E189 Nathan Curtis & Ben Stansfield: What Makes A Great Lawyer?

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It it wasn't my list of things to discuss, but um did you see that they shortened a stage of the Tour de France for the first time ever yesterday?
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Because the weather is that bad.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Yeah.
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So that's the new norm.
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Because people keep talking about it being the hottest June, July.
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It's not it's the coldest June or July that our kids will experience.
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And if you start reframing it, the hottest sounds like a freak event.
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It's not gonna happen again.
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But when it's one of the cooler Julys, it's like, okay, this is normal.
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Yeah, when you're in that stage where like every year it's the hottest one.
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Yeah, yeah.
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It's not in 1976.
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Yeah, it's like the um guy who does the high jump, uh pulver, right?
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And every he's the Swedish American guy.
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Yeah.
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And every event he goes to he beats it by a centimetre because he's on a bonus to get.
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Yeah.
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And so you think you so I have no idea what the actual limit of human expertise is in that, because he's clearly got loads more in the tank.
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Yeah.
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So I I pick I've had this book on my bookshelf, and whenever there's a heat wave, I read a chapter of it because it's um it's called Warming Up How Climate Change is Changing Sport by Madeline Orr.
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So this is the book, I'm into it at the moment.
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So I picked it up and read it on the train again this morning, and I'm gonna write a piece on the back of this because you've got a World Cup that's now punctuated by hydration breaks that is statistically changing how the game's working because your fitness requirements are changing, because rather than it being 50 minutes unbroken, pretty much, you've now got quarters, so almost it's adopting more of an American football style time and structure and hydration like type thing.
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You've got um they'd had uh temperature stops in the US Open tennis before, where if it breaks a certain number, they're just not allowed to play.
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You've now got it hitting the Tour de France, which they almost kind of glamorise that heat in preview.
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Like it was like these guys can survive this and now being meant to be a suffer fest.
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Yeah, yeah, whereas now they're open about heat injuries and things.
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And my hope is that sport is often a vehicle for people realizing things.
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And you know, look at I mean this is a delicate one to tread on, but there's an argument that South Africa apartheid ending, South Africa hosting the World Cup helped on racial grounds and issues on a rugby perspective.
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Maybe sport can be a vehicle for change for people seeing the impact of climate change here because otherwise it's just happening to other people at the other side of the world, whereas actually this brings it onto people's TV screens and into the houses.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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I mean, that's quite a topical point, isn't it, given that um yesterday the government announced it was going to pass the Hillsborough legislation for account accountability in all public inquiries.
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Not so that's not a sport thing, that's not a sport change in law.
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It's a it's a change in law across the entire anyone that works in the public sector in the UK, but it's come from Hillsborough.
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So that that ability for sport to really make massive change is I yeah, I don't think you can underestimate it.
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It's huge.
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Sport and law give us a way in.
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Gentlemen, thank you for coming.
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We should probably tell people who you are and what you do.
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Um I'm Nath Curtis, I'm a partner at James Day, and I'm an infrastructure finance lawyer.
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Thank you very much.
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And I'm Ben Stansfield, I'm a partner at Gowling WLG, and I am a planning and environmental lawyer.
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How did you two first meet?
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I remember it actually, but I don't know if you do.
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But I'm I feel I'm giving away too much if I if I admit that.
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You're gonna tell the official story or the uh Yeah.
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So uh so we were uh junior lawyers at Clifford Chance, one of the big firms in London, and I was doing a lot of energy consenting work.
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Uh I think you had just come back from Sao Paulo.
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Yeah, that would be right.
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And we both did a lot of work for a guy called Jeremy Cronick, who's a sort of a really impressive commercial projects guy.
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And I've been working with him while you're away, and then you came back and Jeremy said, Oh, you've got to go meet Nate, he's he's he's he's great, you're gonna get on like a house and fire.
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So we went for a coffee on the fourth floor in the yellow budgie.
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And was that the beginning of the beautiful relationship?
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Yeah, if only I just had a call that just went on a little bit longer, I was a bit late.
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But yeah, it was good.
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So that'd been what 20 it was just when I got back from Sao Paulo 2006, yeah.
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Yeah.
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20 years.
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20 years.
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So you know, that was that was kind of just when that very beginning, wasn't it, of the UK renewable energy industry.
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Yep.
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And we brought different skill sets to to those kind of deals, right?
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So we ended up working working together a lot.
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Yeah, and they were often first, weren't they?
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So sort of big uh complex offshore wind investments from overseas investors, or it was a financing that I didn't understand, but I understood the underlying assets, or it was so we did what wind, energy, waste of energy, um solar, rooftop, solar ground mounted, all those different industries, and you kind of you can see how we ended up where we did because we learned all the lessons uh back in the day.
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When did anything that might reflect natural capital first get mentioned to either of you?
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When do you remember it being like, oh, that's getting talked about?
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I mean, I think that's a really recent development, really.
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I mean, you could you could probably at a real stretch kind of think about some of the early carbon deals.
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I remember, I don't know whether you're involved in this, but there was a peatland restoration project in Africa.
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Right.
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Um in tw uh that would have been 2014 or 15 or something.
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I don't think it ever actually got off the ground.
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Um but that was a very sort of isolated case.
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This as a kind of a sector, um, yeah, as an industry for me, that was it was maybe four years ago.
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Yes.
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Uh there have been threads throughout my career, so doing things like you know, protected species, some some nutrient stuff, some habitats, regs.
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So some of that sort of nature type improvements in restoration has been there.
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And yeah, some of the early emissions trading stuff where the projects were on the other side of the world and the monitoring and the land ownership and everything was all a bit uncertain.
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Uh, but I think it's three to four years ago where it just exploded and became a real thing.
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I mean, I think the catalyst was the BNG legislation in the environment act.
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Yep.
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Right.
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For us.
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That was when we really started kind of doing funded structured deals that that were actually kind of a whole thing rather than sort of pockets of advisory advice.
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Yeah, when before it used to be in order to get planning, what do I need to do?
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Yeah, I need to do some kind of net gain, but it's all a bit uh flexible.
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There weren't the rules, there weren't the registers, the metrics, all that kind of stuff.
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It was a report written by a consultant, you get planning, great.
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But it it became a thing when uh Peter um Peter Backman at uh at Gresham House went into the environment bank, I think.
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Yeah, yeah, I think that's right.
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Yeah, in terms of the sort of the overall transaction piece, I think that was the yeah.
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I think I think Peter and Ruth making that big splash, it it became a real thing rather than woke sort of lefty vegan idea.
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And when when that first came into the practice, was it something you grabbed for, or was it something that was like put towards you two and you're like, we've got to deal with this now?
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Was it a pull or a push?
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What was the relationship with like I mean I I think the way you get into any new market is you follow your clients, right?
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So, you know, Ruth Murray at Gresham is someone that I've known for a very long time.
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She started off as a projects lawyer, she was a partner um working on projects work uh in a law firm before she joined Gresham.
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And um, you know, you your your clients kind of want when they're going into a new sector, they still want familiarity with their lawyers.
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And I think she recognized that a lot of the same principles that underpin any kind of infrastructure work are there in the natural capital sector.
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You know, you're talking about actually what what's the revenue, right?
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How is that structured?
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How can I kind of use that to underpin the capital that I'm putting into the top of the project?
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How do I go about designing my contracts?
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You know, so whether whether it's my lease or my land management agreement or my route to market for the credits, how do we make those contracts look normal from the perspective of stuff that people have banked in other sectors before?
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Um, so so I think yeah, a big part of it was actually clients coming to us and saying, we really like the work that you've done in other sectors.
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You've kind of proven yourself there.
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Um, let's work on this thing together.
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And we know there's no handle you can crank to you know spew out the same documents you did last week.
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This is going to be bespoke stuff, this is gonna need innovation and some kind of intellectual IP going into it.
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Um, but we'll work it out together, and I think that's that's kind of really where it came from.
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Because four years ago there was nothing, right?
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Yeah when when it landed, there were no contracts, there were no documents, you had to build everything from scratch.
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I mean, the first thing that we did, I mean, the the the BNG legislation and the Environment Act was still a bill at the time, right?
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It hadn't been enacted.
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So the first thing we did was was say to ourselves, um, what's the sort of fundamental underpinning this?
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And we had to go and kind of look up the the the bill as it was at the at the time because it wasn't something that we'd heard people really talking about from a investment perspective.
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Um so we really were kind of starting from scratch.
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Yeah.
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Create sort of framework, doesn't it?
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It doesn't give you any of the back-end stuff of how you go to market and what the sales contracts look like, what the finance stuff looks like.
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And I I remember, you know, the early meetings were, you know, you had a finance lawyer, a commercial lawyer, a real estate lawyer, me on the sort of regulatory type side, and understanding how it looked at the back end in terms of what developers needed to get, and it was just working out who the parties were and where the arrows between the different people were, and there was no responsible bodies.
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And did anyone was anyone going to step forward and become a responsible body and all these kind of variables?
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Um but this is the thing, isn't it, right?
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Like this is what we've done our whole careers.
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When we started off doing, you know, we did the first round three offshore wind farm to be project financed, right?
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Which was a bit a big project off the east coast of England called Gallop.
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Nobody'd financed an offshore wind project before, and a lot of the principles for that actually kind of slightly bizarrely or counterintuitively at least were sort of borrowed from the finance work we'd done in oil and gas.
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Right.
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And then when we were spinning that offshore wind experience into battery storage, for example, no one had done battery storage, and again, you're sort of taking the principles from something else and you're applying them to the new thing in front of you with the right adjustments to make it work because all these things are different, but they have some of the same principles underlying them.
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And exactly the same with with nature, right?
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We took the principles that we'd learned on some of these um earlier projects, tweaked them for the sector.
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Tweak is probably slightly underplaying it, but you know what I mean, um, and solved for that new thing, but adopting principles that are long established in these markets.
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Which is why I mean we know that the B and G legislation's been constantly tinkered with, and I I'm not relaxed about it, but we saw that with offshore wind.
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We saw that I remember you know German investors buying into uh an offshore wind farm, and the government were constantly tweaking the rock awards.
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So, you know, you uh the suppliers were under an obligation to buy renewable obligation certificates, generators could create these rocks, um, and it was one rock per megawatt, and then offshore wind became sort of 1.5, or if you put some online, it became two.
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And the conversations we were constantly having with clients about this is the rock, or this is how yes, there's all sorts of regulatory uncertainty, but these are the principles as to how English law deals with projects and finance and non-retroactivity of legislation.
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Um and you see it again, and I'm fine with it because it means that there's all this tinkering and fine-tuning, because it means that you can go from one or two wind turbines in the sea to 3,000.
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And if you don't tweak the legislation, the investors, the funders don't come.
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So all that, I think if you if you're involved in offshore wind, you see nature and natural capital in a different way.
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What are the what are the reasons why that was continuously tweed?
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What were the drivers that was making government and uh the civil service adjust those things?
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So when it was one rot per megawatt, that just wasn't enough to cover the cost.
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It wasn't enough to get the investors and the financiers involved.
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Um, and then when it became oversubsidized, you've got to adjust it back down so that the return looks sensible and then you're not gifting uh an industry way too much subsidy.
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I mean and and you saw it even more obviously with uh rooftop solarite, where it just exploded and it went the you know, the feed-in tariffs went from a ridiculously high number, but necessary to get it going, and then sort of fell off the cliff.
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That was something that came up so often in London Climate Week this year.
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All the conversation had been about regulation being stopping people to do things, and it had probably been 18 months since I'd heard anyone talk about potentially throwing a carrot into the mix rather than just a stick.
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And it was Martin Berg at an event we did, he's like, if the government wants this to go faster, they could just incentivize it a little bit more.
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And I was like, Oh yeah, I forgot they had that tool at their disposal as well.
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You know, they could ramp up, they could subsidize, they could make it easier for people to pay for carbon credits or nature credits or whatever they wanted to do if they wanted that to be a thing.
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So you forget there are two sides to the regulation equation.
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We're seeing that, aren't we, with uh sustainable aviation fuel, right?
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Where the debate is, do you mandate the airlines to have to start switching to SAF or do you incentivize them through your subsidy?
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Or actually do you do both?
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Um, and with you know with BNG, it's uh it's a mandatory compliance regime, right?
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Actually, the onus is on developers, yeah, in order to get planning to to evidence that they've invested in in biodiversity, you know, in rewilding, whatever whatever you want to call it.
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And there is just on that though, it was your point earlier.
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Every senior development, so every C-suite person I spoke to, uh a house developer specifically, they're like, oh no no, we like BNG because people forget what they were faced with before was they had to do something, no one would tell them what it was.
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It would be different in every geography, in every local authority.
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So they couldn't even plan for it or model it.
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Now they know they know what that cost is going to be, and actually, where they do it well.
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So Neil um at Bellway Homes speaks about this beautifully.
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Where we do this well, it helps us sell houses.
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People want to buy houses in a place that functions better, looks better, is a better environment.
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So actually, people often think the developers don't want it.
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Broadly, they're happy with it, they just like some certainty of the requirements.
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And maybe, yeah, and and maybe that's a slightly unintentional effect of the legislation.
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Who who knows?
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Right.
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But but but I think to your point around actually the fastest way to grow a market is to subsidize it is an interesting one.
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That definitely is what happened with with renewable energy.
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But but actually, you know, a certain way into the kind of development curve of that industry, we switched from a pure subsidy under the ROC regime to uh you know to a contract for difference where which is like a hedge, right?
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So actually, if you're a renewable energy developer and you make too much money, you have to start paying that back to government.
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So something structured along those lines for nature, where you're giving the market certainty as to the kind of baseline pricing, but you're also saying to the market, if you get a windfall from this, actually you've got to start paying some of that back.
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So there's kind of a fair allocation of risk and reward as between the public and private sectors.
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That's you know, that's a proven mechanism that that's investable.
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And I think that's something that you know if if this were high enough up, the government agenda would be something really worth looking at.
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So if you're a nature minister, that's the new regime.
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I mean, like I'm just making the point that that's a proven way of yeah, you could do you could do that.
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It does.
