Inside Mayer Brown’s London private capital push

Welcome back, today's guest is Dom Griffiths London Managing Partner at Mayor Brown. Now, I wanted to get Dom on the show because Mayor Brown has been making a concerted private capital push of its own in London over the past 12 months, bringing in a string of senior laterals across private equity and finance. And growth has been pretty strong too with London revenues for this Chicago headquartered firm, up 20% last year reaching just shy of $270 million US dollars. We talk about what's driving that growth, why the firm is investing so heavily in private capital in London, how Dom approaches leadership and what he thinks will separate the most successful law firms over the next decade. I hope you enjoyed the conversation. Okay Dom, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast. Great to see you on her. Thank you so much for being here. Do you want to give us a little sort of potted history of how you ended up as Mayor Brown's London Managing Partner? Yeah, of course. So I arrived at Mayor Brown almost 21 years ago, having spent a thoroughly exciting and interesting time at White and Case for five years previously, including two years in their Milan office in Italy, which was great. I came on board then a few years later I was appointed into practice management, initially actually head of structural finance, what we used to call securitization, and then into co-running, initially just running the London office finance group and then co-running the global practice. So yes, after a few years of practice management, the suggestion was made that I might be a good candidate to run the London office. So I ran for that, was elected on a mandate of sort of expanding the reach of the London office, raising a profile in the city, and that was about four and a half years ago, but more actually, seems to have gone very, very quickly indeed. More recently I was appointed to the Global Management Committee, which is essentially the Mayor Brown name for our Executive Committee aboard. So that's the way through. So when you joined, was this how many years after the merger was that? I think it was about two years after the merger, and so therefore there was still quite a lot of noise about transatlantic merger. There hadn't been that many at the time. It was quite successful. I'd heard that it had won awards and that kind of thing, but you never know until you arrive, and of course, leaving White and Case, which was a happy home and a great place. I was coming over here and people were saying, "Oh, it's a merge firm. What's it going to be like?" On arrival, Oliver, it felt like the best parts of a very English law firm, which is where I started off my career. That trench mentality, everyone looking out for each other, everyone in it, together and being supportive, that collegiality, but also that entrepreneurial meritocracy of a US dollar firm. So it was a nice balance, and it's still the same. I have to say, I still feel the same way about the firm 21 years later. So do you see Mayor Brown? I mean, I've always seen Mayor Brown as a US law firm, but some people see it more as a transatlantic, I think, because of the merger. How do you see it? It's interesting, isn't it? I mean, the trends over the years for people thinking that saying, "International, this is the most important thing. Is it your sort of big in certain cities? Are you transatlantic? Transatlantic is an important thing." So I came to the firm in my practice area, predominantly at that time, because of the firm's reputation in financial services, particularly structured finance back in the day. So I probably came here with more of an expectation of the kind of US sort of side and culture of the firm. But what I quickly realized was that long, long history in London, and yet, Mayor Brown has expanded, including the transatlantic merger, whenever it was now 25 years ago, by way of combination merger, as opposed to several organic growths, a bit like my previous one, why in case of many others. And so partially because of that, I think there's that sort of, it's all very linked up. But there's also autonomy in terms of, you know, big London office, big Chicago New York office, and that kind of thing. The transatlantic label is important, and particularly for us, because I think we were, I often said this, one of a very small handful of firms that are kind of US-centric, or sensitively like, but have had a kind of 50-year-plus history of having a very serious London office. And to me, yes, we're Mayor Brown globally. But I know there are people in the London market that you talk to, you remember, you know, Roe Moore. And to me, the history of the firm in London is critical. We had our 130th year anniversary in London, have been continually operating in London last year, with lots of wonderful celebrations and client events and internal celebrations. And that, to me, is very important. Part of my role, when I took on board this, this job of managing London, was to emphasise and strengthen that position as a city London law firm, but also recognising that New York and London, strategically for us, are very, very critical in terms of, you know, client-reaching growth. So, as you said then, you know, so you're