In this interview we talk to Islamic finance lawyer Aziz Deen about his colourful career in this growing sector of law. He talks us through his decision process of choosing to specialise in Islamic finance, the state of the UK Islamic finance market and also gives us gems on what up and coming lawyers should be ready for and how to prepare to be the best lawyer they can become.
To begin, let’s understand more about Aziz and how starting a debate on the negative impacts of wind turbines helped him develop his skills for a future career in law!
1) How did you actually know you wanted to work in law?
So in my family, you literally have one choice – medicine. I think I realised pretty quickly that I was going to get trapped into going down a road that I didn’t think I was going to enjoy. So out of necessity, I said, “okay, what skills do I have?”
I’ve got good vocal and written communication skills. My argumentative streak was quite strong and the same with my analytical intuition. I concluded that it’s probably a good choice if I go into law or something related to finance and economics because of my analytical streak and, innate desire to question.
I remember I was in Year 10 and perhaps surprisingly I don’t think I was actually that confident. I remember reading a line in a book detailing a trick to bolster confidence, which is to make ridiculous statements, and try and argue your way out of them. I once started a discussion on wind farms and to any rational, sane person, a wind farm is an absolutely amazing idea. Especially more so to a bunch of not very scientifically clued up people or kids who wouldn’t know the actual pitfalls of wind farms. But they have pitfalls, they’re not perfect!
Anyway, I remember just starting this big discussion about how I was against them. Now there’s 20 people against me and I’m there trying to defend fossil fuels and, you know, the status quo. I knew that I picked a silly argument but the idea of this is you put yourself in a difficult scenario and you have to talk your way out of it.
I remember the adrenaline flowing within me and having to methodically argue about how I just don’t believe in them. So I was bringing up points such as birds being hit by the huge blades, being ghastly sites, how they’re all made of single use non-renewable metal, the high maintenance costs..….and then I ran out of ideas! I’m sure those who were in my science class probably remember it to this day.
But ultimately, it was confidence-inducing. Sometimes putting yourself in difficult situations for the sake of character building has immense benefits.
2) Law is a field where your network helps a lot. Were there any family members involved in the legal industry that helped you break into it?
Oh, no way. I’m the first lawyer in my family. I didn’t go to a private school or anything like that, unlike a lot of the people at my university. But at the same time, I think a lawyer’s built on drive and work ethic. Those skills that make a good lawyer can’t be given to you by family or a network. And learning law is never truly done in a classroom environment. You kind of attain it through osmosis; you watch other lawyers being lawyers and you pick up the skills.
I definitely think that some of the skills of a lawyer fall into this very unique category of being unteachable. You observe, and you pick up the air of confidence, being able to speak off the cuff, these kinds of skills, you can practise them but you can’t read them in a textbook and get them that way.
3) What can someone in secondary school or college do to help them if they’re interested in law?
When GCSE stage students ask me this question, I tell them that you’re unlikely to get a work experience from a law firm. It is notoriously hard to obtain. Rather I’d recommend that you look for work experience in local government, admin departments of accounting firms or estate agents.
For me personally, I remember it being a challenge to get direct law experience. But then I thought, “okay, what’s near legal? What industries are there that have interaction with lawyers?”
I realised I knew an estate agent and I knew that people go to him to get visa support documents. Essentially an estate agent is confirming that your house has enough space to allow this person who’s coming to the UK to stay in it. It’s almost like a quasi legal document, right? So I saw that and I thought, okay, I can’t get into a law firm, so I’ll do my very best to try and get something close to that.
4) How do you as a lawyer, know where you want to end up and what drew you to Islamic finance?
I applied for a vacation scheme in the Islamic Finance Department in 2013 and there was this very, very complex document that I had been asked to have a look at. It was called a Murabaha Agreement. It’s actually the document that I draft the most now.
I remember not knowing where to start and how to finish it. I was taken to the side and explained the mechanics of the financing. I am grateful to my mentor for explaining the nature of murabaha, being a method of financing, using commodity sale on a cost plus markup basis to allow for funds flow. To a 19 year old that initially means very little! However, breaking this complex idea of a commodity sale to allow the transfer of funds down into its constituent parts, it becomes very understandable. I remember feeling after I left that – “you know what, I get this“. that comes with having a good and crucially patient mentor!
I applied to many firms, mostly based in Bristol, because I wanted to come back to Bristol and I ended up securing a training contract at a firm called TLT and I had a really great experience. I trained there for two years and it was fantastic, but I didn’t do any Islamic finance, I didn’t do any banking, in fact, because I tried my very utmost to stay away from conventional finance and riba.
