Naz Sachedina: From structured finance associate to director in asset management

Career Footprints

Reed Smith alum, Naz Sachedina, shares her journey from qualifying as a lawyer at Reed Smith to her current role as a director at WisdomTree Asset Management. Naz discusses her diverse experiences at Reed Smith, including two secondments, and how these shaped her career. Naz also offers valuable insights on transitioning from private practice to in-house roles and the skills needed for success in the legal industry.

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Transcript:

Intro: Welcome to the Reed Smith podcast, Career Footprints. In each episode of Career Footprints, we'll ask our guest, a Reed Smith alum, to share their career story, how their time at Reed Smith set them up for success, and their advice for early career lawyers. Our goal is to surface insights from inspiring professionals' careers that will help you find your professional success, however you define that.

Lauren: Welcome to another episode of Reed Smith's alumni Career Footprints podcast. This is Lauren Hakala, Reed Smith's Global Director of Learning and Development. Today, I'm thrilled to be joined by London office alum, Naz Sachedina. Naz qualified as a solicitor at Reed Smith and then practiced for about five years in the structured finance team of our financial industry group. Her time at Reed Smith included two secondments, one with Barclays, and then with Merrill Lynch. Since then, Naz's career has included two senior in-house legal posts, first at counsel at Pinebridge Investments, and then as associate director and now director at WisdomTree Asset Management. Naz, welcome.

Naz: Thank you, Lauren. Thank you for having me.

Lauren: I’m very excited for this conversation about your career. So I wanted to see if we could start by you telling us a little bit about your current role at WisdomTree and what you're doing now and what you like about it.

Naz: Yeah, sure. So as you mentioned, I'm a director. I'm actually a director in the product legal team at WisdomTree. So that kind of means I cover the products and platforms rather than the kind of the corporate legal matters, which is covered by another part of our legal team. So WisdomTree in Europe has a very wide range of platforms and asset classes. So underlying assets kind of range from equities to commodities like oil and gold to crypto assets. We have physically backed platforms we have synthetic platforms where swap counterparties provide exposure to the underlying assets through a swap and all our kind of all our platforms are all slightly different so which means the mechanics the way they operate are slightly different. That means a kind of in my role I cover the kind of lifespan of the product so right from when you launch a product to when you do maintenance like doing the prospectus rollover if you have to make amendments if you have to do security holder votes right to the closure of a product so it's kind of cradle to grave as it were for products and I also want to take kind of wider projects within the with the WisdomTree so if we're making changes to a platform rather than specific products. So that's in a nutshell what I do at WisdomTree.

Lauren: And keeping in mind that many of our audience are are newly qualified lawyers and lawyers in their first three years of practice and knowing that you've been in their shoes. What's the best thing about your current role?

Naz: I never get bored, ever, just because of the range of assets and platforms. There's always something new happening, which is still a little terrifying. I remember asking Andrzej, shout out to Andrzej at Reed Smith, like, when do you feel comfortable? And he was like, you never do, Naz. So even though it's slightly terrifying, there are always new things to do, new things to learn. I love learning new things. I'm one of those really sad people that gets very excited by it. And also just, you know, WisdomTree, not just the legal team, but the wider team are great as well. I love the legal team. They're awesome. Everyone I deal with are just really nice and very clever people I always want to be the least clever person in the room which I generally am so um so that means I'm always learning basically.

Lauren: I love that point because I feel like as a junior lawyer sometimes we think that after a couple of years everything will be we'll know what we're doing and we'll just go to work and we'll do the same thing and it sounds like for you that's not the way it is and that's a great thing.

Naz: Yeah agreed yeah I mean I I think I it's one of those things sometimes like I wish I just did the same thing every day but I know myself and people I know like Naz you'd get really bored and I would 100% get really bored so it's the sometimes it's nice when you know that you're like okay I can do this it's fine but yeah do that too much and life does get a bit stale after a while so yes, learning new things is apparently key in my life.

Lauren: Well, well, knowing that you've landed in such a place that's so interesting and well suited for your interests, I want to now rewind and go back to the beginning of your career. So when you finished your studies, you attended University College London, you must have had plenty of options for for where to do your training contract. And I'm curious, what did you think about when choosing a law firm? And why did you ultimately choose Reed Smith?

