Uncategorized - International Lawyers Network

Burnout is Not Good for Business…But Self-Care Is

As someone with a MAJOR type-A personality (ask anyone who knows me), I am a wee bit of a workaholic. This might sound noble, but I assure you, it isn’t.

Over the past three years, I’ve been caught up short by my own workaholism more than once, and the way in which it does not serve me as a good business practice. I’ve had many, many conversations with others in the legal profession who are in the same boat – and I think we’ve also learned that remote work (which has offered many people a greater work/life balance – whatever that is) can help us to achieve a little more peace. But so many of us are still really burned out.

Psychology Today defines “burnout” as

a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress.”

This is most often caused by work, but it can also be caused by other things going on in your life. While it’s not a medical diagnosis, says the Mayo Clinic, there are job-related symptoms you might notice, such as:

Becoming more cynical or critical at work
Feeling like you’re dragging yourself in or having trouble getting started
Becoming irritable or impatient with colleagues or clients
Lacking the energy to be consistently productive
Finding it hard to concentrate
Lacking satisfaction from your achievements
Feeling disillusioned about your job
Using food, drugs or alcohol to feel better or not to feel at all
Changing sleep habits (less or more)
Troubled by unexplained headaches, stomach or bowel problems, or other physical complaints

If you had an “oh sh!t” moment while reading this list, you might be suffering from burnout. And frankly, with the way we’ve designed the legal profession, praised the martyrdom of working until we die at our desks here in the US, the constant stress of the pandemic, a war in Europe, potential and looming recessions, and MUCH much more, it’s no wonder.

But does the idea of stepping back and taking care of yourself better fill you with dread, because perhaps your firm or your clients will suspect that you’re not as valuable to them, and you certainly can’t let THAT happen?

(As an aside, while I was writing this post, the power suddenly went out in my remote office on a bright sunny day for a few minutes. If that isn’t some kind of metaphor for burnout and self-care, I’m not sure what is. But did I stop working? I did not. I just hoped that my automatic save feature for the blog didn’t kick in. Truly, I am my own worst enemy.)

Great news…or bad news, depending on how you look at it – being a workaholic doesn’t actually make you more productive or better at your job. I can already hear you complaining because I also know how the legal industry works – sometimes, it’s less about BEING a workaholic, and more about APPEARING to be one (this is why so many of us want to kill the billable hour dead). But more does not equal better.

So many studies point out that workaholism has a negative effect – from Inc. we learn that:

There is a 67% increased risk of developing heart disease for workers who put in 11 hours a day versus 8 (and while yes, you should worry about your own health, if you want to be cold and calculating about it, from a business perspective, you want healthy employees who will be continuing to contribute to the bottom line).
Those who work 50-plus hours a week are three times more likely to develop an alcohol abuse problem.
Fifty percent of employees are less productive as a result of stress. (FIFTY percent).
Twenty hours without sleep is equal to a 0.1 blood alcohol level, which is the equivalent of five or six drinks, for people who weigh 160-180 pounds). Consider that you may be asking yourself, or your colleagues, to be focusing on important client work while effectively sleep-drunk.

These effects are awful on us personally, and they’re also terrible for business – imagine how much better advocates and advisors for our clients we would be if we were well-rested, peaceful, and fully engaged in our day. I’m not trying to make you laugh but to offer a true business case for taking better care of yourself. Frankly, I wish it was enough to say that it was important from a human perspective, but we’re still at the point where we have to offer the business case.

So, how do you do it?

Self-care looks different for everyone, and it may be different for you day to day.

Give some thought to what is important to you and what isn’t important to you, when it comes to the areas of your life, such as physical, social, emotional, and spiritual (by spiritual, I don’t necessarily mean religious – this can be spending time in nature, being grateful, supporting charitable causes, or meditating. Again, this is entirely based on what rocks your socks). Identify which of these areas feels currently well supported, and which could be better attended to.
Break these out and look at what activities you do in each of these areas currently that you’d consider to be self-care, and what might be blocking you from doing more.
Give some thought to what you need more of – is it connection, health, relaxation, comfort, expression, or rejuvenation? What things might fit in each of those areas that you could do more of?
Break that down for yourself on a yearly, monthly and weekly basis – look at what you can realistically do, and how often. Do you want to do more meditation? Is that something you can do daily? Do you want to go fishing once a year? Once a month? How can you ensure that that happens?
Create your ideal morning and evening routines – what does a truly peaceful start and end to your day look like? If that ideal start and end happens, how long does it actually take? (This was an eye-opener for me – I really had to start getting ready for bed much earlier than I was so that I could get the sleep I needed – am I doing it? No. Does this impact me? HUGELY.). But can YOU implement those? Absolutely. And will I try to be more diligent? You bet.
Note when you become stressed throughout the day – what was the preceding stressor? How did it make you feel? What was your reaction? Is it something you have control over? If you do, how can you change it? If you don’t, how can you change your response to it?
Something else I have REALLY tried to work on is being honest about my deadlines, and this is something I’ve talked about with my therapist. Is the deadline a true deadline, or a Lindsay-deadline? Many of my deadlines are self-imposed – the priorities are things that I have decided are essential, and not reality. In the legal world, there are often things that are truly pressing. But when you look at your to-do list or your inbox, can you identify what is actually a client priority and what is self-imposed? Are there things that you can better manage expectations with your clients on, to give yourself some breathing room? Are there things that your clients may not want immediate answers on either? I say that not because I think clients don’t want to hear from you, but because sometimes we reply back to have things out of our own inboxes, but we then also give work back to someone else. I try to remind myself that we are ALL burned out and stressed – when I looked at my calendar for December, there were a couple of things I realized that I could realistically move to 2023 because my lawyers wouldn’t want those things in their inboxes either. (As it is, I suspect they’re going to have enough of me this week!)

