Li Mingyue has been working as a lawyer full-time since 2012. She joined Tian Yuan in early 2017 and was promoted to partner in 2019. Li Mingyue specializes in finance and asset management, asset securitization, private equity and investment funds, state-owned assets management, and state-owned property rights transactions.
Q: What growth and gains have you gained since joining Tian Yuan?
A: At the beginning of 2017, I left the previous law firm with the team and officially became a member of the Tian Yuan Finance and Asset Management Department. It has been more than four years in the blink of an eye. As a “non-native Tian Yuan person”, I have heard about our openness, tolerance and harmony before. After four years of Tian Yuan people, this experience is even more profound.
I dare not say "fast" in my growth in Tian Yuan, but over the years, in the face of platform replacement, market changes and other challenges, I have been able to overcome them head-on, smoothly or thrillingly, and the current career direction has not deviated. Personally, I think it is necessary to maintain hard work and a sense of mission in the industry, but I also want to thank Tian Yuan. This platform is really suitable for the growth of young lawyers, and what we need to do is to maximize the use of the resources it provides.
Tian Yuan’s “academic culture” has a strong tone—it’s learned first and foremost, and when encountering professional problems that they don’t understand, young lawyers can ask for advice from partners or senior lawyers in the firm. Whether they are familiar with them or not, the senior lawyers will always provide professional and detailed answers to questions. There are specialties in the field. In addition to the more than 100 training sessions organized by Tian Yuan every year, the team will often communicate and help each other. In addition, the consistent atmosphere of "rigorousness, truth-seeking, inclusiveness, and freedom of thought" in the firm has given us great room and possibility for development - of course, the premise is to adhere to the professionalism, practice principles and bottom line of lawyers. Another very important point is that Tian Yuan’s internal cooperation mechanism is very smooth, with complementary advantages, which breaks through the limitations of a single team/lawyer in the past. After I joined Tian Yuan, I was fortunate to cooperate with multiple teams.
Q: Having served in the field of finance and asset management for many years, can you share an impressive project?
A: There are quite a few impressive projects over the years, so let’s choose one and share it.
For an investment project in the past two years, we implemented the investment on behalf of the investor. When the project progressed to the critical stage of negotiation and signing, a new competitor suddenly appeared and wanted to invest in the project. At this time, the invested project party had the upper hand. In order to quickly win the project and invest the money, the client urgently made an appointment with the investment and financing parties and the lawyers of both parties, and put everyone in a small room, trying to resolve all differences through one-time centralized negotiation and quickly sign the contract. As the investor’s lawyer, I participated in the whole process of the day’s negotiations, revised the contract, and finalized the draft. This wheel-based negotiation lasted nearly 20 hours. In the second half, it was really a struggle to see who had better mental and physical strength. I remember that day, I walked into the client's office building in the morning and left late at night. Two days later, the two parties successfully signed the contract.
Colleagues all know that as long as you stay in the legal industry long enough, it is normal to experience continuous rotation, multi-threaded operation, non-stop rushing to the deadline, and returning halfway during the holiday. Why is this project so impressive? Because, during that whole day, I really felt the client's sense of dependence and trust--becoming a lawyer trusted by the client and helping the client "solve problems" professionally. Isn't this the original intention of my career?
Q: The laws and regulations related to finance and asset management are very complicated and updated quickly. How do you adapt to changes and provide customers with accurate services?
A: Continuous learning is one of the basic requirements of all lawyers, and the subdivision of the financial management industry has its own characteristics. On the one hand, the financial market is a typical rule-oriented market, and all market transactions directly depend on laws, regulations, rules and various self-regulatory rules. Every policy adjustment and every new regulatory document will also directly affect the feasibility and compliance of structural arrangements in specific projects. It is also obvious that financial innovation often takes advantage of institutional gaps on the basis of compliance and pursues the maximization of benefits. Once financial innovation develops and scales up and results in a breakthrough in the original legal system, it will promote the adjustment of the original regulatory system and norms by the legislative and financial regulatory departments. This also means that it is not enough to just keep up with the policy update documents of the legislative body and the regulatory department, and talk on paper. Only by understanding the industry and the market can we better understand the system and predict the direction of the wind. The so-called "Ducks first know the water in the river is warm in spring".
Based on this, neither financial practitioners nor lawyers who provide professional services for the industry can stay out of the market, and they have to take into account the updating of knowledge; as far as my own experience is concerned, in the daily busy work, it is usually unrealistic to spare enough time to systematically study and summarize. A more practical and efficient method is: first, keep standing on the front line of the market and projects or actively contact the actual business, and be familiar with real market practices and various latest operating arrangements; Explore the transaction logic, compliance logic, and legal/non-legal comprehensive knowledge behind unfamiliar terms, regulations, and transaction arrangements, and immediately check for omissions and fill in gaps in your own knowledge system; finally, "turn the parts into wholes" and develop the habit of scanning industry trends in fragmented time. This is a set of methods that I think is very effective.
Q: In the changing financial and asset management industry, what challenges are you facing and how to deal with them?
A: Personally, I think that I, other senior lawyers and young partners of the same age, are facing some common challenges: after ten years of immersion in the industry, changes in personal roles and values in the team, changes in the position in the law firm, higher expectations and requirements from clients, and adjustments to personal practice values and goals, etc. These challenges have put forward new requirements for personal ability, quality, and working methods. Looking back on the past two years, due to the fear of uncertainty, being too busy with specific tasks, and the psychological comfort zone effect, I am somewhat timid about the next step of my career, but transformation and development are a must for us.
Corresponding to the stage I am in, the financial management industry is also facing transformation and development in the past two years. Especially at the beginning of the "14th Five-Year Plan" layout, after 2020, when the epidemic situation is coupled with complex domestic and foreign situations-under such a background, the financial management industry has experienced a critical year of "strict supervision" and the transition of the supervision period. With the frequent appearance of words such as "removal of channels", "broken rigid exchange", "depression of non-standard scale", "three red lines of real estate", "extended transition period of new asset management regulations", from the China Securities Regulatory Commission, China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission to industry self-discipline associations, various supporting regulations have been promulgated one after another. In 2021, from the new legal system regulations, regulatory attitudes to judicial practice, new standards have been set for financial institutions in terms of product compliance, risk control, and legal effectiveness. It also puts forward further requirements for the professionalism of legal service practitioners in the financial management industry and the speed of response to new rules.
Q: As a new generation partner of Tian Yuan, what plans and goals do you have for the future?
A: 2021, for myself and my field, is a year of embarking on a new journey with the pain of transition. My own expectation is to build on the past foundation, consolidate the original professional level, find a balance in the process of meeting market demand and compliance, and strive to make breakthroughs in new areas; adhere to the cognition of "people grind on things", stick to the main battlefield, constantly "strengthen internal strength", and balance and choose between short-term benefits and medium-term planning. As I recently read a quote from the philosophy writer Eric Hoffer: "When rapid change comes, the future belongs to learners, who will be fully equipped to calmly deal with the world that never existed."