I did a really great year in energy and renewables (split up into six months in property and six months in corporate). I really enjoyed my time in those seats and it was really, really fun. I always thought maybe I might go into energy and renewables. It’s quite fascinating and I like the title as well – ‘renewable energy lawyer’. It was really funky and hip at the time, kind of like the title of ‘crypto lawyer’ right now.
Close to the end of my training contract, I was pretty certain I wanted to go down the path of a commercial litigator. I enjoyed how it pushed me to the limits of my skill set. However, I remember two months or so before I was due to qualify, I was also doing a lot of work on statements of interest, specifically calculating interest in a claim. I thought, hang on a minute, this doesn’t align with my personal views. I’m very, very risk averse when it comes to dealing with interest as it’s prohibited in Islam. So I reached out to an Imam Qazi – my previous mentor from the 2013 vacation scheme, and I asked, “what do you think of this? I’m due to qualify into a team and there’s a lot of calculation of interest and Riba”. We discussed it and he mentioned that he had a vacancy going in his team and he encouraged me to apply for it. So I applied for it and Alhamdulillah got offered a position.
But I remember it was a very, very difficult decision. Do I stay doing what I really enjoy or do I just take a risk and go off into the unknown and try this fascinating area of law? It was a really difficult decision, and I probably prayed istikhara at least 4 times!
I went with my gut (following istikhara) and it turned out to be a great decision. I love the team I work with, I love the work I do and I love my clients. Foot Anstey as a firm is fantastic, our team is ranked tier two in the Legal 500 and we’re one of the best Islamic Financing teams in the country.
We work with nearly every single Islamic bank that operates in the United Kingdom, either with them as our clients, or on the other side of their deals acting for the customers. We are very much part of the Islamic Finance game and we have been for a long time.
5) Is a lot of the work you do based outside the UK?
No, no, it’s nearly always in the UK. The people or the corporate entities might not be based in the UK but the banks providing financing are always from the UK. And it’s very busy! I think our team alone has done well in excess of £1bn in financing. The Islamic finance industry is big and it’s growing and there’s always going to be a need for motivated and energetic people.
But that’s not to say you should wake up one morning and say; “I want to be an Islamic finance lawyer”. You might think you’re going to make a great Islamic financing lawyer, but really your skills may just be well rooted in litigation. You may have the argumentative skills of Harvey Specter, and you may be a natural charmer; you may become a solicitor’s advocate appearing before judges and charm their socks off.
I don’t do much advocacy, even though I love advocacy. I’d love to go in front of a judge again, and have the whole litigation experience. I’ve ended up as a transactional lawyer and I’m happy with that. But sometimes I do think it’d be so fun to put on a suit, to shine my shoes and to go before a judge and put forward a case….(Aziz started to daydream at this stage and I had to bring him back!).
“If you don’t have a passion for the law, then being an Islamic finance lawyer isn’t going to give you that passion.”
6) What are the skills required to work in Islamic finance?
There’s not many Islamic law firms that do Islamic financing, at least not as a specialty. But I think the average non-Muslim solicitor can pick up an Islamic financing file and can at least obtain financing for a property. They might not be able to draft the financing documents, but they can at least obtain the financing. So the point is, it is mainstream and it’s not difficult.
However, I want to make it clear, if someone has a law degree and an interest in Islamic finance, they should be very cautious of blinkering themselves. If you don’t have a passion for the law, then being an Islamic finance lawyer isn’t going to give you that passion. What I do 95% of the time is not even Islamic specific, it’s general property transactions and general law.
So I’m just trying to say, that our exposure to Islamic things isn’t as much as people think. The mechanisms might be Islamic but that doesn’t mean the clients are all Muslim.
I would encourage people interested to first try everything from litigation to corporate law.
7) Would you say a lot of people at your firm know what Islamic finance is?
They do, especially at Foot Anstey, because we’re not seen as this quirky financing team who do very, unique transactions that nobody can understand. We’re very open and many of the biggest clients of the firm are Islamic finance clients.
Within my firm, if I say a certain Islamic bank name, my colleagues in other departments will have already heard of that name because it has come across their desk already. In fact, I know that for one of the Islamic banks, most of its savers are non-Muslim. It just goes to show that Islamic Finance is mainstream.
So I think a lot more people can get involved in Islamic financing but I wouldn’t necessarily advise people to study formal Islamic qualifications. My advice is to go back to basics. Get your tort law understood. Get to grips with your contract basics. What is a breach? What is a contract? What is the frustration of a contract? Understand these theories very well.
