Legally On the Move: Careers, Tech & Insights from Dubai – Clotilde Iaia-Polak – E13

You can hear Rob and Clotilde discussing:

– Dynamic Career Paths in Dubai and How to Achieve Them

– Finding Innovation in Remote Legal Practice

– Empowering Women through Financial Independence

– Community Engagement and Support for Women

– Work-Life Balance and Supportive Workplace Culture

Connect with Clotilde here – https://ae.linkedin.com/in/clotilde-iaia-polak-b958911b

Transcript

00:00

Welcome to legally on the move careers tech and insights from Dubai in this exclusive mini-series of the legally speaking podcast we’re taking you to the heart of Dubai a global hub for legal innovation cutting-edge technology and transformative career opportunities here’s what you’ll gain career inspiration unlock the secrets to thriving in Dubai’s dynamic legal market tech trends dive into how AI blockchain and legal tech are reshaping the industry diversity and leadership here from trailblazersis driving inclusivity and innovation in the UAE and Global Perspectives explore how Dubai’s unique blend of tradition and ambition is creating a thriving legal ecosystem.

00:40

Recorded in iconic locations, these episodes bring you the energy and insights of one of the world’s most exciting legal hubs.

00:48

Don’t just listen, experience the future of law.

00:50

Ready to move forward with us?

00:52

Let’s go.

00:53

So, welcome to the Legally Speaking Podcast: Name, Title and Firm.

00:59

Clotilde Iaia, Managing Partner, Yungo Law.

01:03

And it’s an absolute pleasure to be doing this live with you from Dubai and we’ve got a very dear mutual friend in Jody Hill who’s also been on the Legally Speaking Podcast.

01:12

But I want to ask just first off, tell us a bit about your background and career journey and how you sort of led to be where you are in Dubai today.

01:20

Right, so I arrived here about 20 years ago in 2004.

01:24

As many Dubai experts, I just arrived here thinking I was going to be here for about three months.

01:31

I was a trainee trade analyst at the Italian Trade Commission, and while I was working there, I was like, I love the city, I love the diversity, the type of work that I was doing, and I decided to look for a more permanent position, and I was offered a job by what was at the time a German-British-Jordanian law firm that thatthen became Evershed Sutherlands later on, you know, down the line.

01:57

And then I was, you know, and then it’s such a beautiful city, a diverse environment and salaries were really, really good at the time.

02:07

And so I decided to stay and it was so difficult to go back to Europe or to Italy.

02:13

I lived in London for a while and commuted and that’s the reason I founded Yungo Law.

02:18

It was because nobody in 2014 believed that you couldwork remotely and maintain your practice in the UAE and I had to move to London for family reasons.

02:30

I didn’t want to leave my practice, what I had built in the previous 10 years in the UAE.

02:34

Therefore, I decided that I really wanted to try to set up my own firm.

02:40

Also, I wanted to create an environment where women could thrive and a law firm that was kinder and that was more supportive of women’s career.

02:50

And that’s how the idea of Yungo Law started.

02:53

And it was very successful.

02:54

And then COVID, as you know, happened, and that forced me to actually having to return to the UAE from London.

03:02

So my whole family now moved back to the UAE and this is what we call home and what we will be calling home for a very long time.

03:10

We all have golden visas.

03:12

So we feel really connected and rooted in the environment here.

03:17

My law firm is the Ras Alkema, which isneighbouring Emirates.

03:22

As you might know, the UAE is formed by seven Emirates, Dubai, Rasul Kemah, Abu Dhabi, Ajman, sorry, I don’t want to forget anyone, Fujairah, Umm Al Qain and Sharjah.

03:34

And I didn’t want to forget any of those Emirates.

03:36

And that’s also a very thriving community and at the time I applied for my legal licence, it was the only Emirates that would support women and womenlaw lawyers to be able to obtain a legal license and this is why I had to apply to Ras Al Khaimah.

03:56

Obviously from Ras Al Khaimah we cover all of the United Arab Emirates.

