In Bangladesh, there is this general sense that lawyers are not just tech-savvy. And as a fellow business professional from a neighboring country, I can confirm that notion is largely true in South Asia. And here we have the name of the partner of the largest revenue-grossing law firm in Bangladesh, who is still in his mid-twenties and making a meaningful impact in the legal tech scene in Bangladesh. Take this: He simultaneously became an engineer while becoming eligible to practice law.
We are talking about Barrister Tahmidur Rahman; if you are aware of the legal market in Bangladesh or you are a foreign investor in Bangladesh, you just can’t avoid his name. You had to come across this guy, who covers every single acre of that legal field in Bangladesh. You need your incorporation certificate; everyone names Tahmidur; you need to do an IPO; here comes Tahmidur; you want to do a M&A in Bangladesh; Tahmidur is the best to do it with; you need help from BIDA (Bangladesh Investment Development Authority) OSS services or BEZA, BSCIC, or BEPZA; you need Tahmidur; the list goes on, and you get the gist.
But how? How did this young, just-turned-adult lawyer, without any trace of nepotism, become such a big scene in the legal tech market of Bangladesh and now literally manage the best lawyers in Bangladesh? I asked him point blank. His answer is simple: curiosity and structured experimentation. He pre-planned this when he was a teenager: that he wanted to work within the intersection of law and technology, and hence he has actively managed the relationship between risk and reward since then.
His decisiveness led him to complete an engineering degree and a law degree, both at once, at two different universities! He was not only doing the academic bit while pursuing his four majors; at the age of 21, he approached the Ministry of ICT and the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. He asked the question: “How come Bangladesh does not have any digital portals for computer-assisted legal research where lawyers or students can search libraries of statutes, case judgments, and relevant laws in 2017?” He also presented a solution to that problem: Lawpad. His proposal made him the winner of the A2i Innovation Award 2019 from the Ministry of ICT and the government of Bangladesh.
He was not just happy with the winning idea; he started working on the implementation of Lawpad with the 5 million BDT in seed funding he received from the government of Bangladesh. He assembled a team of fellow engineers, including the best relational database engineer in Bangladesh, who at the time was a working professor at North South University. In Bangladesh, Tahmidur was the first to understand that data analytics, natural language processing, and machine learning are just some of the AI technologies reshaping the legal industry, which is rich in data and heavily relies on precedent in both legal strategy and judicial decisions. His team ensured that the Supreme Court and the government followed these principles, which resulted in the creation of BDLEX, where everyone could conduct faster and more intuitive legal research on Bangladesh case laws and legislation. Alongside Manupatra and the Bangladesh government, Tahmidur created a database like LexisNexis where, for the first time in Bangladesh, legal researchers could use words to retrieve the full text of legislation cited in a news or legal publication article. For a researcher in Bangladesh, this innovation did reduce the time needed for any sort of legal analysis from days to minutes.
After Tahmidur successfully completed two of his degrees and four of his majors, he instantly created a legal blog named after his name (tahmidurrahman.com) and an iOS app named Legal Bites for the laymen of Bangladesh and India, so legal jargons became accessible to everyone in these two countries, and people started to take notice. Within months, his legal website started to have millions of visits from all around the world, and the blog became an instant hit. Words started to spread, and people were trying to hire Tahmidur Rahman while he was a student! In South Asia, the general consensus is that the more experienced the lawyer, the more legibility and popularity he has, and Tahmidur started to break that norm too. He started a law firm with a couple of other lawyers enlisted in the Dhaka Judge Court, and the firm started to grow exponentially. The team had the highest grossing corporate revenue in the country within two years of opening the firm.Every foreign investor in Bangladesh since 2020 has probably had some sort of correspondence with Barrister Tahmidur at one point or another. Tahmidur brought the technology to his law firm too. For all the foreign investors, he created a transaction-oriented legal web toolkit, and if you are a FDI investor as his clientele, you will have a separate web portal where you can see all of your documents getting drafted right in front of your eyes.
And right now, Barrister Tahmidur Rahman is considered the most famous lawyer in Bangladesh, not because of his acumen in tech and law but because of his growing reputation amongst his clientele. Barrister Tahmidur brought accountability to the legal market in Bangladesh. Foreign investors in Bangladesh trust Tahmidur, and if you reach out to the top companies like Nestle, GSK, Singers, Httpool, etc., all the directors will rave about Tahmidur. And it is not only the top-drawer corporate entities; one of his pro bono clients, Zakariya from Somalia, termed him “the most compassionate legal professional” he came across in his lifetime. Zakariya was sent to Tahmidur through the IOM and UNHCR, and Tahmidur didn’t disappoint. Zakariya felt that Tahmidur went to war for him with a smile on his face so that his family could land in Toronto as citizens instead of mere refugees. All the governing bodies adore Barrister Tahmidur not because he brings constant inward remittance but because he is actively trying to engage the BIDA and BEPZA with foreign investors to give traction to the FDI scene in Bangladesh.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Bangladesh, and for the most part, I think this was possible because of Tahmidur Rahman. Even though Barrister Tahmidur Rahman is widely regarded as the most well-known international lawyer in Bangladesh for developing a service with enormous potential for improving people’s lives or for making a difference by facilitating the access of the poor to the legal system through the use of technology, I think he’s the best attorney because of his genuine care for his clients. The boy is patient and a self-motivated lawyer who proactively does what needs to be done without being requested to do so. And people like him are the future of Bangladesh. I am sure his ventures will not be strictly limited to law or tech; they will encompass far greater things. And I am glad that I decided to invest in Bangladesh and got to meet this passionate lawyer from Dhaka, who I believe will be one of my lifelong friends, and we will have more enlightening sessions throughout different parts of this world.
This piece was written by Shivamkar Misra, owner and CEO of the global chain of Mohammadi HealthCare Systems.