Partner Perspectives: John P. Formichella

Please tell us a little bit about your firm and practice.

The firm is Formichella & Sritawat and we are very much a boutique, telecoms, media, technology law practice with a large corporate law component and a dispute resolution practice as well. But the bulk of what we do is in the telecoms media and tech space and that includes cybersecurity and data privacy. When I say TMT include those two actual areas as well.

Could you talk just to go off script slightly, could you talk a little bit about why you include those as part of TMT and serviceability?

Well, data privacy is data privacy law is I would say born out of the expansion and the pervasiveness of technology. We are more and more online and those vulnerabilities, as we all know have been exploited, which has initiated the need for data privacy law.

I mean, there’s always been data privacy law in constitutions and in the medical industry. But that’s when you know you had papers locked in a box, you had to keep them secure. But with technology, actually your personal data has become more of a vulnerable so that it’s just a natural outgrowth from being a technology law practise.

What are the main points that differentiate your firm from your competitors?

I would say that it’s uncommon in Thailand anyways to be a boutique firm and most firms tend to be full service. We have decided that we are boutique now. We may merge in the future with a boutique tax practice, but for now we are boutique and this is what we solely focus on.

So, I think that’s the main differentiation, although there are some good, there’s some other firms that, that are larger that have good TNT practices, but none that I know of that are boutique as we are.

Well, they have specialists, but they’re a part of a larger Organism. Whereas our organisation, virtually 80% of it is TMT practise the entire organisation.

 

And you can devote 100% of your, your efforts onto that particular area.

Well, yes. And we don’t have to call in lawyers from other departments to help that, you know, we have to rely on lawyers that are in a different department. All the lawyers are all the lawyers are specialised. I’m just one of, you know, a team that they’re members of my team that have more knowledge about certain nuances of telecommunications law, media law, data privacy law than I do.

Which practices do you see growing in the next year or two? What are the drivers behind that?

I think, well, there’s a high demand for tech media services in Thailand and with that follows the technology, meaning enlarged, you know, tech platforms, data centres, etc.

But I think that what probably in the near future, I think satellite based services are going to expand because the market is now opening up. It used to be a government monopoly essentially, but now that market is opening up to foreign satellite owners to provide services directly in country.

Until recently it was. When I say government monopoly, I don’t mean they were government owned satellites, but they were satellites that were, they’re owned and launched by private partners, but they have a licence to operate them by the government.

And the government only allowed basically one company. But now they’re starting to say, well, OK, you know, this foreign owned satellite can directly communicate with ground stations, gateways, uplink down link stations based in Thailand.

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

That’s a good question. I think, you know, bottom line is when a client asks a question, they don’t know what they don’t know. And fortunately in many of those situations, we tell them, look, you don’t have a problem, you don’t need to have any concerns about the legalities, what you’re doing where you know, and they appreciate that.

Whereas you could, you could, you could argue that, well, yeah, you probably should get an additional licence of some sort. But what you’re doing, exactly what you’re doing right now, you’re within the boundaries of the law and you don’t have anything to be concerned about. And you know, with the cost of legal services and the cost of technology companies, technology companies have a lot of costs.

The, the human capital is very expensive. The machines are very expensive, the software is very expensive. And so you know, where they can save on cost and not have to worry about any legal issues. That’s what I consider an add in value. You’re giving them advice where, you know, you don’t have to, you don’t have to, you know, go through a long process here. Here’s a more practical and easier process to go through.

How do you build a relationship with your clients?

Get to know them, get to know what their concerns are. Get to know their working style. Get to know what kind of internal pressures they’re under. And a lot of these folks are middle to senior executives at fairly large corporations and of course they have their own internal pressures.

So try to understand what their internal pressures are and how we can help take some of that pressure off of them so that they can deal with their superiors or their colleagues to give them practical advice so that they can work internally and make them look successful.

We deal with so many multinationals from so many different cultures and countries. The first thing that that I do and then what we do is we listen. We, don’t ask them what’s your internal process? You know, that would be a bit, I, I think inappropriate, but we may ask questions of, you know, how do you want this delivered? How do you want the advice delivered? What is it exactly that you’re trying to accomplish? And we’re not suggesting we’ll give you advice to whatever, you know, you want to hear. But what are you trying to accomplish? How would you like this delivered? And you don’t get to know somebody on a first round, especially in this day and age when you’re communicating by e-mail.

You know, over the past two years of COVID communications have largely been through e-mail. And what’s great about, you know, opening up recently is we’ve actually gone to travel, you know, to meet some of the clients. And their personalities were completely different from what reading their emails. So their emails come across as curt and a bit a bit sharp and you meet them in person and they’re just the nicest people.

 

Are clients looking for stability and strategic direction from their law firms?

So we try not to get too involved in commercial decisions, but we do give strategic advice in terms of how the customs and practices of the regulators. So a lot of these clients are multinationals, they may have they may have a set way of thinking of how a regulator behaves.

And sometimes we have to say what hold on a second in this jurisdiction regulators not going to be so concerned about that. In fact that’s not that question will never come up, here’s a question that will come up. So I go back to satellites, for example, for the regulators in Thailand, national security is a big issue. And so their frame of mind and their questioning is going is that’s going to be in the background, that’s going to be in their subconscious.

Whereas in other jurisdictions that may not be a frontline issue, it may be something else. And so clients that are based in North America or Europe may have concerns about you know frequencies, frequency use, ownership of landing stations, etc as a priority. I mean, those are issues as what in Thailand as well, but they need to be aware of that. This is also an issue of national security is also an issue.