Season 5, Episode 4:Legal Insights with Caleb Adebeyo

Ellie: [00:00:00] To start off the interview please could you tell us how and when you became interested in a career in law?

Caleb: All right. Thank you very much for this invite to law talks. I'm very glad to be doing this so I got involved and so my my first The first time I ever wanted to study law was School.

So that was a first. I started out in high school wanting to be an engineer. Well, let's say it was my mom's idea. And if anyone knows typical Nigerian parents, they tried to determine what their children will become and just And so I was anointed to be the, the engineer and family, and because I loved pretty complex things, I decided I was going to be an aeronautic engineer.

I was going to work on airplanes. And this was [00:01:00] until my third year in high school. So back in Nigeria, after the third year of high school, you have the opportunity to, the exams are written on paper. a bit early before the end of the, of the school year. And so you have a couple of months where you're really not doing anything and just spending some time either traveling or at home.

And so during that period I was at home and I'm a very spiritual person. And so I spent some time doing a spiritual retreat. And during that period, I, it became very clear to me that this was a different path that God was directing me to because I was good in both arts and science, and so I could go ahead to become either a lawyer or, of course, an engineer.

But that was the point that I was certain that really my future was in law. I was also very interested in just seeing justice being done and seeing the right thing being done, especially, you know, in the country like ours, Nigeria at the time. [00:02:00] And so that was really what led me towards becoming a lawyer.

My parents seemed to think it was my sister who was, who had decided to become a lawyer. She's a year older than me, but that was absolutely not the case. And this was something I wanted to do by myself and on my own. And I'll say that it has been a very interesting journey.

Ellie: Thank you. Just out of curiosity, was it because is your sister also a lawyer or was she just interested in law?

Caleb: She studied law. But she's not practicing law right now. Interestingly, so I'm the one practicing law.

Ellie: Nice. Very nice. And thank you as a follow up to To how you became interested in the law. Could you please outline your legal career to date?

Caleb: Okay, so I started my legal practice in Nigeria I went to school in Nigeria, I believe most of my life there.

And then after, after law school, so Nigeria law school, it's not the same way it works in the US. So we have five years of undergrad, which is, you know, law undergrad. So you're not studying anything else [00:03:00] before that. And after that you do one year of what we call the Nigerian law school, which is more the practical aspect of law.

And so after that I sat for the bar in Nigeria, qualified, started working in Nigeria. I worked for four years, started out doing a litigation. Did that for about a year and a half, and then after that I moved to transactional practice. I'll say that for me as fun as litigation was since I did a lot of mo much courts, back in school, mock trials and all of that, and I was very good at it.

As fun as that was, it wasn't as quick moving as the way it moved in moot courts, you know, in moot court, it happened pretty quickly, and I thought that it was the same way in real life, but, but, you know, the courts just generally, of course, just, you know, How litigate nature, nature of litigation. But then even more particularly the Nigerian court system, things moved really slow.

I felt like I wasn't learning as fast as I should and as much [00:04:00] as I should. And I was at the time becoming very interested in, in energy law practice. I had always been interested in environmental law, even as an undergraduate, but at this time it was almost like there was that meeting point of energy and environmental law interest.

And so I wanted to do transactional law. And it was at that point that I pivoted to a transactional law firm and started doing energy, environmental law and, and finance that intersection. I did that for about two years before coming to to NYU for my LLM. My LM was in energy environmental law. While there, I took a class and, and this sort of pivots into how I got my job at at Ry Chairman and.

I wrote a paper. So I took a class on energy and international trade with Robert House and NYU Law. And while doing that, our assessment was meant to be by writing a paper with a seminar class. So I wrote a paper on what I do [00:05:00] currently, which is securitization. I had not done it before that time. It was the first time encountering it.

But, you know, I was very excited about it. I It was, I was very fascinated by the concept and let's just say that's what I do till now, you know, two and a half, two, almost three years down the line after, after that paper.

Ellie: Thank you. So some really interesting like studying different jurisdiction, jurisdictional law there.

Which is a really kind of unique aspect. And I think similar, I think it sounds similar, UK that we study on, it takes three years.

Caleb: Absolutely.

Ellie: Yeah. And then, yeah, we, we have one year depending on whether you go. solicitor or barrister. Is that, is that distinction in Nigeria or is it?

