Raj Barot
MANAGING DIRECTOR & GENERAL COUNSEL
AGILE COUNSEL
BANGKOK, THAILAND
6:00 am
No alarm needed: My three-year-old daughter comes into our bedroom every morning and yells, “Wake up time!” I try to convince her that we should sleep in a little longer, but she won’t take no for an answer. I set her up with some toys to keep her busy and go for a swim if she lets me (it’s 91 degrees Fahrenheit in Bangkok).
7:00 am
Breakfast with the family. My kids have pancakes and I have leftovers that I saved from the night before (a traditional Gujarati Indian meal of roti/dal/bhat/shak). I prefer to eat a heavy meal for breakfast and stick to soup and salad for dinner.
7:30 am
I wait for the school bus to pick up my six-year-old daughter and walk to work. I live 10 minutes away from the office and it’s pointless to wait for a cab and then drive through traffic.
8:00 am
At the office, I respond to any high priority emails, then review meeting agendas and other priorities for the day.
8:30 am
Weekly all-hands meeting via video conference. I manage a team of four lawyers and three interns across San Francisco, Singapore, and Bangalore. I work alone in Bangkok.
9:30 am
Call with investors to discuss potential removal of e-commerce firms from the Negative Investment List in Indonesia.
10:00 am
Review and edit a share purchase agreement (SPA) involving multiple entities in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, and India. Due diligence has been dragging on for a few months, but we are finally at the negotiation table.
1:00 pm
Go to the food court in my building for a quick bite. It’s either Thai food or a salad. I try to avoid having lunch at my desk.
1:30 pm
Catch up on emails. Review pitch decks (I regularly mentor MBA students at INSEAD through their entrepreneur-in-residence program).
2:00 pm
Calls with outside counsel and investors to discuss proposed changes to the SPA and next steps.
3:00 pm
Call with a technology partner to review data security measures to be implemented for an upcoming onsite document review project in Shanghai.
4:00 pm
Interview with a lawyer in Mumbai. She just moved back to India after a four-year assignment in London. She is dual qualified (UK and India) and looking for a change that affords her an opportunity to work from home and be more available for her kids.
5:00 pm
Weekly check-in with development team in Bangalore regarding ongoing design and development of a legal document assembly platform for tech start-ups and VCs in Asia.
6:00 pm
Try to leave the office (at least physically) at 6 pm everyday so that I can have dinner at home and catch up with my wife and kids (and parents who are visiting from Los Angeles).
7:00 pm
Give my two daughters a bath and read them a series of stories until one of us falls asleep.
8:00 pm
Leave for the airport, which is not as easy as it sounds because of Bangkok’s gridlocked traffic. The journey involves an alternating series of tuk-tuk (three-wheeled taxis) rides through back alleys, multiple train rides, and brisk walking to get to the airport in under an hour door-to-door. If I had chosen to take a taxi, I might have missed my flight.
9:00 pm
I read the news and catch up on emails as I wait for my flight to board.
12:00 am
I arrive in Singapore and head straight to the transit hotel to get some sleep before heading to the city for a full day of meetings.
