'Some firms won't survive': Simmons senior partner Julian Taylor on the legal AI reckoning, NQ pay wars and the US firm challenge

Today on the podcast, I'm thrilled to be joined by Julian Taylor, senior partner at Simons and Simons, and one of the city's top rated employment lawyers. He spent more than 25 years at the firm, and has had a front row seat to how the legal industry and the business of law has evolved in that time. Julian talks about how Simons is using AI to change the way legal workers delivered, and why firms that can't keep up risk being left behind. He's candid on the big issues too, calling NQ Lawyer Pay, for example, in some parts of the market "crazy", explaining why the battle for talent goes far beyond salaries, and sharing how a unique, flexible working arrangement has shaped his own career. This episode is sponsored by Lexus Nexus. Lexus Nexus brings all your legal tools together in one secure AI-powered platform. Speed through your daily tasks, like drafting, contract comparison, and staying on top of regulations, so you can focus on what really matters your clients and your business. Work where you're comfortable, like Microsoft Word, and enjoy a personalized experience backed by trusted legal content. With privacy at its core, Lexus Nexus helps you save time, and stay confident in every decision you make. Now look, for anyone that might not know who you are Julian, do you want to just give us the quick intro, the quick background? Yeah, I won't start with where I was born, but I started my career as a barrister. Did that for four years? Went on to comment to Simmons to try and develop more work with their employment team, absolutely dreading it. I was not looking forward to working in a city law firm, but I loved it, ended up staying, and I've been there since 1999, became senior partner four years ago. So yeah, Simmons' life, and one of the most highly rated employment partners in the city, I think Chambers gives you an eminent practitioner rating, which is quite something, isn't it? Makes me sound very old, doesn't it Oliver? How did you secure that then? What's been the key to that? I don't think this is false modesty, but I do think there is something about the amazing platform at Simmons as an employment lawyer. I mean, when I joined it had a market-leading reputation, and that's an amazing way to turbocharge your career to be part of that platform. Both in terms of brand, but also the amazing colleagues you're surrounded by, the clients you're working with, amazing experience right from the beginning. I feel really fortunate that I've had that for the last 20, 26 years. Are you still fiorning at the moment? Yeah, I mean, I really, really enjoy it, you know, still work with some great clients, and I think it probably helps in the senior partner role as well, that you're still actually practicing, so that when you're talking to partners about stuff, you're still living the same life that they're living. Okay, so I suppose this week then, Julian, we had Simmons announce its financial results, revenue up, profits up. What did you make of the firm's performance this year? Yeah, good. I mean, I think the financial results are really important. I don't think it's everything, you know, I think sometimes as an industry, we probably look a bit too much just at the numbers. I think for us, it's all about the client relationships and the, you know, that's why the numbers are important because they're an indicator of strong client relationships that are developing, you know, some really kind of great matters that we've worked on over the past year. So, yeah, I think we're really pleased to see that growth, not just over the last 12 months, but over the last sort of five, six years. And the firm, I think, is keen to sort of emphasise a strong kind of sector focus, you know, asset management and funds, financial institutions, healthcare and life sciences and TMT. Can you tell us a little bit more about that kind of sector focus for Simmons? Yeah, we've had it for a long time, Oliver. I think there are those firms out there who kind of purported to do everything. And I think many years ago, we realised that wasn't the way we wanted to go, you know, we wanted to go much deeper in specific sectors. And what what clients always want is they want, they want lawyers professionals who understand their business. And I just don't think it's credible to go out into the market and say, you know, we understand every business. Whatever you do, we're going to understand it. So, within those sectors, you know, we act for the leading players, we understand what they do, we spend a lot of time with them, we pull people together across the sector. And I think it's important to be a voice within those sectors as well. So, it's been really successful for us. And any particular highlights that stand out for you over the year, I suppose for me, I think about the big win for BT in the class action. And if anything for you? Yeah, that was really exciting. I mean, that particular win has led to, you know, quite a lot of other work in that space because it's kind of really, really boosted that out profile around that. We've done a lot of things on my mind in terms of stuff that we've been involved in that unfortunately, I can't talk about because they're kind of sensitivity, but we've had a number of sort of big transactions and other matters. Obviously, AI has been placing an increasing part of the work. For me, that's a big highlight of the last 12 months. You know, we've been talking about it for a little while, but to see it actually feed through into the way in which we're delivering mandates and the way in which we're