Finding Your Unique Voice as an Advocate with Gopal Sreenevasan - Episode 47

In Episode 47 of *The Legal Genie Podcast*, your host, Lara Quie, sits down with Gopal Sreenevasan, a highly regarded advocate with decades of experience in Malaysia and host of “Advocates, the Podcast”. 

Gopal delves into his personal journey, from growing up in Kuala Lumpur and his time at Epsom College and Warwick University. The conversation touches on critical insights for lawyers, such as how to carve out your unique voice in advocacy, the importance of mentorship, and his experience balancing litigation and barrister work. He also discusses the evolution of group legal practices in Malaysia, offering a glimpse into future trends that young legal professionals should be aware of. 

For those in the legal industry looking for inspiration, practical advice, and a deeper understanding of what it takes to thrive in the field, this episode offers an engaging and candid conversation. Whether you are just starting your legal career or are a seasoned professional, Gopal’s wisdom on personal growth and advocacy development is sure to resonate. Tune in for a fascinating discussion that blends legal insights with personal anecdotes and learn how to find your own unique path in law.

Listen now to discover how you can elevate your legal career and sharpen your advocacy skills!

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Transcript

Finding Your Unique Voice as an Advocate with Gopal Sreenevasan - Episode 47

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Legal Genie Podcast, where I bring you insightful conversations with the movers and shakers of the legal industry. This podcast is a labour of love, recorded, edited, and sponsored by me, Lara Quie, in my spare time. So if you have ever got any value from these episodes, please, would you do me a big favour and subscribe to the show on Apple or Spotify?

I would be even more grateful if you could share this episode with your friends and family and leave a rating and review so that the show can reach even more listeners. Thank you and on with the show.

Lara Quie: Hello and welcome to The Legal Genie Podcast [00:01:00] with me, your host, Lara Quie. Today I have the pleasure of the company of Gopal Sreenevasan. Gopal was called to the English Bar in 1993 and the Malaysian Bar in 1995. He was also later called to the Singapore Bar in 2001. He acts as counsel in Endeavor Group Law Practice in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Gopal's advocacy practice covers a wide range of complex commercial and civil disputes, including contract, company law, banking, libel, aviation, administrative law, probate, and professional negligence disputes. He is the co-author of the Malaysian Litigation Practice Guide and a contributor to Law and Practice of Injunctions in Malaysia, both published by Sweet and Maxwell.

Gopal is the host of a podcast called, "Advocates the Podcast", on which he interviews acclaimed courtroom advocates from all over the world. He is Adjunct Professor of Law at [00:02:00] Taylor's University, and he's on the panel of arbitrators at the Asian International Arbitration Centre, AIAC, in Kuala Lumpur.

Welcome to The Legal Genie Podcast, Gopal. 

Gopal Sreenevasan: Thank you very much for having me, Lara. 

Lara Quie: Must be fun for you to be on the other side of the microphone for a change. 

Gopal Sreenevasan: Yes, it's the first time actually. 

Lara Quie: Oh, right. Well, I'm so honoured. Thank you so much. Exciting. So let's kick off with where you grew up and tell me a little bit about your childhood.

Gopal Sreenevasan: So I was born in Kuala Lumpur to my parents, my father was a surgeon. Mother was a homemaker. Grew up in Kampong Baru, which is a sort of a village right in the middle of KL. And my father worked nearby in the general hospital, which is just a five minute drive away.

And I had a very happy very warm childhood. I was very much loved, which was great. And then I went off to boarding school very young. I went to Singapore when I was nine and then I went to the [00:03:00] UK when I was 10. And I stayed on in boarding school in the UK until just before my A levels, did my A levels in in the UK went to university there and went to the bar there. So I spent all in about 15 years in the UK. 

Lara Quie: It sounds like you were sent away very young. 

Gopal Sreenevasan: It was very young. 

Lara Quie: And so how do you feel that shaped you as a person being abroad and independent from such a young age? 

Gopal Sreenevasan: Yeah, it has shaped me. Definitely. And I think what it has given me the one distinct trait I think it's given me all the way through is independence.

And being able to do things on my own from a very young age. But I was also equally very blessed because while I was sent off to school, I still remained very close with my parents and my siblings. And I used to come back until I was about 15 or 16, I used to come back every holiday.

So yes, we still remained a very close family, but certainly it did shape it did shape my thinking. 

Lara Quie: So you mentioned that you then did law. [00:04:00] So who or what inspired your launch into the legal profession, having come from a father who was a surgeon? 