now on the sort of global executive committee at the firm. How would you describe Mayor Brown's position in the global market? Ah, interesting. So, I mean, there are many parts of the global market, which is an annoying answer, right? So, I think, you know, I think it's interesting at the moment, isn't it, because it seems like there has been, and there has been for a couple of years now, this kind of race to be part of the global elites. Yeah. And there's this kind of a news phrase, exactly right. And then outside of that, you know, there's a whole load of other firms, and some people tell you that they're looking to, you know, break into the global elite, others say they've got their own strategy. Where does Mayor Brown sit within that? So, I think, look, at the end of the day without sort of skirting around the question too much, yes, there are certain firms that classify themselves as the global elite and a particular kind of, you know, London, New York elite. You know, I don't particularly love that term, because I think it's often associated with just revenue and profitability, which are very important things, of course, because they're things that people look at. It's what raises our share value, if you like, when people are looking to join our firm, whether as a fresh faced youngster or a seasoned, more senior partner. But fundamentally, I think, and I know that we are amongst a group of, you know, really elite lawyers and firms that are still extremely dedicated, I mean, client services and overused phrase. But we can't lose sight of that in this sort of race that a lot of firms have gone for for this kind of very high levels of profitability. We may get on to that, but, you know, I've got views about, you know, the importance of ensuring that we've got the best possible client base, which can still exist amongst banks, it can still exist amongst, you know, project finance clients and others, it doesn't have to just exist in pure private equity. So, in a long way of explaining, I think, all people often refer to that global elite and that sort of, I suppose, platinum layer as those firms that have been very much more focusing for a decade or more on that kind of more pure private actually sponsor side and borrow finance work, which we do, but we're not overly obsessed with it to the detraction of other good work. Do you pay much attention to, you know, rankings and directories and things like that? Of course we do, you know, not so much personally, because, you know, family and friends say nice things about you, but you are highly ranked yourself. Well, maybe okay, but that's a problem just longevity of the market will then be else. Well, what you don't want to be is what that kind of, whatever they call it, the sort of the seasons, you know, staff or all that kind of thing, that damns your reputation in the market. But, but no, fundamentally rankings are important, Mayor Brown as a firm in London and also the US and globally, but we're talking many about London now has really good high rankings for individuals for practices that I'm very proud of indeed. You know, and I think that one is the core factors. We have certain very focused areas of growth within the firm, but they there's a subtle difference in certain jurisdictions. So, one of our areas in London that I'm most proud of is our real estate group and the and the focus on clients in that in that sector, which go from, you know, the elite real estate private equity clients that we have right the way through to development and international investor clients and that's yeah, it doesn't totally define us because, you know, broadly, we've been incredibly focused on things like private capital, private credit, but those things going back to rankings are important. You know, the fact that we've attracted a really fantastic recent group of lawyers on the real estate corporate site, they've come across for a variety of reasons, our client base, the match with their clients, but the quality and rankings of our real estate lawyers. I mean, those are key areas. I haven't talked to me a little bit about that practice mix within London because when I've always thought about Mayor Brown, it seems to me that it's always had this kind of full service UK sort of law firm type mix where you're, you know, strong in M&A real estate, also within finance, things like construction or, you know, quite, you've got really solid products. Yeah, absolutely. And it's kind of like, it's not your traditional US firm in that respect, is it? No, it's not, but I'm the first to admit that years ago when I came on board 20 years ago, our external image and communications were not ideal, you know, we said, I guess quite a few friends like that back in the day, they weren't sort of showing off about what they were. If you were to ask anyone in the world of the city, you know, what Mayor Brown is good at, they probably answer similarly to you, you're quite good at a lot of things. Whereas you looked at a while ago, you say, you know, high-end M&A, the beginnings of private equity and restructuring. If you look at K, you'll just say, "Hi, you, you saw what I mean?" And so I was very, very keen and have been for years, in particular in these leadership roles and finance and heading