Truism alert – talent, especially in the ultra-competitive world of dealmaking, has never been in such high demand. It is interesting that, while this statement has been wheeled out ad infinitum to the point of becoming a platitude, the component parts of what constitutes legal talent are rarely analysed.
In this, our inaugural Deals Yearbook, our cover feature shines a light on what motivates some of the rainmakers of the future. Selected from some of the leading M&A firms in the City, these up-and-coming partners also discuss the challenges and opportunities facing the practice in the coming years.
As you would expect, there are clear recurring themes. While many, including Clifford Chance’s Katherine Moir, Allen & Overy (A&O)’s Claire Coppel and Slaughter and May’s Sally Wokes discuss the exciting buzz of the corporate environment and the energy that drew them to a career in M&A, the partners also offer clear guidance on how to succeed and hopes for how the practice could become more user-friendly in future.
Fundamentally, all of our interviewees share the view that early exposure to client relationships, as well as access to challenging, complex and varied mandates working alongside a range of partners are pre-requisites for professional success for elite dealmakers in the making.
As Alex Tilley of A&O stresses though, ensuring that a firm’s practice remains successful in the longer term also means thinking about how to diversify the client base and building new relationships.
However, while these partners have, for the most part, lived through a time of relative milk and honey for M&A lawyers, there are real challenges ahead – as our feature ‘Marching on’ highlights. The impact of soaring inflation and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have caused alarm bells to ring in a way that has not been experienced since the 2008 financial crisis.
Thankfully, there are always sound career lessons to be learned from the more seasoned among the deals community we have profiled in our ‘Perspectives’ features. They have lived through hairier times and lived to tell the war stories.
For Samantha Thompson, Anglo American’s prolific head of legal M&A, what has kept her career fresh has been working across a diversity of sectors and geographies, along with the ability to affect changes to governance in her organisation.
For her part, Nallini Puri, Cleary’s highly-respected corporate partner, had a formative experience when, having trained as an M&A partner, she was suddenly forced to pivot to finance and restructuring amid the onset of the financial crisis.
Another tip espoused by Sylvia Andriessen, the general counsel of Euronext, is the need to be brave and to take risks outside of your comfort zone – not always an easy mindset for the notoriously risk-averse legal community – but one that has paid dividends for her.
The cycle of boom/bust has long dictated that those lawyers who roll their sleeves up, are agile and quick to rebrand themselves as the market shifts, are the ones likely to be the winners in the end.
Next generation Linklaters partner Fionnghuala Griggs speaks of her experience doing just that, when she moved temporarily into financial regulatory work during a lull in the M&A markets – a stint that has subsequently proved invaluable to her fintech practice.
The cover feature celebrates the importance of recognising the next generation of lawyers for their worth as relationship partners of the future. For once, putting aside the perennial question of whether inflated corporate salaries are sustainable, those connections are what makes them valuable. There is no success without succession.