Gopal Sreenevasan: Yeah. Well, good question.

And I think of those of his generation, Asian parents of his generation always wanted their sons in particular to follow in their footsteps. So, my father was very keen that I became a doctor and sent me to a public school in the UK, which was a sort of feeder school for medicine, which was Epsom College.

But I think he made the mistake of once taking me to watch an operation that he performed. And I immediately realized that there's no way on earth I was ever going to do medicine at that point in time. And that, and I was very interested in history. I still am. I still am a student of history now.

I was very keen on doing a degree in history, but my father, again, as, many of his generation were, they pigeonholed your educational [00:05:00] options into law, medicine, accounting, one of the professions, basically and engineering. So I think law for me was the least objectionable of the, of those sorts of four, four professions.

And I think I that, that's the reason I gravitated towards that. And also, of course, I did have lawyers in the family. My, my older sister is still practicing in Malaysia. And then my late uncle was a judge and a lawyer in Malaysia as well. So yeah, so there was some family history there.

Lara Quie: And so you chose to do law at Warwick University and that at the time was particularly forward thinking. I remember when I was doing all the open days and there was a very interesting German and law course and German law. So they were one of the first universities that really promoted the sort of international aspect of law.

So tell us a bit about your experience there and the student life that you led as well. 

Gopal Sreenevasan: I think it was Warwick was a place, especially the law school was [00:06:00] a place that taught you to think like a lawyer but did not teach you the law. I don't think they were interested in saying, look, this is the section in the Companies Act that does this.

We never had lectures like that. And I think it really did shape my thinking as a lawyer in the sense that they encouraged us and they taught us to keep asking the question, why? um, so That was a lot of fun and what it also meant was that it was a difficult course to fail if you applied your mind to it.

Not so much the, I don't think you need it to be very industrious in terms of reading and stuff like that, but if you applied your mind to it, it was quite difficult to fail, I think. On the international side, that was my favourite part of the course. I did a couple of courses in, in international law and I absolutely adored it.

I scored highest in, in those international law subjects. So it was a lot of fun. And yes, student life on campus, you've done it as well. Yeah, it was it was fun. It was a party from beginning to end. 

Lara Quie: Yeah, I think that university is quite famous for its on campus fun that you can have near Coventry. [00:07:00] Yeah. So after university, what happened next? 

Gopal Sreenevasan: I sat for the English bar. My father was very much an Anglophile. And at that time there was a course that was available in Malaysia called the Certificate of Legal Practice, which is still around which I could have taken locally and then qualify to practice in Malaysia.

But my father was an Anglophile. I think he felt that doing the bar in the UK would lead to better options for me one of which is, in fact, getting called in Singapore. So I stayed on and did the bar and then came back and practiced immediately. But I should just pause to let you know a little bit of a second career that I had in between A levels and the university which was as a journalist.

So I came back to Malaysia and I was awaiting results, which as it turned out, weren't very good. And I became a journalist for a local newspaper here called the Malay Mail, so I wrote for them for six months, and then I continued after that to, to be what is known as a stringer for them, which is a sort of freelancer.

And I wrote for them for many years. The Straits Times as well for many years. And [00:08:00] I still, now today, write. the odd opinion piece for online publications in Malaysia. And it was out of luck. It was because of that I actually ended up in Warwick because I went to interview these two professors from Warwick who came down to promote a particular course.

And they said well, now that you've interviewed us, can we interview you? And that's how I ended up there. So yeah, it was uh, fortuitous. 

Lara Quie: Yeah, that's so interesting. And lawyers are though, wordsmiths, just like journalists, obviously, are wordsmiths and authors and people who are historians, all good with words.

And it's interesting what you say about journalism, because I think that certain, objectivity, that highly sceptical mindset that lawyers must adopt in terms of the evidence, etc. Although, as we see in modern journalism, the truth is rarely there. It has come a long way from that. 

Gopal Sreenevasan: It is less so now. I think you're absolutely right. It is less so now. And just that, that ability to be inquisitive, I think that's something that, that comes naturally to you as a journalist and that helps as a lawyer as [00:09:00] well. 

Lara Quie: Certainly asking all the right questions, right? Delving deeper, trusting your gut instincts about is this person really telling me the full story?

I'm thinking actually that there might be more to it. So I think in terms of cross examination skills, they probably go hand in hand. 

Gopal Sreenevasan: Yeah, absolutely. 