the London office to make sure that we show to the market without showing off too much, because it's not particularly English characteristic, I think, to say, you know, we're actually specifically very good at these things. You're right, Oliver, we're still quite full service. We have practices that are fantastic and complement some of those core transaction layers and litigation areas. You know, we're going to be financial services forever whilst I'm alive in this firm, you know, 40% almost of our lawyers are litigators, so that these are defining things, but what markets and what particular products are we very, very strong in? I think we've done a lot better over the last 5, 6, 7 years in defining that and telling the market what we get at. Things like insurance corporate, London, New York, absolutely outstanding practice area in which we, we, to a degree dominate. We love that, you know, I mentioned real estate, you know, the component parts of our finance practice. Everyone knew us as a finance firm, but what did we do? I mean, it's quite interesting. We started as a very strong structure finance firm. We still do that. There's wonderful work to be done, highly complex, difficult work, which you're well aware of how you know. There's types of transactions back in the day. But where we strong enough in pure leverage finance, direct lending, you know, Jason Terry's note, and that was quite unusual. So you know, there's been a challenge of the last 10, 15, 20 years to actually sort of concentrate on what we good at, tell the market, what we good at, and benefit from that. But that's really coming through now. It seems to me, then, in the last kind of 12, 18 months, you've made a bit of a concerted push to kind of expand the private capital capability of the firm. Talk to me a bit about that kind of private capital push. Are you looking to differentiate and become known as one of those big private capital heavyweights? Yes, absolutely. I know that we do very well in certain product areas with funds and asset managers and so forth in the private capital, in particular, the private credit area. So we were doing a lot of work, for example, on the structure finance side for the major private capital players. We were doing some good work on the leverage finance side, but we didn't have the volume of lawyers to cover that and really expand it. We did funds finance. We did all those things, but interestingly, we did all of the extra things that other firms are desperate to tack on. I know that because they come looking for lawyers from here, whether it be CLOs or structure finance or asset based lending and so forth. And so it became very obvious, as you rightly say, two or three years ago, that we could make a real difference. There are very few firms out there, one of two English firms, one of two US firms that can provide that full product range to clients, particularly US funds and European funds. And this is mainly on the finance side that we're sort of talking about, specifically. It's obviously private capital. By the way, it's not interesting in a back in the day 20 years ago, we didn't use any of these terms. Private credit, private capital, what's exactly mean? We're now talking about capital solutions, which means different things for different organisations. Every leverage finance lawyer is now a private credit lawyer, aren't they? That seems like the way it is. Not everyone, everyone. Of course, the big borrasside sort of sponsor practices are different. And now we have that, you know, having hard, so a good win and having others in the firm that support our private equity team and work with them every day, which is a good point. So private capital obviously includes private equity. But the way in which we approach private equity on a transatlantic basis, particularly in London, is until recently, we haven't really been seeking to compete with the sort of bulge bracket top-end suppliers of legal services. You know, we just recognise our strengths, but we have made hay in the middle market. I mean, you know, there's been a lot more dual activity in that market, close to 37 deals purely in our private equity team last year in London. But what's really nice to see, having brought on board young, really ambitious partners from Ropes and Grey, Electro and Taron, for example, Tesseraigar from Goodwin, Mark Evans from Decker into that pure private equity team, what we're seeing now is sort of us pushing into the upper middle market. That wasn't incredibly deliberate, but just with very ambitious people in that team, we've ABN active, we're pushing into the upper middle market, but we're not, and they'd hate me to say this potentially, we're not part of that great of law firms that's going, oh my goodness, we have to be poor, wise and Simpson and Kirkland. Fair play to them when I wish them an enormous amount of luck, because it's an immense challenge to co-there and look over that paraplegs and go, right, we need to be on that bigger mountain over there, but that's not really being my gig or the gig here. So you think that's where the white spaces as you see it? Yeah, absolutely. I think that we really clenched a significant volume in that middle market. We're pushing into the upper middle market. We're