Be smart - use early mover advantage

When demand for a certain skill is high and supply is low.

If you want to make it even better, opt for things that will continue to have high demand but very low supply in the foreseeable future due to systemic reasons.

International business law work is soaring right now.

Post pandemic, there is a massive boom in companies tapping international markets, e-commerce is growing at an incredible pace and apart from large corporations, even startups are expanding abroad in light of remote work.

Let’s look at history - until the 1990s India was a closed economy. Starting up a business in India required a lot of licences. Once the economy opened up in 1991, FDI started rapidly flowing into India, as foreign businesses rushed to establish presence.

Indian law firms started focussing on assisting foreign businesses establish an Indian presence. Some of them also helped the larger Indian businesses - Reliance, Tatas, Birlas, Adani, L&T, Godrej, Hindujas etc. with their legal work.

Foreign clients paid a premium hourly fee - Indian law firms could easily bill USD 300 - 500 per hour of partner time, and USD 150 per hour of associate time - India was a big, new market for them, they did not want to take legal risks.

New law firms focusing primarily on new practice areas (media & entertainment, white collar crime, IBC, competition, etc.). Some law firms focussed significantly on startups, but with respect to domestic laws only.

It was easier to build credibility and a track record if you started in a different area from what the Tier 1 law firms did. Now, this market is fast saturating too, as market leaders in these areas are gradually emerging and the structure is becoming more defined.

So, what is the new opportunity?

Global legal industry is USD 700 - 800 billion

The US legal industry is 319.7 billion USD as per IbisWorld, a leading industry research provider.

Indian legal market was USD 1.4 billion in 2018; South African legal services market is USD 2 billion

We are still seeing USD 100K - 200K as the peak of what people have earned on Upwork

We would soon see Upwork millionaires! It is a matter of time.

And lawyers from India and developing countries in Asia and Africa have a huge price advantage on Upwork. And by the way, Upwork is just one platform. There are many others.

Fiverr, Indeed, Freelancer.com, Nexxt, PeoplePerHour

However, the best place to find such work is definitely LinkedIn and Twitter.

Why will this opportunity disappear later?

Imagine, there is a good stock. The company is beginning to do really well.

Some smart people figure out and buy the stocks.

Then the company does even better. The stock prices go up a lot.

Now lots of people realise wow, this is a great stock.

Everyone starts to buy, pushing the price up to a very high level.

As it keeps going up more people buy in.

This is a bull run.

Then the people who bought earlier start to sell because they see that the price is too high and they have made a lot of profits.

Now the price starts dropping. Everyone exists because it's not a hot stock anymore.

Lots of people lose money.

Who made a lot of money in the process?

The people who invested early.

This is called early mover advantage.

People who bought bitcoin early are all now millionaires.

Now Bitcoin is very expensive.

This is how opportunities work.

People who see opportunity early and take action take the cake.

But when people see them succeed, everyone, Tom, Dick and Harry and Sally, everyone wants a piece of the action and rushes in without knowing the consequences.

Opportunities at this point get crowded out.

Five years down the line, we can expect the success story of remote international data protection and privacy work to be so evident that everyone will be rushing to grab these opportunities.

Uncles will tell nephews like they know everything: better do data protection and privacy work, there is a lot of money in it.

By then it will be too late to begin as supply will be high compared to demand.

Right now, there are only a handful of lawyers who have earned 100K+ through legal work on Upwork.

That’s because the game has just begun.

Look at how many lawyers have earned USD 1000, or USD 10,000 - that number is much bigger.

Five years down the line, you will have 100s of lawyers having made USD 100,000 + or even a million, on the platform.

You know how the gold rush happens, right?

There is a point when every fool rushes in to cash in, only to find everything too overcrowded.

Same thing that happens to hot stocks.

Only early investors benefit.

People who jump in later get stuck.

I am pretty sure that in 5-10 years there will be a goldrush to perform international remote data protection and privacy work.

At that time, it will be harder to establish yourself, or even find your place in that frenzy, unless you have already built a track record earlier.

You could be at the front row when the goldrush happens, on the top of the pile.

Secure from all the competition that will come, having an unmatchable track record.

Tens of thousands of Indian lawyers would be doing this work remotely some day.

You don’t want to start at the bottom 5 years later, look back at this day and wonder why you didn’t take timely action.

So, do you want to grab this opportunity to build a career in international business laws?

If “yes” join our 3-days free online bootcamp “Career in International business law”, 5-7 February, 6-9 PM IST, and we will tell how you can start now to get an early mover advantage.

Register here.

(Contributed by the brand)