We want LI to be one of the friendliest places on the internet, where lawyers and law students help each other with their career related queries and occasionally discuss other stuff that might affect their lives too. In other words:
1. Be kind, respectful and helpful to each other.
2. Be bona fide, truthful, genuine and curious.
3. Assume the best intention of others.
Therefore, in using the site, you must agree to do your best to uphold these community guidelines.
Note that what you find here is written and moderated by anonymous people on the internet.
Therefore everything you read here is very likely unverified, rumour, speculation and/or downright false.
In continuing to read anything here, you must therefore agree not to take anything you read here as factual and that you will exercise due caution, diligence and common sense before acting on any information you may come across here.
You also agree to report any inaccurate or malicious comments with the buttons. Moderators take action within 24 hours, as required and appropriate under law.
Our full terms and conditions apply too.
Do you solemnly agree to all of the above?
TMT is a broad bucket (abbreviation for Telecom, Media, Tech). The term was created when there was growing sectoral regulation due to advancements in these industries, and existing laws were not sufficient to fully address the issues arising therefrom.
Over a period of time, and in particular, more recently, TMT has been used to cover any upcoming area of law - Fintech, Media and Entertainment, Gaming - essentially anything that may have an interplay with either the T, M, or T. As pointed out above, this primarily includes data privacy, telecom, media, and tech regulations.
Certain TMT teams have specialised focuses - for instance, Harsh Walia at Khaitan & Co specialises in Telecom. Jaideep Reddy from Trilegal and Smita Jha from Khaitan & Co focus on Fintech and Crypto. This does not, however, mean that they do not advise on other areas of law that form part of the broader TMT bucket.
IPR, being a separate field of its own, has separate specialised partners that work in the industry. It is very rare to now see an IP team also advise on general TMT laws. You could argue that the AZB IP teams do broader work than just core IP, and therefore, are TMT teams. However, they continue to be characterized as an IP practice (whose core focus would be trademarks, copyrights, and design prosecution work, along with transactional support to their corporate and M&A teams).
The opportunities are fewer given that the number of partners in the industry are limited. However, if you make it to a Tier 1 practice, the pay is often at par with other corporate teams. Your bonus will directly depend on the amount of work your partner brings, and a function of how well you bill (or appease to your partners). There is differential pay in certain "IP" teams but the pay still exceeds what is paid by pure boutiques.