Caleb: It's all the same. So when you qualify, you qualify both as a barrister and the solicitor.

Now, I always think that'd be quite nice to be able to kind of have that ability to change. I mean, you can change to some extent, but you have to go through further qualifications.

Ellie: Yeah, I agree.

Did you just out of curiosity on, [00:06:00] on that point, Did you know that you wanted to be kind of in the court advocating or were you kind of more interested in I suppose what would interestingly be in the UK, like more the solicitor route.

Caleb: So initially I really believed that I wanted to do courtroom work because I, like I said, I was very interested in mock trials, mock court. I was the head of my mock, Moodle mock society back in school. And, and so it seemed very natural for me to want to go there, but. just coming into litigation and realizing as fun as this was, I wasn't getting what I needed personally.

And so for me, transactional law practice was, was where I was meant to be. And it's been, it's really been fun so far. I'm getting more fast paced than I even I prepared for. So it's I think I think both of them are great and whichever path anyone chooses to go for. It's that you know, they give you significant opportunities and significant skill sets for some people.

Those just [00:07:00] one thing is more preferred to the other.

Ellie: Definitely. And I think as you, as you, as you've been talking your kind of interest and passion for energy and the environment really comes through. So could I ask, obviously you talk about studying the LLM, but and having kind of this prior interest, but where did this develop from?

When did you kind of know that you wanted to mix your legal career with going into the energy and the environment?

Caleb: Okay. Yeah. So that my interest in environmental law started as an undergraduate. I think I've generally always been interested in the environment from pretty young, just I grew up in a place in a city called Port Harcourt in Nigeria.

Gas flaring was a big thing there. And so there was a lot of pollution of the air. I could see the real effects of, you know, just gas flaring and just general environmental pollution from when I was pretty young. And so coming to school as an undergraduate learning, taking an environmental law class and learning about the real [00:08:00] effects of these things, learning about what was being done globally and locally, I wanted to do something about the problem.

And that was what led to me starting my nonprofit organization, Earth Plus. And so at the time I hadn't really dug into energy law as much as I had dug into environmental law. But then after graduation, and when I started working, I then began to sort of have reason to explore energy law and my firm at the time, although litigation firm was sort of trying to build out an energy law practice.

And so this led me to learn a bit more about energy law and just find that intersection between energy and environmental law. And then I wanted to do this. I wanted to be involved in, in those transactions that will ensure that people had access to energy, but not just energy, clean energy at the same time.

And so that was where my interest was spurred. And since then, you know, it's just been there. [00:09:00] 

Ellie: Yeah. Perfect. And then I'm assuming you then applied for your LLM with that, with that focus and then going, going forward.

Caleb: Absolutely.

Ellie: Great. Yeah, it's really nice to see that how you've been able to weave your interests and passions into, into your legal career.

And again, you were talking about how kind of the excitement and the fast-paced work that you're doing on the like securitization team yeah, as an associate in the New York office of Alan Overeem Sherman. So, could you talk a little bit more about this work and what it entails?

Caleb: Yes, I'm an associate at A&O Shearman.

It's a bit of a mouthful now since you know it. At first it was easier to say. It was just two words. But it's been, it's been great. So my work is, so securitization is a, is a complex finance mechanism, right? It's not one of the easiest things to do. It's pretty detailed in, and it's pretty intricate as well.

And so my, my getting introduced to it, [00:10:00] like I said earlier, it was really just me researching. So I was looking for so, so that the push was I had done, Secured lending back in Nigeria for energy projects. I had also done projects finance, but here was an area that I hadn't done. So for me, it was, how else can we finance again, the energy interest?

How else can we finance the energy transition in Africa? The. With another financing mechanism that was not project finance or secured lending. And so I stumbled on this and it was so exciting. And, and then that was what led me all the way into it. My, the nature of my work is pretty much advice in board bracket banks, really the biggest banks you can find asset managers advising.

Sometimes companies that want to issue securities based off back by different assets. So it's broadly divided into what we [00:11:00] call collateralized loan obligations and asset backed securities. That's CLOs and ABS and the broad division is Sometimes the similarities are not that they are, there are similarities and there are differences between these two asset classes, broadly speaking, because under ABS, you have different assets that can be the assets in an asset backed security.