I highly, highly recommend the simple self Self-Care Planner (credit for many of the above suggestions to them). This is the daily version, but there is also a weekly and thirteen-week version. They give you guidance and suggestions which will help you to develop your own self-care plan. And as I always do, I will highly recommend finding a good therapist that you connect with who can help you navigate your personal stress minefields – a good therapist is invaluable. A great place to start is by looking at Psychology Today or by asking your primary care physician for a recommendation. And if you don’t feel that you click when you meet them, that’s okay – move on to the next therapist!

Self-care is unique to each of us, but we all need it – and our practices and businesses need it too. Particularly in these stressful times where the lines between our professional and personal lives have blurred more than ever, the ability to take care of ourselves so that we can show up as the best version of ourselves for our clients and colleagues (and families and friends!) is essential – and truly, showing up as the best version of ourselves FOR ourselves is the most important thing.

Law Firm ILN-telligence Podcast | Rafael Salaberren Dupont, SyLS

Rafael Salaberren Dupont is a founding partner of SyLS in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which is also a member firm of the ILN. In this episode, Lindsay and Rafael discuss the transition between starting a firm and its succession, the true role of a lawyer and their client, and the difference between Latin American law firms and law firms in other regions.

You can listen to the podcast here, or we’ve provided a transcript of the highlights below.

Lindsay: Hello, and welcome to the Law Firm Intelligence podcast, I’m your host Lindsay Griffiths, Executive Director of the International Lawyers Network. And our guest this week is Rafael Salaberren-Dupont of Salaberren y López-Sansón Abogados in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Rafael, welcome. We’re really happy to have you with us this week. Thanks for joining us.

Rafael: Well, thank you very much, Lindsay, and quite impressed with your Spanish. Those are not easy names.

Lindsay: I did take a number of years of Spanish in elementary school, of which I remember very little.

Rafael: Well, but they did work.

Lindsay: Oh, thank you. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about your firm and your practice?

Rafael: Sure. Well, we like to call it SyLS, as opposed to the long name. SyLS was founded in 2009 by Sebastián López-Sansón and by me. We both came from a large law firm in Argentina, and we both had, let’s say, an international background having studied and working in the US for several years. And at a given point, we got excited with the idea of founding a boutique firm that at the same time would be a full-service firm where we could provide our clients with all the legal needs they may have in Argentina, and at the same time build a firm that it was not so big with a very personalized service where the partners in hand type of firms, and basically focused in assisting global clients doing business in Argentina.

So we are not that focused on assisting local clients, but more global clients in doing business in the region where we could serve like sort of a cultural bridge between global clients and the way they like to do business with local complexities of investing in Latin America where, as you know, we have economic instability, complex social situations, and political swings every four years. So these are complex regions, heavily taxed, heavily regulated. So we thought that would be a good idea, and well, after more than 12 years, we definitely proved well, and we are very, very excited with the firm that we built, and it has been very, very successful.

Lindsay: And how about your practice in particular?

Rafael: Well, I specialize in corporate and M&A, so although I’ve probably done almost everything during my almost 30 years in the legal environment, in Argentina, when you begin, you kind of do anything, and you cover all the fields of law at some point. And I think that gives us a very good background now because you know a little bit about everything, and probably a lot about something.

But it’s important to know a bit about everything when advising global clients doing business in this region. I worked for almost four years at a very large US law firm, and you see there how specialized everything is. You have the leveraged lease financing department, for example, and when you go from here to there, you can’t believe how specialized everything is, and that’s awesome.

But when you look for a lawyer in the Latin-American region, I think you need a lawyer who has a more broad look into the legal complexities. Of course, they need to be specialized in one of the practice areas, but having a broad, comprehensive look at the legal complexities, I think, is key. So if you ask me, how do I define myself, I’m an M&A lawyer, probably. But I like to look at myself also as a lawyer who knows a bit of every field in the law also like your general doctor, your general physician.

Lindsay: Right, right. You know how to do the specialties when you need to, but you also know how to diagnose the problem.

Rafael: Yes, because doing business in Argentina, advising in foreign investments, it kind of goes horizontally in all fields of the law. And in M&A too, when you buy a company and you audit the company, you conduct the due diligence of the company and you look into it, you basically look into all the fields of the law. You look at labor law, exchange controls, corporate law, permits, taxes, customs. You have to look into everything, and so having knowledge in all those fields it’s also something that probably comes with practicing M&A.

