Q: Mr. Carter-Silk would you please provide an explanation of your role as an International Technology Lawyer and your personal history achieving this role? Alexander, what is your story?
There is an old Irish expression, if I wanted to end up here, I would have started in a different place. I don’t like labels; a great lawyer is a great lawyer irrespective of the subject matter. I hope that perhaps I might have achieved sound or good, because I have worked with some “great” minds, and how high that bar is.
My career started in a provincial practice in the industrial north of England. I was dispatched to the one man/woman London office founded to serve the historic Covent Garden Fruit and Veg Trade in London. The founder a fine man with over 50 years in the law had sold his practice to my employer but maintained his clients, some of whom were the oldest trading companies in England.
One day he returned from lunch and sadly died in my office. The following day as a trainee I was thrown into mastering all my predecessor’s files and so started the learning journey. I question everything, accepted nothing and set about reading everything.
I had to learn everything from scratch appearing in courts arguing about everything from shipments of fruit to bank’s execution of security over racehorses, dealing with the trusts of old families and everything in-between. The split bar helped because I could access advice which was not available in the office. I have had the opportunity to work with some of the best minds of my generation, I represented clients (with counsel) before the court of appeal before I was qualified.
I became a partner in another London office of multi-office practice the day I qualified. Firmly branded as a maverick (which I resented but now wear as a badge of honor) doing a mixture of litigation and commercial work. I learnt to assume nothing, question everything. It’s fair to say it was mighty effective. If it did not feel right, it probably wasn’t, and I was not shy of saying so. I remember the words of Sir John Harvey Jones, when asked why young business succeed, he replied, “Because they don’t know any better.”
Over the intervening 35 years technology and commercial life changed, new businesses arose, and I rose with them. I saw the birth of the internet, cloud computing, big data, digitization of media, block chain, artificial intelligence. I set about learning about each new technology, its application and how new business models worked where the money flowed. As a commercial lawyer I knew to follow the value. Clients were not averse to paying good fees if they were making money from a transaction, I avoided areas of law which were driven by regulatory or compliance needs as being grudge purchases, and therefore price competitive. What I do and have always done has been described as the stuff that “goes into the too difficult bin” and is not price sensitive so I have never had to negotiate fees.
In 2011, I acquired a new associate, with whom I have worked ever since, she has been my partner for the last 6 years. We worked as defense advisors for insurers and their insured in some of the biggest/most expensive tech claims. Together we have also advised on a staggeringly broad case load trademarks, copyright, design law to judicial review, patents, software, and pharma, aerospace, corporate and commercial transactions for clients across the world, working with local counsel and finding ways through the maze of conflicts of laws, cultures and processes.
I had the opportunity to successfully defend the first and still influential case of trademark use/misuse on the internet (three former firms had advised it could not be won). With my partner we fought the seminal software copyright case SAS Institute v World Programming Limited, in the English High Court, Appeal Court and the European Court of Justice as well as federal court in North Carolina, Texas and California, 17 years later we prevailed, though the economic and emotional cost to the client of defending completely unjustified litigation was a lesson in life. It also gave me a cynical view as to how jurisdiction is biased towards their national.
The English courts put paid to use of Californian long arm jurisdiction to execute U.S. judgments in the UK. We repelled an attempt to enforce a U.S. judgement which was blatantly a re-litigation of a prior UK case. Despite the law being firmly against us, again but after constant professional disagreements with our advocacy team we agreed a way forward, by which we presented the case as one where following the established precedent would produce a perverse and unjust result. The court of appeal supported our approach making it clear that UK sovereignty could not be overridden by California long arm statutes.
My grounding in contract, tort, trusts, intellectual property and economics enabled me to apply existing jurisprudence to new technologies and to draft documents and present arguments in a way that tell the story.
Technology changes, but the fundamental profit motive doesn’t. One needs insatiable curiosity and a clear moral compass. There is no (or very little) specific technology law, the same legal tools and principles apply to all business. No two days are the same, no two agreements look the same no two disputes are the same, and the ingenuity of innovators moves so fast that one cannot assume that what one knew yesterday will apply today. Similarly, one has to retain a high level of skepticism.