You can have solar, which was how I got introduced to it. So securitization, you can have data centers, you can have mortgages, you can have literally anything that has receivables can be securitized. And so it makes the work very interesting that you can see. different asset classes in a day to day basis.

My work on a day to day basis involves, or weekly basis involves a lot of things drafting indentures offering circulars other ancillary documents involves meetings calls, but meetings that are internal to the team and external meetings, sometimes industry related meetings [00:12:00] involves Emails preparing and a lot of our time actually involves emails preparing and reading emails.

I think as a lawyer, that's something that is inevitable.

Caleb: It involves reviewing transaction documents when the other parties draft, we have to review the documents involves process. process management and just tracking timelines because those things are very important. So you don't miss them. Involves reading through laws or legal texts or precedents to just figure out answers to client questions.

Pretty much that's, that's what the work involves. Doesn't sound as fun as, you know, what you see as suits. But the truth is that is the nature of the job and it is interesting because you are, are. You're just, you're just using your, your mind and your brain and you're analyzing stuff and just figuring out stuff and being able to help your client.

Ellie: Thank you. I mean, the pure breadth of different assets you're describing, it sounds really interesting and in that way, and I guess what I'm wondering is when you, if you're coming across [00:13:00] something new, like a side of an asset that you haven't covered before, does that mean you have to kind of like deep dive into that area?

Or is it all, is it like fairly generally applicable or is it like you learn all these different specialisms as you go through?

Caleb: A mix of both. So it is fairly generally applicable because the security, all securitization is securitization. So you can be able to figure out what is going on here, even if it's a different asset class.

But there is also the part of just learning what specifics you have to do for that asset class. For instance, an asset class like a data center involves real estate, involves buildings. And so there's always the real estate bit. You have to work with a real estate team. And if it is real estate in different cities, you have to figure out, okay, this California have laws about, about real estate that Georgia doesn't have, for instance, or they have laws about certain buildings being in certain areas.

You know, that sort of thing. You don't have to deal with that, for instance, if you are securitizing credit [00:14:00] card receivables. Which does not have to do with any buildings. It just has to do with credit cards, right? So those are the nuances of each asset class that you just have to learn and figure out which is what makes it interesting.

Because with each asset class, there's something new you're learning. There's, there's, people who do music IP securitization. Now that is also different. There's people who are doing cell towers, people who are doing fiber, right? So all of these things with different learning curves makes the work very interesting.

You don't have to deep dive so much in the sense that, you know, you have to do an entire course on what are data centers about and, you know, Something that is, that takes all of your time, but there's definitely some level of deep dive into just understand the asset class to be able to serve your client better.

Ellie: Yeah. I can definitely see how it's such a fast-paced kind of area to work in. And, and really interesting as you keep kind of discovering different different areas. And you, you spoke about how you're working [00:15:00] with like big banks and I guess such a part of that is working for such kind of like an attorney.

Top international law firms. So to kind of give context to this question, the majority of our listeners are kind of aspiring lawyers. I'd probably guess around undergrad age give or take, and hearing about kind of your career. I wanted to ask you what sort of attributes you think are particularly important to be a successful associate at like one of these top international law firms.

Caleb: Thanks. That's a good question. A couple of attributes I would mention. Maybe that's not all, but these are the ones that I think are top, based on my personal experience, both in Nigeria and here working at A&O Shearman. The first is intellectual curiosity. Just being very curious intellectually about what is going on, you know, what's happening here.

Just that. intellectual, that ability to [00:16:00] want to learn stuff, to want to know stuff is very important because whether you're starting out as a summer associate or you are starting out as a full associate law clerk, or, you know, any law firm or in house, whatever, wherever, really you work, trying to practice law, being someone who wants to know what is going on, who wants to understand the nature of what you're dealing with.

Who wants to learn is very key. Now, there are various ways to learn. There's learning on the job by actually doing the work, so to gain an experience. There's learning from the people that are, have gone ahead of you. By asking questions, there's learning by reading, just bringing out materials and treatises and documents and just read it through.

And knowledge is exhilarating. And so having that intentional method of just wanting to learn and being open to it and showing that, Hey, I might know stuff before I'm ready to learn what I need to learn. I'm ready [00:17:00] to relearn if I were to relearn and I'm ready to learn new stuff. And so that is the first thing.