Lara Quie: So You went to Warwick after all of that, and you did your training. In the beginning, what was your ambition? Were you thinking you were going to be a private practice solicitor?

What were you thinking longer term? 

Gopal Sreenevasan: Yeah. I think fairly early on, I had decided that if I was going to practice, it was going to be in a dispute resolution. It was going to be litigation. Malaysia, like Singapore, has a fused profession. And what happens in the bigger firms is that you have you have departments which do different areas, including corporate, conveyancing, industrial relations, tax, and then you have a litigation department.

And of course, [00:10:00] just from my family's background, both my sister and my late uncle were both in litigation as well. And I felt a natural draw to that. So I don't think I ever considered for a moment thinking about becoming a sort of transactional solicitor in any way.

Lara Quie: So currently in your firm, you're acting more as a barrister. So you talk about the fused profession, 

Gopal Sreenevasan: yes 

Lara Quie: but actually you like to focus on the advocacy. So tell me a bit about that journey. 

Gopal Sreenevasan: Yeah. So I practiced as an advocate and a solicitor for, more than 20 years, 23 years before I set up this group legal practice, which focuses on advocacy.

And I think what I've found is when you're in a full service firm and you're doing both the advocacy and the solicitors work, you effectively are spending time on things that don't really matter when it comes to court work. And that is the hand holding, the letter writing, that sort of thing that you tend to have to do with a lay client, and as well as, drafting of affidavits. [00:11:00] That just takes away a huge chunk of your time, which you need, I think, nowadays, for thinking about the advocacy. And what I mean by that is about the written advocacy and the oral advocacy. As you said, being a wordsmith, choosing the right word to say. What do you leave in your submission, written submission, what do you leave out for oral submissions? That sort of thought process.

So having done that now for the last two years, I have found that I have had so much more time to focus on those two things. And that I think has benefited my advocacy. I think it has benefited the judges. I think I've become more helpful to judges than I perhaps used to be. And so in the course of which it's just become more fun practicing.

So, that's what I do now. And in fact, in Malaysia next year, in February the, this model that we have at the moment, it's just two of us in a GLP. We're hoping to expand that to 10 lawyers. [00:12:00] Who will be in a traditional UK set of chambers. We have premises for that in February and we'll be taking possession of that in February.

And we will have a traditional clerking system. We have a firm of practice managers who come and take on the task of traditional clerks. And everyone will have to sign an undertaking not to do solicitors work. And all our continued training as we move on, we'll all be independent practitioners and our training as we move on will be focused purely on advocacy.

Lara Quie: That's very interesting. So what changes needed to be made to the Malaysian Bar rules for that to come in? 

Gopal Sreenevasan: Yeah, I think about five years ago the Malaysian Bar passed rules allowing what are known as group legal practices. And what that means is that you can have at the present up to five and apparently, it's being increased to seven.

Why the number, don't ask me, is utterly arbitrary as far as I'm concerned. And what it allows individual firms to do is to practice together and to share facilities. So that was the [00:13:00] change. I think, I don't think there should be a limit on the number. And I don't know why there is, but that's where we are at the moment.

Lara Quie: Well, that sounds like a very interesting development and no doubt there are many smaller firms and individuals thinking about how they can band together and form a nice Yeah, yeah. 

Gopal Sreenevasan: It's been hugely popular, Lara, I tell you particularly with the younger practitioners. Who were in days of old sort of bonded to a firm and taking a salary because, they couldn't take the risk or afford going out on their own.

So now they can, up to five of them can get together and share premises, share costs. So I think it's been a real boon to the younger end of the profession in Kuala Lumpur. Out in the, in, in the provinces and the other states I think it's probably been more helpful for the smaller firms rather than the younger ones.

Lara Quie: It's good to see this progress. I think what we're noticing is that the young solicitors of today do think very differently. Their priorities are different. I think they've watched the older [00:14:00] generation and how we suffered in terms of just literally giving over our free time and our lives to the practice but being much more focused now on that work life harmony, particularly after the pandemic meant that people focused on what does life mean?

Is it all about work or actually. greater things in terms of relationships, spending time in nature, et cetera. So with your junior people that you work with, what do you feel about the future of law and what advice have you got for younger lawyers? 

Gopal Sreenevasan: Well, let me start off by saying, I think the Malaysian Bar has a hugely talented pool of young lawyers, in KL particularly the ones that I work with.