04:00

It is a bit challenging to grow because very often the UAE attracts very multinational corporations and multinational law firms and it is more difficult for homegrown businesses if youif you allow me that term, to actually grow and become international, not because somebody came from abroad and opened an office, but because we created an international firm that is born in the UAE.

04:32

So that’s what I’m trying to do.

04:33

I’m trying to make a firm that was born in Ras Al Khaimah an international law firm.

04:39

AndBecause I worked for 10 years in Biglow, I have so much experience.

04:44

I’ve gained a lot of information, knowledge in managing a larger firm, and I really love a challenge generally as a person, and this is what I love about this market.

04:56

Yeah, and you’re doing great work.

04:58

And the other great thing about you is you’re a very community-led person.

05:01

I know there’s the values that run through your firm as well.

05:04

But tell us about some of the wider initiatives you’re involved in and the work that you do, because it’s impressive.

05:10

The reason I set up Yungo Law was to, one of the main focus general for me as a person, it’s my passion, is to ensure that women have financial independence.

05:25

Because financial independence for women creates the opportunity of financial freedom and the opportunity of having financial freedom will ultimately reduce domestic abuse and the reduction of domestic abuse will ultimately benefit children.

05:41

So, all my initiatives, all that I do that is not related, obviously, to profitability on my firm, and I do believe, I’m a firm believer that your passion can become your business, and if your passion is your business, then your business can only thrive.

05:59

And at the same time, you can do something, you can be profitable, but you don’t need to be greedy, and you can be profitable and do something good.

06:08

What I’m trying to do is to create opportunities for women to become, to acquire more knowledge in financial matters.

06:17

So to become more financially educated, to have more access to justice and to a defence, to have more access to and understanding the legal environment where they live, to have more access therefore an opportunity to meet together.

06:34

And so in that realm, last year, for instance, I’ve organised a four-part seminar, which was called Skill Building for Women by Women.

06:44

And it was attended by over 250 women in Dubai.

06:50

And we also did a two-part seminar in Abu Dhabi with the cooperation of the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and the Abu Dhabi Business Women Council.

06:58

And here in Dubai, it was in cooperation with the DLC Academy.

07:03

And we obviously, I honestly love the energy and I also support, of course, the Women in Law Awards.

07:11

Again, I feel so much joy when my colleagues are recognised for their work because I know as a woman it’s really hard to be a lawyer.

07:22

It’s really hard to be so successful.

07:24

You really need to be an exceptional person and I hope in the future that women, to be successful, they will not need any more to be exceptional.

07:33

to be perfectionist.

07:35

I hope that every woman, like very often happens for men, that you just need to be fine.

07:42

Yes.

07:43

Well said, well said.

07:45

And what’s your view on the future then, with your firm, within the UAE?

07:50

What are you most excited about?

07:52

Right.

07:53

Obviously, I can’t speak about all our projects that are a little bit in progress and then I want to jinx it honestly, but we do have some exciting news that I do hope to be able to share very soon and you’ll be the first one to know.

08:07

I’ll give you an exclusive minute.

08:11

But yeah, we’re looking at expanding more in the UAE to be able to cover other emirates.

08:17

During COVID, I had to let go of some people and so the firm became very small and then suddenly afterCOVID I was able to regrow my team and now we’re a team of five lawyers plus three support staff.

08:31

I want to further grow the firm in terms of number and continue to provide an environment where you know we offer very hybrid flexible work which helps mothers to be able to return to work or to continue to work even if they have young children.

08:47

We’re very supportive of that.

08:49

We provide all sorts of benefits to allow mothersto be able to come and work for us.

08:55

And this is what I want to continue doing.

08:58

I want to continue to provide opportunities for women to become successful lawyers without having to renounce to being manners or being, you know, partners or…

09:08

also enjoying family life.

09:10

Yeah.

09:11

I think you’re a human first author.

09:13

Exactly.

09:13

And I think, you know, understanding that people have lives, have families, et cetera, et cetera, and they can still get the job done if you give them the platform is brilliant.

09:23

Not only do they get the job done, they get excellent job done, you know?

09:27

Yeah.