Naz: Sure so a lot of my peers were basically looking for the magic circle law firms right that was like the pinnacle of where you wanted to train but then the more I talked to people kind of you know when they come to your unis and try to get you to apply and try to understand what they did as a trainee it just didn't sound very exciting. I know don't get me wrong the life of a trainee is not supposed to be exciting right you're supposed to be learning but even the work they were doing as a guy I put amends through on documents and I do and again that's there's nothing wrong with that but there was no scope seemingly to do more even when you kind of got to a third or fourth seat trainee which is obviously when you're really hitting your stride so I kind of decided I wanted not a magic circle law firm but a really still good size firm that had a lot of coverage did a lot of practice areas was international because you know that's always interesting as well and also I kind of went by the trainee intake size so reed smith oh God I should know this maybe I'm going to get it wrong aren't I I think about 15 to 20 trainees and that that was a really good size because then you know there again there is going to be enough work for all trainees to do because you're not you're not one of 150 so that means that if you kind of work hard and prove yourself there's there's a chance to kind of get more exposure and do proper work rather than just putting them in through documents which again it's necessary work it has to be done well. So that's why I decided to go with Reed Smith.

Lauren: Well, that's fantastic. No, I hear that so much from our lawyers in our London office and also here in the US that our lawyers are really doing substantive work and thinking work from day one. I mean, it sounds like you were super thoughtful about seeking that out. So once you arrived at Reed Smith, tell us about your trainee seats. Where did you rotate and how did you decide to land in the financial industry group?

Naz: Sure. So I did corporate as my first seat. And that actually so I'm surprised actually when I look back on it how much thought I've put into it because I thought that was good kind of foundational seat right it's not too specialized you don't have to have a lot of background as a law graduate you won't necessarily already have but it gives you a good kind of breadth in terms of especially the clients that there was like life sciences as well as kind of pure corporate clients so you could do a lot of different things and then I went on to comment to Barclays Asset Finance and then I did that I did obviously FIG financial industry group as my third seat and it was the classic you have to think about your third seat because that's when you're your best performing so you want to go to your third seat the place you want to qualify and then I did commercial disputes as my fourth seat so that that was kind of my thinking mostly because I knew I wanted to qualify into into FIG just because I was interested in financial services basically.

Lauren: Yeah. And I understand that you went well in FIG. You worked in what I think of as a highly specialized area of structured finance. So what was that like? How did you get up to speed?

Naz: I mean, looking back, to be honest, Lauren, it was a crazy, but excellent in the end move, but crazy for me, to be honest. So the structured finance team had only just joined Reed Smith when I was a full seat trainee. So I couldn't actually annoyingly do a seat there. But I was really interested in the subject matter just because obviously at that point just following the financial crisis and you know it was very much kind of in the news and in the zeitgeist so I was very interested in those kinds of structures and so I just I just applied knowing that I didn't have any experience but please I'm really interested and thankfully the team took a chance and and hired me so I was lucky I was lucky enough to be offered a job there and in terms of how I got up to speed I mean I kind of just read as much as I could so I you know, it did our classic, our good old friend PLC about the different kinds of transactions. Right, that structured finance teams would kind of undertake to at least, so I'd go and have an understanding of what people were talking about, rather than just sitting there shell-shocked in the corner. And then when I was actually assigned to a transaction, if I was, for example, asked to look at a specific document, I would then on my own time, look at the other documents as well. So I can understand how they fit together and how one impacted the other and just kind of being really curious about the whole thing just to understand just because for my own education I wanted to understand how things work so that when I was commenting on one thing I could then see well if I do this here that also means something else over here so yeah it was just being curious and reading a lot unsurprisingly Lauren and being a lawyer but yeah.

Lauren: No I love that I mean it's I think as a as a junior lawyer at least for me I sometimes felt so out of control like there's all this new information but it sounds like you've had a lot of confidence right to go and meet them.

Naz: Misplaced confidence Lauren let's let's not let's not get things confused and twisted um certainly miss but it was more just i felt it was one of those the more information i had the safer i felt almost right so it was like I'll just look at everything and then in the hope that I'll be able to kind of answer questions if if they were kind of asked of me so I wouldn't say confidence Lauren I would i would say more yeah more just wanting to not look like a complete idiot it basically.

Lauren: Curiosity right which you said.

Naz: Yeah

Lauren: So you mentioned that during your traineeship you were seconded to Barclays and seeing now in retrospect that you landed in an in-house role I’d be curious to know what you learned from that experience and how that sort of contributed to your eventual decision to live in-house.