I think one other thing that I'd say is very important for success is overcoming your fear of mistakes and failure. Cause that is going to happen a lot as a lawyer. You will make mistakes. You will fail at stuff. You will do stuff that you'll regret doing because you blame yourself. Like this should never have happened.

An email will go out that you would wonder why that email ever went out without you correcting the spelling of something. And so just, Having that, getting to that point where you have overcome or are working to overcome that fear of failing or that fear of making mistakes because they would happen.

And the idea is just being able to learn from them rather than dwelling on them and beating yourself up. I think another thing is work ethics. Developing strong work ethics that, that, that say that you take your work seriously. You give it your best. And you make sure that [00:18:00] excellence is always your watchword.

Like, if you're not going to do it excellently, you will not do it at all. And that gives you such a, I call it a surgical approach to your work. You treat it like you are a surgeon, and your work is literally the life of somebody on your, on your surgical bed. And you treat it with that that commitment and that, That attention to detail that always sets any lawyer apart because you will give it that attention to detail.

You give it that time commitment. You will give it that you know that that determination and everything it needs to to make sure that whatever is coming out is a fine piece of work where you can be proud of. I think the final thing or 22 more things. Actually, one is prioritizing feedback. That was something very important for me that I had to even learn more while on this job.

Make sure you're always getting feedback and make sure you're always learning from it, not just getting it, but learning from it. So go out to ask for it rather than waiting for it to come. And then the final thing is taking [00:19:00] charge of your career, which prioritizing feedback can, can sort of fall under as well.

Because what is your career being able to take charge of how you learn, how you develop, making sure you're growing, tracking your progress to know that Oh, you know, I was here two months ago. Have I, how much have I learned since then? What can I do better that I couldn't do two months ago? Am I really growing?

Am I progressing? And being able to do that without, you know, having anyone do it for you, having that, of course the law firm assessment will come maybe mid year, end of year, but you doing that self assessment and making sure that you are progressing is a tremendous skill to succeed as a lawyer.

Ellie: Thank you.

That was, that was really, really clear kind of advice as to, to attributes. And I think there's like a nice diversity in there that some of them quite early on your career, you could, or even when you're studying, you know, you could question, do I have that intellectual curiosity? Am I, is that something that I'd want to do?

And then other ones I presume the things particularly like [00:20:00] overcoming career failure are things you can work on and develop particularly as you start focusing on That career in legal. Do you think that these were these were things that you would that you realized while you're working on the job?

Something that kind of came along the way or was it something that you were working on like when you were studying undergrad

Caleb: a mix so some of it I actually discovered on the job. The part of feedback I certainly discovered on the job. You know, I learned a lot about feedback and how to use it on the job.

About taking charge of my career, I feel like I've pretty much been doing that all my life. But I think I learned more about that as I went ahead. Yeah, and love them. Intellectual curiosity has just always been there. I've always been very curious about knowledge about wanting to know, you know, one way or another.

So some of these things you can, you know, build or you can have already as a law student or as a student, even if you haven't even decided to go to law school [00:21:00] yet. But some of these things you have the opportunity to build on the job. I think the best thing hearing about it now is, and that's the idea of hearing You know, interviews like this and listen to people's experiences that you can start to prepare yourself and actually build these things from now you can start because the truth is, whether or not you're going to be a lawyer, or whether or not you're going to end up in big law, these things are things that would help.

Any career that you have and so starting to build them from now, even as a student will help you in everything. Just having that approach of excellence to your work and saying, you know, if I'm going to do it, it's going to be the best work that I could have brought out and having that approach to failure and mistakes and saying, yes, it's a mistake that was made.

How do I learn from it and move forward rather than beating myself up and dwelling on it and, you know, not being able to move forward? I think those are things that, and that's the beauty of law, right? It will build in you skills that are applicable for life and not just the law.

Ellie: Definitely. No, I completely agree on [00:22:00] those skills being so applicable to not just the law.

And yeah, this, this kind of self-sufficiency and I guess self reflection as such a key aspect is something that I'm hoping to continually work on. And yeah, I think so, so crucial to focus now slightly on something that you mentioned earlier on in the interview you spoke about Earth Plus and discussed.

Like, how that was linked to when you decided to found Earthplus. Could you tell us a little bit more about this? When and why you decided to become, become a founder of Earthplus?