09:28

Because, you know, if you’re a mum, you have to juggle so many things, so you know how to juggle things, you know how to manage expectation, you know how to make sure that youmanage your time wisely.

09:40

If there is somebody that gets things done, it’s mums.

09:42

That’s what I know for sure.

09:44

Absolutely.

09:45

I mean obviously you don’t have to necessarily be a mum.

09:48

No, of course.

09:49

To get the job done and I wouldn’t in any way, shape or form want to discriminate against who is not a mum.

09:55

I do think that women can be mums in so many ways.

09:58

Yes.

09:58

And not just by having, you know, children.

10:01

You can have that maternal instinct and I think there was like a very famous advertising agency in London that was called Mothers and each one of the, you know, each one of their employees was called a mother.

10:16

Because again, you can be a mother in so many ways.

10:18

You can also be a man and be a mother.

10:20

There you go.

10:21

This is true.

10:22

This is true.

10:22

And I think you really well put that.

10:24

Well said.

10:25

I want to just do two quick questions before we close.

10:27

One is on business development, you know, running a firm, you know, how do you go about business development?

10:33

How have you found that in terms of growing?

10:36

You’ve kind of teased up that you’ve got some exciting plans coming, but yeah, any strategies on business development that work for you principally within the UAE?

10:42

Right, so I think there are several ways to do business development.

10:46

As a leading law partner, when I set up the firm, I knew I had to do business development, but honestly I didn’t knowexactly how to do everything and so at some point I realized I had to delegate some of these functions to someone else because simply it was too much.

11:03

Yeah.

11:03

At the beginning honestly I didn’t even need to do business development because I set up my firm and suddenly I had you know a million dollar portfolio worth of clients that followed me and I wasn’t expecting that because you know we tend to underestimate our potential, right?

11:22

So I was taken aback by theamount of support that I received from my clients and that was enough to already like my focus was I need to get lawyers to come and work for me and I need to and then after that and that was and then you know COVID started suddenly you know there was not enough work and I was had to you know you have to fight and do another day soI never left business development.

11:51

That’s when I actually started to invest more in business development.

11:55

And so I had to improve my visibility on social media.

12:00

So I started to work more on social media, started an Instagram account, TikTok account, a LinkedIn account, and tried to see what sticks, what works, what doesn’t work.

12:09

Then after COVID, yes, the work started to come back in, but then it was difficult to hire people.

12:15

People wanted to work only for a large firm, and if they knew the firm and nobodymy firm.

12:20

So I had to find a way to attract talent and my focus for the past four or five years was how can I raise my profile so that people come and work with me?

12:30

And that was another piece of, you know, business, even though you might say it’s not directly a business development, but you can, you know, grow if you don’t have talent, right?

12:42

So again, it is business development and so finally now we are at the point where we are advertising otheradvertised a position for a training solicitor starting in August 2025 because our current training solicitor is going to finish his two years of practice and qualify as a solicitor.

13:00

And we had hundred applications, so we had to create a full process before, you know, how to mark them and so forth.

13:09

There are so many ways that I do business development and because we’re a small firm, I might notbe always right.

13:17

I use a lot of external consultants.

13:20

Another thing that absolutely was a game changer for us is artificial intelligence.

13:28

We don’t use artificial intelligence to provide legal consultation to our clients.

13:34

This is a very much human thing.

13:38

Artificial intelligence is not there yet in terms of quality of work and reliability of information because sometimes ithallucinate.

13:46

However, artificial intelligence has helped tremendously with, for instance, SEO analysis.

13:52

It helps a lot with content creation.

13:56

Not because we use AI to create content, but because we use AI to understand what content is trending.

14:04

And I don’t need to have a consultant that does that for me.

14:08

It makes things so much faster and you can be a lot more coherent with the time, you know?

14:16

I always talk about newsjacking or what’s going on in the world or what’s trending where you can get attention, where there’s attention, you want to be part of that conversation.

14:23

And before it took you time to understand what was working or what was trending, but now with artificial intelligence, I can see where the trend is going, it gives me an idea what I need to speak about and then makes content creation so much easier.