Lindsay: Absolutely. So what would be something that people misunderstand about your field of work?

Rafael: Well, it depends on where they are from. So if we are talking about a foreign investor, they might not be aware that they need a broad, comprehensive look into the fields of law. And so sometimes you may receive a question where they ask you, “So you’re an M&A lawyer, can you help me with this labor law question, and shall you put me through with somebody else?” And unless it’s something very specific, and of course, I can answer that question, it’s most likely that I can answer that question. And of course, you need to be prudent, and if you receive a question that is complex, then of course we have the right specialist in the firm to deal with that.

Lindsay: Right. So what would you say is your biggest challenge at the moment, and how are you working to overcome that?

Rafael: Well, we are at a… I’m 51 years old, and you don’t want to be relaxed at this stage of your career. It’s a very interesting stage in your career where you’ve achieved, probably more than you thought you would achieve on this road. Then at the same time, we want this firm to continue in the future, even in the far future when the founders are not serving in the firm anymore. And so you need to build the right structures in the firm to continue and have that excitement being reset continuously to try to have other partners follow that excitement and build the structures for SyLS being a very successful law firm 20, 30 years from now.

So probably when we founded the firm, we were not so focused on, “How do we make it successful in 30, 40 years?” we were focused on, “How do we survive next month?” When you go solo, in a way, when you build a new firm, you are focused on, “How am I going to survive next year?” No, no, no. It’s something really wonderful that 12 years later we are focused on, “Which is the right structure to have SyLS being successful 20, 30, 40 years from now?” So that’s a challenge, that’s really a challenge at the current moment,

Lindsay: It’s a wonderful challenge to have, and I think many firms have gone through that sort of succession period, and it’s interesting to look at that first succession as well as then, as you say, you’re considering not just, “How are we successful now?” but, “How are we successful for the next generation and going forward continuously?”

Rafael: And I think this is the right time to think about it because we are still very young all the partners, we are still seen as a very young firm. So this is the right time to plan. I don’t want to be, I don’t know, in my 70s thinking about this for the first time. So it’s probably very good timing, and I’m very optimistic about it.

Lindsay: Absolutely. I think a lot of firms in that position, a lot of the senior partners have waited until that period, and some of them have either made the decision that they aren’t as worried about whether the firm continues. And as you say this is sort of the perfect time because you can ensure not only the continuity of the firm but the continuity for your clients.

Rafael: Right. Exactly. Exactly.

Lindsay: So what would you say then has been the biggest surprise? And normally, I would ask this question, what’s been the biggest surprise you’ve had over the last few months, but I think given the conversation that we’re having, what has been the biggest surprise that you’ve had in developing your own firm?

Rafael: That’s a difficult question because I’m a thinker, so I like, probably, I don’t know if it’s a virtue or it’s something bad that I have, but I always like to overthink things sometimes when I plan, plan A, plan B plan C, plan D. And so I would say that things went according to plan A, and that’s something wonderful. Of course, we had a plan B and a plan C, and then plan D was probably to shake hands and say, “Okay, let’s get together for beer every Friday.”

But things really went according to plan A. We were very lucky also, I think. For a law firm or for any business to be successful, you need an element of luck. Of course, the more you work and the more you think, and the more you plan things properly, probably you’re in a better position to take advantage of the luck. But we were very lucky. So we had the right clients at the right moment, the right project at the right moment, big projects that came at the very beginning, and it really helped us with our self-esteem in the project, and we were very successful.

And it helped us be brave. When you get a big project at the beginning, that helps you be brave. And so we took the right decisions with a very big project already on our desks. So that’s why I think it’s a difficult question because I’m not aware of any big surprises along the road because everything went according to plan A.

Lindsay: Maybe that’s the surprise.

Rafael: And everything started with the partners picking each other, and probably I know I picked the right partner, Sebas, hopefully, thinks the same. And then the next partners that were promoted also. And having the right team, of course, as you know, is key in every business.

Lindsay: Are you still as careful about picking the people that you work with as you bring in additional partners and associates?

Rafael: Yeah, we are very careful with that. Very careful with that. I think that not only do you need to pick the right partner from a business perspective, but also from a personal perspective, which eventually influences the business, but you need to get along well and share the same basic priorities in life. And of course, then they need to be good to the business and help the business grow.

And I know for law firms that have 200, 300, 500 partners, that’s not possible, probably. You need to have processes, and you may be right in some cases with a partner you promote or you pick, and then you may be wrong, especially with laterals, which you don’t know that well. Us being a boutique firm, it gives us the possibility of knowing the people better. So yes, we are very, very careful with the people that we promote and that we may select to join as laterals in the future, yes.

Lindsay: That’s great. What would you say has been the most important lesson that you’ve learned over your career?

