“The General Counsel and his legal leadership team, including certain C-suite members, were impressed with Duc’s transformational vision and structural elements in shaping tomorrow’s in house legal team—the continuing journey elevating lawyers to business leaders.”
Greg Chew, VP Legal, Asia, India Middle East and Africa, Firmenich (April 2014)
“Duc conducted sessions on improving communication skills for our Asia Pacific lawyers in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and on building commercial acumen and strategic thinking for one of our global legal teams in Athens, Greece.
What sets Duc apart is his wide and varied background in law and business — as a private practice lawyer, general counsel, business leader, professor, writer and now a corporate trainer. He is able to draw on a wealth of experiences — and combine them with structured tools and methodologies — to engage and inspire my teams to continuously develop their skills to improve their performance.
The legal profession is at a crossroads, and Duc is uniquely qualified to guide legal teams to deal with the challenges ahead.”
Jackson Pek, Vice President and General Counsel, Asia Pacific, Amadeus IT Group (May 2018)
“I attended the Architecture of Leadership seminar conducted by Duc Trang, which is well-researched and thought-provoking. With Duc’s experience in previous leadership positions, he was able to relate to and answered questions posed to him by participants from various backgrounds. He gave useful insights that participants could apply to their situations and further their self development journey.”
Siew Pheng Ooi, Head of Legal, Bank Pictet & Cie (Asia) Ltd.
Duc Trang recently conducted his signature Entrepreneurial Lawyering, Architecture of Business workshop for the participants of Singapore Academy of Law’s Future Law Innovation Programme.
The audience was varied, with lawyers and non-lawyers alike. Yet, the sessions offered everyone some really useful and practical tools to explain ours and our client’s businesses, enabling us to have deeper conversations with our clients because we have a better understanding of the world around us.
We often hear that lawyers need to think more strategically and demonstrate sharper commercial acumen. Duc’s “Architecture of Business” model helps address that point very concretely, while being relevant to any type of business.”
*Noemi Alintissar-Mooney, Manager, Future Law Innovation Program, Singapore Academy of Law
“Duc’s Architecture of Business course is ground-breaking in the way that it trains lawyers to think about the practice of corporate/commercial law as a business. The in-house legal team and external advisers must work together to make the practice of law less transactional and more directed towards building long term value for the business they serve and advise.”
Catherine Dickson, Vice President, Regional General Counsel APAC, Sealed Air
“Duc has an insight into the business of law that is unique. He moves easily from the perspective of external lawyer to in-house counsel to a business owner. That multi-faceted perspective was a great help in the Entrepreneurial Lawyering – Architecture of Business workshop. His easy going delivery peppered with lots of first-hand experience kept the workshop interesting, especially when the topics got heavy and technical. He challenged me to think about where my legal practice is, where I want it to go and how to get there. Although the workshop was only over 2 evenings, it was filled with useful and thought-provoking information. I have attended many workshops in the past. For many of them, almost everything taught is forgotten after a few months. Not so with this workshop. Months later, projects are planned and are being executed based on what I had learnt from Duc.”
Lim Seng Siew, Director, OTP Law Corporation
“Duc recently delivered a fascinating, and important, session on Commercial Acumen – the Architecture of Business for our Singapore lawyers. He made the point very clearly that the delivery of legal services is rapidly changing and that “business as usual” is no longer going to be sustainable for the legal profession. Duc’s former experience as a GC gave him considerable credibility with our partners at all levels when he talked about business models and value principles and what, from a GC’s perspective, differentiates one law firm from another. Duc’s style is engaging and authoritative, the content of his talk was thought-provoking and informative. I would strongly recommend Duc’s session to any professional interested in taking their business “to the next level”.”
Helen Jenkins, Head of Knowledge Development, Asia, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner
“Lawyers, both in-house and in practice, are now required to be both technically competent and commercially astute . . . That was the main impetus for my attending the Transactional Lawyering Essentials: Architecting Deals course. I felt the need to keep up with the clients’ expectations and also to add value and distinguish myself as in-house counsel.
The course met and exceeded my expectations. I learnt concepts like adverse selection, moral hazard and contingent contracts, which can be put to practical use immediately. The course is conducted in a workshop fashion so there are plenty of group and hands-on activities. The framework of “private orderings” that is taught can be applied to almost all types of transactions regardless of industry. It will elevate the lawyer from a mere risk manager to a deal maker. Ultimately commercial people seek counsel from their legal advisors in order to solve problems and not just to “take care of the paperwork”. I highly recommend this course for any lawyer that wants to stay relevant and excel.”
Senior Counsel, MNC, APAC
“Architecting Deals and Contract Primer was a good introduction to contract theory and covered some of the considerations lawyers should have when putting an agreement together. . . . What the course does is to provide a useful framework to approach most types of transactions and I think it does that well. Duc has a more complete course as well as a book coming out and I’m looking forward to those.”
Wen Loong Lau, Associate Director, Blue Ocean Capital Partners
“Duc gave us a session, The Architecture of Business, on how to analyze a business’ competitive position in order to make better strategic decisions . . . In today’s corporate world, HR departments spend a lot of time building up their employees’ important soft skills, but at the end of the day, little effort is made to teach business acumen. I can’t stress enough how much value legal teams get from the sort of business skills training that Duc offers, and he has a unique ability to put it into the context of what we lawyers do in our every day roles. In fact, by the end of our first session, we were already analyzing our own internal client’s competitive position and brainstorming about improved strategic approaches and better ways to focus our support. . . [I]t was ‘awesome’.”
Eric Napoli, Senior Counsel, Legal Head, Amadeus Airport IT, Amadeus IT Group
“The Architecture of Leadership workshop was very helpful to think about different concepts of leadership, and to understand the differences between manager’s role and leader’s role. Many of us are maybe spending too much time on (micro-) managing work and team. The work shop enlightened me, and helped me pause and think about the future of our practice and each member of our team, and then list what to do next not only for myself, but also for the team members. Extremely helpful especially for new leaders.
Atsutoshi Maeda, Partner, Anderson Mori & Tomotsun
“As law firms face increasing pressure from alternative legal service providers deploying new business models, Duc’s Entrepreneurial Lawyering, Architecture of Business workshop challenges participants to think critically about the traditional law firm model, and consider what the legal profession can do to better align itself with the wider business community it serves. As the founder of a legal startup, I would highly recommend this course to anyone with an interest or role to play in shaping the future of the legal services industry.”
Jamie Tredgold, Founder, The Legal Collective
Landon Advisory Services 