Rajesh Sreenivasan

Practice Areas

Rajesh Sreenivasan is a Partner and Head of the Technology, Media & Telecommunications Law Practice at Rajah & Tann Singapore LLP and the Coordinating Partner for the firms’ multidisciplinary and cross-practice Data and Digital Economy (DDE) Legal Services. He is a Director and Co-founder of Rajah & Tann Technologies Pte Ltd and Rajah & Tann Cybersecurity Pte Ltd which are the legaltech arms of Rajah & Tann Asia.

With over 20 years in practice, he has been universally recognised as the leading technology, media and telecoms lawyer in Singapore by all major professional ranking agencies and noted as one of the top TMT lawyers in the Asia Pacific region. Rajesh has been at the forefront of legal, regulatory and policy matters relating to technology procurement, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data protection, analytics and governance, telecommunications, electronic commerce, cloud computing, distributed ledger technologies, digital forensics and digital media in the region.

Experience

Rajesh plays a significant role in leading legal sector transformation and innovation initiatives at a national level culminating in his work on the exco of Lupl, the world’s first open platform for legal matter management and collaboration. Today, Lupl powers the Legal Technology Platform (LTP), one of the key initiatives in MinLaw’s Technology and Innovation Roadmap for the legal sector. He has also been regularly noted and awarded by publications such as the Financial Times Asia Pacific Innovative Lawyers Award and The Legal 500 for his innovation and thought leadership in legaltech and TMT matters. More recently, Rajesh was recognised in Asia Business Law Journal’s Singapore Top 100 Lawyers’ A-List as a top performer in the nation’s legal profession.

Rajesh has been working together with R&T’s Financial Regulatory practice in addressing the FinTech sector in legal and regulatory work spanning across DeFi to Virtual currency regulatory issues. Rajesh serves on the AI Tech committee of the Singapore Standards Council and on the Board of Experts of the Singapore Management University Centre for AI and Data Governance (CAIDG) and the National University of Singapore Centre for Technology, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence & the Law (TRAIL). On the corporate front, he sits on the Board of MediaCorp, Singapore’s national broadcaster.

Internationally, he sits on the Advisory Board of the Centre for Legal Innovation, College of Law, Australia, the Advisory Board of the Future Privacy Forum (FPF), Washington, DC and is the Vice-Chairman of the Media Law Committee of the International Bar Association. On a pro-bono basis, he serves on the Board of Trustees of the Sree Narayana Mission and as a member of the School Management Committee of Montfort Schools.

Rajesh is also the only Singapore lawyer serving on the Legal Advisory Group to the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) UK Centre for Digital Trade and Innovation. As an appointed member of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) OECD project, he contributes actively to the multinational initiative by providing a representative deep dive into Singapore’s legislations on Artificial Intelligence and brainstorming on innovative best practices in complying with global regulatory guidelines.

Rajesh has constantly been in the forefront of telecoms, media and technology legal and regulatory matters in the region as has been universally recognised by all ranking agencies as the pre-eminent practitioner in TMT law. His recent work covers cutting edge legal, regulatory and policy work in TMT areas such as Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Currency and other blockchain implementations, Data Analytics, Internet of Things (IOT), Telecoms and Media Over-The-Top (OTT) frameworks, Deliberate Online Falsehoods and online privacy and data protection models at a policy and legislative level.

Rajesh has been working together with our Financial Regulatory practice addressing the burgeoning area of FinTech in legal and regulatory work spanning across Initial Coin Offerings to Virtual currency regulatory issues. Regionally, Rajesh has assisted the telecoms regulator in Brunei on formulating Brunei’s telecoms licensing regime which included a regulators handbook, telecoms licences and a competition regime.

On the international front, Rajesh has been engaged by the World Bank to review IT legislation in Mongolia. The World Bank has also engaged his services to lead and conduct an electronic commerce legislative benchmarking exercise involving over 20 East Asian and Pacific nations and in 2006 he was engaged by the World Bank to assist in ASEAN advisory matters.

Rajesh has been engaged by the Ministry overseeing ICT in the Kingdom of Lesotho, Africa to draft its ICT legislation. He was jointly engaged in 2007 by the World Bank and the UNDP to assist the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in drafting its ICT laws and the national data centre regulatory policies. He has since completed regional ICT projects for the World Bank in Laos, Cambodia. Most recently in 2017 and 2018, he has been engaged by the World Bank in the Philippines, Bangladesh, Guinea, Cote D’ Ivoire and Nigeria to advise on the drafting of new laws and policies to ensure that people have their basic right of personal identity secured through the mandatory issuance of non-discriminatory digital identity cards. Rajesh has in addition advised state authorities in Fiji and Canada on regulatory compliance and statutory interpretation matters.

From a legal-commercial perspective, Rajesh has assisted leading organisations in Malaysia and Indonesia in drafting and negotiating complex IT procurement contracts, shared services and outsourcing arrangements.

In the telecoms sector, Rajesh has structured complex IT and telecoms infrastructure procurement agreements based on traditional and PPP models and was the lead telecoms lawyer in the first MVNO arrangements in both Singapore in 2002 and in Malaysia in 2007 as well as lead counsel for one of the largest domestic submarine cables, the US$1.5 billion Palapa Ring project in Indonesia. He has often been engaged by numerous telecoms service providers and equipment manufacturers to secure telecoms regulatory clearance in Singapore and the Asia-Pacific region for over ten years.

On the public front, Rajesh lectures, presents papers, conducts seminars and discussions regularly at international forums on IT, digital media, digital forensics, telecoms and other issues related to the new economy. His views on IT and telecoms have been sought on numerous occasions by the local and international media. He has also written numerous articles and contributed book chapters highlighting the interplay between IT and the law in areas such as IT law, harmonisation of ICT legislation, telecoms law, biotechnology and digital forensics.