winning mandates as well. Actually, I think that's been a highlight. Yeah, so lots to talk about AI and tech. Been some really interesting announcements as well recently from Simmons on that. I suppose first question for you, Julian, is kind of how does Simmons think about, you know, technology and innovation as a firm? I think we think about it as being right at the heart of the business. You know, I think it's a mistake when, you know, in some organizations it's seen as a bit of a sort of bolt on or a, you know, a department that is a sort of a support function in some way. I think innovation has always been kind of core at Simmons ever since I joined, you know, thinking back to 1999. I was always really conscious of an organization that was looking to do things differently. You know, many years ago we had a platform called Alexa that was again, it was a sort of market leading platform. I'm always trying to think what are clients after, you know, what's the solutions are they looking for and what they don't always want or rarely want is law firms just doing things the traditional way, you know, just packing a load of lawyers in the room and charging out those billable hours. So I think right from the beginning we encourage our people and I keep saying lawyers, it's not just lawyers actually increasing its other professionals who are key to how we deliver just thinking really differently about things. And now, you know, increasingly baking in, I mean, tech has always, you know, for a long, long time tech has been a big part of how we deliver our services. And AI isn't particularly new, is it? We've had AI on our smartphones for kind of many years, but I think in terms of what it's now offering for delivery of legal services, it's really exciting. So a big challenge for me and for others is just to make sure that everyone around the firm is engaging with this. And again, that's been a real highlight of the last year. I think we've dropped now over 90% of our fear and is really kind of using AI on a regular basis. So you have an in-house tool, don't you, called Percy. What does that look like? How are lawyers using that? I was speaking to one of our junior associates recently. And, you know, I just, I asked that question, I said, can you give me, give me a few examples of how you're using it personally. And he said, he kind of paused and he said, actually, it's almost, it's almost easier to say what I'm not using it for because I'm using it for pretty much everything. He said every, every time I get a task, something I need to deliver for clients, it's my kind of starting point, you know, how can I use Percy to to speed up the process to do it differently, to do it cleverer. And it ranges from a whole whole load of things to, I mean, I remember a while back being on a conference tour with a client and the other dealing piece of litigation, the other side sent in a long document in the middle of the call. There's about 50 page document. And while I was speaking to the client, I was able to send them a one page summary, you know, I just stuck it into Percy, the one page summary, sent it over during the call, you know, brilliant from a client perspective because previously that would have had, you know, someone spending several hours doing through that and trying to produce uses for the summary. That is nuts. How incredible. Yeah. It's kind of nuts all of it. But that's one of the sort of more basic ways in which it's being used. You know, people are using it a lot more creatively. They're creating kind of first drafts of documents. They're using it to synthesize all sorts of different things. We've got a bit kind of prompt library because as you know, the key to the using AI is being kind of smart with the prompt So you know whenever whenever people are doing that and having good outcomes, it goes into the prompt library so that other people can access it So I suppose you know It wasn't that long ago when just using your example there Let's say it was a sort of a discrete sort of task that the client has asked you about You might have so you would have sort of taken that away after the call and that might have even involved a sort of a top-up on the quote right for that so it's like you know a 50 big long document that you need to go and spend as you say six seven hours looking at and that's just been done instantaneously How does that impact kind of pricing and things like that? Yeah, I mean that's a super interesting question, isn't it? You know, what did I charge the client for that? Nothing, you know, I charged nothing because I was already I was already charging for the for the call So they got that for they got that for free um, I think it's the sort of thing We we are talking to clients about around how this is going to work clients have you know many clients have expressed frustration about the billable hour for a long long time It's proved to be remarkably resilient over the years But I think AI is opening up a different conversation around pricing Um, and I I think we will increasingly move more towards a sort of value pricing I mean a lot of the work we do at the moment in common with other firms isn't isn't done on a billable hour basis You know, so there is plenty of work that you do on fixed fees or other sort of um fee arrangements What what I think is interesting around this and I think clients are very open to this conversation is Them recognizing that we're having to spend money investing in tech and that that does need to be built into How we price at one one client said to me very honestly recently um yeah Julian I recognize we we tend to want um The best of both worlds So if you do something quickly, you