Raj Panasar is a lawyer who has recently left private practice from his previous position as a Corporate Finance partner at Hogan Lovells. Born and raised in Lancashire, Raj felt under immense pressure from his parents to pursue a ‘high-flying’ career, despite being at real socio-economic disadvantage and coming from, in his own words, deep deprivation. Nonetheless, he made it into private practice, training at Linklaters, and then making partner at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton before moving to Hogan Lovells. Raj has now stepped away from partnership to pursue his own legal tech venture which he’s keeping under wraps (for now)!

In a conversation that could’ve continued into multiple podcast episodes, some of the key things Raj and I discuss are:

• Raj’s journey into law from a socio-economically disadvantaged background;
• Arrogance v confidence and imposter syndrome;
• Raj’s own experience of partnership, and his recognition of his unfair expectations of juniors earlier in his career;
• What led him to changing his attitude towards people management;
• Machismo in the culture of the legal industry;
• Work-life balance; and
• Management training and how to get managers to actually change their behaviour.

You can find Raj on LinkedIn where you can keep up to date with his exciting new venture!

The book that Raj mentioned is ‘The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts’ by Daniel Susskind and Richard Susskind