INSIGHTS OF AN IN-HOUSE LEGAL
NATALIA KAMARUDIN
A Father’ s choice
INSIGHTS OF AN IN-HOUSE LEGAL
NATALIA KAMARUDIN
• Natalia Kamarudin holds a Bachelor of Law( Hons) degree from University of the West of England, Bristol.
• Having completed the Bar exams, she was then called to the English Bar by the Honourable Society of the Lincoln’ s Inn.
• Natalia has been an advocate and solicitor for 6 years in the Corporate construction practice.
• She is currently part of the Legal Counsel of AECOM, an American multinational engineering company listed in the FORTUNE 500 and FORTUNE’ s World’ s Most Admired Companies in 2015, 2016, and 2017.
I didn’ t want to be a lawyer. That has come to be my standard response every time someone asks me why I wanted to be a lawyer. I was forced to( or in a politer term, persuaded to) read law by my father, the lawyer. He said“ Natalia, you do not have to DO law, you just have to READ law” but one milestone after the other and I later found myself admitted to the Bar both in England and Malaysia and became a qualified practising lawyer. Although I must say that, the decision to practise law after I graduated was my own because I felt that LLB would only be worth something if I continue and complete the whole trail.
The beginning of the journey
I started reading-in-chambers in a considerably large firm. Each pupil or chambering student is assigned to a“ Master”, a senior practitioner who is meant to be a guide and a person that you can follow as a model to watch and learn. My Master was the head of the corporate construction practice group and I spent much of the duration of my pupillage working and learning under him. That foundation has led me to stay within the corporate construction law practice to this day. I made a decision to move in-house as a legal counsel of AECOM, a global engineering consultancy firm, 3 years ago, after 6 years of practising, to get myself exposed to the technical and business aspects of the construction industry. Practising corporate construction( in a law firm) more often than not only exposes you to the top chain of the players in the construction industry; which are the Clients or Project Owners and the Contractors. Our legal advice would mostly be drafting and advising on the construction contract on behalf of the Clients or Project Owner. Unless we are sought to advise on issues during construction, our legal advice ends at the drafting and finalization of the construction contract and that whole process hugely revolves around heavy reading and perfecting a standard form of construction contract.
Going in-house
I wanted to also be versed with what goes beyond the construction contract, beyond the relationship between the Client and the Contractor and what is happening on the ground during the carrying out of the construction work itself. Being in AECOM is perfect for that because in an engineering consultancy firm( with services spanning from engineering consultancy, project management, design and quantity surveying), through the performance of these roles by AECOM( note that these roles ordinarily sit in between the project owners and the contractors in the construction contractual matrix),