Rafael: At the beginning, we lawyers probably see ourselves as the main character of the movie. And over the years, I’ve learned that you serve better your clients by acknowledging that you’re not the main character in the business, that you are there to help the main characters to close a deal and to settle a controversy. And sometimes lawyers have a hard time in accepting that they’re not the main characters. Lawyers usually are… well, you probably know that better than anybody would, you deal with so many lawyers. But we lawyers have big egos and we all like to see ourselves as the main character and not accepting that we are in a supporting role in the moment.

And that’s probably the biggest lesson that I’ve learned over the years and I happily accepted. And I think that you provide a better service by accepting it. As I reach this age, probably liking my profession more than I liked it when I considered myself a main character.

Lindsay: That’s an important lesson. And I think that probably that’s true for any service profession. Your point about being in a supporting role as opposed to the main character, if you can accept that that’s your role, I think you’ll go really far.

Rafael: Yeah, but it definitely goes against lawyers’ egos, and so it’s… But I invite other lawyers in the firm to think about it and to accept it because I think it’s really good, not only for the clients but also for us lawyers to know what we are being asked to do.

Lindsay: Absolutely. And then switching gears a little bit, can you tell us about the biggest mentor that you’ve had during your career?

Rafael: I had several ones, and I have very good memories of all of them. I started my career in a completely different field and worked as a clerk in the criminal courts of justice while I was studying. And so, one of the judges there, I had a really good relationship with him, a really good relationship with him. Then when I started at the big law firm in which I worked before, I probably had the same boss for 12 years. And I learned a lot about him. He was always patient with me. He dealt with a Rafa who was 23 years old and was probably having his focus was not only on working but also on what happens after he left the office. And that’s probably everybody at that age. And so he patiently helped me walk through those beautiful years.

And then when I worked in the US, I also had both in the New York office and in the Miami office of the law firm in which I worked, I had really, really good mentors there too. So I was very fortunate with the people that… and they were all very different, completely different. And so I had the opportunity of picking the right skills from each of them.

Lindsay: How important do you think having a good mentor is to the course of someone’s career?

Rafael: I think it’s key. I think it’s very, very important. It makes you. It makes your career a lot easier or having the wrong mentor can make your career a nightmare. So you can have a very good mentor, you can have no mentor, or you can have a boss who became a nightmare. And I’m in the first group, fortunately, definitely.

Lindsay: Have there been any clients who have impacted or changed the course of your career?

Rafael: No. No, I don’t think so. No. No, no, no. I started, as you know, in a large Argentine law firm, and at a given point, I was invited to work in the US. That was a big moment. That was really a big moment going from working in a local environment to working probably at one of the largest law firms in the world, and so it was a big, big change. It gave me the opportunity to put probably two more zeros in every transaction that I was working in, all deals were super big and complex.

And then I went back to the law firm, and then we decided to found this boutique. So those things, those changes from big local law firm, very big global law firm, small local law firm, those were all really interesting moves. The good thing is that they were all moves that I wanted, and so I was very lucky from that viewpoint.

Lindsay: And then switching gears, what does being a part of the ILN mean to you?

Rafael: Well, it was a nice surprise, I must say. And we were quite reluctant of joining a group, and I wouldn’t say an alliance, but a group. I don’t know how you learn network, using part of the name. We never thought we would, but one of the firms, KLA, actually in Brazil, strongly suggested that we took the chance. At the very beginning, you look at it as an extra cost, Lindsay. You say, “Okay, let’s add a figure in our P&L, in the L column, and I don’t know what I’m going to add in the P column.” So that’s the first thing you look at.

But we respect KLA a lot, and if they say this might be a good opportunity, let’s take a chance. And well, several years have passed, and it has been a nice surprise, we are happy with the ILN, and we like to participate as much as we can.

Lindsay: I’m glad to hear it. That’s really good. So to close, I always like to ask people what is something that they are really enjoying right now. Outside of work, outside of everything that’s happening in the world, what is something that you’re really enjoying?

Rafael: Well, in my case, my family. I’m really enjoying my family. The kids are still paying attention to me, I don’t know for how long, I don’t know if it’s going to last. But with Ines, my wife, we have three kids and they’re 22, 18, and 15, and we are really, really enjoying them because they’re grown-up people, probably in many aspects, they’re more mature than I am. And it’s a blessing, this time is really a blessing. So that’s probably what I’m enjoying the most.

I do lots of other things. As you know, I’m a horse fan, horse races, and I’ve got lots of friends, and I like to enjoy life. And also, we have a family farming business, so I love going to the farm. So I really am very fortunate, but the family’s probably what I’m currently enjoying the most.

Lindsay: That’s wonderful. When I ask that question, I never know what answer I’m going to get, but more often than not the number one thing that most people say is their family, and it’s lovely to hear that so often.

Rafael: Well, that’s good that everybody or the majority of the ILN lawyers think like that.

Lindsay: Absolutely.

Rafael: That’s why we get along well, probably.

Lindsay: It’s true. That is true, absolutely. It’s like, we are one big family, and the ILN members love their families, so.

Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today. And thank you to all of our listeners, we will be back next week with another guest. And in the meantime, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you so much.