know, we want to pay for the 10 minutes it took you Um, and if you if it takes if it takes longer we want a different sort of fee arrangement that's not time-based So they were just recognizing that they'll have to be you know a bit more flexible Perhaps in terms of how they look at that and and build in the the tech investment that's necessary for us to be able to do things in a very different way So do you think clients are expecting that you know, let's just say that their annual spend with Simmons will will reduce because of AI No, I don't think they are I mean a lot of clients I speak to oh, I mean they're very focused on efficiencies But but many of them Generally expect their legal budgets to either stay stable or possibly to increase Um, and that's recognizing that it's you know, there's it's a complex world that we live in there's a lot of regulatory change all sorts of You know geopolitical issues other things going on that that do impact on legal spend Um, but they want it to be done differently and you know, certainly our hope is that clients will be increasing their spend with us because we Would hope that because we're approaching things differently and I think further down the track than some firms that they'd want to have a high proportion of their spend with a Affirm that is you know doing things differently and it's not just about efficiencies. It's also about quality You know, I think AI enables you to do Just better things than we've done in the past I didn't had a client expressing frustration about another firm Recently where they've ended up spending too much money and they they said that they were very frustrated that a AI wasn't used on a matter and and partly they they said that would have driven the price down But also they they were disappointed with the quality of what was produced and they were they were surprised that AI hadn't been used to kind of check some of the work that had been done Do you think as well, you know, do you see it sort of opening up work work that wasn't previously viable So you know the clients maybe have a big very document heavy project or whatever it is and they're saying, you know Now we can actually do this in an economically viable way. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think I think you describe it very well You know if that if that can be done Through AI why not and you know often often that there can be work that is I suppose more commoditized and document heavy, but it's also linked to And higher value work from the client's perspective and so there is value for them in a firm that's covering both pieces rather than having to to split it all up and and and what's uh what what Simmons strategy? You know often people talk about you know Is it by your build or a little bit of both when it comes to you know legal AI these new legal tech tools You know what Simmons preference generally? Well, we've certainly built with with Percy and I think there's there's we've got a lot of data scientists in the business I think there's massive value in being able to Develop your own bespoke tools, but we also carefully watch the market, you know If there's if there's good stuff out there We we absolutely have the conversation and we're very we're open to buying as well And I'm sure we will do in the future I suppose what was it earlier in the summer? um You know you announced a partnership with flank didn't you the the german legal AI company and that was all around AI agents um Would love to know a little bit more about that. Yeah, I mean, that's just that's just really exciting having a Digital person alongside you who can be a great co-worker and so um clients are really positive about that we've um I suppose the the lead agent that we've been um working with clients on so far is around NDAs and and You know NDAs are something that clients can find quite frustrating can take up a lot of time um Sometimes super important um sometimes less important um but the ability to have that done by an agent is Is amazing from a client's perspective, but also with the ability to escalate to a human as well You know where particular kind of complications or sensitivities arise Um, and we're looking at you know, we're developing other agents around other areas as well investment management agreements That sort of thing so I think there's going to be a lot of activity in that direction over the next 12-24 months So so what does that look like in in practice then? So this is an AI agent that you sort of co-develop with with with flank and then offer to to clients. Yeah Yeah, and is it on like a subscription basis or is it just part of your service? It is yeah Okay, I mean, it's usually done on a subscription basis um But it's uh, yeah clients are really interested in that I wanted to ask you as well about you know the Big rise of kind of your your general legal AI platforms, you know, the the most prominent I suppose is Harvey made the most noise. What do you um think about those types of platforms or those those things that Simmons Uh is is interested in yeah, I was um, I was chatting to someone now from Harvey at a conference recently I think they've I think they've done really well and it's always interesting to see um What they're developing and how the market is moving I think for us, you know, we percy in the developments we can make around percy That's working really well um, so we're not looking to kind of bring anything else in at the moment um There might be things that we can like the partnership with flank and other things that are are more sort of um Specific to certain things that we're developing um, but yeah with I think advancements um Improvements that