showing the value that we have and can create for our clients there, which is very exciting. And then because there's these new teams on board, but what we don't do is hire people and just put them in the corner, and we don't have sort of four different separate private equity teams, for example, we integrate people. Now, people use that term enormously. What does it mean here? It means that we hire people who have fully explained to them who else we have here. We involve those other people in the interviews as soon as people arrive. They have an absolute schedule of what they're going to be doing, who they're going to be talking to. And I have an age-old adage that I use in lateral hiring interviews, which I do a lot of myself, by the way. I think the firms in London that have done the best, and I don't seek to tell you that we've done the best, the firms that have expanded enormously in London, you know, Siddlies, the firms that have had their managing partner involved in that process have done better, I think. And so seeing that process through, explaining to people what we have here, and then plugging them in. And I often say in those interviews, if you arrive at Mayor Brown, and at a bare minimum, you sell yourself and you reach out to our internal network in London, in New York, in Europe, maybe if your practice is such, maybe Asia, maybe South America. At a bare minimum, you will be a success, right? I've never seen anyone who's done that fail. Obviously, we love the fact you have other client relationships, but we don't buy books of business. What we're doing is just building out a sort of skill set and adding to core areas to make sure that our main clients, particularly in private credit and private actually have that full skill set. So I've heard this one before, Dom, and I accept it in terms of, you know, you don't buy books of business, but then when you speak to headhunters and you talk to them, what are the key drivers behind most of these lines of business on that? It's all about the book. So you're saying, I guess it kind of not all the time. Exactly right, Oliver, and your spot on to be slightly cynical about that expression. If someone has a book of business and a big following of clients, or a smaller set of clients, but doing a vast amount of business with them, it's always a good sign. And it's a good sign because they're in market and they have loyal clients. And don't get me wrong. I'm not going to turn away to his major clients that they want to bring over. And we will certainly pay them competitively and extremely well for that. But my point is, it's not the most important driving factor. What I'm looking for, what my heads of finance and corporate and private equity and litigation others are looking for is people that they can put in front of our core client base to build out their expertise and to show the clients that we can do more for them. And it's incredibly, personally, I'm still a full-blown practice partner for my sins. That's the way firms like this work. It's so exciting. Well, and you know, someone like me or David O'Connor who heads up our ABS team here has been doing work with a key fund client. Let's say private client fee for a few years. And then you introduce your new real estate corporate team to them or then you introduce your direct lending leverage finance team. And you never thought you'd be able to get that core direct lending work. But because of the loyalty and relationship and the service we provide, we introduce these other people and just makes this all happier, frankly. You're still practicing, Dom. And you're in a leadership position, obviously. How much time are you spending on recruitment? Good point. I mean, quite a large proportion of that time. And it's not just London. I mean, part of my range of portfolios and the management committee, executive committee, the firm include energy projects and infrastructure for example. So I'm interviewing a core, very important lateral hire in for the United States tomorrow afternoon. You know, I will go to locations as do my other senior partners on the committee to deliberately go and hire people and talk to people. We're doing quite a lot of that at the moment in New York, but also outside of New York, you know, in the West and Texas knows like that. So there's there's a responsibility for us, I think, to ensure that we are hiring. But I also say we don't just hire to be big. There was that massive trend 15, 20 years ago to just sort of who's the biggest tool from the world? You have this chance and you go, you know, we've got to get up there and certain firms took it far too seriously and merged with massive first nation Australia, etc. You know, we're not going to do that. We are hiring in the right areas to build out the areas of growth that we've identified. So if you could sort of write down, if you were to write down on a piece of paper, how you think about growing a law firm in the simplest way, how do you think about that? I think you've got to look at what you have. It's like looking at the ingredients you have in front of you and then working out how you can maximize what you have. And so it's a very, very simple answer, but I don't think it's that complicated in a sense. I mean, people write lots