People always say that a law degree is a worthless three years and the LPC is what really counts. I completely disagree because the theory obtained from that law degree is unmatched. You understand the rationale behind things like precedent and the need for precedent. What you learn in your degree will pay dividends in your career if understood well.
8) What do people around the world think of UK Islamic finance?
I think it’s cool to be in the UK where we have Islamic finance. It’s the most established market within the Western world, primarily because of the number of Muslims that we have here.
The UK is cutting edge and everybody knows that. If you go to the UAE or Saudi Arabia, the market in the UK is known to be very Islamic financing-friendly, primarily because a lot of good assets are here and a supportive government.
It’s no surprise to me that the UK is at the forefront of Islamic Finance and also in terms of entrepreneurial development. We’re getting that support from the government, the FCA and HMRC, they’re very open to discussing innovative structures. Whereas in America, I might be mistaken, but everything is done on a local basis meaning different states have different rules and regulations.
” Religion does have a place in employment and in the workplace”
9) I want to talk about diversity as well. Law is seen as a profession that’s very homogenous. What advice would you give to someone who wants to bring their true self, in whatever capacity, to work?
The first thing is don’t compromise – but also engage in dialogue. If you speak to people they can help with workarounds and solutions.
But I really, really hate it when I hear stories (and I hear them all the time) of people that struggle being Muslim in the workplace because they don’t communicate.
If you need to pray, tell people that you’re going so they can adapt and react to your circumstances and your requirements. Employers are more than willing to be flexible. You just need to ask for that flexibility.
I know it’s difficult for all those out there who are a junior and starting their careers. I know it’s difficult, but dialog and discussion is so important. How can you expect people to make accommodations for you if you haven’t asked for those accommodations?
We are seeing massive leaps and bounds like the Black Lives Matter initiative. It did so much for equality and diversity genuinely across the board. It wasn’t just a point that people spoke about once a month. It became something entrenched in the culture of firms. They actively sought to be more accommodating.
And I love seeing posts on LinkedIn where a firm that never had a prayer room before has made one. Religion does have a place in employment and in the workplace. A space to pray that’s clean is all that’s required. And again, be reasonable. You might have a legal right to these things but there is a way to approach things socially, in line with social norms and customs. People are more than accommodating.
10) I know diversity is very important for you and you’re involved in a lot of activities to promote it. Can you share some of your work with our readers?
The take home message here is ‘action not words’. The Legal Guides program that I founded with my colleagues at the Association of Muslim Lawyers (AML) was created out of that principle.
We had the idea that we should use our AML Network to create a Legal Guides program to help black and ethnic minorities attain legal employment and training. So not just Muslims but Black, ethnic minorities and underrepresented individuals. We’re open to anyone from any background who feels underrepresented.
To date on our Legal Guides scheme we’ve maybe had about 160 people, mentors and mentees. We’ve got a really, really good record of helping people secure vacation schemes.
My advice would be to take advantage of all the schemes because believe me, I did. I was on a city law for ethnic minority scheme. I was on a ‘pathways to law’ scheme and any kind of scheme I could get my hands on.
You may not have a cousin or an uncle who’s a lawyer, but you have access to a very good network of people who want to help you.
11) Lastly, can you share with us some of the mistakes or pitfalls you faced when you first started working? How would you advise others to overcome them?
I’d like to think that I don’t have any regrets with respect to my career. I did everything very thought out and to be honest, whenever I had a pitfall, I genuinely thought quite methodically about how I can overcome it pretty quickly. Maybe when I first started I wasn’t as confident as I should have been.
The key is take information from as many people as you possibly can. I want the TML audience to know that communication is key. Therefore, they’re going to avoid any miscommunication from the outset.
I heard this phrase that a wise man learns from his own mistakes, but the wisest of men learns from the mistakes of others. And that’s key, that’s why I try to speak to as many people as I possibly can. I classify myself as a serial networker and I won’t ever turn down an opportunity to meet people and engage with them irrespective of background, age etc.
I’m going to share with you a hadith I have on this pen in front of me. So on this pen here, it says, “a believer never stops seeking knowledge until he enters paradise”. That’s something I want everyone else starting their careers to ponder as well – don’t just focus on being subject matter experts. I want to be just as comfortable with medical terminology as with legal terminology. Seek knowledge wherever you can as this is what grows you, gives you options and makes you stand out.
12) Final Four
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