaboration allows our clients to enjoy insights drawn from years of experience in each of these practice areas.

4. We continue to invest in our people and in the tools that will allow us to continue to provide effective and cost-efficient services to our clients. We also continue to look for opportunities to grow. In fact, at the beginning of the pandemic and the lockdowns, despite the uncertainties that arose from this extraordinary event, we did the opposite of what most Philippine law firms did – we implemented our usual pay increases for all our lawyers, and we also invested a significant sum to upgrade our hardware and software so that we would be better prepared to serve our clients once they’ve decided to resume their projects and transactions

5. Our membership in the Rajah & Tann Asia (RTA) legal network, which is Southeast Asia’s largest legal network with presences in ten countries across the region and in China. This has given us an unparalleled reach in the region among our Philippine peer firms, an advantage recognized and valued by our clients with business interests in the region, as they have seen how we are quickly able to tap our colleagues in any of these countries for local law support whenever they needed this Our membership in RTA has also allowed us to draw upon the knowledge and experience of our colleagues in other jurisdictions whenever we needed these.

 

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

Energy & infrastructure, M&A (especially on matters involving the energy and tech industries), TMT, commercial and construction disputes, and tax litigation.

Energy & infrastructure, M&A (especially on matters involving the energy and tech industries), and TMT – We’ve seen increased activities in these practice areas in the last few years, and especially this year. This isconsistent with the Philippines projected GDP growth of 6% to 6.5% for 2024, 6.5% to 7.5% in 2025, and 6.5% to 8.0% for 2026-2028. Increased activities in these practice areas are also directly or indirectly driven by strong domestic demand, increased public investments, steady remittances and improvements in the labor market.

Commercial and construction disputes – Increased transactions involving energy & infrastructure, M&A, and TMT typically lead to increased disputes involving transactions as well. As for tax litigation – the more business activities, the more the likelihood of tax issues arising, both on a national and local government level.

Fortunately for our firm, these are practice areas where we are strong and are highly regarded in.

 

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

Before the pandemic, most Philippine law firms (including the biggest ones) still relied on desktops as their main work tool as on-site work was obviously the norm. Fortunately for us, even before the pandemic erupted in the Philippines in March 2020, we were already in the process of shifting all our lawyers to laptops and improving our IT infrastructure as we were about to pilot test a limited work-from-home program for our lawyers to improve our efficiency given the traffic situation in Metro Manila. Therefore, when the pandemic erupted and the lockdowns began in March 2020, around 90% of our lawyers were already properly equipped to work from home, and we hit 100% shortly thereafter. This allowed our firm to quickly adjust to the pandemic and to efficiently serve our clients as they resumed their commercial activities.

 

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

Most definitely. For example, while face to face meetings are increasing now, virtual meetings have become the norm, not just for foreign clients but also for local clients. We are also closely following developments in AI, as this is likely to become more and more important in the near future.

 

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

Recently, more and more of our clients have requested us to reinforce their inhouse legal teams for various reasons, including because they have seen an increased demand from their principals or because members of their team will be on extended leave. We have accommodated these requests by seconding our lawyers to them as long as necessary. This has allowed our clients’ inhouse teams to continue to deliver what is expected of them by their principals, and us to have these inhouse teams’ appreciation.

 

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

I should think so. Many of our major clients have been with almost since our firm was founded in 2007. I believe they value the institutional knowledge and the trust that have developed coming from working with the same partners in our firm over the past several years.

In 3 years’ time, I am hopeful that we will have increased our capacity and capabilities, especially in our core practice areas, and that the work that we will get from our clients will allow us to grow and become one of the five largest law firms in the Philippines (in terms of headcount). We have over 70 lawyers now. God willing, we may have over 90 lawyers by then.