Khairul Anam

Khairul Anam is the Managing Partner of Khai & Partners, where he leads the firm's corporate and commercial practice with a rare blend of legal rigour and genuine business acumen. His path to the law was anything but conventional, and it is precisely that unconventional path that defines how he practises today.

Before taking up the law, Khairul built a career at the highest levels of international hospitality management. He began in operations at Shangri-La Hotel Surabaya and JW Marriott Surabaya, before moving into commercial roles as Sales Executive and Account Executive at Hotel Majapahit and Sheraton Hotel & Towers Surabaya. He went on to hold Sales Manager, Director of Sales, and Director of Sales & Marketing positions at some of Archipelago International properties and Accor Group properties in Bali, Balikpapan, and Surabaya, before advancing into general management — serving as Executive Assistant Manager, General Manager across some Archipelago International properties in Jakarta, and ultimately General Manager in one of Accor Group property in Jakarta. Across four cities and some of the most demanding brands in the industry, he was responsible for revenue, commercial strategy, contracts, and full property operations at the executive level.

It was while still at the peak of that career that he began reading law, earning his legal education in parallel with his final years in hospitality management before completing his postgraduate studies and being called to the bar as an advocate and member of DPC PERADI Balikpapan. Few lawyers arrive at the profession already fluent in how a business actually runs — how a commercial negotiation is won, how a contract is structured to survive a hard renegotiation, how an operation under pressure makes decisions in real time. Khairul did, and it shows in how he practises.

He brings that same instinct to every legal matter he now handles: translating complex regulatory and contractual questions into clear, commercially grounded guidance for corporate clients, business owners, and investors. Where many lawyers reason only from the statute, Khairul reasons from both the statute and the boardroom — anticipating not just what the law permits, but what a counterparty will actually do, and what a client genuinely needs to hear in order to decide.