Naz: Sure I think one of the things that kind of led me to want to do is to comment as a trainee is the whole point obviously is to get experience right and understand what you like and what you don't like and so obviously you know there are different routes in terms of a legal career but certainly in my head you know when you're when you're really young and don't know better it's very much private practice in-house and those are the only two routes. To go on as a comment just meant well at least I can see if I would be suited to in his house career if I would like it so that was one of the main drivers wanting to kind of understand if that's something I want to do in the future. What I learned I learned I learned a lot about one just the obvious thing kind of how in-house teams are structured what kind of work do they do what's expected of in-house lawyers and I was a I was a second seat trainee Lauren so I was I mean still terrified to be honest and it was just because when you're even when you're on secondment it does say trainee in your email title but everyone kind of disregards that and just sees you as kind of qualified legal counsel. So, but it was, It really improved my confidence just because it was such a massive learning curve because people took what you said as gospel you had to then be confident yourself that what you were saying was correct which meant you have to you know understand exactly what they were talking about and exactly what the question was and what the impact so you have to do a lot of kind of fact finding so you could be sure that you would you were giving the correct answer.

Lauren: Yeah no I love that point about how you're the lawyer right in the conversation even though you're you're brand new.

Naz: Yes.

Lauren: Did you how do you kind of prepare to make an impression? I mean you talked about how you were reading and doing your own research and looking at all the documents. Is there anything special you did at Barclays to feel more confident about the answers you were giving.

Naz: I think it was more just again I'm gonna just repeat myself this whole time I'm being curious right and even on things that you weren't working on when you had team meetings and people were discussing what they were doing listening and then asking questions about what that meant and oh is there a document I can look at and can I get more background onto what you were doing and not in an annoying way because in-house lawyers do not have time to sit there and give you background but equally if they can just send you a document that you can then read. And I think the other thing is just kind of in terms of making an impression you know again again being curious but also trying to take the initiative because as a trait you know when you go on as a comment as a trainee thankfully the people that are in-house know that you know very very little you're a trainees they know you're scared so they give you one piece of work right and you do that one piece of work but then you can also be like okay well this is it i think the next steps are going to be this would you like me to do them like I've looked at this document you look to the document would you like me to send it out and then i can answer the questions i just try to take the initiative and you know show that you're not just there to do that one thing that they told you to do but you're trying to be helpful and add value basically.

Lauren: No, I love that. Like the anticipating the next thing and offering it up, which I think is something that you so appreciate, especially when you are managing other people.

Naz: Agreed. Yeah. Yeah.

Lauren: All right. So you after after starting in your qualification seat with the financial industry group, which we call FIG here at Reed Smith, for those who don't know, you had a by all accounts, very successful practice for five years in the FIG group. You've worked with some fantastic mentors at the firm who are leaders in their field and known to be particularly good at bringing up more junior employers. So I'm curious about that time in your career. What did you like most about your team and what did you like about the work you were doing?

Naz: What I liked most about the team is that they knew so much collectively because they had so much experience over different practice areas. Is there was very, I can't remember a time when I'd, you know, when there was a random question and there wasn't someone in the team who could answer that question or at least give you a, I would look here and then you find out the answer. So it was such an amazing learning tool because, because you're surrounded by people who have such breadth of experience now and certainly, definitely then I'm sure now as well at the FIG. So yeah, I think that's what I, I also really liked the team. Like they were a really good laugh. You could just have a chat with them. It wasn't just all about work, which is really helpful. So yeah, I do miss my time at Reed Smith. Not being as scared when you didn't know what you were doing, but certainly the people, I haven't forgotten them. And I'm still in touch with a lot of them, which is also really nice.

Lauren: Oh, that's fantastic. You mentioned that you thought that you might be interested in in-house roles from your traineeship. When did you realize, like at what point in your career did you start to think it was It's time to think about next steps?

Naz: I kind of knew after the Barclays comment, I actually really knew that I enjoyed it. As scary as it was, and as challenging as it was, it really improved my confidence. It made me realize that I could do this and I could go in-house. And so at that point, it just became, well, Naz, if you want to go in-house, what do you need to do? You need to get as much experience as you possibly can across everything that basically structured finance has to offer, which is what I tried to do. And it's obviously you know because the scary thing about going in-house to a place that you know with work you've never done before is thinking god am I going to be able to do this and if you know that you've done a load of stuff before and you've managed to do it that just gives you confidence to know that well I've figured that out I'm sure I can figure this out too.