and lots of books about how to grow in a law firm, how to be more profitable, how to manage people better and all the rest of it. Fundamentally, manage with empathy, grow the areas where you think there's the best sort of great opportunity, support people in doing it. And don't just talk about it internally. I'm a great believer in not having meetings that extend beyond one hour, following up on action items, you know, good governance, and then just going after the class. At the end of the day, people ask you lots of, why is that partner so successful? Why is it David O'Connor so successful? You know, why is it Chris Harley who had a real state that he has so successful and it's not magic. It's not luck. You know, Chris is out three days a week having breakfast with clients, David loves lunch as a class. It's not just that. It's not just entertaining them. It's just keeping in front of them all of the time and showing them and talking to them about the good work we're doing, sharing information and getting more work because of that. So I remember also many, many years ago telling at the time the person in my position, the managing partner, senior partner at the time of London office, that I could increase revenue in the finance group. I was a local head of finance, but between 5 and 10% by just improving morale and just making sure that people were happy what they were doing and wanted to believe in working hard for clients. And that happened. Believe it or not, it was also the time which there was a boom in my market. So that's probably correlation, not causation. But I do think there's something in that, you know, if you've got people who are following in the same direction as you and believe in the project, then you will grow and you'll have people close to the class. It works, I think. So you became managing partner in London in 2022. Talk to me a little bit about how you found that, how you're approaching kind of leadership. And you know, what I always liked to ask is kind of some of the hardest things you found about the role. Yeah, good question. I mean, I wasn't sure what to expect. My predecessor had done a fabulous job, Sally Davis, and she was extremely good with the people and the firm, you know, everyone. And she was a great believer in the fact that everyone has important. So I had to take over that mantle and continue it because it was very important. We come out of Covid and she done a lot of very good work there. I have to say, I found it a bit of a challenge in terms of getting things done, our great believer in positive change, as I've mentioned before, and just getting people to do things that are benefit to the firm. That was much easier in practice management. Think about it. You're running a global finance practice. You're doing the same thing as a lot of those people in that practice. They hopefully have respect for you as a lawyer and as a leader. So asking them to do things politely, they tend to do it. Or they can make an effort to do it. At least we are a partnership. So it's all advisory. It's not like a corporation when you insist. When you've got a variety almost a hundred partners in London who are doing a variety of different things, at the time you don't knew me because of being had a finance but didn't know me intimately day-to-day. And you're asking them to come along with you in terms of strategy and making change. It's more difficult. I'm a very impatient person, you know, quite sort of ADHD in terms of what I want to get down and very focused on that kind of thing. But I found that you could only do that within this kind of role through consensus building. Which initially I found frustrating because you're having to spend a lot more time with people. You're sitting around a table, you're explaining concepts to people, you're having one-to-one meetings with people who perhaps are slightly unsure about what you're doing and then you find consensus and you move forward. It takes longer and I found that initially a candidate, if you're asking me about challenges. But when you get it done it's immensely satisfying. So that's the trick, is it to sort of running leading a partnership? I mean, it sounds obvious, I guess, but. Well, I mean, running a partnership is not as easy as it sounds. I mean, my grandfather was a partner in a partnership of two or three people, I think. That's easy. Law firms before, you know, the change of professional services in the late '60s had to be 20 partners and no more catchy firms as well. That was great. But then you have so many partners, you can't put them around one table. How do you actually manage them? How do you, as I said before, you know, it's not a company, it's not a corporation, you don't have that kind of bored, executive kind of interaction and people having to do things. So you have to work that consensus, I think. And they're lawyers, right? So they'll say quite a lot of the time, no, I disagree with you because they're trained to do that. So you've got to find ways to convince them. I don't know often you might do this sort of exercise, but what are the kind of metrics that you look at, you most closely watch as the managing partner? I guess the financial metrics really is what? Yeah, the financial metrics. Yeah. The financial