Meet our expert: Babita Ambekar, Partner, Singapore

What will be the most important market trend affecting your clients’ sectors over the next six months?

The biggest trend that I am continuing to see across the sectors in which I am active is the move to digital. The pandemic has materially accelerated the pace at which businesses embrace all things digital, and technology-related M&A activity is buoyant at present.

How do you expect your work as a lawyer to change in the coming years?

As clients increasingly adopt a value-driven mindset, I expect that we will continue to refine our approach to legal practice in order to derive efficiencies in the way that we manage and execute transactions, be this through the use of technology or further evolving our sector-specific expertise. As the world continues to become more seamlessly connected in a virtual sense, although jurisdictional intricacies will remain, I see the development by practitioners of global centres of excellence in terms of practice area and sector focus as being a very tangible reality.

What advice do you have for those using video call technologies? What have you learned from this phenomenon over the last year?

Whatever hybrid form the future of work takes, video call technologies are now inbuilt into our daily working routines. I am sure that our interactions with clients and colleagues will take place in a myriad of ways and we should continue to leverage both in-person and virtual outreach to most efficiently serve client needs. What I have learnt is that, at the end of the day, what we really we need in order to deliver what we do is presence of mind, a laptop and a WiFi connection.