Q: What is the history of International Technology Law, with regard to Digital Assets?
The explosion of digital assets was/is underpinned by three technologies, distributed ledgers, public/private key cryptography, and blockchain. With a background in cryptography and tech litigation, I was perhaps well placed. The financial institutions and regulatory bodies were caught napping, then promptly over-reacted.
The potential to create alternate decentralized financial networks was matched by opportunities for criminality and making vast amounts of money unimaginable in conventional markets. It takes a shift of thinking to understand the power of smart contracts which exist of on-ledgers software replicated everywhere and nowhere. The idea that one can send an instruction to such a software/address/contract in the ether and shift millions of dollars of assets is still difficult to conceptualize. As fast as technology is created new models appear that need agreements, enforcing rights creating new documentation and seeking redress for wrongs.
Technology freed from physical delivery has no respect for traditional boundaries laws or jurisdictions. Navigating these fluid activities requires one to stay grounded in the principles underpinning international laws.
Q: Where are you based, what is your geographic location?
Our base is London, but largely we work from home, our clients work internationally, so we work with the leading law firms around the world, most of our time is on-screen.
Q: How long have you been an International Technology Lawyer?
I have been working as an international lawyer for more than 35 years.
Q. What are the qualifications required for entry?
The risks of money laundering and professional liability is high, the basis of the technology is easy to understand superficially, but a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and what you see is not always what is happening, a tech background is helpful but not critical, what is essential is a very broad understanding of many areas of law, intellectual property, finance, trade, conflict of laws contract, tort, regulatory and even criminal law.
There is a growing “Decentralized Finance” specialty, but this is still in its infancy and whilst much of the U.S. securities law and Financial Services regulation means that many firms allocate digital asset work to corporate departments, the operation of digital markets is quite different, liquid staking, liquidity pools distributed exchanges and the complexity of jurisdictional ambiguity created by a host of conflicting laws. Fortunately, I have never followed a specific sectoral specialization and absorbed both commercial and litigation which gives me a perspective that others who have been pigeon-holed in large firm structures may not have.
Q: How would you describe your work / life balance? Is there any?
Having left “big law” some 6 years ago for a distributed platform, my partner, our associates and the 400 independent lawyers around us cracked the work life thing by being immersed in the distributed law firm model. Sure, we work hard, often long hours dictated by international time zones and markets, but we don’t have hours and billing budgets which makes life much less stressful, but no less remunerative. The status of being a partner in a prestigious firm is just a screwdriver away from putting your name plate in the trash can.
Previously, as head of Technology and IP for several firms I figured that if your associates had to work long into the night it was most likely your bad management or greed for their chargeable hours. Partners largesse built on the pain of their associates never impressed me.
Work life balance may mean working hard now for a better future, but I was always skeptical that seniority was a merit-based thing, it rarely worked that way whatever the mantra. I always figured that the stronger my practice the better my law, the more I got heard until one day I realized I did not need to be heard, at least not by partners and managers.
Q. What is it like working with disruptive technologies?
If one wants to wake up in the morning understanding a market sector… and be reasonably certain that you have an easy command of your applicable law and practice, this is not for you. None of those things are nailed down. Even working out what law might apply to how transactions are performed, who the counterparties are, what regulations might apply is a clean sheet journey every day.
Finally: What advice would you give to someone contemplating a career in law?
I don’t expect to change my approach. My counsel is, learn to listen, think deeply, keep a clear moral compass question everything, accept nothing as truth until you have proved it to yourself advise fearlessly be aware of your own inherent biases and be open to new ideas and don’t let others own your future.
I appreciate that within the structure of large law firms challenging perceived wisdom does not lead to comfortable annual reviews, but if you want to win then following the boat in front in a race will only ever give you second place. As I advised my children, don’t be school of Da Vinci when you find what you want to be, be Da Vinci.