Law Firm ILN-telligence Podcast | Anthony Shatz, Fladgate LLP

Anthony Shatz is a corporate partner at Fladgate LLP, the ILN’s member firm for England. In this episode, Lindsay and Anthony discuss the energy crisis and war in Ukraine and its impact on businesses and the legal industry in Europe, what makes a corporate lawyer curious, and Anthony’s passion for triathlon.

You can listen to the podcast here, or we’ve provided a transcript of the highlights below.

Lindsay: Hello, and welcome to the Law Firm Intelligence podcast. I’m your host, Lindsay Griffiths, Executive Director of the International Lawyers Network, and our guest this week is Anthony Shatz with Fladgate, our London member. Anthony, we’re really excited to have you with us. Thank you so much for joining us.

Anthony: Thanks very much for having me, Lindsay. I’m very excited to join you too.

Lindsay: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and your firm and your practice?

Anthony: Sure. I am a corporate M&A partner at Fladgate in London. I’ve been practicing now for, ugh, about 22 years, so I qualified around about the year 2000, so I’m somewhat into my career. I sit within the corporate team in Fladgate, and for our listeners that don’t know about our firm, we are a full-service firm in London. We only have one office in London. We’re about 90 partners, and we do lots of interesting work for a very diverse range of UK, but also international, clients.

Lindsay: And that’s great, so let’s dive right into the questions. What is your biggest challenge at the moment, and how would you say you are working to overcome it?

Anthony: Mm. Well, I think business-wise, I moved to Fladgate just over three years ago in 2019. And it wasn’t long after that, the pandemic commenced, and so for a good amount of the time that I’ve been at Fladgate, we’ve had to confront all of the challenges that the pandemic has thrown up. And that’s been challenging in terms of both maintaining, but also building networks, and also dealing with, at times, some very difficult market conditions. So I think that’s been a challenge and I’m sure, well, there are plenty of other challenges out there that I’m sure we’ll come on to discuss. I think, yeah, we live in interesting times and that makes for some challenging working conditions at times, but I think we’re doing okay and we’re managing to get through them okay.

I think also just on a … I mean, that’s business-wise. On a personal level, we have two teenage children. Our son is age 16 and our daughter is age 13. Having teenage children in 2022 is not particularly straightforward, so that’s equally as big a challenge as what we’re facing on the work front.

Lindsay: I have a teenage niece, and I agree with you.

I’m so glad I wasn’t a teenager when there were social media and cell phones. That’s for sure.

Anthony: Absolutely. But I think they’re doing okay. I think the main thing is that they’ve got good friends and good networks and good social life, so I think that’s the most important thing, and they seem to be doing pretty well on that front. So, I can’t complain.

Lindsay: Absolutely. That’s wonderful. You mentioned networks as one of the challenges to building when you came into Fladgate, and that’s something that we’ve actually talked about on the podcast before when it came to people who came into firms either just before the pandemic or during the pandemic. And I’m curious to hear your experience about how you approached building your networks when you really did come into the firm just before the pandemic. Obviously, you would’ve had an established network of clients, but how did you approach building relationships with the other members of your firm when you had only that short period of time before the pandemic really, really came into effect, and then you were forced to be working from home?

Anthony: I mean, it could have been worse because I joined about six months before anybody had started to hear about COVID. So, I had a window where I could get to know at least some of my fellow partners, and … in March 2020, just as we were going into lockdown, and so nobody met any of them for the first six or eight months that they joined the firm. So it could have been worse for me, but at the same time, six months isn’t a particularly long time to build deep relationships with people that you’ve just met. So, I think for me it delayed the process, but that said, it’s been three and a bit years now, and I think we’re through that. And in the end, I think it just delayed the process of getting to know my fellow partners. I think I’m in a much better place on that front now.

Lindsay: That’s great. Were there things that you did during the pandemic that helped the firm did? Do you think that there were any additional measures that they took that aided in that process?

Anthony: I mean, in the first lockdown, we were trying to spend quite a lot of time talking to each other on Zoom calls and in the end, I don’t think that’s a perfect substitute for actually being together, but it was better than nothing. I think from a client perspective, it was particularly tough from March 2020 through July 2020, which was when the first lockdown happened. Because if you recall, that was the time when financial markets were crashing and no one really knew where we were going with this whole thing. So it was a time of great uncertainty, but I think once we were through that initial four, five months period, I think business sort of got going again as it were, it certainly wasn’t business as usual, but it felt as if we were at least getting back on an even keel.

Lindsay: What would you say has been the biggest surprise you’ve had in the last few months?

Anthony: The biggest surprise? Well, I mean, I think, first of all, the invasion of Ukraine. That was a pretty big surprise and I don’t think many people really thought that that was going to happen. And I actually remember when the US government announced that Putin was about to invade Ukraine, I think a lot of people didn’t really take it seriously, and then it happened. So, that was definitely one event that took me by surprise; and obviously, we have very high inflation rates, both in the UK and in the US and in many other developed countries around the world, and also developing countries.