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I I just I'm just saying I entirely agree with the point that compulsion is not the only tool.
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I mean, we talk we talked last week a lot about different kinds of kind of government intervention that you could have around some of this stuff.
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And we do need to remember that compulsion is not the only tool that that that some sort of incentive is is also you know available as well, alongside of other things too.
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I think about the sort of speed of nature rollout, and you because you see it with AI, and I think nature and AI have got all sorts of interesting parallels, right?
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And you see AI just going crazy fast, and people go, ooh, slow, you know, is this is this overtaking us?
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Do we need to slow down?
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Is this causing a risk?
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But if you speed up nature, what's the worst that happens?
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I mean, yeah, it it it it it it feels like you know, if you speed up nature, you get redemption.
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If you if you speed up AI, you get risk.
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So yeah, the more you speed up AI, the more you need to speed up nature, right?
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To offset all the damage that you're causing.
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So um, yeah, no, I think there's definitely something in that.
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Yeah.
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You've you've taken us there.
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Um, how would you articulate your position on the spectrum between being AI optimists and pessimists in terms of the whole thing AIs bring into the world?
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I I think I'm I'm too old and too unqualified to know.
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So I use AI quite a bit, but I probably I don't scratch the surface of it.
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I bring that to life for people.
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What do you mean when you say you use it quite a bit?
00:18:28.480 --> 00:18:37.039
So I will use Copilot to scrape through my 20,000 emails in the inbox and put together my s my schedules when I'm traveling and meetings and what have you.
00:18:37.279 --> 00:18:44.240
I use uh other AI tools to and actually and actually biodiversity net game is a really good example.
00:18:44.559 --> 00:18:48.240
We have 10 habitat banks we deal with a lot.
00:18:48.319 --> 00:18:55.599
We know what we're doing with those, but you still get a habitat bank with a contract you've never seen before because it's a a landowner going into the first time.
00:18:55.759 --> 00:19:03.759
So you've got a nice little vault with your 10 contracts you're very happy with, and you throw the new one in and say, How does this stack up against the others?
00:19:03.920 --> 00:19:09.599
and you get a pretty good first draft terms of issues list, which you can talk to your clients about.
00:19:09.680 --> 00:19:11.200
So you can speed up the basic stuff.
00:19:11.279 --> 00:19:12.319
I'm sure it can do way more.
00:19:12.400 --> 00:19:20.799
I'm sure Nate's uh a genius at it being younger and cooler than me, but I'm not gonna argue with that.
00:19:21.039 --> 00:19:22.480
I am younger and cooler.
00:19:23.519 --> 00:19:25.839
How how much is it impacting your day-to-day?
00:19:26.079 --> 00:19:29.599
So look, you got I think we need to be as a profession, right?
00:19:29.759 --> 00:19:34.799
If we're just talking narrowly about AI in the legal profession, we need we need to be quite careful.
00:19:34.960 --> 00:19:41.599
If the legal market's view of AI is this is great because it's gonna save me money, that's the wrong perspective.
00:19:41.839 --> 00:19:49.599
The right perspective is this is great because it enables us to provide a better service to our clients in a more efficient way.
00:19:49.920 --> 00:20:01.200
And thinking about it through the lens of how do we use this to be better, to be more skilled, to be more professional, to offer more, rather than how do we use this to save lawyer time?
00:20:01.519 --> 00:20:02.240
Yeah, no, totally.
00:20:02.319 --> 00:20:04.400
But and the best lawyers are bumblebees, right?
00:20:04.799 --> 00:20:11.920
So an in-house lawyer is a bumblebee because they go from sales to accounts to the supply chains, the CEO.
00:20:12.079 --> 00:20:16.400
They're constantly going around the business, gathering information and passing it on.
00:20:16.480 --> 00:20:28.880
And the best lawyers in private practice are bumblebees because we go from sector to sector as we've done with nature and in renewables, and taking the structures and the best bit or the best practice and and bringing it into a new sector.
00:20:29.440 --> 00:20:31.519
And I don't think AI can do that.
00:20:31.839 --> 00:20:38.960
I think the the the the beauty of of you know good legal service is that human touch, right?
00:20:39.200 --> 00:20:39.440
Yeah.
00:20:40.079 --> 00:20:43.119
At the moment it doesn't it doesn't understand nuance.
00:20:43.359 --> 00:20:43.519
Yeah.
00:20:43.839 --> 00:20:47.519
And a huge part of what we do is nuance and subtlety.
00:20:48.240 --> 00:21:04.160
Yeah, and I mean, you know, you're you're a client, I'm not, but my um expectation is you want to hear, yeah, Rich, this is the right thing to do from a human who's seen it before and done it before, not just a computer saying unbalanced probabilities or based on something I've read on the internet, that's probably fine.
00:21:04.559 --> 00:21:15.680
So I think I think that human analysis, that sort of metaphorical hand holding and saying, Yeah, no, this this this is the way forward.
00:21:15.920 --> 00:21:17.599
I d I don't think that gets lost.
00:21:19.039 --> 00:21:24.079
But I guess the opportunities for junior always are going to be smaller, thinner.
00:21:24.720 --> 00:21:26.640
Is that real or is that a fear?
00:21:26.880 --> 00:21:32.319
Like have you seen that yet, that it is affecting the number of junior opportunities, or is that a narrative?
00:21:33.039 --> 00:21:36.640
I've not seen it yet, but it feels like it could be credible.
00:21:37.039 --> 00:21:41.839
I mean, in the professional services sector more widely, it it's definitely real.
00:21:42.079 --> 00:21:50.400
Like you're seeing I I I don't know whether it's all of the big four, but certainly some of them have really scaled back graduate recruitment.
00:21:50.960 --> 00:21:53.359
And why is that a problem?
00:21:53.920 --> 00:21:59.759
Because the senior people of tomorrow are the graduate recruitees of today.
00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:00.880
They right.
00:22:01.039 --> 00:22:12.079
So the fewer graduates you're putting into the system, the less chance you're going to have of really high-quality leaders being there in 10, 15 years' time.
00:22:12.240 --> 00:22:12.400
Yeah.
00:22:12.640 --> 00:22:13.920
So that does worry me a bit.
00:22:14.480 --> 00:22:15.119
You're right.
00:22:15.279 --> 00:22:24.480
But then if you think back to when we were junior lawyers, the senior people then, who've now retired, grew up doing leases, licenses, more less sophisticated stuff.
00:22:24.720 --> 00:22:29.279
And they they developed from that into something pretty amazing.
00:22:29.519 --> 00:22:33.359
We learnt from them and we kind of went in at quite complex work.
00:22:33.759 --> 00:22:38.480
Um and similarly have developed into something pretty amazing in your case.
00:22:39.839 --> 00:22:40.799
And this is unusual.
00:22:40.880 --> 00:22:42.319
Is this a Tracy Style episode?
00:22:42.640 --> 00:22:42.880
Oh yeah.
00:22:44.319 --> 00:22:46.160
Put a TV camera on him and he suddenly misses chart.
00:22:46.480 --> 00:22:46.960
I'm trying to be humble.
00:22:48.640 --> 00:22:56.480
But you have to assume that the junior lawyers of today and tomorrow will be similarly equipped to sort of make their mark.
00:22:56.559 --> 00:23:02.640
I mean, yeah, there might not be as many, but I I don't think AI prevents them developing into phenomenal lawyers.
00:23:03.200 --> 00:23:07.759
I think the thing is that it's the law firms that are gonna own the AI, right?
00:23:07.920 --> 00:23:08.720
Not the clients.
00:23:08.880 --> 00:23:10.480
And yeah, what do I mean by that?
00:23:11.680 --> 00:23:16.880
Why do people why did why do we not do our own conveyancing, right, when we buy a house?
00:23:17.119 --> 00:23:22.480
One, we'd be terrible at it, but two, ultimately you need to have someone to sue, right?
00:23:22.799 --> 00:23:27.039
You're not gonna sue Chat GPT if it gets it wrong.
00:23:27.359 --> 00:23:42.079
So so I was I was very fortunate to be at an event um top of Salesforce Tower in San Francisco Climate Week, and Anthropic were hosting a head of US for Anthropic was hosting like a masterclass with Salesforce 20 startups for this year, undles.
00:23:42.240 --> 00:23:44.480
We we were just there as guests, it it was amazing.
00:23:44.640 --> 00:23:53.599
And and they were talking about how one of the narratives was uh all these pop-up AI-led law firms are gonna be bad for the number of lawyers.
00:23:53.839 --> 00:24:12.960
And that I think I think they quoted the head of uh the head legal professor at like Berkeley at Cal saying, no, no, this will be the biggest growth in lawyers we've ever seen because the amount of bad legal paperwork that'll be out there now, there there is like an unlimited printing press for bad legal advice.
00:24:13.119 --> 00:24:14.559
Someone's gonna have to clean up the mess.
00:24:14.720 --> 00:24:17.839
And he's like, it's the greatest thing that could happen for lawyers ever.
00:24:18.240 --> 00:24:22.880
And the whole room went, oh yeah, that realization of that secondary order impact of it.
00:24:23.119 --> 00:24:29.599
There was a I think a professor of economics at Cambridge, he was talking on a course I was at recently, and he was saying something similar.
00:24:29.759 --> 00:24:48.079
He was also saying that if it slightly brings down that sort of barrier to entry to professional legal services, all it's gonna do is grow the market because suddenly, you know, more companies, more people will be able to actually access um you know kind of higher-end legal services, it's just gonna grow the market.
00:24:48.240 --> 00:24:54.559
Yeah, I had a qu a client ask me a couple of weeks ago actually, look, you know, if we if we got some legal tools, could we start using it?
00:24:54.799 --> 00:24:58.880
Would it help you if we did a first draft of the contract that we want to enter into?
00:24:58.960 --> 00:25:00.559
And I was like, it it really wouldn't.
00:25:00.640 --> 00:25:07.119
But if you used your heads of terms and put that in and you know, flesh out your heads of terms with some different ideas, that would be useful.
00:25:07.359 --> 00:25:18.079
You know, give the more the better the input, the better we'll be able to craft something in terms of the contract and and understand what market looks like, what does the other side's gonna want, all that kind of stuff.
00:25:18.319 --> 00:25:30.400
So spend time thinking about your ideas and and and what structures you might want and what remedies and liabilities, but uh and make sure that's full rather than just two three points on the back of a fact packet.
00:25:31.440 --> 00:25:39.680
When when you both were junior lawyers and you first met, was it always in your mind I want to be a partner at some point?
00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:43.599
And is that true of every junior lawyer when they come in, they're like, that's where I want to get to?
00:25:45.200 --> 00:25:52.400
I I think um that's that's probably true of the majority of people that started in this profession when we did.
00:25:52.480 --> 00:25:52.640
Yeah.
00:25:53.119 --> 00:25:58.559
Most people felt like they were in for the long haul and behaved accordingly.
00:25:58.799 --> 00:26:05.200
I think these days people are a bit more flexible in their mindsets about what they want to do.
00:26:06.079 --> 00:26:12.079
I don't see that kind of um that I have to be a partner ambition as often now, I don't think, as I used to.
00:26:12.240 --> 00:26:15.279
I don't know, no, I think and I think it's a longer journey, right?
00:26:15.759 --> 00:26:16.000
For sure.
00:26:16.160 --> 00:26:23.519
It's yeah, you know, harder 20 odd years ago, it was yeah, I got made up at nine years, nine and a half.
00:26:24.079 --> 00:26:26.000
Um that would be quite early now.
00:26:26.240 --> 00:26:29.599
And so I think What would your expectation be at the time when you came in?
00:26:29.759 --> 00:26:31.680
Were you thinking this is a nine, ten-year thing?
00:26:32.319 --> 00:26:40.799
So I I worked with uh a guy called Nigel Howard, he's now Global Head of Environment CC, uh, and I think he did it seven, seven and a half.
00:26:40.880 --> 00:26:50.000
I mean he he was brilliant, um but I think that seven to eight was the the norm, so I thought maybe that plus a bit extra.
00:26:50.720 --> 00:26:59.920
I think when we were kind of mid-level lawyers, it felt like that timetable was getting pushback a year every two years or or something like that.
00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:02.720
It always did seem to be getting stretched.
00:27:02.960 --> 00:27:08.640
And I think you know, one of my faults was I didn't enjoy the journey enough because you're like, that's the goal, that's where I want to keep going.
00:27:08.720 --> 00:27:12.319
And I think people these days are a little bit more like, well, I'd like it to happen.
00:27:12.880 --> 00:27:15.200
It i i i on my terms.
00:27:15.440 --> 00:27:23.039
Um and in the meantime, I'm just gonna focus on doing really interesting stuff for the right clients, really understanding a sector.
00:27:23.200 --> 00:27:23.440
Yeah.
00:27:23.599 --> 00:27:28.559
Um so when you entered, what did you think it would take to get to partner level?
00:27:28.880 --> 00:27:30.880
And what did you realise it did take?
00:27:33.119 --> 00:27:37.599
See, I think I had it easier than a transactional guy, right?
00:27:37.759 --> 00:27:41.200
Because I would work regularly till sort of eight or nine.
00:27:41.279 --> 00:27:46.960
I do one late night a week till midnight or one, two, to get all my admin done and catch up on the loose ends.
00:27:48.079 --> 00:27:49.279
It never worked Saturday.
00:27:50.480 --> 00:27:55.839
Very rarely will work Saturday, didn't really work Sundays, and I turned my computer on at six, and I I've kept that going.
00:27:55.920 --> 00:28:07.759
So I don't think I would have made the sacrifices that an MA lawyer or a finance lawyer would have been up against because my bit on nay steals would probably be a bit more on the structuring.
00:28:07.839 --> 00:28:15.440
This is how the regulation works, here's my schedule, here's my two or three key clauses, and then they'd be in the meeting rooms till six a.m.
00:28:16.079 --> 00:28:16.640
doing the dish.
00:28:16.880 --> 00:28:20.160
So even under your context, that's a 60-hour week?
00:28:22.240 --> 00:28:24.400
I think it's probably a little bit more than that.