we're making to percy you know quite a quite a fast pace mean that that's very much our focus for the moment Are there any kind of trade-offs do you think about about um building something in house? I mean obviously everyone talks about you know, there's quite a lot of cost involved in that, you know You need your own development team etc Um, how do you think about that? It's part of the equation, isn't it? You know, there are benefits. I mean obviously When you're when you're looking at other products in the market um they are developed um based on you know Multiple users multiple firms kind of engaging with them and so you're You're getting the benefit of you know feedback from a range of market participants and that can mean You know, there's plenty of tech in the firm that we do buy from third parties and it works You know that model works really really well. So I don't think you can always say there's you know Definitely one way is is better than the other it depends, you know very much on the circumstances, but um, I think You know, this this all started off going back kind of what 18 18 months with with quite a lot of um client concern around use of data and um how AI will Will be used on their matters and the risks around that And I think we found that in those client conversations there is there is quite a lot of comfort um derived from the fact that we have Very much built our own product behind our firewall that we're very, you know, confident in how it operates You you mentioned that story earlier than, do you see in kind of RFPs and the like, clients kind of, you know, mandating the use of AI or perhaps just asking questions about what Simons is using? Oh yeah, really, I mean, they're really interested in it. I've not seen one where they kind of mandate it, but I think certainly over the last six months or so, I am seeing an increasing expectation from clients that AI will be used. And they're asking questions. They're asking questions from a kind of risk perspective in RFPs so that they can satisfy their compliance teams around how AI has been used. They're also, what I'm also seeing all of her is that their legal teams are really keen to learn from us. You know, they often don't have, they can have quite big legal teams sometimes, but often they don't have the budget for investment in legal AI. So we've done a lot of sessions for legal teams showing them what is possible and also work with legal teams, you know, where they're working with, you know, some of our data scientists and other other colleagues to help them develop products for use within their own businesses. Now, I suppose, you know, you're kind of on the front line of all of this, Julian, so how do you think AI will ultimately impact the legal profession? Oh, that's a biggie, isn't it? Yes. Look, it's already beginning to have a massive impact, isn't it? You know, we are, and it's done impact us in a whole variety of ways. So I could probably speak for about half an hour on this Oliver, but you don't want that. So let me, let me try and give a few headlines. We will, you know, looking forward two or three years time, we'll just be doing work very, very differently from how we do it at the moment. There'll be, you know, increasing use of AI agents, a lot of tasks that are still done manually at the moment will be done by machine. So it will look quite different. What will that mean for the industry? It will be good news for clients because clients will have stuff done quicker, more efficiently, better quality. What will it look like for the firms? I think it will depend. I think I suspect some firms won't survive and would be my prediction because I think this is all moving very fast. And there are some firms, I sense from feedback you hear in the market that probably aren't moving fast enough to catch up. And we know that, you know, law firms as organizations in some ways can be quite fragile. So that will be one impact. Question that often gets asked is what, what does it mean for talent? You know, what does it mean for hiring? Are we going to kind of slash on numbers of trainees? I'm quite optimistic on that front. I mean, I think it will mean that the work that particularly trainees and junior lawyers are doing is different. But I think what we've seen in any tech advancement in the past is there's been pessimism about what it means for jobs. And that's never really played through because what you've seen is different jobs develop and jobs be done in different ways. So the message I always give to, you know, students in terms trainees is you'll be fine as long as you embrace AI because, you know, I think there's an exciting world in the future for lawyers who are comfortable and excited by working with AI. If you're kind of fearful or tech phobic, I think that's, you know, that's where the careers will just disappear. So one of the big questions is, you know, how do you train your top rated employment partner of tomorrow if, you know, the grounding of their career when they're just starting out is sort of outsourced to AI and tech? Yeah, it's a really good question. I mean, I do think this point gets made quite a lot. And I think we sometimes overstate the value of training in the past. I mean, I think you're a lawyer by background, aren't you, all of them? When you think back to your training contract, I mean, does it sort of fill you with joy, the sort of stills that you were learning on a daily basis? I mean, maybe you had some of those experiences, but I suspect it wasn't all like that. The example I always point to, no, perhaps not during the training contract, but you know, when you're a junior associate, and often you'll be given a