I didn’t expect that inflation would be this rampant and this entrenched. And I think that certainly in my career, for all the time I can remember, we’ve been living in a very low-interest rate environment, and we’re heading out of that low-interest rate environment now. And I think that’s going to have a huge impact on many of our clients, on economic activity, and I think that particularly in the UK, we’re going through a really tough cost of living crisis.

There’s an energy crisis, which is acute in many countries, but I think it’s particularly acute here because of our energy mix, and today, our government policy. And so I think it’s going to be a really tough period for a lot of people, and in particular, a lot of businesses and small businesses in the UK. So, I think we’re going to have a very bumpy ride over the next 12 to 18 months. And in my view, unless and until we see some resolution in the Russia/Ukraine war, I think that’s going to have an impact on everything that’s happening, and it will be difficult to resolve things until we see an end to that conflict.

Lindsay: I totally agree with you. I was speaking with one of our member firms last night, and we were discussing that the first six months of this year, in terms of member firm referrals, they were quite high compared to what they had been over the pandemic, but even over previous years. And we were saying that we expected that to change because of a lot of the factors that you just mentioned. And I’m wondering if you think that people are trying to get, especially being in the corporate and the corporate practice, if people are trying to get a lot of work done before things start to change. And that’s why we’re seeing law firms, especially in businesses, especially being so busy at the moment, because they’re trying to so of front load that before things really start to hit that downturn.

Anthony: I think it’s difficult to say. And of course, I think that the advantage of being in what you call a full-service law firm, which we are and which many of the ILN members are, is that you are relatively well hedged in that you have cyclical and countercyclical practices.

For instance, for a long time, our insolvency team has not been particularly busy, and that’s largely been driven by the fact that in the UK there’s been a legal moratorium that was put in place, as a result of the COVID pandemic, which prevents many businesses from actually going insolvent. Now, that moratorium has now been lifted. And in the UK, there is an energy price cap for individuals. It’s going up very significantly, so energy’s becoming prohibitively expensive, but there’s still a cap. But for small businesses or any businesses, that cap doesn’t apply, and so I can foresee a situation where it’s going to be very tough for a lot of small businesses, and you may see an increase in insolvencies in the UK.

I think it’s difficult to necessarily conclude that because we’re about to head into a recession or very bumpy economic times, that necessarily means that there’s going to be a significant reduction in legal work because it could drive a lot of restructurings. It could drive a lot of opportunistic buying opportunities. If currencies devalue, particularly against the dollar, then you could see US entities and buyers coming into those markets and buying opportunistically. So, I’m not super pessimistic that we’re going to fall off a cliff in terms of activity levels. What I think it means for lawyers is that the mix of work can change quite significantly, and where the work is coming from can change quite significantly. Or at least I hope I’m right because I like to keep busy.

Lindsay: And I think we’ve seen that before. So I mean, I think you’re right. For full-service firms and firms with a good mix of practices, that has borne out previously.

You mentioned the moratorium on insolvencies being lifted, and I had a similar conversation with Bas Ebels in the Netherlands and he said he felt that that may have hurt the economic situation there because it didn’t allow sort of a more natural evolution for the business environment. We didn’t have the same situation here in the US because we didn’t have those protections in place. I’m curious to hear if you think that is the case. Because there wasn’t that sort of ebb and flow of businesses, it really just sort of held down the tide on unprotected businesses that maybe should have gone under, although obviously, the reasoning was there because of the pandemic. What do you think about that?

Anthony: Well, I think that’s probably right. It has protected businesses that may not otherwise have survived, although it raises an interesting philosophical question, which is that if a government is prepared to protect businesses because of a new zoonotic virus that’s spreading around the world, why is it not prepared to protect businesses because of massive inflation in the wholesale energy markets that in part has been triggered by an invasion of another country? So, I think there’s an interesting political point there.

Lindsay: Yes, I agree. What would you say is the biggest area related to your practice that you’re curious about, and why? And I always hesitate to ask this when speaking to corporate lawyers, because the corporate lawyers always say that not a lot changes when it comes to your area of practice, but sometimes I like to ask it just to see what you say.

Anthony: Okay. Curiosity is, I think, just an important attribute for lawyers generally, and I think when I start work on a new transaction, particularly if, let’s say, I’m on the buy side on a deal, so we’re advising the buyer looking at a target, I think I’m always curious to learn as much about the target business as possible. And there’s the scope of work that you have to undertake, but trying to understand commercially what business does, what industry it operates in, who its key customers are, what its financials look like, really getting under the skin of all of that I think is really interesting. And I think it’s really important for an M&A lawyer to do that because the more commercial understanding you have better. I think that’s one point.

I think, although I’m essentially an M&A lawyer, I’ve always been quite interested in the tax aspects of deals. And I would definitely not hold myself out as a tax expert, and I have plenty of tax colleagues that know a lot more about tax than I do, but I continue to be curious about it. I’m always trying to learn more in that area.