Caleb: Okay, thank you. Earthplus was founded in 2015, my final year as an undergraduate. I was very interested in environmental issues at the time.

I was taking the environmental law class, and my thesis was going to be on environmental law. And so I was just very interested in seeing more than writing about it. attending a class about it, talking about it in class, I wanted to see something [00:23:00] being done. And for me, that was the perfect time to set up something where people could be a part of volunteer and we could do our own small bit in our own corner of the world.

to make things better in that area. And so it started in 2015 and since then it's been running. We've done a host of projects, including projects that involve actual physical dialogues and conversations and focus group meetings. We've had competitions, writing competitions, video competitions, you know, photo competitions.

We've had Essays, have people write essays and just we've had people, we've had a competition where people had to solve an environmental problem in Lagos state of Nigeria. And we just had them bring up the ideas and present it and tell us how, you know, it will be funded and how, how do we get the money to finance this idea?

And we've had we've had also currently working [00:24:00] on one where We just finished the event. It was on climate justice and really just bringing people together, different stakeholders to talk about it, and we're putting together a document called the National Youth Climate Agenda, which we're going to be presenting at the Conference of Parties in a couple of weeks.

And so, All of these things. We've done cleanups. We've done cleanups across various cities just to make the environment cleaner and to talk to people about why that's important on. So all of these things for me are our own way of contributing to making the world a better place, making the world more sustainable.

I'm getting people to understand why it's important. Recently, I saw the news, I think yesterday or so that were 3. 1 degrees Celsius. That is terrible, given that the aim is 1. 5 degrees Celsius. And we see it in the weather patterns. We see things happen in places that have never happened before. Heat waves, hurricanes, you know, it's getting worse and worse.

And so for me, it's [00:25:00] let's stop talking and start doing, and that was really the reason why I started it.

Ellie: Well, yeah, thank you. I can see the, the kind of like breadth of different, different things that Earth Plus has, has been involved in and, and led. So, I mean, you talk about like finding it in your final year of undergrad and it's now such a such a, such a large thing.

So I guess I'm curious about that initial kind of creation and like implementation of it. How did you, I guess, like get it off the ground? What was like the process? What's, what was the team and, and yeah, how did it, I guess, come to how you've described what it is now?

Caleb: Yeah. So starting it out was.

First of all, I have cold feet when it comes to starting stuff. So yeah, eventually started out, you know, it was on the paper for quite a while. And then I'm like, you know what, we're going to start it. And then I started reaching out to, first of all, the people in my class and then just people I knew and posted it on social media for those who were interested in joining.

The first thing we did was And the essay competition for people for [00:26:00] young people in college across Nigeria and just I forget the topic, but it was something environmental that we wanted them to just, you know, write something about what they will do about a certain environmental situation. And then we're going to assess it and then give prizes to the top.

Top people from the, from the competition. And I recall putting in my money cause I mean, nobody was going to give me money for something I just started. So I put in my money as the prize money for first, second and third. But it felt very fulfilling even though I was putting my money down that I could be using for something else.

It felt very fulfilling doing it. I was, I had so much energy. I reached out to the various websites that advertise opportunities and had them put it on there. And we had. We had 120 something entries, which was, which was amazing for first time. And. So that was the first thing that got sort of a name out there.

And then from there, people that I didn't talk to it about, I talked to about it, where [00:27:00] I could at least see we had done something. And then people who were interested began to join bit by bit. And we began to form this small team, began to do more projects. I think the next project was a cross multi city project, which we did in about three weeks.

For cities going into schools and teaching kids about sustainability's kids in primary school. That's probably what you call your In the U. S. I think I don't know, like the great grits like grits 123456 sort of teaching them about sustainability and then even giving them in some schools were installed, like power saving light bulbs and just showing them, you know how these things were important to sustainability.

And so getting off the ground was for someone who is has cold feet was not easy, but it was Eventually it was something I decided, you know what? It's either you're doing this thing or you're not doing it. And eventually, of course, there was the ramp up period. And, but eventually people start seeing what you're doing and they're like, I [00:28:00] want to be a part.

And so the biggest, the biggest thing for me is that Earth Plus gave people the opportunity to do something good, gave them the platform they were looking for.