task about going away and drafting, what is typically can be quite sort of complex provisions in an agreement. And you're sitting down there for a couple of hours and you're working it through, and you know, it's very deep, deep thought, deep work. It's very sort of, you know, you're applying a similar kind of logic to how we use sort of program, you know, if this and else kind of statements in your head. I do worry that if you're not practicing that regularly, that seems like a problem. Yeah, and I think we're going to have to be really alive to that. I mean, I think you're drafting exercise of the future will be the prompts, you know, and there'll be real value attached to those who are really smart at creating, creating the prompts. But we will need to find ways of ensuring that lawyers or trainee lawyers do get that sort of experience. Because you're right, you know, there will be stuff that you do need to know where that work isn't done by people anymore. And the risk is that as you're suggesting that you don't have that sort of basic grounding. But I think there are ways through that, you know, I think there are ways through that. And with, I mean, if you think about something like employment law, it's a mix of, it's a mix of different things. And some of that is just knowing the law. Some of that is having the experience. A lot of it, it's just, it's just kind of common sense and empathy and understanding how kind of people work. And that stuff, AI is not going to be able to do, you know, a lot of it will still be on the phone with the client talking through a situation. There's quite a lot of psychology involved in, in kind of employment law. So, um, it is sort of, you know, a lot of it isn't at the kind of commoditized end of the stale. But it will be, you know, if you think about M&A, there will be a lot within M&A that is, is now done by AI. And your, your challenge will be how, how do you give the, you know, corporate senior corporate lawyers of the future, the grounding in understanding how, you know, all the different bits of the transaction sort of bolt together. And I think, I think there will be elements of that, that are challenging. We'll need to kind of think that through and think through how the, how the sort of training and education works around that. Do you think there's a back? Sorry. Do you think there's a role for, you know, simulations, you hear more about simulations and things? Yeah, I was just, I was just thinking I'm sure we will use AI to educate people, you know, and whether that's through simulations or other things, there will be, there will be ways of doing that. I mean, there is no substitute for actually learning on the job. So, you know, what you don't want to do is just send people on lots of sort of, you know, segment in a room with a, with a computer and say, you know, spend the next two weeks learning, learning what a corporate deal looks like. So I think simulations is, you know, that's a good way of approaching it, something that feels a lot more kind of practical. Now, I just wanted to move on to, to kind of talent and culture and things like that. Julian, I guess just a natural kind of lead on is, how important is AI, do you think, to kind of attracting talent and retaining them? I was in an interview with a lateral partner recently and it featured very strongly. So they were really excited about our platform and what we can offer for AI and how that will be quite transformative in what they can offer to their clients and their current firm, which they're not going to name them, but really big firm, they were saying it's just, just nothing like that there. So, yeah, that's, that's a partner level, really kind of positive. For others, I think it's incredibly important because it is, it is the future, isn't it? You know, they, they know, whether you're sort of applying for training contracts or, or junior lawyers, they know that the, the legal industry is going to look very different in three, four years time. And so, do they want to be at the forefront of that or do they want to be at a firm that's constantly playing catch up? And there are definitely firms that are struggling and sometimes that's where they've, they've made very limited investment in technology in the past and they're now desperately trying to kind of bolt AI on, which is very hard, you know, if you're, if you've got a slightly kind of arcade tech system, and it's very hard to get moving with that. So, I think it's a really important part of the sale. when we see junior people really excited about coming in and using Percy and other tools that we've got. And also, ensuring that we're using those junior people for the more senior people to learn because often they're much more advanced in what they can do. I did a computer science course a few years ago, much mockery at home from my children. But I was a bit worried about being kind of left behind. So there's a really good Harvard course to all computer science for lawyers where I kind of learned to code. No one's going to give me a coding job all over. But there is a challenge for, I suppose, people of my generation as well to make sure that not only we're sort of advocating for all of this, but we're role modeling as well. And is that your advice as well to kind of juniors at Simmons to be curious and learn as much as they can about LLMs and prompting and all of this? Yeah, completely. And we're really making it mandatory. It's more than just encouragement. I mean, they have to be using it. And when we're recruiting, I think we're not saying, we want you all to be coders or even that your people have immersed yourself in tech in the past. But I think that