THE AUTHOR:
Namrata Mayur Shah, Partner Designate at Rashmikant and Partners
The IBA Arb40 Subcommittee launched a competition to compile and publish poignant stories from this period, forming a distinctive compendium of shared experiences. Exploring the depths of the international arbitration community, the IBA Arb40 Common Heritage of International Arbitration Competition for the Most Meaningful Personal Stories unfolds a tapestry of diverse narratives.
Spanning the globe, these stories capture the human side of international arbitration, showcasing triumphs, challenges, and the interconnectedness that defines our professional journey. Each article in this collection offers a unique lens into our Common Heritage of International Arbitration, underscoring the significance of camaraderie, mentorship, and shared experiences within our global community.
The following article received high commendation in the competition.
“So, everyone speaks English in the High Court? If I apply for a job at your firm but I can’t speak English, they won’t employ me?”
I was in a lawyer’s office in the District Court of Nasik, a small town a few hours away from Mumbai. I had just stumbled out of my car after a long road trip to defend a foreign client in domestic arbitration proceedings initiated by a local plaintiff. A young lawyer from the local attorney’s office came up to escort me to the courtrooms and struck up a conversation about the prospect of her coming to Mumbai and finding a job in the financial capital. She was asking me her questions in Marathi. I was responding in Hindi and embarrassingly broken Marathi. Hours earlier I had struggled over the phone to convey to someone from the client’s team – who only spoke Mandarin – that I needed to connect with the client – whose first language is Portuguese.
“If the High Court passes judgements in English, isn’t that unfair? How do litigants understand? Most litigants whose cases go up in appeal to the High Court don’t speak English,” she continued, disappointed when I tried, as gently as I could, to tell her that her opportunities in Mumbai’s legal fraternity would be limited without fluency in English.
Years later, I was applying for a job in International Arbitration. The listing mentioned that fluency in Spanish was a plus, but not a requirement. When I spoke to someone who already had a job on the team to ask for advice on the application process, her first question to me was, “Do you speak Spanish? They say it’s not required but it is, and they get a lot of interest so this is the only way they can filter out applicants.”
As someone who comes from a tremendous amount of privilege in India, I find it interesting how Indians with privilege experience power and opportunity in one context and disempowerment and discrimination when we travel outside India. In India, I was once offered a job after the interviewer asked me where I lived – my address conveyed that I came from wealth and connections. However, for every application I have sent to employers outside India, my address is a disadvantage, bringing visa complications and cultural differences they would rather not deal with. Even when we speak of diversity and inclusion in International Arbitration, are we really including that girl in Nasik who only speaks Marathi and hasn’t travelled beyond her city? Not really. We’re mostly speaking of upper class, privileged lawyers from big cities with a Eurocentric education–lawyers who will casually sling the word racism around when they travel abroad but will push back hard against affirmative action in India.
In International Arbitration, nearly every job listing demands proficiency in at least one, and most often two, European languages. If only Europe hadn’t divided up the world so neatly between its nations, we might have had more than one coloniser to leave us the benefit of their languages. It doesn’t help either that our former colonisers are so begrudging with visas and work permits, something that nearly all employers expect potential employees to figure out themselves. When the underlying message is always “We don’t want you here,” can we really say we believe in diversity?
I have come to realise that discussions around diversity, if done the right way, will always be uncomfortable – they compel us to take stock of our privileges, to confront our disadvantages, and to take responsibility for our intelligence and skills (or the lack of them). I know that real change is still generations away, whether on the global or local scale. At least in the International Arbitration community, there is a willingness to have a conversation about diversity, the willingness to advocate for it, to think and write about it. I see how sharply these discussions in International Arbitration contrast against local Bar Associations in India, which remain Old Boys’ Clubs, and where any discussion on diversity will be flippantly brushed aside.
While decades of work may still stretch before us, I realise as I write that this essay itself is a privilege, made possible by the work of those who advocated for diversity and inclusion before me – something I haven’t done for my non-English speaking colleagues. Being able to speak about a systemic problem and having hope that one can change it is a seldom-acknowledged privilege in itself.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Namrata Mayur Shah practises in Mumbai and enjoys working on cross-border commercial disputes. She is qualified to practice in India and New York and has over a decade of experience in arbitration and litigation. She was a Regional Representative for India at Young LCIA, and is currently on the Arbitration Pledge’s Young Practitioners’ Sub-Committee to advocate for diversity in International Arbitration. In 2019, with support from the International Advocacy Training Council, Namrata founded a training programme to teach oral advocacy to junior lawyers practising before the High Court in Mumbai. The course is the first of its kind in India.
This article was first published on the website of the Arbitration Committee of the Legal Practice Division of the International Bar Association, and is reproduced by kind permission of the International Bar Association, London, UK. © International Bar Association.
Available at: https://www.ibanet.org/Arb40-Competition