00:28:24.720 --> 00:28:25.839
Okay, for a decade.
00:28:26.240 --> 00:28:26.640
Yeah.
00:28:26.880 --> 00:28:29.279
And and your definition of that is you had it easy.
00:28:29.519 --> 00:28:31.599
I think that's but like are you.
00:28:33.440 --> 00:28:35.920
I don't think your profession talks about it anywhere near enough.
00:28:36.079 --> 00:28:40.000
So prior to this chapter at OC and literally seeing how you guys work.
00:28:40.240 --> 00:28:44.240
So so we were uh we were in a uh Clifford Chancellor's offices for our book launch.
00:28:44.319 --> 00:28:45.519
Thanks very much, appreciate you.
00:28:45.680 --> 00:28:53.200
Uh we finished up that book launch like nine o'clock at night, and the food was arriving for the lawyers who weren't leaving until midnight.
00:28:53.440 --> 00:29:00.079
I don't think people who don't work with city law firms have any comprehension that that's what's required.
00:29:00.319 --> 00:29:10.160
Um what was what was your yeah and and look, you know working at Clifford Chance and spending all those years there were was incredible, right, for our careers.
00:29:10.559 --> 00:29:18.559
Um and we had it really was I mean, this is a massive cliche, but it really was that sort of work hard, play hard type culture.
00:29:18.799 --> 00:29:27.359
Um, but the opportunities we had to go and work in other jurisdictions, to learn from incredible people, to travel, you know, it was just you know to build a network.
00:29:27.440 --> 00:29:30.799
It was an amazing, amazing and a privileged experience.
00:29:31.039 --> 00:29:36.400
But you you have to remember as well that actually when we were junior lawyers, this was pre-layman, right?
00:29:36.559 --> 00:29:41.519
Pre-financial crisis, the economy was just going at 100 miles an hour.
00:29:41.680 --> 00:29:53.119
There was so much money everywhere, everyone was a deal junkie, and we didn't have the kind of tools that junior lawyers have now, going back to AI, that actually makes their day-to-day lives easier.
00:29:53.279 --> 00:29:56.160
So a lot of the work was actually quite menial.
00:29:56.319 --> 00:30:06.720
If you were a transactional lawyer, you spent a lot of time, you know, kind of breaking out documents where you needed the same document 50 times in a deal, but you had to change the names.
00:30:06.880 --> 00:30:07.039
Right.
00:30:07.119 --> 00:30:10.319
So it was incredibly uh it was incredibly hard work.
00:30:10.480 --> 00:30:15.119
I think my average week was probably, as kind of you're suggesting, were like 80 or 90.
00:30:15.279 --> 00:30:27.039
I mean, you know, there was a period where um, you know, I I worked so hard, so many kind of nights in a row that I got salmonella poisoning because my immune system was so down.
00:30:27.119 --> 00:30:33.359
And I'll never forget it, it was the weekend of the of the Whitechapel bombings, so the London bombings, right?
00:30:33.519 --> 00:30:37.200
And a lot of the kind of the victims of that have been taken to Whitechapel hospital.
00:30:37.519 --> 00:30:46.880
And I was so poorly that I went in a taxi to Whitechapel and they saw me and they kind of got me through straight away the second I turned up.
00:30:47.039 --> 00:30:49.359
Because I don't think I could even tell them my name.
00:30:49.599 --> 00:30:51.759
I was I was just kind of so ill.
00:30:52.000 --> 00:30:58.079
And um, you know, so you could have moments like that in your career and you think this is probably taking it a little bit too far.
00:30:58.319 --> 00:31:04.559
You had the foresight to get in a cab though, because I felt ill when I was junior and drove myself to Amy at three in the morning.
00:31:04.799 --> 00:31:12.880
I'm not sure I had a car up here, but yeah, time more people than not have a similar story that they've pushed themselves to sort of physical break.
00:31:13.200 --> 00:31:22.160
I mean, I I I could tell you similar stories of a lot of our kind of peers, um, both at uh you know not just at CC but in other magic circumfirms as well.
00:31:22.319 --> 00:31:22.480
Yeah.
00:31:22.559 --> 00:31:31.440
Um it was a it was a pretty looking back, I think it was a pretty brutal pr pr pretty brutal time and a pretty brutal career path as well.
00:31:31.519 --> 00:31:40.000
Um But I don't ever I mean it sounds like lawyer limiting like no one ever's like to me you you must say like you must do this.
00:31:40.160 --> 00:31:49.759
It was just that I want to do the cool, high profile, really interesting first, you know, but like and I don't think that's really changed.
00:31:49.839 --> 00:31:54.240
You just you're just really driven, you want to be doing the good stuff, yeah.
00:31:54.319 --> 00:31:56.400
And once you were in on the deal, you were just all in.
00:31:56.480 --> 00:31:57.839
That's just how people worked, right?
00:31:57.920 --> 00:32:04.720
Yeah, you know, I I remember as a trainee, I I um this was before we had Blackbriefs.
00:32:04.960 --> 00:32:07.279
Uh do you remember wanting to have a Blackbree?
00:32:07.599 --> 00:32:09.759
Like envious of what you wish for, right?
00:32:09.920 --> 00:32:10.480
Yeah, exactly.
00:32:10.799 --> 00:32:14.160
But I remember going home because I thought we'd done we were done for the day.
00:32:14.319 --> 00:32:20.640
And then my supervisor were like ringing me at two in the morning saying you need to come back to the office, some more stuff just come in.
00:32:20.880 --> 00:32:24.960
And yeah, there's a lot of professions where that would be highly unacceptable, yeah, right.
00:32:25.119 --> 00:32:30.400
But as a junior lawyer in the magic circle, yeah, you you were back in the office within 15 minutes.
00:32:30.559 --> 00:32:31.759
So I I had to make some of that.
00:32:31.839 --> 00:32:39.680
I was I was working, I had the next week off, and it was Friday, six o'clock, and my supervisor said, I'm really sorry, but technically you're not on holiday till nine o'clock Monday.
00:32:41.039 --> 00:32:41.759
That's the weekend.
00:32:44.000 --> 00:32:48.400
If if someone has to make you do it, you'll never get there anyway, right?
00:32:48.559 --> 00:32:51.359
You guys wanted to be in the room, you wanted to do those things.
00:32:51.519 --> 00:32:54.720
And and especially at that time, the deals are addictive, right?
00:32:54.880 --> 00:32:55.119
Yeah.
00:32:55.279 --> 00:32:55.839
Yeah, absolutely.
00:32:56.000 --> 00:32:57.359
I mean, you take ownership.
00:32:57.519 --> 00:32:58.559
This is the thing, right?
00:32:58.640 --> 00:33:02.799
Even as a junior lawyer, you just take ownership and you kind of you think of it as your ordeal.
00:33:03.039 --> 00:33:14.480
And actually, like, you know, the partners are flying all over the world doing really interesting work and you know building businesses and stuff, they're not there looking over your shoulder every thing you write down on a on a contract, right?
00:33:14.559 --> 00:33:15.599
They trust you to get on with it.
00:33:15.680 --> 00:33:20.880
So you you you're kind of you're given that autonomy and you and you take it or you or you or you don't.
00:33:20.960 --> 00:33:24.160
And if you don't, then you're not going to be doing many more deals after that, right?
00:33:24.240 --> 00:33:25.519
So it's just the way it works.
00:33:25.680 --> 00:33:30.160
So you both talked about exceptional and brilliant people you met along the way.
00:33:30.480 --> 00:33:35.039
What were the attributes and characteristics that made people brilliant?
00:33:35.119 --> 00:33:40.960
And you can pick whichever ones are popping into your head when you think about those, that next level of performer.
00:33:42.160 --> 00:33:59.680
So I I remember being in a room um with a German partner and there was this really it was on the phone back to the office in Berlin when CC had one, and it was really and he was and then the Indy just went und and hung up.
00:34:00.240 --> 00:34:05.359
And and I use that und all the time now because it was just like he'd received so much data.
00:34:09.039 --> 00:34:09.760
What are you telling?
00:34:09.920 --> 00:34:13.679
So so when I'm looking at memos or advice or drafting, it's like, so what?
00:34:13.920 --> 00:34:18.639
So that that sort of you know plays loudly in my ear.
00:34:18.800 --> 00:34:36.239
But the other thing that's so so when you when you say that point, it it was uh the demeanour, the calmness, the ability to focus on the a what actually is noise here and what signal and clients pay a lot of money for a city lawyer to give them advice.
00:34:36.320 --> 00:34:43.199
And if you're not giving them an answer, if you're saying that might be the answer and that might be the answer, I've s I've shown you the answer.
00:34:43.440 --> 00:34:46.320
One way or the other, I y y y that's no good.
00:34:46.639 --> 00:34:51.199
And it might be really tricky, and you have to say, well, it's probably that one because of XYZ?
00:34:51.679 --> 00:34:53.920
Not 100%, but you you have to give an answer.
00:34:54.000 --> 00:35:01.039
So it was it was it was this so what I've I've heard loads of data, what do you want me to do with that?
00:35:01.280 --> 00:35:08.800
And I think good lawyers are uh are really good at giving the advice, not just showing them the options.
00:35:09.920 --> 00:35:16.719
But but what really uh what I really remembered and what I tried to do with my team is is is just the humanity.
00:35:17.440 --> 00:35:26.960
I work with two I worked with two partners, Brian and Nigel, who were just decent people and who cared and who would say thank you.
00:35:27.519 --> 00:35:32.320
And so I think it's that was the that was the sort of the the take.
00:35:32.639 --> 00:35:35.920
I I don't think I could have done twelve years without working for humans.
00:35:36.719 --> 00:35:43.119
And is the skill set you need to be a great partner internally the same as you need to be a great partner for the client?
00:35:43.760 --> 00:35:45.360
Is it the same skill set or different?
00:35:45.679 --> 00:35:55.199
I I mean I think one of the reasons why this job is quite hard in some ways is the breadth of skills that you need to have.
00:35:55.360 --> 00:35:58.559
And those probably do apply both externally and internally.
00:35:58.719 --> 00:36:13.599
And yeah, if you looked at the best partners, they were able to go seamlessly from knowing the minute detail of a clause in a contract in one minute, yeah, to walking into a meeting room and charming clients the next, right?
00:36:13.679 --> 00:36:29.360
Is you know, with very sort of extrovert personality, and and that skill set of being able to be really in the technical detail of something one second, but being the client's best mate the next, I think that's quite a difficult thing to achieve, right?
00:36:29.440 --> 00:36:36.000
A lot of people are like a type of personality which doesn't lend itself to being able to adjust between those things just at the click of a finger.
00:36:37.039 --> 00:36:46.960
The people always get confused when they find out my PhD is in data and I'm a data geek because they're like, no, no, you're you're the podcast marketing guy.
00:36:47.039 --> 00:36:48.719
Like you're from marketing background, right?
00:36:48.800 --> 00:36:52.719
I'm like, nope, I'm a dead because they can't hold both things to be true at any point in time.
00:36:53.119 --> 00:36:53.760
Yeah, yeah.
00:36:54.000 --> 00:36:55.760
But but but I think that's rare, right?
00:36:55.840 --> 00:36:57.920
I think that's that's relatively rare.
00:36:58.000 --> 00:37:06.719
You know, that I think the the people who I've typically come across to as sort of more regulatory lawyers, and I just exclude you from this bend just for me.
00:37:07.519 --> 00:37:08.320
He's about to be nice to you.
00:37:08.480 --> 00:37:09.360
I feel a bit seen here.
00:37:10.719 --> 00:37:22.239
You know, incredible at knowing what that regulation says, but they're kind of so deep in kind of detail and they're so comfortable with with the paper that actually they forget about the fact that that law is a service industry, right?
00:37:22.400 --> 00:37:23.360
And that's the thing we always need to do.
00:37:23.519 --> 00:37:26.000
Well, I think you can be too intelligent as a lawyer.
00:37:26.400 --> 00:37:29.440
Because I'm not.
00:37:29.760 --> 00:37:36.960
I see new legislation and I have to I you know read it three or four times before I even got a chance to understand it.
00:37:37.119 --> 00:37:43.360
Then I have to start thinking about worked examples and analogies, and and only then do I start to get it.
00:37:43.599 --> 00:37:53.519
But that's a good thing because it means I can take something super complex and I can explain it to an intelligent non-lawyer client as to how it works.
00:37:53.679 --> 00:37:59.199
Whereas some people you meet are just so insanely brilliant and they're reading it and they're like, Well, yeah, that's really obvious, isn't it?
00:37:59.440 --> 00:38:04.719
One of our board members once described me as the perfect level of intelligence before it became a problem.
00:38:05.360 --> 00:38:07.440
I was like, I think that's nice.
00:38:07.920 --> 00:38:09.679
That's that's a great appraisal line, isn't it?
00:38:10.079 --> 00:38:10.480
Take that.
00:38:10.559 --> 00:38:12.480
Yeah, but it's the same thing.
00:38:13.119 --> 00:38:15.519
What about you in terms of the the best of the best?
00:38:15.599 --> 00:38:18.079
When you think back, who are the ones that you stick out?
00:38:18.159 --> 00:38:23.840
And and have you tried to emulate aspects of their style or very much gone, no, no, that's them, that's not me.
00:38:24.320 --> 00:38:25.360
I think you have to do that.
00:38:25.440 --> 00:38:32.239
And I think the thing is when you when you first become a partner in a law firm, you you feel a lot of pressure.
00:38:32.800 --> 00:38:36.559
And does anyone sit you down and say the world's different now?
00:38:36.719 --> 00:38:38.800
You're expected, you just have to figure out your own way.
00:38:39.199 --> 00:38:46.079
Your your first um experience of being a partner is your your inbox changes, right?
00:38:46.320 --> 00:38:53.760
So overnight extra overnight you go from not ever receiving any emails about the management of the firm as a business.
00:38:54.239 --> 00:38:56.400
So 30th of April, you don't get any of that.
00:38:56.639 --> 00:39:01.519
1st of May, suddenly every email about the management of the business comes into your inbox.
00:39:01.599 --> 00:39:02.719
And it's actually quite intimidating.
