Jacques Deguest is the co-founder & CEO of Angels, Inc, which supports entrepreneurs in Asia. He is a specialist in Japanese corporate law and provides legal services to the start-ups he supports. He can code in Perl, PHP, SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL and Oracle), HTML, and CSS.

What kick-started your interest in coding?

“It really started out of curiosity because I initially wanted to understand how it worked, and then with the pleasure of being able to automate many tasks tailored to my own needs, it grew on me.”

How does coding help you as a lawyer?

“There is no apparent direct relation between coding and lawyering. However, it contributes in a few ways. I believe that designing code in an objective oriented-way, mapping out in one’s mind the relationships between libraries and functions helps me deliver better and more pertinent design in contracts, or in corporate structure, not to mention that the underlying knowledge of information technology helps me pre-empt many issues such as in security, IP rights, buy-out, etc. Coding also has the great benefit of acting like a mind yoga, providing key relaxing and refreshing time at the end of my day.”

How many years have you been able to code?

“I started coding on my first Apple IIe computer when I was in high school using Turbo Pascal to code my class schedule. It was good fun then. So I guess I have been at it for over 30 years.”

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