word you use is such a good one, curiosity. We want people who are interested and want to explore and are adaptable. Because you asked me earlier, what are things going to look like in the future, 3, 4, 5 years time? No one really knows. We can have a good estimate about what things might look like. But you need people who are kind of enjoy change and are kind of here for the ride and will adapt. And law firms haven't always been very good at that. And lawyers haven't always been very good at that. The lawyer mindset tends to be quite conservative and a little bit resistant to change. Yeah, so stepping aside from AI just for a second, I wanted to ask you-- I guess it ties into the culture point here. But you went viral recently. Didn't you, Julian, on LinkedIn? And it was around your 90% arrangement. I think that's what you call it. So my understanding is that, for the past 20 years, you've had an arrangement where, on Wednesdays, you've been able to take a half day or something like that. Tell me more about that. So yeah, it was 2005. I've got three children now. At the time, I had two young kids. And I was very mindful, I'd kind of become a weekend dad. I wasn't seeing them at all during the week. And that was making me quite unhappy. I was excited about being a relatively new dad, but struggling with what to do. I considered just packing in and going to a different sort of environment. But then I thought, actually, if I could carve a bit of time out in the middle of the week, that would make a difference. So I just asked quite tentatively. And three weeks later, I had my first Wednesday afternoon off. It was amazing. There was no pushback. Everyone in the department and the broader firm were just very supportive. And it's just something I'm massively grateful for, because people say, oh, that must have been fairly remarkable in 2005. I mean, there were very few people. Certainly men working on flexible arrangements. But it didn't feel like I was having to be particularly brave at the time or anything like that. And I think that's a real tribute to the culture at Simmons that I kind of had the confidence to ask. What's the kind of lesson there? I guess it is one about just sometimes asking. I've had so many men over the years say to me that they would love to do this arrangement, that they're quite envious. Because look, we work in a profession where everyone is trying to super well paid. And what we're all short of is time. So yeah, it's been amazing from my perspective. But what people talk about is a real worry that they're going to be seen as lacking in commitment. Totally. Yeah, I mean, is that something that the firm encourages firm-wide, flexible arrangements and the like? Is this part of the gig? Yeah, what we want is the best people. We want the best people. And I think to have the best talent, you have to be able to offer arrangements that work for people. I think, I mean, the pandemic was terrible, wasn't it? But I think one of the good things that came out of it was a recognition that doesn't always matter where someone is working from. And I think that's been really helpful. So yeah, we have a lot of people across the firm on all sorts of different arrangements who all work, incredibly hard, very committed to delivering an accent service for their clients, but just doing it in slightly different ways. I had an American client several years ago where I wanted to put someone new on the team, and she worked four days a week. And he said, no, sorry, Julian, that won't work. This is a really intense environment. I need someone full time. And I said, look, she's brilliant. Will you just try it? So put it on the account. And about nine months later, there was a suggestion that she'd go on to comment to another client and be out for six months. He went absolutely ballistic. He said, don't you dare move her off my work. And he just realized how fantastic she was. And ultimately, that's what clients want. They want brilliant professionals working on their account. And he got the fact-- I think it was Monday that she didn't work. If there was an emergency, she'd make herself available. But he was getting an amazing service from her. And by having those sorts of arrangements, we've been able to keep brilliant people that I know are not cut by many other firms. And often, we've succeeded in attracting talent from elsewhere, where those sorts of arrangements aren't available. It was really important to me when I was standing to be seeing your partners. There was some people suggesting that I would want to move to 100% arrangement. And I said, no, I think it's really important to send a message. I've been happily pretty successful doing this for the last 16 years. Why can't I do this job on the same arrangement? So talking about talent, then, what have you made? It seems like a sort of annual thing currently where junior pay rises across the city, driven definitely by the US firms setting the benchmarks. How do you think about that and what's kind of sim and strategy? So I think the pay of newly qualified lawyers in some parts of the industry is crazy. I think it's too much. When you're paying those sorts of levels for people who have just gone through their training contract, aren't really able to deliver that much value to clients at that stage. You're paying them four times what a teacher is paid. More than a hospital consultant is paid. I just don't think it makes sense. And it drives clients absolutely mad. I hear a lot of really strong feedback from clients about how frustrated it makes them because it does a few things. I mean, those firms paying at those sorts of levels, they're trying to feed that through into