00:39:02.960 --> 00:39:07.199
And no one tells you what you're supposed to reply to or engage with, or you just have to work it out.
00:39:07.360 --> 00:39:09.920
It's like going back to your first day at work all over again.
00:39:10.079 --> 00:39:10.559
It really is.
00:39:10.639 --> 00:39:13.679
It's like you've just started a new job because you've got no idea.
00:39:13.760 --> 00:39:15.920
You a lot of the stuff you had no idea even existed.
00:39:16.320 --> 00:39:22.800
All these different committees or yeah, whatever, and and the you know, the accounting and the marketing, the business development, and all this kind of stuff.
00:39:23.039 --> 00:39:25.360
You you had have absolutely no idea.
00:39:25.440 --> 00:39:34.960
And I think you know, you start day one as a partner and you're dealing with that, and you're also feeling the pressure of, oh my god, I've got to like immediately justify my existence, like straight away.
00:39:35.039 --> 00:39:37.519
And and you're kind of wired for a while, right?
00:39:37.679 --> 00:39:43.920
That first two or three years, I think you're you're just kind of running on adrenaline and probably just sort of all over the place.
00:39:44.000 --> 00:40:03.199
And that must actually be quite hard for people who you manage because uh because I think you know the level of energy that you're having to take to it is not necessarily conducive to the way that you know I certainly manage people now, which is giving people kind of trust and autonomy and letting their own personalities shine through.
00:40:03.360 --> 00:40:06.480
And I think you know, this is one of the issues that we grapple with, right?
00:40:06.559 --> 00:40:11.840
Which is your clients are buying kind of you and your personality and your brain, right?
00:40:11.920 --> 00:40:13.119
That's the product.
00:40:13.360 --> 00:40:19.280
And so as a partner, your kind of natural inclination is to say, well, that's what my client's buying.
00:40:19.360 --> 00:40:22.639
And so that's so that's what everybody on the deal has to be like.
00:40:22.800 --> 00:40:28.880
So everyone else on the deal has to think like me, has to act like me, has to kind of almost be a version of me.
00:40:29.119 --> 00:40:33.440
And and you can't, I mean, it it's obvious that you can't manage people like that.
00:40:33.519 --> 00:40:34.880
That's never going to work.
00:40:35.199 --> 00:40:43.440
You have to trust that that people will provide the same level of service to your client, but in their own kind of unique way.
00:40:43.519 --> 00:40:50.000
And I think once you start understanding that, the kind of the job of being a partner and managing people does become a bit easier.
00:40:50.159 --> 00:40:50.480
Yeah.
00:40:50.719 --> 00:41:01.440
And I think as well as copying lessons from really positive role models, I remember think I I would spend more time looking at people around me and going, what do I not want to be like?
00:41:01.760 --> 00:41:09.280
So as a trainee, when someone in another department partner took off his headset, threw it against the wall and smashed it because he didn't like what the other side had said.
00:41:09.440 --> 00:41:12.239
I remember thinking, I don't think I'm ever gonna do that.
00:41:12.960 --> 00:41:13.440
Not a good look.
00:41:13.599 --> 00:41:19.599
Or when you're in the lift uh and you just get totally blanked by a partner, and I was like, I'm not gonna do that.
00:41:19.840 --> 00:41:24.639
But now I'm old and I'm in the lift and I'm like, I can't remember your name.
00:41:24.880 --> 00:41:30.800
And so so actually I now look back and think, okay, that wasn't necessarily rudeness, that was just age.
00:41:31.199 --> 00:41:39.840
Um but but I remember thinking so many times, when I'm a partner, I'm not going to be like you more than I thought I'm gonna be just like you.
00:41:40.559 --> 00:41:42.400
So you can do the positive and negative.
00:41:43.119 --> 00:41:47.280
Yeah, I think the thing that I'm really trying to avoid is hierarchy.
00:41:47.519 --> 00:41:50.559
That that's that's the thing that I've always now in your team.
00:41:50.719 --> 00:42:12.480
Yeah, that's the thing that I've always kind of been a bit uncomfortable with in the way law firms are structured often is you have this kind of very sort of rigid, you know, you have the partner, and then you have the senior associate, and then you have the mid-level associate, and then you have the junior, and then you have the trainee, and there's a very sort of vertical kind of reporting line, and nobody can kind of step outside of that, and you know, it's all very kind of structured.
00:42:12.559 --> 00:42:16.480
And I just don't think that's the real world, at least not anymore.
00:42:16.639 --> 00:42:20.559
So, my team at least, we all sort of pitch in, we all do kind of a bit of everything.
00:42:20.639 --> 00:42:24.880
We don't have this kind of that's the partner's role, that's the junior lawyer's role.
00:42:24.960 --> 00:42:28.719
You know, we're kind of trying to just we genuinely work to teach juniors how to become partners, right?
00:42:28.800 --> 00:42:36.480
So that on their first of May one day they know what you do with the profit and loss and and how you recruit and how you make the sales, yeah.
00:42:36.639 --> 00:42:44.320
The the um the business case recruitment is so you mentioned about what a client's buying and sitting on that side of the table.
00:42:44.480 --> 00:42:49.119
I think it is right, like you as individuals is a big part of that decision process.
00:42:49.440 --> 00:42:56.000
How much is things like personal brand and profile talked about with legal partners?
00:42:57.519 --> 00:42:58.719
It's kind of weird, isn't it?
00:42:58.880 --> 00:43:01.039
People are very much left to get on with it.
00:43:01.440 --> 00:43:02.880
I think that that's the theme, right?
00:43:02.960 --> 00:43:04.800
That's the consistent theme as a partner.
00:43:05.039 --> 00:43:11.679
Like it it in many ways, you're your own kind of CEO, you're the CEO of a little mini business.
00:43:11.920 --> 00:43:15.440
So there's like loads of CEOs kind of all kind of doing their own thing.
00:43:15.519 --> 00:43:28.159
Now, obviously, there's management and there's coordination, and and and and law firms take the overall brand very seriously and and take you know significant steps as as they rightly should to protect the overall brand.
00:43:28.320 --> 00:43:36.079
But in terms of how partners project themselves to their clients or their kind of targets, that's incredibly autonomous.
00:43:36.559 --> 00:43:37.920
Yeah, I think it's changing.
00:43:38.159 --> 00:43:59.840
I think actually AI is changing that in that you know, we uh at Galen we sort of talk about you know the silent lawyers and stuff, and there's there's lawyers who are very busy and got good clients and and and and doing very good work, but there's no sort of record of them outside that you know they're not necessarily going to the conferences speaking at conferences.
00:44:00.239 --> 00:44:05.840
They're not doing some of the BD events, they're not on LinkedIn, all this kind of stuff.
00:44:06.079 --> 00:44:26.639
And I, you know, I'm told that AI is a really good tool now for when you're trying to find your lawyers, um, because it will go through all the social stuff, all the press releases, but it also goes through the the the directories and what have you, so you can get a much clearer idea of what someone's expertise is rather than them just telling you in an email I'm amazing at XYZ.
00:44:26.880 --> 00:44:44.320
So I think I I think if you ask that in two or three years, there'll be many more partners who are who have got that social media profile and are and are constantly and actually trying to promote themselves and what they do.
00:44:44.559 --> 00:45:02.480
But but is that is that because of people personally curating their own brand, or is that because there's management intervention where people are saying you have to do X, Y, and Z in order to be consistent, you know, in order to make sure that all partners across the firm are consistently kind of doing the same things?
00:45:03.119 --> 00:45:06.079
I'm I'm I'm I'm sure there will be some director to do it.
00:45:06.800 --> 00:45:11.679
But you know, there'll be good examples, right?
00:45:11.840 --> 00:45:14.719
I mean, nature's a really good example, and and probably AI.
00:45:14.880 --> 00:45:29.280
Brand new asset class, a group of lawyers uh regularly out there developing something, winning work, um, building something quite exciting, and people go, okay, well, that's perhaps there are lessons to be learned.
00:45:29.840 --> 00:45:31.199
I I think it's coming.
00:45:31.360 --> 00:45:33.519
So I think we we don't have it yet.
00:45:33.760 --> 00:45:58.239
I think um I was interested because you two are amongst the most prominent lawyers in the sector, and in some industries, you that would be positive for generating business and clients, but internally, and and I and I don't know this about law firms, but certainly when I was in the public sector, I would be criticised for having a personal profile because it was like, no, no, the the name on the the badge is the company, not you.
00:45:58.480 --> 00:46:02.000
Oh, we we want all the then they'd ask me to do stuff on social media to publicize it.
00:46:02.079 --> 00:46:03.920
We want the brand, but no, no, it can't be about you.
00:46:04.079 --> 00:46:15.440
Whereas actually, uh OC, our collective brand and and mine has been a real positive for us having uh meeting people and connections and deals, and it's been such a factor.
00:46:15.599 --> 00:46:22.400
So I I was wondering, in terms of your respective, the fact that you have got these profiles, is it viewed positively versus negatively?
00:46:22.480 --> 00:46:33.599
Then you describing in the future that you think it'll come, and I think it will as well, because that will be that personal point of differentiation from a generic AI-led lawyer to going for the person.
00:46:34.639 --> 00:46:41.840
I I've never had anyone, Gowling, be critical of my efforts to raise profile.
00:46:42.159 --> 00:46:44.880
Um have you had anyone ask you to do it more?
00:46:45.039 --> 00:46:47.199
Has anyone said push harder with it?
00:46:48.320 --> 00:46:53.440
No, because I think I probably do you know, if I'm not if I'm not asleep I'm on exceptional.
00:46:53.679 --> 00:46:54.800
If I'm not asleep, I'm on LinkedIn.
00:46:55.679 --> 00:46:56.800
Absolutely love that platform.
00:46:56.960 --> 00:47:01.679
So so I I don't think I would welcome anyone encouraging me to do more on that sort of stuff.
00:47:01.920 --> 00:47:05.280
But yeah, the broader profiling I think is is really encouraged.
00:47:05.360 --> 00:47:08.239
I think there's this Halo effect, I think it's really good for recruitment.
00:47:08.400 --> 00:47:16.639
I think you know, we're lucky that this this area of you know natural capital is interesting, it's appealing to junior or students.
00:47:16.880 --> 00:47:18.960
Yeah, you know, do I want to do that kind of work?
00:47:19.199 --> 00:47:25.679
Absolutely, I'm gonna get paid a decent amount of money working with great clients on phenomenal landscape recoveries.
00:47:25.920 --> 00:47:28.159
What why would you not want to do that?
00:47:28.480 --> 00:47:32.800
Um, so I think it it it helps with with that kind of stuff.
00:47:33.119 --> 00:47:40.320
Um yeah, I mean, uh and yeah, we do we do dinners, we do events, we do um yeah, film screenings.
00:47:40.400 --> 00:47:47.360
So I think there's all this kind of I think it's it with a new industry or new asset, it's an opportunity to do things in a slightly different way.
00:47:47.679 --> 00:47:49.280
Yeah, you you've got to build it and share about it.
00:47:49.360 --> 00:47:51.760
Because like again, five years ago, no one knew anything.
00:47:51.840 --> 00:47:53.599
There was nothing there that that existed.
00:47:54.000 --> 00:47:57.199
When you say you love LinkedIn, why do you love LinkedIn?
00:47:57.679 --> 00:47:58.719
I don't know.
00:47:58.960 --> 00:48:03.039
Um because you can find your people, right?
00:48:04.079 --> 00:48:11.679
The criticism of LinkedIn is that you're in a bubble and you don't, you know, whereas Twitter you can sort of very easily find someone who has a different opinion to you.
00:48:12.000 --> 00:48:21.360
Um but it's it's a small community, I think, with this the natural capital, and and and you can find your folk, you can get all this phenomenal information.
00:48:21.519 --> 00:48:23.840
I mean, it's there's huge depth of stuff on there.
00:48:23.920 --> 00:48:26.719
I mean, there's even this podcast by a guy called Rich Doctor.
00:48:26.800 --> 00:48:29.280
I don't know if you've come across it, but not on my radar.
00:48:29.679 --> 00:48:30.239
It's all right.
00:48:32.159 --> 00:48:32.880
It's worth looking at.
00:48:33.199 --> 00:48:36.239
I'll tell you why I like the way that you use LinkedIn.
00:48:36.400 --> 00:48:37.119
Uh and it's this.
00:48:37.440 --> 00:48:38.320
We're getting on quite well.
00:48:38.480 --> 00:48:42.719
You I'm expecting the there's a is it coming?
00:48:43.039 --> 00:48:45.039
It's because you two really love each other, you know you do.
00:48:45.119 --> 00:48:46.639
You just protest too much, usually.
00:48:46.960 --> 00:48:50.960
But I I love the way that you everyone on LinkedIn is delighted.
00:48:51.280 --> 00:48:51.599
Right?
00:48:51.840 --> 00:48:52.480
I'm delighted.
00:48:53.519 --> 00:48:55.119
I have done X, Y, and Z.
00:48:55.599 --> 00:48:59.679
And it's 90% of the time just a huge self-promotion tool.
00:48:59.840 --> 00:49:00.000
Right?
00:49:00.159 --> 00:49:09.360
Whereas I think people that use LinkedIn the best, I'm talking about kind of lawyers here, are people that use it to tell people stuff that's important.
00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:12.239
Maybe some analysis, some information.
00:49:12.719 --> 00:49:13.840
Adding some genuine value.
00:49:14.159 --> 00:49:14.880
Correct, exactly.
00:49:15.039 --> 00:49:16.239
And that's exactly how you use it.
00:49:16.320 --> 00:49:22.400
And and I thought your write-up of London Climate Action with the other day was was amazing, right?
00:49:22.559 --> 00:49:23.440
Your nine or ten points.
00:49:24.639 --> 00:49:30.000
Um you know, to to distill that absolute chaos, right?
00:49:30.159 --> 00:49:36.880
Which had gone on for hours and hours every day for a week into those nine points was was exceptionally helpful for people.
00:49:37.119 --> 00:49:40.000
Not just I'm delighted that I've won the latest award.