Lauren: And you talked about having some some great mentors and team members you really liked and are still in touch with so when you decided it was time to start looking for in-house roles in earnest did you talk to them about that how did you approach looking for roles and did you tell anyone at the firm you were doing that.

Naz: Yes I did I was lucky enough so Tamara Box who's obviously was head of structural finance at that point and obviously still in FIG now I was I was very open with her it was great she'd be right from the outset T-Box sorry I call her T-Box I can't I can't call her Tamara it sounds weird. T-Box was very open to you know people take different paths some people go in-house some people stay in private practice some people go to different firms and she was was very kind of encouraging of kind of discussions around that so even before I decided I wanted to kind of leave I asked her if there was an opportunity to do a secondment for example which is how I got my second secondment and Merrill Lynch yes the toolbox was exceptionally supportive and secondment and both of my left as well and it's great I still get to work with her now which is amazing.

Lauren: That is great. So if there were an associate who wanted to start exploring in-house roles at the firm, what advice would you give them about starting a dialogue with their mentors?

Naz: So I would say two things. So one aside from the kind of dialogue about that is just try to get as much experience as you can, like across different things, work with different partners. Do different types of work even if it's scary even if you think oh I don't this doesn't have anything to do with anything I might be doing in the future I want to do in the future because you don't know how things transpire and you don't know things that will crop up in your future career that you randomly did 10 years ago that actually helps you and then the second thing was to be honest just be as open as you can like you know partners in law firms aren't going to they're not going to make you feel bad for wanting to go in-house certainly those who understand that at some some point you could be their client right so ask about secondment opportunities you know with from partners in your team if there are any if there's anything you could do to be considered for a common opportunity and also then when you actually do get to work with clients in private practice you know make a good impression not that anyone obviously makes a bad impression certainly but really go the extra mile like be personable be responsive be kind of understanding of what they want and try to deliver that so that if there is an opportunity to do a secondment there they're gonna be like oh yes I remember this person they were great on that transaction sure I’d love to have them on my team for a secondment like that also really helps.

Lauren: That's such great advice I mean we we've all had times in our career when we're working very hard and and things on a deal get heated up but just always remembering that the person who you're serving in that moment right they could be it's a chance to market yourself as a professional and the person and it sounds like you really did that.

Naz: I tried. I don’t know if I succeeded, Lauren, but I tried.

Lauren: So you have a ton of wisdom that I think we could talk for a much longer time about the advice you have for more junior lawyers. But since we do only have a few minutes left in our time together, I want to ask you a couple of questions in your capacity now as a senior in-house lawyer. And the first one related to the last point we were discussing. But when you are working with junior lawyers that are outside counsel. Can you talk about a few things that a junior lawyer has done during your time that's really impressed you and given you the impression that this is someone you really might want to work with again?

Naz: Sure. So the first is responsiveness. You know that annoying, a client sends an email and then you respond saying, hi, I've seen your email. The timelines are fine and we're working on it. That is a really pointless email to send, I know, because it seems so unnecessary. But. To the person who's just given you work to do, it's really nice. Okay, that person's either they're dealing with it, I don't have to think about that anymore. So definitely the responsiveness. I would also say attention to detail. You know, as in-house lawyers, we don't expect nor do we really want our partners to know the minutiae of transactions. Like we don't want them to kind of be knee deep in the documents. So as a junior, my kind of advice would be immerse yourself in the documents. Know what's been negotiated and know what the outcome was or where we are currently with them if it hasn't been bottomed out yet. So if you're on a call and someone says, oh, where do we get to on the limitation of liability? You know, you as a junior person can probably, oh, this is where we've got to. And it shows that, you know, the documents and you're keeping track. And that is very impressive. And, you know, it just, it's good to know that someone's on top of these things. So that would be my advice.

Lauren: So just that responsiveness and being the person who's kind of keeping everyone else organized.

Naz: Yes yeah definitely.

Lauren: Yeah as a junior lawyer that that surprised me that that that was part of my role but but as the person who has right the most time and probably the fewest matters compared to you know I imagine you're working on a ton of matters at any given time.