Ellie: Yeah. And definitely it seems to really have impacted like the younger generation and those at school, really. Giving them, I think what you said was going from just talk to action and giving them all these things that they can do to like actively get involved.

I can, yeah, definitely see why it would be such a successful initiative. And as a kind of final question on, on EarthBus, what was the kind of process change from moving to the New York office? Did that kind of like change the running of it? Was it, did it create any like additional difficulties or has it all been quite a smooth process?

Caleb: Absolutely. Definitely. Things change. So all of that started and was done in Nigeria, you know, for all the while I was there and then having to move to New York at that time, we then had to, it then had to be something of. Now it's no more, and I mean, that was always the goal. It's no [00:29:00] more about you.

They have to be people there on the ground that are running it while you're here. And thankfully they have been, I mean, the project I'm talking about that we're currently on, I, I, I've not been in Nigeria. Since my wedding, right? And even when I went, I went, that was what I went for. So there's people on the ground running it.

Very committed team, amazing team. They ran, you know, we had for this project we're running now, we had an event a couple months ago, I think in August, and it was fantastic. You know, they got participants, they had, you know, the speakers. pretty much handle everything. I'm still involved. I'm playing more of a supervisory role and just also ensuring that things are running smoothly, ensuring, ensuring we're recruiting the right people every now and then for our projects, ensuring that people are still running with the vision.

I would also be a cop sometime later this year. And so that involvement is still there for me because You know, I still, I'm still very passionate about it, but we have a [00:30:00] very well functioning team on the ground that is making things run. even while I'm not physically present there. And that's amazing.

Ellie: Yeah, no, that sounds exactly. It's good that it's adaptable in that way to, to be able to keep running at such a, such a high functioning level. So thank you. That's been really interesting to hear about Earth Plus and all the different areas that it works in. And as a final question. As a final question for the interview, I know that you went into detail about different attributes for an international law firm, but typically kind of the final question we ask is what would just be your main advice for someone listening to this episode and they're inspired and they'd like to kind of continue to pursue a career in law.

Yeah. What would be your main advice for an aspiring lawyer?

Caleb: Okay. So what I would say to an aspiring lawyer is that law is a door. I've always considered it a door. It's a door. One of those things that you study that gives you the opportunity to work anywhere in absolutely any industry, literally doing [00:31:00] whatever you want to do it because law is in everything.

It's in talk about entertainment, talk about fashion, talk about construction, talk about infrastructure, talk about. literally whatever energy, you know, it's, it's always there. And so as a lawyer, just becoming a lawyer is a door for you that gives you the opportunity to pick and choose what area you want to work in and actually still be able to work in it.

I know people who are interested in tech today and are doing tech law and they are absolutely loving it. I know people interested in finance and are doing finance law, you know, banking and are doing banking law. And so, Whatever you want to do, it is a door to that, to just experiencing it with the beauty of the law as well.

And so what I would say is. Make the absolute best of the opportunity law gives you to learn, to think, and to network. Because those are three things that law absolutely gives you the [00:32:00] opportunity to do. It's so vast, there's, there's never an end to the learning that comes with the law, because it's always evolving, always developing.

I mean, there's AI law now. And one way or another, it's touching on things we're doing in every other aspect. You know, tech law is not just for tech now. It's touching on what we're doing in every aspect, right? That there's an energy, there's a significant need for energy in today's world. Energy law is touching on pretty much everything.

And so, there is that opportunity to learn. Law gives you that opportunity. Take advantage of it. To think because law is a thinking business. You're always analyzing, figuring out. Of course, if anyone has ever written any bar exam you know that there's a lot of thinking involved. You have something presented to you and you have to figure out why, how, what law applies and all of those things and the opportunity to network.

It is a networking profession. It's a profession that is grown by literally meeting people. That's how people get clients. That's how people make their businesses and their law firm [00:33:00] successful, right? And lawyers have so many events going on. Law schools have so many events going on. Use the opportunity to, to do all of these things because that network is super important.

You build it and you're building it, not just even for the law, you're building it for so many other things that you need in life. So that is, those are the three things I would say that. Every every person who's aspiring should take advantage of because law is it is such a beautiful thing.

Ellie: Thank you Thank you very much.

I think that's incredibly Inspiring advice and very helpful and thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Caleb: You're welcome Thank you so much for interviewing

Ellie: Yeah, thank you