And then I think the third point I’d make is that as well as co-leading, they cross over between the ILN and the US because the ILN has such a big presence in the US. But I’ve always done quite a lot of work for US clients doing inbound deals into the UK, and so I’m interested in how the UK and the US can increase the amount of business that they do, transatlantically. It’s a country I’m quite close to. One of my brothers lives in the US. He lives in Atlanta, so I feel like I’ve got sort of strong connections to the US. And so I’m curious about, don’t know if I’m answering the question in the right way, but I’m curious about how we can grow our business between the US and the UK.

And I think there’s an interesting point there because for the UK post-Brexit, one of the obvious places for the UK to turn its attention to is the US, and the US has obviously always been a huge trading partner for the UK, a very significant trading partner. I think it would be a fantastic thing if at some point there was a meaningful UK/US free trade agreement that wasn’t just like a bulk standard free trade agreement, but there was a sort of game-changing free trade agreement. It seems difficult to envisage that’s going to happen anytime soon because it doesn’t really seem to be at the top of President Biden’s in-tray, but maybe at some point that will become a possibility, and I think it would be good if it did.

Lindsay: That would be really nice, but I think you’re right. I think President Biden has other things he’s worried about at the moment, but anything’s possible. Anything’s possible. Switching gears, tell us something about yourself that most people don’t know.

Anthony: Okay. Nothing to do with work, but I took up triathlon about eight years ago.

Lindsay: Awesome.

Anthony: And for our listeners that don’t know what triathlon is, it’s a multi-sport discipline comprising open-water swimming, then cycling, then running over a particular distance as quickly as possible. And I think I’ve done maybe about 17 or 18 triathlons now.

Lindsay: Wow.

Anthony: But the big achievement for me was that I managed to complete an Ironman distance triathlon in June of last year.

Lindsay: Congrats.

Anthony: So June 2021, which was in England, and should I explain what the distances are?

Lindsay: Yes. I think people need to know because it’s very impressive.

Anthony: An Ironman distance triathlon is a 2.4-mile swim, which is about 3.8 kilometers, and then a 112-mile bike, which is about 180 kilometers, 180, and then a marathon, and it took me about 14 hours. In these events, you’re generally time limited to 17, and if you don’t make it by 17 hours, then you get disqualified. So, I did it at about 14. I was hoping to do it in about 12 and a half, but that proved incredibly optimistic. It kind of went a bit wrong for me on the run, as it often does for first-time Ironman athletes. And I think the world record … Well, actually there was an attempt to go under seven hours by the very best Ironman athletes this summer, and they managed to do it.

Lindsay: Wow.

Anthony: But they only managed to do it by what’s called drafting on the bike, which is where they were basically in a sort of … like riding in the Peloton in the Tour de France. If you ride in a group, you can go much faster. So, I’ve worked out, I’m about half the speed of the top athletes in the world, which I’ll take.

And it was a pretty amazing experience because, I mean, you have to train for that sort of event for about a year, and it takes a long time to prepare yourself physically and mentally. I mean, there are lots of stories I could tell about it, but I think just one I’ll relay is that when you turn up for an event like that, and you arrive in the sort of transition area, it’s quite interesting because half the people have done one before and so they know what they’re letting themselves in for, and they’re kind of calm and not relaxed, but they’re okay. And then the other half, you haven’t done one before, which included me, are kind of crapping themselves and on a full-on adrenaline rush, and that all felt pretty extreme, the whole experience of turning up on the morning.

But it was an amazing experience, and a lot of it really is about the journey through the training and what it teaches you about yourself and your body and your mind and your spirit and all those things. Actually, when you get to the start line, 99.9% of the work is done. You just have to try and get through the day, and I managed to get through it. And yeah, it was a pretty cool experience. I’m not sure I want to repeat it anytime soon, just because of the sheer volume of training. It just took up a lot of time. A lot of very early morning starts before work. But yeah, if anyone wants to learn more about the whole experience, please do reach out to me. I’ll be happy to talk to them about it.

Lindsay: That’s really amazing. Congratulations. I’m a marathoner, so I know what kind of commitment the marathon requires. And I know some triathletes and I know some Ironmen, and so I understand the full commitment that the Ironman requires, and for our listeners that don’t know, it’s really quite something, so congratulations.

Anthony: Thank you. Thank you.

Lindsay: That’s really something. That’s amazing. And yeah, I can only imagine what it’s like to turn up, not knowing what you’re really getting yourself into.

Anthony: Yeah. Well, when I got dropped off, well, my wife dropped me off, and when you start these events, you go off at 6:00 in the morning, so you have to turn up at 4:30 or whatever before the sun comes up. And she dropped me off and burst into tears thinking I wasn’t going to make it through the day, so yeah, it’s definitely an emotional experience.

Lindsay: Mm-hmm, absolutely. Absolutely. And I mean, there’s so much. There’s the actual events themselves and then there’s so much skill in the transition too, so it’s really-

Anthony: Well, not where I’m concerned, Lindsay. My transition skills are not … they need to be worked on, shall we say.

Lindsay: Well, for the next one.

Anthony: Absolutely.

Lindsay: Who has been your biggest mentor over your career?