And I always say I, I design the teams that I work with on the footing that I'm surrounding myself by the people that are smarter than me. That just makes my life easier, makes me look good. So that's the starting point. And I think [00:15:00] there's huge talent in in KL here and I think at the same time that there is a lot of talent, the standards are not equal in the sense that we have a very good end, and then we also have, I think, a very bad end.

So, the very good end is very good. The English is excellent, their deployment of language, their research skills, their forensic skills. That's really good. So yes, I love working with younger lawyers here. Advice for them, I think for me I've been sceptical about a work life balance existing in the first five years of practice.

I think after the fifth year, you can start looking at that. But I think the first five, the learning curve has to be so steep. And if it is so steep, something's got to give. So I think, I would say just get your hammer down for the first five years. The industry you need for the first five years is at a very high level.

And another piece of advice I'd give, second piece of advice is, pick your mentor. So everybody has to learn from someone as you know as well. And I think picking the right person to learn [00:16:00] from, results in you doing things properly for the next 50 years. Pick the wrong person and you could end up quite in the opposite direction.

So I think that's really important. 

Lara Quie: That sounds like you're thinking of some mentors in particular. Can you tell me about the mentors that you yourself have had and why you say that specifically? 

Gopal Sreenevasan: Sure. For me, there was only really one main mentor I had. I was very lucky when I was, when I came out into practice, I was a pupil in Shearn Delamore, which is one of the bigger firms in KL.

They offered me a spot, but it wasn't in an area that I wanted to do. So I went out on my own very young. I was with a firm for maybe a year, and then I went out and opened up on my own. But what I did was I recognized that, with my kind of level of experience. If I didn't learn from the right people and do the right kind of work, I was going to end up doing divorces and running down for the rest of my career.

So I picked a couple of people I'd work with during my pupillage and said to myself, I'm going to go and [00:17:00] offer myself as a solicitor to these people. They're leaders at the bar. And it so happened and I did it unwittingly really that there was a gap in the market for good quality solicitors who could support senior counsel.

So, the main person I would mark out as my mentor is the late Raja Aziz Addruse, who can only be described as a giant on the Malaysian legal scene, absolute giant. And he taught me without any restriction as to knowledge. He was a gentleman. He taught me about integrity and honesty at the bar.

And he was a very skilful lawyer. So I learned a lot from him, but I was also very lucky, even though it was just a year and a half, I got to work with other very big names in, in litigation in Malaysia in that capacity as solicitor. So I worked with Lo Siu Chang, for example, who was a master in company law.

I worked with Robert Lazar from Shearn Delamore a very experienced uh, trial lawyer. an appellate lawyer as well, and people like that. So I think those would be the three [00:18:00] names that stand out for me in terms of being my people I really learned from. 

Lara Quie: Sounds like you positioned yourself very strategically from a young age.

Where do you think you were able to come up with this sort of strategy? 

Gopal Sreenevasan: Actually, as I said, it was completely unwitting. I didn't think of it. It was more, I think it was driven by the realization that I could end up doing, you know, this kind of work, which I would never enjoy. You know, running down and divorces.

I would never enjoy doing that. So I think it came from that rather than some sort of long term vision, but it worked out well. And that's the kind of work I ended up doing the kind of work that I wanted to and learning from the kind of people that I wanted to. So I was very lucky very lucky.

Lara Quie: I'd say that these days, there's so much more of an opportunity for young people to design their own legal career. You mentioned how, in days gone by you'd be in a large firm and you'd just stay there and just do the work. But nowadays thinking about you and your group legal practice, thinking about [00:19:00] your focus on advocacy and all of these different things, how it is within a young person's control to direct their career, shape it, find the right mentors.

What other advice have you got for them to really shape that way forward? 

Gopal Sreenevasan: I think, making a decision early on, and I can only speak about the litigation part of it, but I think making a decision early on, if that's what you want to do then I think the next step is to work out in what areas you want to practice in, legal areas.

So, is it commercial law? Is it industrial relations? Is it company law? And then from there, find the right person to work with. So, I do not think that, for example, we have these Chambers and Partners and Legal 500s and those sort of directories. I'm not sure they're entirely useful for a young practitioner coming out to identify who it is you should be working with.

I also do not think that it is [00:20:00] particularly useful when students are attracted or pupils or young lawyers are attracted to wages that are being paid. Or indeed the fact that, oh, that firm held a social at my university. And that seemed to be driving factors for some of them.