14:39

Not because again, I’m the creator, but I can use artificial intelligence to say, do I say this way, do I say that way, what kind ofvocabulary do I need to use?

14:47

What is going to be popping up in SEO researches?

14:50

That is a game changer because for us, it reduced our time of being a small team and having to do a lot of business development ourselves, not having a full business development team as I was used to a big law firm.

15:05

And I teach all of my lawyers, you know, guys, you need to be your own business development manager.

15:10

Number one priority, because even I worked in big law firms, and we did have directors of marketing, directors of business development.

15:20

Don’t think these guys would do my job.

15:23

These guys would tell me, these are the trends of the firm, this is what you want, this is what your KPI are, you have to achieve these targets, this is how you’re going to do it, and these are the events you’rego to, or you might be going to, get the job done.

15:38

But I had to prepare the content.

15:40

I had to prepare the slides.

15:42

I had to make sure those slides were relevant.

15:45

They could give me some help, but the big job is you, is your energy, how you connect to people, how much you involve yourself in things, your authenticity.

15:56

Correct.

15:57

Yeah, and I think I always say everything is energy and I love your energy and I’ve loved this conversation.

16:01

And a final question before we go, as someone who is running a law firm, who’slooking at talent, maybe thinking of people who are wanting to move into the region.

16:08

What are like one or two skills or traits you look for when hiring lawyers that you think makes them perform well in the UAE market?

16:15

Right, I’m very peculiar on that, Rob.

16:17

I think not everybody likes this.

16:20

you know I can see someone’s background or you know legal skills from their CV, I don’t usually care as much about from which university you come from or you know your GCSE results or you know your A-levels or whatever.

16:39

No, the first question I ask them is what is your passion?

16:44

And somebody cannot answer that like what is your passion beyond law, okay?

16:50

If somebodydoesn’t know how to answer that question, it tells me a lot about that person.

16:58

Now, this is obviously because, you know, being a small law firm, when I hire somebody, we’re a guerrilla team and we just want to make sure that everyone is really, you know, becomes a really tight piece of the team.

17:13

You see, you have to be in a small firm, you have to bevery polyadric.

17:18

You need to have a passion for exploring opportunities, for seeing what’s new, to improve yourself, to make connections.

17:28

If somebody doesn’t have or doesn’t know what to answer to the question, what is your passion beyond law, it to me is a sign that that person hasn’t quite figured out much about his or her life or goals.

17:44

And so, but when I have a clear answer, that for me is the number one criteria to say, okay, this person can work for me and my team, because it’s somebody that has understood something about life.

17:58

It’s somebody that is passionate about something and is passionate about something, is going to be passionate aboutmaking this work.

18:07

And I love passion and it’s what we’re passionate about on the show and you know we’re trying to educate, inform, inspire people and having amazing guests like yourself on the show certainly does that.

18:15

So Clotilde, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the Leadly Speaking podcast.

18:18

If people want to know more about you or indeed your law firm, where’s the best place for them to go?

18:24

Feel free to share any social medias or website links and we’ll share them this episode for you too.

18:28

Thank you, so my e-mail address is clotilde@Yungo.com.

18:35

Our website is Yungo.ae.

18:37

Please there is so much resources.

18:40

We publish on this website every week important information about the legal landscape of the UAE.

18:47

Please feel free to go and look it up.

18:49

It’s really interesting and it answers a lot of the questions that you might have in regards of many topics from buying a property to drafting a will to divorce and mediation.

19:01

You will find everything that you need to know as aas an individual to have a nice understanding of your environment from a legal perspective.

19:13

There we have it folks.

19:14

So thank you so much once again Klatil for joining me on the Legally Speaking podcast live here in Dubai but from now from all of us over and out.

19:21

Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of our Legally on the Move from Dubai series.

19:26

If you enjoyed today’s conversation please take a moment to rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform.

19:32

It really helps us out and if you want to connectdirectly, join our vibrant Legally Speaking Club community on Discord or visit our official website legallyspeakingpodcast.com for more updates and ways to get involved.

19:45

Stay tuned, we’ll see you again soon.

19:47

Over and out.