Leading full-service Southeast Asian law firm Tilleke & Gibbins is pleased to announce the promotion of two outstanding lawyers to the firm’s partnership. Nopparat Lalitkomon leads the firm’s data privacy and cybersecurity practice in Thailand and Vietnam. His expertise in technology, media, and telecommunications has earned him recognition as a “Rising Star” by The Legal 500 Asia-Pacific and as an “Up and Coming” lawyer by Chambers Asia-Pacific. Nopparat is a trusted advisor to domestic and multinational companies alike, advising clients across industries on a wide range of tech-focused matters in Southeast Asia, including cybersecurity, data protection, e-commerce, e-payments, e-transactions, fintech, gaming, and insurtech. He also advises clients on general corporate and commercial matters, including banking, direct marketing, foreign direct investment, investment incentives, labor and employment, M&A, and joint ventures. Nopparat hold degrees from Thammasat University and the University of Glasgow, and is a member of the Thai Bar Association. Wongrat Ratanaprayul is the director of Tilleke & Gibbins’ Indonesia operations, based in Jakarta. Wongrat is recognized as a leading practitioner in Indonesia by IAM Patent 1000 and WTR 1000, and in 2023 she was named to Managing Intellectual Property’s list of the Top 250 Women in IP globally. She advises clients on all aspects of IP prosecution in Indonesia, as well as in multiple jurisdictions throughout Southeast Asia, to ensure efficient and effective IP portfolio management. Wongrat’s practice benefits from her exceptional breadth of expertise and her international reach. Wongrat is a particularly adept patent practitioner, and is much sought-after in highly technical fields including biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, automotive, electronics, and computer-related technology. She is also a leader in regional pharmaceutical patent litigation. Furthermore, Wongrat oversees the firm’s regulatory affairs practice in Indonesia, serving clients in pharmaceuticals, food, cosmetics, and related industries with respect to product registration and compliance. Wongrat

Tilleke & Gibbins is proud to be one of the founding member firms for the newly launched Sino International Professional Advisory Council (SIPAC) platform. SIPAC is a global network of law firms that offer legal services tailored to the Chinese legal market. Legal advisors partnering with SIPAC provide Chinese companies with expert advice and guidance that enable them to conduct business in key jurisdictions around the world. SIPAC aims to create a platform that connects in-house counsel at Chinese companies with a wide range of legal services, to ensure that Chinese companies can conduct business overseas with maximum efficiency. By bringing together leading firms from different countries and industries, SIPAC offers a comprehensive solution for businesses seeking expert advice on doing business in different regions of the world. As a founding member firm of SIPAC, Tilleke & Gibbins brings a wealth of expertise and experience advising clients on complex legal matters across the region. The firm has been operating in Southeast Asia for over 130 years and has a team of over 220 lawyers, making it one of the largest in the region. With the launch of SIPAC, Tilleke & Gibbins and its fellow founding member firms are well-positioned to offer customized legal and regulatory recommendations that provide Chinese businesses with increased access to overseas markets.

Michael Ramirez, a counsel in Tilleke & Gibbins’ dispute resolution group in Bangkok, will provide the Thailand legal outlook at a Thailand Regional Forum meeting to be held at Sasin School of Management on June 9, 2022. The event will be a special relaunch meeting of the Thailand Regional Forum, an initiative established by Dataconsult some 35 years ago. After a hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic, the forum is restarting with Sasin School of Management as its new home. The Thailand Regional Forum at Sasin plans to hold regular meetings from July onward. The meeting will consist of forecasting panel presentations and roundtable discussions. In addition to Michael’s presentation of the legal outlook for Thailand, other speakers will offer insights into Thailand’s political, risk, economic, and human resources outlook in the coming year. Following the presentations, the speakers and attendees will participate in a roundtable discussions and Q&A to address any questions that came up during the session and to consider various potential scenarios. For more information on the Thailand Regional Forum, which offers memberships on a corporate basis, please see the Dataconsult website.

Tiziana Sucharitkul, managing partner and director of Tilleke & Gibbins’ dispute resolution group, provided in-depth insights on diversity and inclusion and law firms for a recent article in Asia Business Law Journal (ABLJ) on diversity and inclusion in law firms across Asia. In the article, which was published on March 30, 2022, Tiziana offers insights gained in her years in senior leadership at Tilleke & Gibbins and as a longtime advocate for law firm diversity and inclusion initiatives. The article begins by contrasting the demand for greater diversity among Western law firms—especially by corporate counsel—with attitudes in Asia, where questions of expertise and service often take precedence when it comes to legal work. The writer then quickly shifts to investigating the reasons for this, as well as exploring the current state of diversity in the Asian legal industry today. This section of the article leads with Tiziana’s explanation that leadership of Asian law firms are in a very different context than the social tensions that catalyzed many diversity initiatives in the West. However, this does not necessarily mean that diverse representation has lagged in this part of the world. Rather, as Tiziana points out, “Southeast Asian countries have some of the highest proportions of women in senior business leadership in the world.” She also notes that markers such as gender diversity and respect for minority rights can vary widely across Asia. Elsewhere in the article, other senior law firm leaders express similar observations and provide details on the diversity challenges in their countries of focus. For example, an expert on diversity in the Indian legal profession notes that local diversity concerns must also consider caste discrimination, and a partner at a global firm in Singapore speaks about the challenges of developing diversity policies that fit each local context. Tiziana