And they go in, for example, and do pupillage, and then come out and go, oh boy, did I make a mistake? So I think getting your ear to the ground early on and finding out who the market says is good, and that's, like I say, not necessarily reflected in, in, in any directory or in any or in a, in an, in the throwing of an event.

And then find your way through that to the right person to work with. 

Lara Quie: That's very true. It is quite arbitrary and it is better to do one's own legwork and also to find the right fit, because as every individual lawyer is an individual personality. Absolutely. So a practice area, a person, a firm, an environment, each of those has to fit you as an individual. 

And I think it's very important that people have good self [00:21:00] awareness and do develop an idea of what is going to be a good fit for them. And not just to go with the flow all the time in terms of what everybody else is doing and all the big names, as you say, it's a lot about branding, about money. And that can be quite a short term view. But if you're going to play the long game and meet the right people. So I think actually networking is a really great way of finding out from people. So as a young person, you enter the Malaysian legal scene. If you can get yourself to some events and speak to some senior lawyers and say, "So, who's a bit of a mover shaker here, what kind of thing do they do?" And so going on to that, let's talk about your podcast, where all of these incredible movers and shakers are, being interviewed by you. So, firstly, what inspired you to start the podcast? And also, who is it singing your introductory music?

Gopal Sreenevasan: Good question. [00:22:00] Good question. So, let me answer the second one first. He's a local singer in Malaysia. His name is Bala. He's been on the local scene for, he does covers and he'd be on the local scene forever. Semi-retired now, but he's a very close friend of mine.

So just before we launched episode one, we needed some intro music. So I just went and picked him up. I took him to a music studio and I said, just record something for us. And he did. And that's what came out. So as to how we started it well, it was in the middle of it was in the middle of lockdown.

And I was starting to think more and more about advocacy and, and as a result of which I'm, I've got this new practice. And I was beginning to wonder how, you know, people's careers evolved and how they began, what inspired them and how they charted their journey as advocates.

So that's how it, that's how it began. And I called my friend Razlan and asked him and said, "Look, can we kick this off?" And then together with our then producer who became an interviewer later on, Michelle, we said, yeah, okay, let's just give this a bash. And at that time, all the technology was available as [00:23:00] well.

So we started off with guys we knew in KL. Robert Lazar, Tommy Thomas, who had , just resigned as Attorney General of Malaysia, and then my sister Ambiga. So we started with three guys, three local guys, and then I knew a few silks in London. Jonathan Crow was one of them.

And Eason Rajah, who's now a High Court Judge, was another. So yeah, we just got in touch, and then the circle just got bigger and bigger. And then when you wanted someone else, you'd go to, say, Mr. X and say, do you know him? If you do, can you put me in touch?

So it's just six degrees of separation. And that's how it began. 

Lara Quie: Well, this is quite brilliant. I really, really enjoyed all the episodes I've listened to particularly the Right Honourable Baroness, Hale of Richmond. Absolutely brilliant. She's such a character.

And it's so good though, to see these public figures and imagine what they're like, but to actually, with your one to one conversation that you had, able to really talk about her school and her family and all of [00:24:00] those things and all the things that have led to where she is, because her story really is extraordinary.

And as a female lawyer, in her position with that kind of trajectory, it is so encouraging. And I think that young female lawyers in particular, when they can hear stories like that from her, it's really inspirational. And also what I love is how down to earth everybody is, and everybody is very humble and they don't hide when they've had challenges or failures.

In fact, they're quite proud of them. And that's what is so beautiful about podcasts, isn't it? The level of depth and openness and authenticity that you get on a podcast is quite different to what you get on the TV or when someone's interviewed in another context. 

Gopal Sreenevasan: I think that's absolutely right. And just to digress for just a minute. Like Baroness Hale, for example, we interviewed, I think we interviewed her in April of last year. I think she was our last episode. And then in May, I was in [00:25:00] Madrid for a World Jurist Awards that were being handed out and she was getting a medal. And she immediately recognized me, gave me a hug.

We became friends, and so you get to meet these people you've interviewed and Nancy Hollander was there as well. So yeah, it was nice. It was nice that way. 

Lara Quie: It, I must say, is a fantastic excuse to meet new people. That's how we met obviously as well. 

Gopal Sreenevasan: So that part of it has also been very rewarding.

I think the kind of relationships that have that have endured. 

Lara Quie: Totally. And I just think it's such a great way to connect with people, hear more about their story, understand where they've come from, understand where they're going. And just talk about things, you know, in this day of AI where everything is so digital and we're reading so much, ultimately what humans are craving is true human to human connection.