metrics are incredibly important. I'm not overly obsessed with them. So, you know, I'll ask you a question and say, yeah, I do look at the revenue line, the daily productivity line in London, in various groups and overall, that's important to me. I will look at profitability, I will look at the profitability of individual client relationships and more generally our partners, but I also, it's kind of interesting thing. I will walk the floors quite a lot and talk to people and look at the statistics, it's just as important, I think, as getting a real sense for what's going on, the feeling that there's real activity. Right now, the M&A market has opened up enormously literally in the last few days or weeks or two. I can look at a chart that tells me that my corporate group is, you know, pumping out over a third more daily than it was in pumping out this terrible work to do in real, by the way. But you know what I mean? Their levels of productivity and busyness have gone up over a third since the first quarter of this year, but I didn't need to look at that chart because I can walk around the corner. So, I'm lovely, beautiful, newly refurbished corporate floor with all their pods and rest that. And they're just, they're all in most days of the week and they're working really hard and they're intensely focused and there's a buzz about it. So, you know, I think the real interaction with people not just sitting behind statistics and charts is quite important. And now you're on the executive committee then. How has that changed your thinking? Because I guess, are you thinking now a bit more kind of globally? You have to think where London fits in a bit more with the rest of the firm and things? Yes, of course. Yes, of course. But I'm working alongside people who've been on the committee for longer. I wanted to, I mean, quite a few of the six who were there, apart from Chairman and Managing Partner, I know really well, they're very dynamic. You know, they've been very successful in their own practices. And so, it's a lot of tag teaming and that regard, working together on our portfolio responsibilities, working together to seek further success within the firm. So, it's, you know, it's very exciting. I'm extremely honoured to be on that committee. I'm not quite sure where I was going to put that actually, but that's quite a happy joggy along just doing this job. But, but it's a really interesting insight. And you're right, Oliver, it's, it's, it's applying this sort of oversight and nurturing with empathy that one had over just one office to collectively doing it for the whole firm. One of the most exciting things actually is learning more about other practices. And I found that four and a half years going on. I took this role along. I obviously have a much bigger opportunity now. So, you know, it's the first, it's the first couple of months. I'm not quite sure exactly what I'm doing, but I think it's a bare minimum, a retiring partner from the committee told me it's a bare minimum. You ought to reach out, talk to people, understand other practices and try and be fair and even handed. That's probably quite a good explanation as to what good law firm management should be, I think. Would you have any advice to a, would be law firm leader now that you've done a bit of it? Yes, get an unbelievably good legal assistant or P.A. Just that is unbelievably important because your diary will explode in front of you. You know, if you, the most important thing, what I love when you're pointing in other roles, indeed, a ship in law firm, is to want to do it. Don't put yourself in a position whereby you're going to be a leadership and then go, I just did it because it looked good or I thought it was the right thing to do. You've got to really want to do it because it's, it's all encompassing. I want people in leadership who are driven and actually want to change things and and help to run an offer. You don't want people to are there just because they've got a fantastic book of business, good client relationships and people think that might be a good thing and seniority. Is there anything that keeps you up at night, you know, as the leader of an international law firm? I find it should say that probably a thing that keeps me up at night more than anything is client service within my own practice and just making sure that we keep on top of that the whole time and, you know, my advice for any senior lawyer, let alone in management is, you know, a bit of humility and a bit of, you know, things might go wrong today, so I'm going to try harder. I look at myself in the mirror every morning and go, Don, come on, you've got to do better today, you know, make sure nothing goes wrong. That is exhausting, I wait because it sort of drives you, but it's an important factor, I think, in terms of senior leadership. I think having humility, having empathy and understanding for your people is absolutely critical. If you look after people really well, you know, people who are going out on a turn, so you leave, people are returning from illnesses, people who've had a mental health episode, I hate the word, I hate the word to burn out, it just suggests you all over. If you look after this piece. but they will give you 150 percent. I've seen that and you