Michael Chu is the outgoing president of the Inter-Pacific Bar Association (IPBA) and a partner at McDermott Will & Schulte in Chicago. He is excited to have Priti Suri as the president-elect and has commended her on the successful conference in New Delhi. He sat down with India Business Law Journal for a quick chat about the conference.
India Business Law Journal: Would you like to share some thoughts on Priti Suri being the successor?
Michael Chu: Priti and I have worked closely together on the council for a number of years in the run-up to both the Chicago conference. She was very curious as to how to run a more efficient conference. We all have little notes in our heads that we were keeping towards the conferences, because we each plan our own conferences.
I think Priti has implemented a lot of the things that we both really enjoyed, and even [improved] on some of the things differently that I liked. We work very well together, and I look forward to working with her.
She’s very involved in her own planning, very close to her committee, and it’s not micromanaging. It’s really caring about how well you’re hosting the people that are coming, right? And I think she and I are very alike in that way. That’s what we care about. It’s not making a good impression. It’s not doing things efficiently, or even cost-efficiently. It is about making people feel at home, which is, I think, the magic of what the IPBA really is, right?
IBLJ: Would you like to share a bit about your journey with the IPBA?
Chu: Mine is unusual.
I came to my first IPBA in the early 2000s in Hong Kong, and it was magical for me. It was the first time I came back to Asia as an adult. A friend of mine at another firm said, “Hey, you should come to this conference in Hong Kong. It’s for the IPBA.” And I went there, and it was magical. I met so many people, saw the organisation and how well it was run. Vivien Chan was the president at the time, and I remember how much I felt like home, how people were great hosts, and it was wonderful.
I got hooked on the organisation and joined it. I didn’t come to every conference after that, but every now and then I would come.
It [slowly] became a priority within me.
In the council, I served [in] the regional council member role, and then the way it happens in our organisation is that someone came to me and said, “Hey, we should have a conference in Chicago.” And I said, “Okay.”
We had a conference in Chicago last year. It was wonderful, and [I was] very happy about it. And I still feel like the feeling from that is still here in Delhi, and there’s been a really good continuity between there and here.
IBLJ: How would you introduce the organisation to first-timers and new lawyers looking to join international organisations?
Chu: I would say that the IPBA is a great organisation, because it really focuses on networking to improve your career [with] networking, cross referrals. The establishing of relationships with those across borders who have with other firms or other attorneys that have a focus [on] the Asia-Pacific region [adds to it].
Our organisation is not political. We are not really a governance organisation where we work on policy and things like that. We work on how we can enhance our membership, expand our membership and expand the things that we offer our members to become better lawyers or to network better.
The focus is on the relationships. I always tell people, “You just need to go, and then you will understand it.”
All of our programmes at the conference, in terms of social programmes [and] evening programmes, are focused on just giving people opportunities to network and get together, and it’s really a gathering of friends, and that friendship circle expands at every conference.
IBLJ: What are your thoughts on the diversity and inclusion in the IPBA?
Chu: [There is] tremendous diversity and inclusion. We do our best to make sure that people from underserved communities, underserved countries, sexual orientations [are included], and, of course, [that] the sexes are all equal.
Our council members are almost equally divided – men and women. I’m not sure [if] other bar associations, very large ones, are divided that way. So that’s very purposeful, and it comes out very well.
There’s also diversity in terms of thought, not political thought, but diversity, because when you become a member of the council, you realise that your own country that you live in is not the centre of the universe, and it shouldn’t be the centre of your practice.
It forces a diversity of thinking culturally, which is, I think, a different version of the definition of diversity. It really opens you up to the cultures and things like that for just reasons of networking and gaining friendships. You can’t judge other countries or communities or cultures if you hope to form real relationships.
IBLJ: Over the years and your experience with the IPBA, how have you seen this organisation transform?
Chu: It has gotten larger, but not too large. It has expanded more regularly beyond the specific Asia-Pacific region. I think there’s also been an expansion in the maturity, in the way it is run and the thoughtfulness. For example, it has adapted very well to the fact that people, perhaps travel more and have more and have more international practices. I think our course offerings, or session offerings, are much broader than they were before.
When the organisation was founded, our original mission says it’s an association of business lawyers, which, back in the 1990s, the word business lawyers referred to or made people think of corporate lawyers, M&A transactions lawyers. In fact, when I first joined in 2001, I was one of the very few IP litigators.
My impression after being at those conferences was there were not that many disputes lawyers that were involved at the time, some, but not as many as there are now. So the definition of what it means to be a business lawyer has expanded.
Even the diversity in terms of fields of law has also increased over the years in the IPBA.