And so there's a magic about the spoken word. And I think that if we think back to our caveman ancestors, sitting around the fire, looking into the flames, [00:26:00] telling stories, that is what is successful. Cause when we talk about lawyers practices these days. And what does it take to build your own book?

Actually, it's good storytellers who are the most successful. They're the people who can explain their what and why, and that's very motivating and it definitely helps with your firm's brand, et cetera. So 

Gopal Sreenevasan: I don't know that we did it for that, but I must say that It was a very deliberate choice to do it as an audio only podcast, very deliberate.

I think particularly me I grew up on, on BBC radio in the UK, listening to the cricket and, the news and talk shows and stuff like that. So you're right. The spoken word holds a very special place for me. And that's why we deliberately made it an audio only podcast.

Lara Quie: So you just said that it's end of the last season. So have you got a whole load of recordings coming up and some exciting people? 

Gopal Sreenevasan: Well, no, in fact, when we put the cudgels [00:27:00] down at the end of last season, we thought we might bring it to an end. I mean, done 33 episodes, I think, 30 odd episodes and not as many as yours, Lara.

And we thought we were getting a little bit tired of the kind of format that we'd deployed. But we got together again just a couple of weeks ago and we miss it so much now that we've not been doing it for eight months. We've decided to come back for another season. And I think we're going to have some discussions in the new year about just tinkering with the format a little bit.

And then and then, yeah, hopefully we'll start recording in the first quarter of next year. 

Lara Quie: Well, that's certainly encouraging. I do definitely want you to come back for a new season. But I agree that Podcasts can get a bit samey if the format is too rigid certainly within mine, I've started to add a few sort of bite sized BD type of episodes.

I'm thinking of adding a bit more where we have a few more guests. interacting as well. And also perhaps more sort of topical [00:28:00] discussions. I think now that the audience has built up to a point where people know what it's about. And there's plenty of content there already from a sort of mentorship perspective, so that is the main body.

And that was very much the idea. I wanted young people to have virtual mentors and to be inspired and encouraged by all of these amazing lawyers. But also to, to realize that the legal industry is broad and it's not just lawyers, you can take your legal career from being a solicitor to doing all sorts of things, if you're really interested in cryptocurrency. And you want to go in and do the legal side of that. And the regulation of that. You can be doing business development like I do, you can be doing all sorts, so I want people to love the law, the legal industry as a whole, but for it not to be a set of handcuffs so they don't feel trapped and they don't feel like there's nothing else they can do because there are many very unhappy lawyers and [00:29:00] there's no reason for that.

They can take that knowledge and they can move forward with that but in a new direction if they want. So that's the idea. 

Gopal Sreenevasan: It's great that you're doing this. Yeah. 

Lara Quie: So, let's end on a last word of advice for some young lawyers listening and just some final words that you'd like to tell everyone. 

Gopal Sreenevasan: Well, I'd like to actually borrow a word that you used in the discussion a little bit earlier about it being we're all being individuals as lawyers.

So I'd end by saying this to anyone who wants to be at the bar, is to recognize that it is about your voice. Every individual has a different voice, so if you want to develop as an advocate, develop your own voice as an advocate. Don't copy anyone, don't speak like anyone, don't gesticulate like anyone, but yes, be yourself.

And I think if you are, you're able to develop your own style as a barrister and your own voice as a barrister. It is far more effective because it's honest. 

Lara Quie: [00:30:00] That's great. it reminds me of the idea of singers, everyone has such a unique voice. There's no point crooning, trying to pretend you're Elvis.

Gopal Sreenevasan: And it's the same with advocacy. Yeah. 

Lara Quie: Yeah. So it's exactly that. So brilliant. Okay. So where can people reach you if they want to connect with you? 

Gopal Sreenevasan: I'm unfortunately not on any social media platforms at all. So you can drop me an email. And you can find out my email address on the website.

Lara Quie: Okay. I'm sure people will find you anyway. So thank you so much, Gopal. 

Gopal Sreenevasan: Absolutely been my pleasure, Lara. Thank you very much. 

 Thank you for joining us on the Legal Genie Podcast. We hope today's episode has granted your wishes for legal career insights and wisdom. Don't forget to subscribe to the show on your favourite podcast platform to be first, to be notified of the latest episodes. Please consider leaving us a review on Apple podcasts and sharing it with other legal eagles. Your support helps the show to reach [00:31:00] a much wider audience. Until next time, have a magical week ahead.