00:49:40.480 --> 00:49:45.840
And I and I and I think that that you use LinkedIn in a way which is which is less common, but I think a lot more valuable.
00:49:46.159 --> 00:49:46.880
Yeah, generous.
00:49:47.039 --> 00:49:54.719
You're generous with what you put out on LinkedIn and uh authentic and honest about stuff, which I think is rare.
00:49:55.199 --> 00:49:57.679
And also much more hardworking than I am.
00:49:57.840 --> 00:50:00.480
All I really do is press the share button.
00:50:01.119 --> 00:50:03.199
So I've got something to look up to.
00:50:03.440 --> 00:50:04.880
But LinkedIn isn't your platform, right?
00:50:04.960 --> 00:50:09.199
You're you're you are far more an in-person conversation relationship.
00:50:09.760 --> 00:50:10.960
Has it always been that way for you?
00:50:11.039 --> 00:50:13.280
You just feel more authentic in that arena?
00:50:14.320 --> 00:50:15.280
Yeah, I think so.
00:50:15.440 --> 00:50:29.440
I mean, um I mean part of the problem is as well, like I'm I'm just across so many different sectors and industries that it's actually really hard for me to kind of spend the time kind of really drilling down on some of the detail and in some of the stuff on the show.
00:50:32.400 --> 00:50:33.920
Yeah, that that which is hard.
00:50:34.079 --> 00:50:34.320
Yeah.
00:50:34.480 --> 00:50:39.280
I mean, yeah, most of my time is obviously spent doing doing transactions, right?
00:50:39.360 --> 00:50:47.679
Which uh which a lot of the time are you know either confidential or you know, just just things that we're doing rather than talking about.
00:50:47.840 --> 00:50:51.920
Um so it just means the opportunities to do that kind of stuff are narrower.
00:50:52.000 --> 00:50:53.599
But that you know, I I should try to use it more.
00:50:53.840 --> 00:50:55.840
Yeah, but it is it is hard when you're across a lot of sectors.
00:50:55.920 --> 00:51:02.639
So before nature, I mean you know, I did my environmental regulatory stuff, I did development, I would act for resi, I'd act for industrial, I'd like for energy.
00:51:02.880 --> 00:51:08.239
Really hard to find threads because you do a post and a and a resi client might look at it and go, Why are you talking about that?
00:51:08.320 --> 00:51:09.280
It's got nothing to do with me.
00:51:09.519 --> 00:51:10.400
Are you really in my sector?
00:51:10.559 --> 00:51:14.000
Yeah, nature's amazing because it's a green thread that goes through everything.
00:51:14.239 --> 00:51:22.000
Every sector, no matter what the size, no matter what the jurisdiction, is impacted by you know natural resources or has an impact on nature.
00:51:22.079 --> 00:51:31.760
And so you can talk about these things, and although I do loads more different bits outside of nature, it's a it's a brilliant thread, and that no one reads it and goes, that's irrelevant to me.
00:51:32.400 --> 00:51:42.320
The before we leave the sort of partner career path, are the skills that the next generation need to bring into the sector different from the ones you had?
00:51:42.559 --> 00:51:46.719
And what would you encourage them to focus on if they want to be partners in the future?
00:51:47.519 --> 00:51:52.639
I'm gonna go back to something that I said earlier, um, which is that this is a service industry.
00:51:53.679 --> 00:52:01.360
And that is the key point, that's the fundamental point in do you want to be a successful partner in a law firm?
00:52:01.519 --> 00:52:11.760
Right, it's not about legal knowledge, it's not about can you draft an incredible contract, it's not even, you know, can you kind of stand up and advocate in a really convincing way?
00:52:11.840 --> 00:52:14.000
Although obviously those things are part of it.
00:52:14.239 --> 00:52:32.559
But if you don't understand that you're selling something in a market which is actually quite competitive, and the easiest way to continue to do that is to build great relationships with people that get that are going to come back to you again and again because of how you treat them.
00:52:32.800 --> 00:52:38.400
If you don't understand that, you're gonna find it extremely difficult to have a long-term career as a partner in a law firm.
00:52:38.559 --> 00:52:41.440
Um, now around the edges, there's there are obviously different skills.
00:52:41.519 --> 00:52:51.039
I mean, going back to the AI point, I mean, we didn't we did have some level of AI um you know growing up in law, but in a completely different way to how it looks now.
00:52:51.119 --> 00:52:57.039
And people, you know, lawyers are not gonna have successful careers if they don't understand how to integrate that into their practices.
00:52:57.280 --> 00:53:12.480
But I think the core proposition, which is you're selling something into a market, you need to be able to act in a way where you recognise and acknowledge that you are providing a service, is never gonna change.
00:53:12.639 --> 00:53:20.559
And actually, when people say to me, What's the best work experience I can do to prepare for a training contract and a career in law?
00:53:20.800 --> 00:53:24.480
I don't say go and do a vacation scheme in a law firm in the city.
00:53:24.719 --> 00:53:27.920
I say go and work in a posh hotel, right?
00:53:28.079 --> 00:53:38.079
Spend two weeks a month, whatever, literally serving, waiting hand and foot on the kind of clients that go and stay in posh hotels.
00:53:38.239 --> 00:53:48.320
That would teach you more about the skill set you need to be a lawyer or any professional services provider than two weeks doing the photocopying in a in a law firm ever would.
00:53:48.880 --> 00:53:49.840
Yeah, no, I agree.
00:53:50.000 --> 00:53:50.800
That makes sense.
00:53:51.039 --> 00:53:59.599
I think I think um I think in an online world it's it's it's uh it's easy to lose those social skills picking up a phone.
00:53:59.760 --> 00:54:01.519
Like whoever uses the phone anymore.
00:54:01.760 --> 00:54:08.480
I I think hospitality is I or if I see it on a CV, especially an extended period, slam dunk.
00:54:08.559 --> 00:54:08.880
Yeah.
00:54:09.039 --> 00:54:17.679
Because it means you've put up with a lot, you've dealt with complex situations, you've turned up on time, you've dealt with uncomfortableness and difficult things, and I think it it does really help.
00:54:18.159 --> 00:54:24.960
You learn how to deal with people shouting at you for things that aren't your fault, which is an incredibly good preparation for a career in law.
00:54:25.199 --> 00:54:25.679
In every career.
00:54:26.320 --> 00:54:28.800
So I don't think people not many shout is now.
00:54:29.360 --> 00:54:30.239
Well, probably less.
00:54:30.480 --> 00:54:30.800
I don't know.
00:54:30.880 --> 00:54:32.400
There's different ways of shouting, aren't there?
00:54:32.719 --> 00:54:36.239
We we we had so we were gonna do some filming with a third party.
00:54:36.480 --> 00:54:42.880
Um, they didn't send the legal agreement, they wanted me to go do this filming thing, they didn't send the legal agreements through until it's for this week.
00:54:43.039 --> 00:54:52.079
They didn't send them through till Thursday or Friday when they said they were coming weeks ago, and they wanted us to agree to them having complete control of my name, image, and likeness and voice forever in any which way they want.
00:54:52.159 --> 00:54:54.079
So we're like, no, of course we're not gonna do that.
00:54:54.239 --> 00:54:56.320
And the production company just started yelling at our team.
00:54:56.480 --> 00:54:56.719
Really?
00:54:56.880 --> 00:54:57.360
Yeah, yeah.
00:54:57.440 --> 00:55:00.960
So they had a nice chat with George, and we're not working with them ever again, of course.
00:55:01.039 --> 00:55:02.000
But yeah, so it does still happen.
00:55:02.239 --> 00:55:07.519
But we've missed out on the little rich Stockdale merchandise toys and stuff, which we could all Christmas presents.
00:55:07.679 --> 00:55:09.360
Yeah, like the sort of bully in bullseye could have.
00:55:11.440 --> 00:55:13.840
That is a northern old school reference, isn't it?
00:55:14.000 --> 00:55:15.599
Wow, yeah, we've lost kids now, haven't we?
00:55:15.840 --> 00:55:16.880
Bully in bullseye.
00:55:17.280 --> 00:55:19.280
People can look that up on YouTube, can't they?
00:55:19.679 --> 00:55:25.199
My um the analogy about the relationship thing, I think, and I go back to sport and a lot of this stuff.
00:55:25.440 --> 00:55:30.639
I think managing a relationship is the equivalent of passing and receiving a football.
00:55:31.039 --> 00:55:38.079
So, whatever position you play, you're gonna have to be able to receive the ball from someone, listen, and you're gonna be able to pass it to somebody else, communicate it.
00:55:38.239 --> 00:55:39.519
And that's the fundamental aspect.
00:55:39.679 --> 00:55:48.800
And you look at the best football teams in the world, the Klopp and the Guadiola trained teams, they spend all their time doing little drills of actually passing and receiving the football over and over again.
00:55:48.960 --> 00:55:51.360
It's one of the things I love the most about this podcast.
00:55:51.440 --> 00:56:03.519
I've had a lot of reps listening and communicating stuff back to people, and I think all the time we spend teaching people the law or ecology, we spend such a small amount of time teaching communication effectively and things.
00:56:03.840 --> 00:56:06.559
So, yeah, I do think hospitality and those skills in the age of the state.
00:56:06.719 --> 00:56:11.199
So what's the legal equivalent of passing like the um tiki tacker?
00:56:11.519 --> 00:56:13.360
How do we how do we do that with our trainees?
00:56:13.599 --> 00:56:18.320
Having the occasional real conversation in the office, which is always a good start.
00:56:18.639 --> 00:56:23.599
I mean, people will just rely on emails and uh it's not communications, it's exchanging it, isn't it?
00:56:23.760 --> 00:56:29.679
Yeah, yeah, I mean words, written words, you know, and I get emails from five metres away high then.
00:56:29.760 --> 00:56:31.599
Can you just say this could have been a chat?
00:56:31.760 --> 00:56:32.639
This is exactly what I'm saying.
00:56:32.719 --> 00:56:35.280
Like, you know, just come round, right?
00:56:35.360 --> 00:56:38.639
And or you know, ask someone to go for a coffee and talk about it.
00:56:38.880 --> 00:56:39.920
There's so many different ways you can do it.
00:56:40.960 --> 00:56:58.719
I I think so I've hit that I've hit that weird point now whereby every time I go for a meeting with some so we're 55 people in the business now, so that first cohort who were like working with me all the time, every day, up until like 15 or 20 people has changed, and we've got a lot of new people coming in.
00:56:58.880 --> 00:57:01.280
And they're always thanking me for my time whenever I go to anything.
00:57:01.360 --> 00:57:02.800
I'm like, can you stop doing that?
00:57:02.960 --> 00:57:05.199
Like, I want to be here and have this conversation.
00:57:05.519 --> 00:57:10.400
So I think it's on us to go, no, no, like like we have to be the one on the lift that says hello.
00:57:10.480 --> 00:57:13.039
Yeah, yeah, because our job titles go before we do.
00:57:13.119 --> 00:57:18.480
Yeah, and it's so yeah, the most we can do to get rid of that hierarchy and be like, let's have a chat, what do you think?
00:57:18.639 --> 00:57:30.800
So I still chair an all-staff meeting on a Monday morning when I can be there, and I make a point of like try try and force questions from the floor and Mick taking out of me as well, just to keep that as flat as possible.
00:57:31.119 --> 00:57:34.400
We um we briefly touched on on climate week there.
00:57:34.559 --> 00:57:38.559
Um, what was your reflections on London Climate Week 2026?
00:57:40.000 --> 00:57:44.000
I hadn't really done London Climate Week as much in previous years.
00:57:44.079 --> 00:57:46.559
So we sort of we Hiddle you done New York before?
00:57:46.800 --> 00:57:50.800
I've done yeah, I've done I've done New York and I've done the odd event at previous London Climate Weeks.
00:57:50.960 --> 00:57:54.960
Um and so I don't know if it's a bit like you know, when you buy a yellow car, all you see is yellow cars.
00:57:55.199 --> 00:57:59.679
And but I thought London Climate Week was an absolute rip-roaring success.
00:57:59.760 --> 00:58:00.079
I loved it.
00:58:00.159 --> 00:58:15.440
I mean, we did a lot more events, which was so I saw a lot more people coming through our doors, went to more external events and caught up with most of the really important people in the NATCAP space, including you guys.
00:58:15.760 --> 00:58:17.840
So it was great.
00:58:18.000 --> 00:58:19.440
I mean, I I loved it.
00:58:19.599 --> 00:58:25.840
What disappointed me was but for the heat wave, there would have been nothing in the news about climate.
00:58:26.800 --> 00:58:34.960
And there wasn't, you know, when you go during a COP, and I get cops are different and they're international, but the headline news today at COP, this is what the government announced, all this kind of stuff.
00:58:35.280 --> 00:58:36.320
There was none of that.
00:58:37.360 --> 00:58:46.000
So it was cool to hang out with the circle, but I don't know but for the weather, whether we would have broken through.
00:58:46.320 --> 00:58:47.679
And that's the most important bit.
00:58:48.079 --> 00:58:52.400
So let's put a pin in what we can do about that to make that better in future.
00:58:52.800 --> 00:58:55.199
What was your experience like in the week?
00:58:55.599 --> 00:59:01.840
Yeah, I I kind of agree with that because it risks becoming a bit of a bubble, doesn't it?
00:59:02.079 --> 00:59:08.400
If the nature community is there for week talking to each other and having a great time, but there's no export.
00:59:08.800 --> 00:59:21.119
But uh, I do think you know, I kept bumping into very senior people at at big organizations, and for me that's always the yardstick of is this actually kind of worth the time investment?
00:59:21.199 --> 00:59:22.639
Yeah, who else is in the room?
00:59:22.800 --> 00:59:31.119
It's not so much about really the content because you kind of take that as red, but it's you know, what what's the nature of the people that are in the room talking about this stuff?
00:59:31.360 --> 00:59:31.679
Yeah.
00:59:31.840 --> 00:59:33.599
No, and I go, and I and I think you're right.
00:59:33.679 --> 00:59:36.800
In the I mean, you know, when we went to COP 16 in Cali, right?