see that in other law firms, some of the big English law firms, it's incredibly hard to hire some of their partners, particularly their female partners because they've been looked after extremely well. You gain long-term loyalty by having short-term empathy. So I wanted to sort of zoom out a bit, Dom, and talk about the kind of market and some of the trends we've been seeing. I guess this year's been defined, doesn't it, by mergers, transatlantic mergers. It feels to me like certainly the three that we've had or, certainly the Asher's, Puckett's Cooey one, and probably the Taylor Westing Winston's wrong one. They seem to be sort of now even more directly competitors to Mayor Brown. They've got the same kind of makeup, the same footprint, overlapping practice series quite often, obviously. How do you think about that? What's the next step for Mayor Brown? How does Mayor Brown differentiate? I can see exactly the motivation for people wanting to do that, particularly firms that perhaps don't have as large a litigation group as us, maybe doesn't have the balance of lawyers within the core cities in the US and Europe, the UK for example. So that is perfectly understandable. From our perspective, currently the core strategy is building out the areas which we think are the most important in terms of business, our clients and in particular that means London and New York and other sort of core cities in the United States. Not to the total detraction of other parts of the network, things like our incredible Paris office will continue to thrive and grow in the right way. But that frankly speaking is the absolutely key thing for us. I mean we won't count out further combinations. We've been very successful in doing it. The Mayor Brown Brown more combination of Frankfurt and just sort of combinations and Paris actually is just to celebrate at their 30-year anniversary which is very pleased to go out in Grand Paris install to celebrate. So we absolutely keep an eye out on the market if the right kind of opportunity comes along at the right time. Who knows, but fundamentally we think we've got it covered quite well at the moment. But do you think that would be all about still bulking up the scale between the U.S. and London or is it about those other international markets, Europe, Asia, etc. Well look, we will do a considerable amount more lateral hiring including teams at which I will be able to announce another one very soon. We've heard I think I heard I think 36 lawyers say far this year already, particularly in North America and Europe. And we intend to carry on doing that. We will do that in those core jurisdictions mainly but also others. And it will be also, and this is really critical to bolster practice areas and product areas that we believe are critical to the firm. I'd love to see our corporate group at London and in New York expand further. We're very focused on funds so getting more people on that side is critical, very focused on that. So in the right areas and the right jurisdictions which are those core areas, things like corporate funds, not detracting from litigation, we're making ours there as well. And in jurisdictions like London and New York, we will be making more highs in those areas in the right fashion. So what do you think will differentiate the most successful firms over the next five, ten years? A variety of factors dare I suggest they're approached towards AI. I know it's an overused or people talk about an enormous amount. I don't think we can ever say enough about AI so that we'll define a bit the shape and size and focus of our law firms going forward, which is why it's incredibly important to work with AI and provide solutions including cost effective solutions for our clients. Not just say we love AI or we've got sort of generous of AI, we have a platform that that's incredibly important. So I think that will be the case. I think that obviously people talk a lot about private equity coming to market and so forth. That'll be one to watch if you get one or two first movers in that kind of area. That may substantially change the shape of our law firms. In terms of investment into law firms. Exactly. Yeah. So that's one to watch and it's very interesting. It may work. I actually though, I remember being interviewed by another publication that published this on me called Innovative Lawyers, another one I told you that a few years ago and they said, "What's the most innovative thing that's going on?" And we have lots of innovative things going on in London and globally. But actually, I also believe in the fact that clients really, really appreciate old-fashioned professionalism and dedication to the work that they have and doing in the best possible way. And I actually think that is the perfect protector if you like to AI. So when embracing AI, pushing out ideas and projects with clients or four clients, but at the end as well, that kind of professional partner or senior associate kind of attitude towards the clients, sitting by them being their core strategic advisor, that's going to be around for a long period of time, hopefully for as long as I'm working with a professional. But who knows? Okay. I think we'll leave it there. Thanks so much for joining me, Dom. Thank you very much, Oliver.