Meet the innovators: Global Head of M&A Bill Curtin on how cross-border M&A requires creative solutions and original lawyering

We start with the mindset that law firms and lawyers are not fungible. We believe our M&A Group supports clients on their transactions in a manner that is different and distinguishing. While we share a set of baseline principles across our team, we also encourage each member of our team to enunciate their individual perspectives and strengths. We foster a horizontal culture across our lawyers, creating space for each team member to express themselves with confidence and setting an expectation for each to contribute to the forward progress of a transaction and of our practice.

We set an expectation for each of our lawyers, from the most junior to the most senior, to develop a vision around how to optimize their role as part of our M&A team. By embracing this expectation, and entering the arena, each and every member of our team assumes responsibility, identifies opportunities, and embraces accountability for whatever task or workstream they select – and each of our lawyers develops a greater discernment for the type of lawyer they wish to become.

The best lawyers never stop thinking about a client’s objectives – the client’s objectives become our objectives. We take on the responsibility and we do not let it go until we have found a way to solve the problem.

M&A is, by its very nature, extraordinary. Transactions are tools to accomplish outcomes that cannot be realized by our clients in the ordinary course – or at least cannot be realized with sufficient speed. For our clients, their M&A transactions become their “Olympic moments.” They are high consequence, high visibility, and high risk-reward events. Within that frame, our M&A lawyers need to be at their innovative best in order to meet our clients’ most important moments.

These types of transactions present challenging circumstances, unpredictable dynamics, and what can seem to be daunting undertakings. Consequently, complex, cross-border, private deals stand out because they illuminate the best in our people, giving rise to the most remarkable relationships, friendships, and loyalties. We meet these challenges with our best, and we become better from them.

Market shaping transactions can also reveal extraordinary levels of professionalism: a German lawyer negotiating an earn-out covenant in English as a second language; a colleague from Beijing joining a drafting session in the middle of their night, with enthusiasm; a subject matter expert intervening for a narrow, but disproportionately determinative, aspect of a transaction. Our people always seem to rise to meet the moment in the most remarkable ways.

AI and legal tech are here to stay. They will reposition us, but they will not replace us. I see this next frontier in two dimensions.

First, M&A lawyers should embrace the AI boom. There are so many ways, some already known, some still to be discovered, where AI and legal tech will improve the effectiveness and efficiency of legal services. These improvements are to be welcomed, integrated, and proliferated.

Second, while technology will facilitate and expedite certain aspects of a transaction, M&A is not susceptible to becoming implemented in an automated or template-framed manner. Clients can find, and they deserve to receive, value through the judgment, wisdom, and expertise of their advocates.

The ability to bring about complex transactions will be facilitated by AI and legal tech but will continue to be forged by the most skilled and trusted advisors.

Our clients stand at the vanguard of change, enjoying pride of place to drive innovation. They select their advisors and can set the standard. By guiding how they want us to work – integrating legal tech, testing new structures, encouraging us to be visionaries – our clients push the market forward. That agency makes our clients the primary movers in how transactions are brought to life, with the very special opportunity to lead change. As professional service providers, we respond by finding novel ways to deliver that change – and then some.