00:59:36.880 --> 00:59:39.360
It's 20,000 people all going, nature is amazing.
00:59:39.679 --> 00:59:48.320
Very different from when you go to a UNF UNF CCC COP where half the people are going, we need to do more on climate, and half people are saying, Oh, slow down.
00:59:48.559 --> 00:59:58.239
So nature, and and I know this was climb climate action week was was both sides, but like we spent a bit too much time in the nature bubble, and everyone is like, We need to do more, we need to do faster.
00:59:58.400 --> 01:00:07.360
It doesn't it'd almost be a bit more fun if we had some detractors in our in our midst to make us articulate things in a different way and communicate more differently.
01:00:07.599 --> 01:00:08.400
That's interesting.
01:00:08.639 --> 01:00:12.480
So um bizarrely, it's the first time we've properly done London.
01:00:12.639 --> 01:00:16.800
So we've done New York, San Francisco, Zurich, and now London.
01:00:16.960 --> 01:00:21.519
We did one announcement London last year, which was the world record, world record carbon price.
01:00:21.599 --> 01:00:21.840
Yep.
01:00:22.000 --> 01:00:24.400
Um, outside of that, I'd never done anything London before.
01:00:24.559 --> 01:00:26.079
I was a bit cynical about it.
01:00:26.159 --> 01:00:39.119
I was like, okay, it's gonna be either old school environment sector telling everybody it's all sad and people wanting to be seen to be in the environment sector, or it was gonna be people just talking to themselves about the stuff they already know.
01:00:39.360 --> 01:00:42.159
And actually, I thought it was a rip-roaring success as well.
01:00:42.239 --> 01:00:43.679
Like I love you almost.
01:00:44.000 --> 01:00:46.480
The the 10 point yards that you did.
01:00:46.639 --> 01:00:50.880
Did you publish a how you were going to measure it beforehand, or did you just I thought you did at the beginning of the week?
01:00:50.960 --> 01:00:57.679
I said these are my 10 tests, yeah, and then created a rod for my own back, knowing that on Friday I was gonna have to actually write it up.
01:00:57.920 --> 01:01:01.039
Yeah, and and I thought they were they were absolutely the right test, you know.
01:01:01.199 --> 01:01:02.639
What is this actually achieving?
01:01:02.800 --> 01:01:08.000
And you you you were right that it didn't get the media traction that it it should have done otherwise.
01:01:08.159 --> 01:01:12.639
Um, but I think in every other way, the quality of conversations were better.
01:01:12.800 --> 01:01:21.599
The the creativity, the innovation around stuff, like the event you hosted was brilliant because it that could have just been a us sat there in a very sterile make a case argument.
01:01:21.679 --> 01:01:29.679
Like the panel I did the year before, um, we did our announcement, I went to another panel, each of the members got asked to do a 15-minute monologue and they closed the panel.
01:01:29.840 --> 01:01:33.199
It was like I was falling asleep on stage, never mind the audience.
01:01:33.360 --> 01:01:37.119
So, you know, you want to just describe the event you put on because I thought that was a massive success.
01:01:37.360 --> 01:01:40.159
I mean, yeah, it was a kind of a debate format, right?
01:01:40.239 --> 01:01:53.440
So we took some questions from the audience, um, and there were two teams on the stage, and um, each team took it in turns to respond to the questions from a particular point of view, right?
01:01:53.599 --> 01:02:00.880
The central theme was do we need government intervention in order to accelerate nature becoming an investable infrastructure asset class?
01:02:01.119 --> 01:02:04.559
And then all of the questions were related to that central theme.
01:02:04.800 --> 01:02:08.960
Um, so it just meant that we kind of broke it up a bit.
01:02:09.039 --> 01:02:21.440
You know, it was quite rapid fire, people talking for two or three minutes in response to each question, people the audience hearing from kind of different people on the two panels in quite a quick quick way.
01:02:21.679 --> 01:02:27.360
Yeah, and and I think you know, your your your eyes were constantly kind of moving to the next person, right?
01:02:27.440 --> 01:02:32.880
Which didn't didn't give people the opportunity to kind of get into that kind of oh, this is really dull kind of lull.
01:02:33.360 --> 01:02:40.880
Um so yeah, I think it did, I think it was good, and we did get a lot of good um good feedback as people were kind of leaving.
01:02:40.960 --> 01:02:51.280
So the audience was so varied, you went from literal investors, uh, institutional and private capital all the way through to students and people at the start of their career.
01:02:51.599 --> 01:02:56.800
So I think from your we as a team we did 40, no, 48 events across the week, I think.
01:02:57.039 --> 01:02:57.360
48.
01:02:57.599 --> 01:03:04.320
Yeah, which I love because it meant, and and we talked about this a little bit earlier in terms of it almost being the partner's profile.
01:03:04.480 --> 01:03:09.679
One of my things I'm really conscious of now is if we get an invite for something, I'm like, who else is better to do it?
01:03:10.000 --> 01:03:12.159
Because it can't just be rich turning up at everything.
01:03:12.239 --> 01:03:15.360
And and I'm often not the best person to talk about a topic now.
01:03:15.440 --> 01:03:20.719
Like if someone wants us to talk about our peatland delivery or our woodland planning, I'm not the best person to talk about that anymore.
01:03:20.800 --> 01:03:25.360
Like fee is in who's running oxygen conservation now and the individual parts of the business.
01:03:25.599 --> 01:03:36.880
Um, so it was yeah, it was interesting to be able to uh address some of those questions from different perspectives and us to teach some different bits and pieces, but yeah, that that felt different this week.
01:03:36.960 --> 01:03:40.800
The sheer volume, the range of stuff, how creative and playful it was.
01:03:41.119 --> 01:03:51.519
Um yeah, my my favorite one was we we joked five years ago that when you ended up with Blackrock interested in the sector, it had hit a level of sophistication.
01:03:51.679 --> 01:04:03.280
Yeah, and on the Thursday night, Sherry who was on your your panel, um, invited a load of people to talk about natural capital at BlackRock, which was like, hold on, this is a sector and an asset class growing up.
01:04:03.440 --> 01:04:06.639
Yeah, do you feel that similar level of maturity kick in?
01:04:07.599 --> 01:04:09.199
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.
01:04:09.280 --> 01:04:18.719
So, you know, uh last week we had another city-based institutional asset manager saying, right, we've acquired a big slug of land and we want to do something with it.
01:04:18.960 --> 01:04:19.679
How do we do it?
01:04:20.320 --> 01:04:26.800
Um, and every month we're getting a proper blue chip reputable outfit saying, Can you help us?
01:04:27.039 --> 01:04:29.280
This is our first time we're doing it, we want to get it right.
01:04:30.239 --> 01:04:34.000
But this has gone to investment committee and it's a proper investment.
01:04:34.320 --> 01:04:48.400
We're not doing this so that the chair can have their photo on the front cover of the the um the corporate in-house magazine with sort of a spade saying, Look at me, I'm planting a tree, you know, CSR type, it's proper.
01:04:48.480 --> 01:04:55.519
No, this is a financial play and it feels that it's it's a real thing then, isn't it?
01:04:56.639 --> 01:04:57.599
Which is really cool.
01:04:58.320 --> 01:05:08.559
Yeah, and um if you look at how some of the off takers are approaching this, they are asking the right questions.
01:05:08.800 --> 01:05:13.039
It's not just okay, I'm gonna buy some credits or some nature shares.
01:05:13.360 --> 01:05:18.719
Great, I can report on them uh under TNFD and I'm done.
01:05:19.039 --> 01:05:24.719
They're saying, How do I know that you're gonna continue to maintain this land for 33 years?
01:05:24.960 --> 01:05:26.719
What happens if you go insolvent?
01:05:26.880 --> 01:05:28.079
What happens if the land gets sold?
01:05:28.239 --> 01:05:29.440
They're looking at it, yeah.
01:05:29.599 --> 01:05:33.760
How do you prove that you've actually derived you know delivered the benefit that you've promised to do it?
01:05:34.159 --> 01:05:36.239
I do wonder whether that's because of the market we're in.
01:05:36.480 --> 01:05:46.559
So our clients are so you know, the fact that they can afford good legal advice, they're wanting to make sure that this is not just a compliance tick box.
01:05:46.960 --> 01:05:50.559
They're wanting to know that they're putting their name to something good.
01:05:50.880 --> 01:05:57.280
I do sometimes wonder if there's a you know a market that we're not seeing.
01:05:58.000 --> 01:05:59.440
Oh, uh almost certainly.
01:06:00.000 --> 01:06:01.599
But I think that's a good thing.
01:06:01.920 --> 01:06:04.960
So you can still buy a bad car if you want to.
01:06:05.199 --> 01:06:06.960
That's the nature of a market, right?
01:06:07.039 --> 01:06:09.440
You can go buy a Tesla or you can buy a Vauxhall.
01:06:09.840 --> 01:06:11.679
I I've had three courses in my younger years.
01:06:11.760 --> 01:06:12.480
They were all right.
01:06:12.719 --> 01:06:13.360
I can see you in that.
01:06:13.679 --> 01:06:15.039
I'm not happy about the fact that that was a thing.
01:06:15.280 --> 01:06:16.000
Underfloor lighting.
01:06:16.239 --> 01:06:16.800
But that's a market.
01:06:17.440 --> 01:06:18.719
Underfloor lighting.
01:06:19.039 --> 01:06:19.519
Not quite.
01:06:19.599 --> 01:06:20.239
I didn't have it.
01:06:20.320 --> 01:06:21.280
It wasn't that posh.
01:06:21.599 --> 01:06:22.719
But that's a market, right?
01:06:22.800 --> 01:06:24.800
You need a range of products, you need choices.
01:06:24.880 --> 01:06:34.159
You know, people need to be able to choose the high-end premium type thing all the way through to something that is lower quality, carries more risk, and is is more affordable.
01:06:34.320 --> 01:06:39.679
So I think we probably are more prone to seeing the high end of stuff, but we need all of it.
01:06:40.800 --> 01:06:43.760
Yeah, although where's the breach going to be?
01:06:44.239 --> 01:06:46.719
So it's it's going to be at the It is.
01:06:46.880 --> 01:06:47.360
It is.
01:06:47.760 --> 01:06:53.440
So jumping back to BNG for a second, um, I I think we've we've progressed in so many different ways.
01:06:53.599 --> 01:06:57.760
The big question that sits there is who is the arbiter?
01:06:57.840 --> 01:07:01.599
Who's who's the actual person who is going to monitor and flag the breach?
01:07:01.679 --> 01:07:11.519
And and I I heard a suggestion the other day, do we end up with almost like a G4S private uh enforcement body or regulator for BNG and nature?
01:07:11.679 --> 01:07:12.719
Do you do you think we'll see something?
01:07:12.960 --> 01:07:13.920
Well we can't have that, don't you?
01:07:14.000 --> 01:07:15.280
In the sense of responsible bodies.
01:07:15.519 --> 01:07:23.760
Oh, I suppose, yeah, that's the that's the private private sector taking over enforcement of standards for nature's benefit.
01:07:23.840 --> 01:07:26.880
I mean it's it's sort of outsourcing Natural England's job, isn't it?
01:07:27.119 --> 01:07:27.840
Or the EAs.
01:07:28.079 --> 01:07:28.320
Yeah.
01:07:28.400 --> 01:07:32.239
And that's the argument that that the developers are making, isn't it?
01:07:32.480 --> 01:07:33.760
To their buyers.
01:07:33.920 --> 01:07:43.760
They're saying this is independently verified and and and checked by responsible bodies, and that's the comfort that you're getting that we're doing this properly.
01:07:44.079 --> 01:07:47.360
Have we had a test case yet as one as a zero challenge company?
01:07:47.599 --> 01:07:58.480
And it won't be an off-site habitat bank, it'll be an on-site delivery, and in five years' time there'll be you know small resi units, 50 50 units, whatever, and people go, Why why are we why is that scruffy bit?
01:07:58.559 --> 01:08:01.599
Can we not just mow it, get rid of it, so we can play football on there?
01:08:02.079 --> 01:08:08.159
And it'll be how so I so I'm less worried about the off-site, because I think that's you you're right, it's got the regulator.
01:08:08.320 --> 01:08:14.159
The on-site's more than likely got a 106 for local planning authority, they've received all the financial contributions.
01:08:14.320 --> 01:08:24.640
The person who did the 106 has long since moved on, so they're not worried about the annual monitoring port, and it drifts, it looks scruffy, and it's and it's silently got rid of.
01:08:25.920 --> 01:08:31.840
And it's how everyone comes together to either stop that or how to stop well to have to stop it happening again.
01:08:32.800 --> 01:08:44.159
Yeah, and I I don't have a good enough sense of the relative scale of the on-site delivery against you know the the mega habitat banks as to whether to know whether that really matters.
01:08:44.800 --> 01:08:48.880
I mean the the you know the the the big national house builders are getting it right, yeah.
01:08:49.039 --> 01:08:58.720
And and they're phenomenal, and you've talked about Neil already, but you know that that guy has put nature on a FT100 board and they're taking it seriously.
01:08:58.800 --> 01:09:01.119
And I think that's the real success of BNG.
01:09:01.199 --> 01:09:03.680
It's a it's a pilot scheme.
01:09:03.920 --> 01:09:06.880
One or two sectors, you know, development and energy.
01:09:06.960 --> 01:09:08.800
If you're putting a spade in the ground, it applies to you.
01:09:08.960 --> 01:09:13.199
Smallish but notable sector in a small country, and it's working.
01:09:13.920 --> 01:09:16.640
When we go internationally, it's the first thing I'm asked about.
01:09:16.720 --> 01:09:16.960
Yeah.
01:09:17.199 --> 01:09:20.000
Especially in the US, they're like, we need that, and you have to explain.
01:09:20.079 --> 01:09:21.119
You kind of came up with it.
01:09:21.520 --> 01:09:22.159
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:09:22.239 --> 01:09:24.239
But this is why we need to talk about it in New York.
01:09:24.399 --> 01:09:27.119
You know, people people need to kind of know how this is working.