Anthony: Ah, it’s quite a tough question, that. I mean, I can’t say hand on heart, there’s been one particular mentor that has guided me through my career, perhaps to my disadvantage. I think what I would say is say, I’ve been at three firms in my career before Fladgate. I was at a firm called RPC, but before that, the firm I really grew up in was a firm called SJ Berwin, which some of our listeners may have heard of. And in its time, it was sort of the preeminent private equity, real estate, and fund formation firm in the UK. And it was an amazing firm because it only started in 1982 by the eponymous founder, a guy called Stanley Berwin. It actually went bust in 2016 in the UK’s biggest law firm merger … the biggest law firm failure, I should say, and I was there from 2000 to 2013. I was an associate for eight years, then a partner.

In my time there, I had lots of mentors because the firm was, in its time, it was sort of really trailblazing because it was the first firm in the UK to try to emulate the US model of being quite responsive to clients, being really proactive as opposed to reactive. Almost taking a sort of like investment banking type approach to law rather than what, for a long time in the legal industry … I think before I started in the ’70s and ’80s, the commercial law firms were not slow-paced, but they were a bit more reactive. They didn’t behave in the same way that law firms behave now. I think we now all take it for granted, but we have to be very responsive. We have to try and solve problems for clients.

The skillset now is different, but in the UK, I think SJ Berwin was really one of the firms that trailblazed in that regard. And so there were lots of senior lawyers at the time that I fed off and learned a huge amount from. In terms of one of the cultural things, there was, you always replied to a client’s email that day. Even if it was to say, “I don’t have an answer for you yet. I’ll come back to you tomorrow,” or, “I’ll come back to you in a few days’ time,” or, “This is what we need,” there was a culture of you have to respond that day. And there were just some absolutely brilliant lawyers in the building who intellectually were outstanding, and so I think I had a lot of mentors. I’m not sure I want to mention any of them by name on this podcast, but there were many people that I learned a lot from.

One of the apocryphal stories about that firm was that Stanley Berwin, the founder, he actually died before … I think he died in 1985, a few years after he had started the firm. But one of the stories about him was that when he started the firm, every bit of correspondence that the firm sent out there was a sort of white, a pink, and a blue. And the white letter was, this was all pre-email of course, but the white email was the one that got sent to the client, the blue one was the one that got put on the file, and the pink one was the one that got sent to Stanley.

Every single night he would read every single bit of correspondence that every lawyer in the firm sent out. And if he’d made any grammatical error, nothing like a legal error, if he’d just made a grammatical error, a spelling mistake, anything like that, he would haul you into his office the next day for a bollocking. Some people now might say, “Well, that’s inappropriate,” but arguably it created a culture of excellence. And I think that’s a really important point, and one that’s lived with me, actually, throughout my career.

Lindsay: I can imagine. I think I’ve heard from a number of lawyers that very similar situations where they have had multiple mentors rather than one that has stuck out to them, and I feel that it really benefits people when that’s the case. Not that there’s any one right path to mentorship. I think all of them benefit us, and however, we get to where we are.

What would you say is the most important lesson you’ve learned over your career?

Anthony: Well, I think early on in my career, I’m not sure I was a very good listener, and I think I’ve worked quite hard on my listening skills because you have to listen really hard and really hear what people are saying. Otherwise, I think you get a bit stuck, so I think that’s one lesson, just keep listening. Don’t always be in transmit mode. Sometimes you just need to be in receiving mode.

I think the second point is, don’t be afraid to ask lots of questions until you really understand the point, and one question usually doesn’t cut it. It usually requires a whole series of questions before you really get to the bottom of what’s going on and you have a true comprehension of things. Because until you get to that point where you really understand what’s going on, it’s then very difficult to work out what your next steps should be.

And then I think, just in terms of the art of deals and being an M&A lawyer, I think as you become more senior, I think it’s important to try and control the narrative in terms of what’s being talked about, what are the important points on the deal, what should be prioritized. And obviously, that’s a discussion that you need to be having constantly with your client, but it’s not a conversation you should be afraid to have, because I think ultimately that’s how you add value in the process.

Lindsay: Wonderful. Those are great points. And one final question before we wrap up, this has nothing to do with work or what’s going on in the world, but that is, what are you enjoying right now?

Anthony: What am I enjoying? I’m quite enjoying the new Game of Thrones prequel, which has just started. That’s pretty good. I’ve just come back from a nice trip to Spain with my family, which was great fun. And before that, my wife and I had a weekend in Greece without the children.

Lindsay: That’s nice.

Anthony: Which was also good fun. I feel quite fortunate, everyone seems to be healthy and sort of reasonably happy, and work is going pretty well. So yeah, I think that there are lots of people having a very tough time out there, so I feel quite blessed that I’m sort of doing okay.

Lindsay: That’s really wonderful. I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us this week, and thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much to all of our listeners as well for joining us. We’ll be back next week with another guest. And in the meantime, if you can take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, we would really appreciate it, and thank you so much.

Find an International Law Firm

Find a firm