the pricing. But it also distorts the talent market and the pay levels for clients. Because there's clearly a strong link between what's being paid in private practice and what you pay in a house. So yeah, I think it's regrettable that it's kind of played out in that way. Is it something, though? I suppose any serious firm like Simon's, you do have to respond ultimately and remain competitive. Look, these are kind of incredibly talented people who should be really well paid. And that's how we see it. And I think it's really important that you are competitive in the market. But I don't think that means you need to be sort of matching every sort of pay level out there. And there's another consequence of all of this that when you're paying at those sorts of levels, you're requiring in return an incredibly intense level of commitment. So our people are trainees, our junior lawyers. They all work very, very hard by any sort of normal standards. But we also want them to have a life as well. We don't want, for them, the only thing they do be to sleep and work. So anyone coming into the industry knows that it's a challenging industry that there are high levels of commitment. But I think there needs to be some degree-- or certainly at Simons, we feel strongly that there needs to be some degree of balance as well within all that. You've been in the game a long time. What have you made of the rise of the US firms in London? So I think it's, in many ways, we should be pleased. that US firms see London as such an attractive market and I think it's you know it's good for London that they've invested so heavily you know brought great people over that you know often that is linked to the growth of US organizations in in the UK so generally it's it's great for our economy it's obviously created some challenges there are there are some firms who've lost a lot of people to US firms and that's you know that's been tough it's had the impact on pay levels that we've talked about I think one of the trends we've seen is that this big sort of intense drive profitability among some of these firms means that they become much narrower in their focus so if you are shooting for those you know pet levels of you know five six seven million dollars per partner it's actually a relatively limited amount of work within the market that will sustain profitability at that low those levels you know maybe it's the private equity work big class actions that sort of thing and as some of the some of the other you know big non-US firms have tried to kind of play catch up they've also been knowing their focus in a similar direction and that's that's created gaps in the market and and that's been quite fruitful for us I guess there is a worry about a kind of concentration risk isn't there and it seems like as you say you know that very profitable work it is very kind of private capital client dominated isn't there and you've seen that that's where all of the investment is going for for these kind of firms so so how is it you know as you say I guess it gives a firm like Simmons just more work that they know are no longer interested in yeah I think that's right and I think the feedback I hear from from quite a lot of our clients is that there are quite a lot of firms now that are that they're interested in the big ticket work but they're not really interested in kind of investing in the relationship in the same way that they would have done in the past and being there as a sort of a day-to-day partner with with the client you know they want the big super big thing that comes along you know once every six months 12 months and for us you know relationships are the sort of core to what we do and we're very keen to be kind of partnering with our clients and you know along this full life cycle of what they do so I think that's been an interesting development as well okay I'm last one for you then then Julian so so your second term as senior partner I think runs until 2027 so a couple more years left what do you hope to have achieved during your your time as senior partner at Simmons we all always think about first and foremost is what is it we're doing to support our clients and I think I know we've talked about it a lot but I think over the next kind of couple of years AI is the big story so I think I think continuing our investment with AI but also and I think we've kind of touched on this haven't we all over you know AI is just too much about the people as it is about the tech you know and helping to kind of support our people in developing their stills around that I think is really important so I'm quite excited about where we can get to in the next in the next kind of couple of years but a key part of all of that you know clients what clients want more than anything else and then we've talked about this they want brilliant people working on their on their accounts and that's you know the reason I've been at Simmons for so long the reason I joined in the in the first place is just the brilliant colleagues that that I have here so helping to sort of grow develop bring more people on who kind of you know are really aligned with that culture I think I think that's a big kind of target for the next kind of couple of years because it's you know you've been asking this in the questions it's it's an interesting market isn't in terms of the amount of kind of money washing around and some of those dynamics that we're seeing I think we're just really confident about proposition we have both for our clients and for our people as to why you know we're maybe a slightly different place to forge your career fantastic okay thanks so much for coming on Julian and Greg thanks very much