01:09:27.439 --> 01:09:41.439
That is a beautiful um segue back to the um you both do a great job of convening people, and you know, when you pull stuff together, there are MPs and in literal like chief investment officers at serious institutions.
01:09:42.000 --> 01:09:44.479
Perhaps we need to bring the media in instead.
01:09:44.640 --> 01:09:51.680
Maybe that's the thing we can do in terms of convening power to make sure the messages out of Climate Week uh uh are heard further afield.
01:09:51.840 --> 01:09:57.600
You know, when we do New York, let's let's reach out and invite um full disclosure for people listening.
01:09:57.680 --> 01:10:02.800
We're gonna try and do some events to help showcase the UK approach to natural capital and the things we can do in New York.
01:10:02.960 --> 01:10:05.039
Let's invite the media and say we want to talk about this.
01:10:05.279 --> 01:10:08.880
Yeah, but are you gonna get two specialist media?
01:10:09.199 --> 01:10:10.560
Maybe to start with.
01:10:10.800 --> 01:10:24.960
But it's the st it's the stuff a bit like you articulated um as the uh prevalence of personal brand and thing grows in the legal profession, it will be a person, then it'll be a few people, then it'll become an expectation or encouraged, then it'll become a requirement.
01:10:25.119 --> 01:10:26.800
So you've got to climb climb that ladder.
01:10:26.880 --> 01:10:40.720
We we've seen it at OC when when I we hired a photographer, third person into the business, and I um we we were looking at a graph earlier of my LinkedIn connections, and it's like nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing over the last sort of 12 months.
01:10:40.880 --> 01:10:46.399
Now you've got 10 or 15 people actively publishing, writing, sharing their content.
01:10:46.560 --> 01:10:50.880
That only happens if somebody senior makes it okay and like encourages it.
01:10:50.960 --> 01:10:58.880
So yeah, let's invite the media and get the specialist people and start having the conversation, and then in time we'll get the sort of broader coverage.
01:10:58.960 --> 01:11:05.520
And maybe it is that sport route, maybe it is something that gives people a resonance of grabbing the topic and actually wanting to talk about.
01:11:05.600 --> 01:11:13.840
I think it'll be the AI and the data side of stuff as much as anything, because unless they get their environmental and social license right, they just won't be allowed to function or operate.
01:11:14.159 --> 01:11:15.520
Yeah, yeah.
01:11:15.680 --> 01:11:18.079
No, I I think that's I think that's a great point.
01:11:18.239 --> 01:11:19.840
We should definitely try and do that.
01:11:20.479 --> 01:11:31.359
What do um so we're recording this in the middle of the second heat wave of of this year that's gonna be uh, as you quite rightly said, I don't know if this is before we started recording, the coldest summer we're gonna have.
01:11:31.520 --> 01:11:33.039
Yeah, you've got to stop talking about the hottest.
01:11:33.359 --> 01:11:35.760
It's not my my youngest is nine.
01:11:36.479 --> 01:11:42.000
He will look back to the good old days of 2026 when it was, you know, you could still function.
01:11:42.319 --> 01:11:59.199
Um so Elena Dom's, our amazing director of Europe, she shared a um a sort of mock-up uh satirical weather forecast from 2014 of what 2050 would look like and it wasn't as hot as what we've got right now.
01:11:59.520 --> 01:11:59.680
Really?
01:11:59.920 --> 01:12:04.000
Yeah, literally what we thought 2050 in a terrible scenario would look like, we're already there.
01:12:04.239 --> 01:12:07.439
So in 10 years we've accelerated beyond 35 years of estimation.
01:12:07.680 --> 01:12:08.239
Yeah.
01:12:09.359 --> 01:12:18.560
Yeah, I think if we start talking about it as good, yeah, the hottest, it's it's a record broken every five minutes, it loses its sheen because next year will be hotter, and next year will be hotter.
01:12:18.800 --> 01:12:23.199
And and the narrative now, more than not, is yeah, it's a bit uncomfortable, but it's quite nice, really.
01:12:23.359 --> 01:12:25.039
Because we have crack weather in the UK.
01:12:25.119 --> 01:12:29.119
Because I don't think we're yet feeling the the impact of it.
01:12:29.199 --> 01:12:42.640
So, you know, we we talked earlier about the impact on sport and how you know in the US there are hundreds of deaths a year that relate to heat injuries from like young athletes that overheat playing sport and they've had to stop them playing in Australia at certain temperatures.
01:12:42.800 --> 01:12:53.039
In the UK, yet it's still almost nice and it's still almost pleasant until you know it's too hot to sleep or whatever, but we're not seeing the the terrible impacts of it yet, enough for it to bite and grab, I don't think.
01:12:54.159 --> 01:12:58.239
Yeah, I agree, and we also have extremely short memories, right?
01:12:58.319 --> 01:13:05.199
So as soon as we get into the autumn and it starts being cold again, everyone will forget that it was 38 degrees in London all week.
01:13:05.680 --> 01:13:08.960
And I think I think that's exactly the problem.
01:13:09.119 --> 01:13:11.199
Like people can only really see what's in front of them.
01:13:11.439 --> 01:13:14.479
So we're not really getting the wildfires, you know.
01:13:14.800 --> 01:13:17.520
We're not getting the sort of the worst stuff.
01:13:17.840 --> 01:13:28.079
No, I mean I I remember I mean I'm out in Essex, and I remember a couple of years ago I could smell smoke because there was some um in Tilbury or not at Tilbury, anyway, somewhere near the M25.
01:13:28.159 --> 01:13:31.119
And so you that that was quite a moment.
01:13:32.399 --> 01:13:38.239
But um yeah, until they're frequently stopping and and trains, I mean that's the other thing, isn't it?
01:13:38.319 --> 01:13:43.520
You know, you see the trains is you know the the points getting too hot, the overhead lines getting too hot, which is not.
01:13:44.000 --> 01:13:49.600
I came back from London back in the last week and it was chaos once you went to the Midlands, everything was cancelled because the points had failed because of heat.
01:13:49.840 --> 01:13:50.159
Yeah.
01:13:52.640 --> 01:13:53.199
Not good.
01:13:53.760 --> 01:13:54.960
It's only the beginning, right?
01:13:55.439 --> 01:13:56.479
It's only the beginning.
01:13:56.960 --> 01:14:06.079
Um what's on your respective agendas for the remainder of the summer and and the year in things that relate to nature and climate?
01:14:07.680 --> 01:14:18.159
So next week I'm going to Switzerland on holiday because my youngest has seen Mickey Mouse lots of times around the world, but he's never seen a mountain.
01:14:18.560 --> 01:14:20.720
And more importantly, he's not seen a glacier.
01:14:21.359 --> 01:14:26.239
And if we don't go soon, he's not gonna see the glaciers.
01:14:27.039 --> 01:14:29.760
Um and it's also gonna be a bit cooler higher up.
01:14:29.840 --> 01:14:32.399
So we're we're we're taking the electric car down there, which would be good.
01:14:32.960 --> 01:14:34.479
So you're gonna drive to Switzerland?
01:14:34.800 --> 01:14:35.119
Yeah.
01:14:35.920 --> 01:14:45.840
So I'm quite looking forward to it, although three kids in the back might be a bit um 2017 and nine, they're all gonna be sort of elbowing and trying to work out who's the biggest.
01:14:46.239 --> 01:14:48.800
But yeah, so so seeing a glass will be good fun.
01:14:48.960 --> 01:14:52.560
Um and then it's yeah, gearing up for the autumn.
01:14:52.640 --> 01:14:57.920
There's there's there's COP 17 in Yerevan, there's New York Climate Week, there's COP 31, is it?
01:14:58.000 --> 01:14:59.119
I forget the numbers by now.
01:14:59.279 --> 01:15:01.840
Or is it 32 in Turkey?
01:15:02.159 --> 01:15:05.760
And what do you um we'll go you first, rush of the year priorities?
01:15:06.079 --> 01:15:15.600
Yeah, I mean, we've we've got some some deals to close, um, which is obviously always the kind of the first first priority, really.
01:15:15.920 --> 01:15:18.560
You've made me look bad now because of my clients like, are you not gonna do my deals?
01:15:18.960 --> 01:15:25.920
Yeah, I mean, while whilst you're looking at glaciers, yeah, you know, we're but that's his authentic social media reach out there.
01:15:26.000 --> 01:15:27.680
That's the hearts and minds playing to his audience.
01:15:27.920 --> 01:15:30.159
I think there's there's room for different approaches, isn't there?
01:15:30.399 --> 01:15:37.199
Um and and the yeah, yeah, I think COP17 has got some real momentum building to it.
01:15:37.279 --> 01:15:41.920
I think there's yeah, COP16 was excellent in um in Kali.
01:15:42.079 --> 01:15:46.159
There was a lot of really interesting stuff going on and and good people there.
01:15:46.319 --> 01:15:48.560
And I think COP17 will be even better.
01:15:48.640 --> 01:15:52.079
So I like the idea that biodiversity cops every two years as well.
01:15:53.039 --> 01:15:59.359
Because you can kind of look forward to it, and there's a bit of momentum, and it feels like that's the one opportunity the international nature community comes together.
01:15:59.439 --> 01:16:06.960
I know they do a bit in New York and London, but it's um with the carbon cop every two years, the climate change cop every one year, sorry.
01:16:07.119 --> 01:16:20.000
It it it just feels a little bit same agenda, same frustration at the end when no one mentions fossil fuels and it's all a bit it it it always feels like a a a bad news conference.
01:16:20.800 --> 01:16:28.079
Um London this year felt more honest, but like there wasn't that there wasn't the elephant in the room that people aren't talking about.
01:16:28.159 --> 01:16:38.399
You know, people were talking about the climate, they were talking about the weather, they were being honest about stuff, but actually it was we have done this, we know we still need to do this, but people actually had enough things they could point out that they'd achieved and they'd done.
01:16:38.560 --> 01:16:42.239
And um we have come so far in in five years.
01:16:42.319 --> 01:16:45.840
You you mentioned um Peter and Gresham's impact.
01:16:46.399 --> 01:16:55.600
What are the things you hope we might see this year that would give us a similar sort of step forward, or what are the things that the sector and the market need to keep progressing?
01:16:56.800 --> 01:17:05.520
So I mean I don't I don't know whether you know this year is kind of realistic in terms of timing for where the market needs to go.
01:17:06.239 --> 01:17:24.640
I mean, if you look at the thing that which really made the biggest difference to uh the energy transition ability to attract scale of capital, it was people stopped uh investing in companies and started investing in projects.
01:17:26.720 --> 01:17:31.359
Maybe they didn't stop investing in companies, but alongside investment in companies, they started investing in projects.
01:17:32.000 --> 01:17:38.239
And investing in projects creates the ability to access an entirely different kind of capital.
01:17:38.960 --> 01:17:54.800
And that's where you're gonna get the scale because commercial banks and investment banks and equity can come in and say, I know that if that thing goes wrong, my risk is limited to just that thing going wrong, right?
01:17:54.960 --> 01:17:58.000
It's not going to trip the whole business.
01:17:58.640 --> 01:18:05.279
So my my risk is just this amount of capital that I've deployed on this single project.
01:18:05.840 --> 01:18:10.960
And that's a it's always been a very useful kind of investment mechanism.
01:18:11.760 --> 01:18:13.920
We call it kind of limited recourse.
01:18:14.399 --> 01:18:42.880
And if we can develop a model which lean kind of lends itself to that, so people can say, right, this project has got a long-term fixed revenue credit worthy off-taker or off-take contract, we deal with the stranded asset risk, you know, of that off-taker going and solvent or you know, kind of not owning the critical infrastructure assets that it needs to be protected anymore.
01:18:42.960 --> 01:19:00.399
Or yeah, whatever, whatever it is, if we can solve that, if we can find the right insurance products, if we can make sure that we're, you know, as a sector, we're kind of comfortable with the people that are managing that habitat, then you can start to create something which looks very much like an investable project.
01:19:00.560 --> 01:19:06.960
And that will really precipitate a whole kind of new load of money coming into the sector.
01:19:07.199 --> 01:19:11.039
But I don't think we're there, and I don't know when we're gonna get there.
01:19:11.119 --> 01:19:38.800
You know, there's there's a lot of interesting discussions around the sort of resilience market, whether you know people can can can mitigate things like flood risk through nature-based solutions, which is gonna mean that the insurance premiums go down, compensation payments uh are gonna decrease, and there will be therefore money for people to pay for nature-based solutions, and that's something that you think, well, that could be securitised, that could that could become an investment project.
01:19:39.279 --> 01:19:40.239
A one and done thing.
01:19:40.319 --> 01:19:44.479
I think that's the key part about those sort of ecosystem service contracts.
01:19:44.720 --> 01:19:52.399
It's more akin to a renewable energy facility and that it'll keep going year on year, whereas at the moment the carbon or your BNG is sold once and done.
01:19:53.119 --> 01:19:57.279
That's exactly it, and that's where the where the parallel with then with energy comes in.
01:19:57.520 --> 01:20:13.119
You know, you structure that as a some sort of nature service payment, which is which is made every year for 15 years, that allows you to get kind of the debt in, which allows you to get the equity in in order to have that capital stack.
01:20:13.680 --> 01:20:26.560
Whereas at the moment, as you say, Rich, the front loading of the off-take does create a real kind of problem for people that are trying to kind of utilize structures from other sectors.
01:20:26.960 --> 01:20:34.640
It's really interesting in that it it kind of highlights the two phases I have to think about in terms of our business.
01:20:34.880 --> 01:20:40.239
So um I love what Rob Gardner's doing about these paid ecosystem services.
01:20:40.399 --> 01:20:52.319
So uh on the marketing and branding side of stuff, we we owe a lot of thanks to Rob because he was the first person I ever heard about um framing it as natural infrastructure and bringing and borrowing that language to the sector.
01:20:52.640 --> 01:20:58.640
He's also actively doesn't like the discussion around credits or units because it's one and done.
01:20:58.720 --> 01:21:02.399
He wants contracts because it's repetitive, so I think he's doing great work around there.