Naz: Yes basically it also can be quite daunting as a junior lawyer to be the person that's almost like the lynchpin but it's the classic well if you just break it down right you know what documents are being negotiated you know who's working on if you kind of keep a track of what's the most back and forth it's actually not that bad but it can really yield a lot of results and not just externally to your client right but also internally. It's very helpful to partners if there's a snapshot of what's going on where are we if you can deliver that that shows again that you care you're not just doing what you're told you're really trying to to kind of provide the best service both internally and externally.

Lauren: And that point you made about how you don't necessarily want the partner to be the person who's up to date on all the details, right? But for obvious reasons, and I think that's really powerful that someone, you know, a senior in-house lawyer like you can actually notice when a junior is providing that very strong support to their more senior attorney.

Naz: Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, obviously, yeah, there is, we don't want, you know, partners to be negotiating limitation of liability because it's a waste of their time, as well as a waste of fees. I think there might be some kind of I can understand that if you're a junior lawyer in private practice you might be like well no one's going to know that I'm doing this and everyone's going to understand I'm not going to get acknowledged and it's not about acknowledgement but you know if you work hard of course you want to get acknowledged for it but you know the partners of Reed Smith certainly you know at least in my experience have very much kind of acknowledged when the work has been done by someone else. And equally on a call it's very obvious right when a junior person can speak up and answer a question that they know what's going on so that will be even if you don't even if no one on the call says oh wow that's amazing I'm so glad you know that, it will be it will be noticed that it was you who was able to give the answer.

Lauren: I think that's very motivating and reassuring right when you're when you're working as perhaps the most junior person on the deal to know that your work is really very meaningful to the client. So final question and you've talked a little bit about what what you did and what you think mid-level lawyers should be thinking about if they want to move in-house but just speaking from the perspective of someone who might be assessing people who you're mentoring or who might want to join your team what would you say to a mid-level lawyer about the the skills that they should be developing if that is a path that they if they want to pursue.

Naz: So I think yeah and this is kind of a theme that I've seen certainly and certainly in the you know the job that I'm in in now which is it's less about do you have experience in this particular asset class or this particular area it's do you have transferable skills to do this work if you're given the support and the tools that you need. I for example I did nothing I've never done exchange traded product work in my life don't worry I was very upfront about this in my interviews so this is not a surprise to anyone at WisdomTree but you know i was able to demonstrate because of the experience I had on the CLO work on the securitization work I was able to look at complicated structures and problem solve and figure out answers and that's what it really is about. It's about being able to apply the skills that you've learned elsewhere to the job that you're doing now because no one has done everything and it's certainly an in-house counsel as I kind of said as I said before you will end up doing things that no one has ever thought about like you know that hasn't really been contemplated. I'm not even being facetious. Certainly in the crypto space, for example we're definitely doing things that have never been done before and so it's not about do you have the experience because no one had the experience. It's about how can you approach this and will you be able to do this well and that is very much based on the skills that you have your ability to kind of problem solve your ability to approach something and be able to kind of break it down to some of its parts and understand it and then figure out a way to deal with the problem or the best way to do a project or something. So my my advice would basically be try not to get fixated it's very difficult but try not to get fixated on the area itself and getting experience indirectly in that area but get as much experience as you can then be able to demonstrate how the experience that you have will be able to what will mean that you'll be able to do the job that you're applying for very well.

Lauren: I love that so so earlier you talked about being someone who loves learning and and it sounds like that is the skill that you're looking for in people who want to work with you.

Naz: Yes for sure like enthusiasm and curiosity and wanting to be challenged and don't get me wrong you know challenge is not easy there are certain days when you know the things you're doing are hard and it makes your it makes your brain hurt but once it's done it's a really really nice feeling to be like, yeah, we did that. We as a team were able to accomplish that. And it's a really nice feeling. So yes, definitely.

Lauren: Well, Naz, thank you so much. We are at the end of our time together. But I want to thank you for sharing so much from your perspective as an alumni of the firm and a senior in-house lawyer and someone who started their career at Reed Smith and made a very intentional decision to join the team. So thank you so much for being with us.

Naz: Thank you again for having me. I really appreciate it.

Lauren: Thanks so much, everyone, for joining this episode of Reed Smith's Career Footprints podcast. And we hope to see you at the following episode.

Outro: Career Footprints is a Reed Smith production. Our producer is Ali McCardell. This podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, PodBean, and reedsmith.com. To learn more about Reed Smith's alumni network, or if you're an alum of the firm who wants to share your career story, contact me, Reed Smith's Global Senior Director of Alumni Relations, Laura Karmatz, at [e-mail].

Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation.

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