01:21:02.640 --> 01:21:10.000
The difficulty is I I want that future to come and very happy to spot Robin whatever we can to develop those systems and processes.
01:21:10.159 --> 01:21:30.000
But with our portfolio, we're sat on 500 million pounds worth of value, and almost I have to make that as boring as possible because it is a real asset, and our our natural capital is predicated on regulated credits or markets or where it's voluntary, it's on UK Woodland and Peatland Code, things that are real.
01:21:30.159 --> 01:21:43.680
Whereas in the future we're thinking about innovative, developing future revenue streams, whereas that first portfolio, we put no value on those things that might come in the future, but to protect the value we've created at the minute, it has to be boring, dull, dependable, safe.
01:21:43.840 --> 01:21:50.159
Because if we want to get institutional investment in, which I agree, all those things you were pointing to are what we need to get that capital in.
01:21:50.319 --> 01:21:52.560
It's not six months, it's probably five years still.
01:21:52.640 --> 01:21:56.000
Yeah, I think just to make it possible for them to even embed.
01:21:56.319 --> 01:21:58.319
But look, we need to have different structures, right?
01:21:58.399 --> 01:22:01.119
Yeah, we need to have a we haven't got the business model right yet at all.
01:22:01.359 --> 01:22:03.840
Yeah, but we we we need to have different ways of looking at it.
01:22:03.920 --> 01:22:09.600
We need to have deals which are inherently kind of land deals, we need to have credit deals, right?
01:22:09.680 --> 01:22:22.720
We need to have you know voluntary nature shares, whatever you want to call them deals, and we need to have the sort of um, you know, the kind of resilience market, nature-based solutions contract deals, and and we need all of those different things.
01:22:22.960 --> 01:22:27.680
We need people to have the choice, you know, do I invest in a management team or do I invest in a project?
01:22:28.079 --> 01:22:29.680
That's actually how you build a sector.
01:22:29.840 --> 01:22:35.760
You give you give options so that different types of capital can come in at different levels on different kinds of projects.
01:22:39.520 --> 01:22:46.880
And it's almost like what we've done, but at 10x the speed as well, because of the the global reach and growth of it.
01:22:47.039 --> 01:22:49.840
But they're still groping around for what the right business model is.
01:22:49.920 --> 01:22:52.800
So you had open AI accelerate off direct to customer.
01:22:52.880 --> 01:22:59.680
You know, we're we're looking at whether we offer a direct to customer carbon and nature-based product at the moment, and we keep going back and forward on it.
01:22:59.840 --> 01:23:04.000
Someone's going to, someone's going to offer that direct to customer by the gram.
01:23:04.319 --> 01:23:06.319
So we had a room full of hundreds of people.
01:23:06.479 --> 01:23:13.359
If we'd have put a QR code up and said who wants to offset their travel here, we we think it's 10 grams a mile or whatever you did.
01:23:13.520 --> 01:23:16.880
There's your QR code, and you can guarantee this project is high quality.
01:23:17.039 --> 01:23:26.319
A good chunk of that room would have I got asked, I did a I did an event, I did a book festival uh on that one last week in in Wales, the Love Trails Running Festival.
01:23:26.479 --> 01:23:29.039
I went and and spoke at the Rebel Book Club.
01:23:29.199 --> 01:23:29.920
You guys heard of them?
01:23:30.000 --> 01:23:30.319
I haven't.
01:23:30.560 --> 01:23:31.039
They're amazing.
01:23:31.119 --> 01:23:41.760
They um I came to books late in life, partly due to the Rebel Book Club, which was like they'd flash up one non-fiction book that they said if you read this, it'll fundamentally change something about the way you think.
01:23:41.920 --> 01:23:45.279
And then so it was a kind of full circle moment to go speak at this event.
01:23:45.359 --> 01:23:49.680
So it was a tent full of like 200 trail runners that I did this QA with.
01:23:49.840 --> 01:23:51.840
Hand went up, can I offset my traveller?
01:23:52.000 --> 01:23:52.640
I want to buy carbon.
01:23:52.800 --> 01:23:55.760
I was like, you can't yet, but someone will be able to.
01:23:56.000 --> 01:23:57.600
It'll be like the McDonald's thing, right?
01:23:57.680 --> 01:24:01.760
You know, you maybe you don't go to McDonald's as often as I do, but you know, it's eight pounds something.
01:24:01.920 --> 01:24:04.800
Do I want to round up to nine pounds for the Ronald McDonald's?
01:24:04.880 --> 01:24:05.199
Yeah, yeah.
01:24:05.600 --> 01:24:07.199
And it'll just become uh a roundup.
01:24:07.520 --> 01:24:09.119
Have you heard of stability?
01:24:09.680 --> 01:24:10.720
A guy called Will Folks.
01:24:10.960 --> 01:24:11.279
Right, okay.
01:24:11.439 --> 01:24:22.960
And they have a green margin that they do that exact product, and it's now been rolled out into co-ops around the southeast, I think, and it's routing funds already to wildlife trust, doing that exactly.
01:24:23.279 --> 01:24:24.800
Just the roundup will be a great way.
01:24:24.960 --> 01:24:34.960
And I think you'll get I think in the next six, twelve months you'll have the first voluntary uh purchase of environment of nature shares or nature credits or certificates, whatever you want to call them.
01:24:35.119 --> 01:24:38.000
And then I think the NCIP coming in is gonna make a big difference as well, right?
01:24:38.159 --> 01:24:40.720
You're gonna get really chunky off takes.
01:24:41.199 --> 01:24:44.159
And some individual projects need thousands of units.
01:24:44.479 --> 01:24:47.840
And and what's really good about that, because you haven't got your spatial multiply, have you so much?
01:24:48.000 --> 01:24:57.920
So you're gonna get areas where there isn't loads of town and country planning development, therefore doesn't really need a huge habitat bank, but are actually really lacking in biodiversity.
01:24:58.000 --> 01:25:07.840
And so the the beauty of being able to do your offset wherever you need in England means that parts where there isn't a big local market can really go hard on the NSIP stuff.
01:25:08.000 --> 01:25:08.159
Yeah.
01:25:08.399 --> 01:25:09.279
So I think that's quite exciting.
01:25:09.520 --> 01:25:14.960
And you can maximize for impact on that basis because you are getting connectivity and scale and and all those things.
01:25:15.199 --> 01:25:20.720
Um, one of the one of the ideas we're building towards that that was facilitated by some introductions you made actually.
01:25:20.960 --> 01:25:34.640
We're going to try and put together a specific institutional advisory panel for us who every X number of months or whatever will come together and tell us because you know we've built a product that is aimed at corporate and private markets.
01:25:34.720 --> 01:25:37.039
It wasn't ever aimed at institutional capital.
01:25:37.199 --> 01:25:40.800
But what do we need to change collectively to make it easier for you guys?
01:25:40.960 --> 01:25:42.399
Not now, but in five years.
01:25:42.479 --> 01:25:46.720
What are the things, decisions we could make now that we help move the market towards them?
01:25:46.880 --> 01:25:47.119
Yeah.
01:25:47.279 --> 01:25:51.279
So I think that's something we're kind of in six months, but we'll we'll start that process.
01:25:51.920 --> 01:25:52.640
Excellent idea.
01:25:52.960 --> 01:25:57.359
Gentlemen, I finished the podcast in the same way each time, um, and you both get an answer.
01:25:57.520 --> 01:26:01.199
What is the one question I haven't asked you you wish I had?
01:26:01.920 --> 01:26:03.520
What's your favourite dinosaur?
01:26:04.239 --> 01:26:11.119
Everyone had a favourite dinosaur when they're growing up, and at some point in our lives it became taboo to talk about your favourite dinosaur.
01:26:11.520 --> 01:26:13.359
And I think this is a safe space, Ben.
01:26:13.439 --> 01:26:14.880
What is your favourite dinosaur?
01:26:15.199 --> 01:26:15.920
So I've got two.
01:26:16.000 --> 01:26:18.560
I've got a real favourite, but I struggle to pronounce it.
01:26:18.720 --> 01:26:18.880
Okay.
01:26:19.039 --> 01:26:26.000
So I generally go safe with stegosaurus, which is my my second favourite, but I think the real one is Parasolophus.
01:26:26.239 --> 01:26:29.840
So it's like it's got that like Nike swoosh coming off the back of its head.
01:26:30.159 --> 01:26:31.039
Interesting.
01:26:31.359 --> 01:26:33.520
No one's asked about favourite dinosaur before.
01:26:34.640 --> 01:26:35.680
Favourite dinosaur?
01:26:36.399 --> 01:26:37.520
Stegosaurus.
01:26:37.680 --> 01:26:38.319
Yeah, it's good.
01:26:38.479 --> 01:26:38.720
Yeah.
01:26:38.960 --> 01:26:39.359
Solid.
01:26:39.520 --> 01:26:39.760
Yeah.
01:26:40.000 --> 01:26:41.199
Anything herbivorous?
01:26:41.920 --> 01:26:44.159
I f I feel an affinity to a triceratops.
01:26:44.239 --> 01:26:46.079
I think it's the shape and size.
01:26:46.239 --> 01:26:49.119
Yeah, which when people go T-Rex, you just it's just way too obvious.
01:26:49.439 --> 01:26:50.640
Yeah, it is true.
01:26:50.880 --> 01:26:52.880
Nathy, you also get a final closing question.
01:26:53.119 --> 01:26:54.640
Beat back is pretty good.
01:26:55.039 --> 01:26:57.039
That is pretty good, isn't it?
01:26:57.520 --> 01:27:02.159
Um I don't really have anything for this.
01:27:02.239 --> 01:27:03.600
I'd like to ask you a question though.
01:27:05.600 --> 01:27:06.720
What's my favourite dinosaur?
01:27:08.000 --> 01:27:16.399
So I think you you are one of the most sort of passion or outwardly passionate people in the market on this stuff.
01:27:17.119 --> 01:27:41.279
And the thing that that makes me wonder is for you, what's the sort of balance right between I'm trying to build sort of this incredible, investable, profitable business versus I kind of really believe that this is making a difference to you know how we live and how our children are going to live.
01:27:41.520 --> 01:27:49.359
Because I'm sure that it's you know there's a percentage on both sides, but I've kind of always wondered like where does that where does that balance it?
01:27:56.159 --> 01:27:57.199
In somebody hates it.
01:27:57.359 --> 01:27:59.680
I mean, I don't know what goes on the side of that brain.
01:28:00.079 --> 01:28:01.840
I think that's a hell of a read, to be honest.
01:28:02.000 --> 01:28:06.319
I think people often assume I'm incredibly positive.
01:28:06.560 --> 01:28:14.720
I don't always feel positive, like I'm frustrated a lot because I want to go faster and I want to make it better, and I want I it's the um Dave Brailsford.
01:28:14.880 --> 01:28:17.760
Like, what are the aggregation of marginal gains we can make every day?
01:28:18.399 --> 01:28:23.199
Um yeah, I I'll tell one story on the way past that.
01:28:23.279 --> 01:28:30.399
I was once asked just before we got we got married by a guy I work with, he's like, You have the inability to be satisfied by anything.
01:28:30.560 --> 01:28:32.479
How confident are you you're gonna stay married?
01:28:32.640 --> 01:28:34.800
And I'm like, I I can't believe I've got away with this.
01:28:34.880 --> 01:28:40.960
There's enough of a margin of like, I cannot believe I got to marry my wife that I don't think I'm ever gonna think that that stacks up.
01:28:41.039 --> 01:28:42.239
So Helen, I love you.
01:28:42.640 --> 01:29:01.359
Um so, in terms of my motivation, I love that what we do has a positive impact, and I want and it needs to matter, but my day-to-day drive is more about the people I work with and the business we get to build than it is innately nature and climate.
01:29:01.439 --> 01:29:04.239
Like I love it, is that, and I love it's positively that.
01:29:04.399 --> 01:29:12.720
But if I can create a place where each of the people that comes loves what they do, they're succeeding, and they can do that on a day-to-day basis.
01:29:12.800 --> 01:29:14.640
That's the thing that I get the most pleasure from.
01:29:14.720 --> 01:29:24.319
When you ask me what I'm most proud of about the business, it is the people that are in it and that we've attracted and the culture we've built, more so than the change of state on the ground.
01:29:24.560 --> 01:29:30.000
Now, I get both, which is why it's a very people ask me, you know, how are you?
01:29:30.079 --> 01:29:32.560
And I say I'm living the dream because I literally am.
01:29:32.800 --> 01:29:43.760
I can go to the estates, I can see the impact we've had, I can but it's not me planting the trees now, it's me creating the situation where they can deliver all this impact, and that's the way I think I can do do the best thing.
01:29:44.000 --> 01:29:50.239
Um, but the people are the bit that get me to well up or make me emotional or or really push me about the business.
01:29:50.319 --> 01:30:02.960
I think it reminds me of what people say about what the most rewarding thing about being a partner in a law firm is, is that you see someone that you've mentored and trained being brought through to be a become a partner.
01:30:03.119 --> 01:30:10.800
And actually, I think I'd go one step further because then you start seeing those people that you've mentored and trained start looking for the next person that they're going to mentor.
01:30:11.600 --> 01:30:20.960
Where you've taught somebody something and you've seen them teach it and then teach it goosebumps when you see them coaching the same skill or thing that exactly the old start chain reaction.
01:30:22.000 --> 01:30:23.119
L does it all the time.
01:30:23.199 --> 01:30:27.600
I see L coaching things I coach, and it's like, yes, that makes me super proud.
01:30:27.760 --> 01:30:37.760
I and I think you you guys have got a huge amount of responsibility for how this sector has improved, the talent, the credibility.
01:30:37.920 --> 01:30:45.920
Because from us walking in, you've been convening, you've been sharing experiences from energy and renewables and deals and all the things that are there.
01:30:46.079 --> 01:30:50.479
And yeah, on behalf of me and all the companies in the sector, thank you for everything you're doing with that.
01:30:50.560 --> 01:30:52.800
And it's been an absolute privilege to have you on the podcast.
01:30:52.880 --> 01:30:53.600
So thank you for coming in.
01:30:53.840 --> 01:30:54.800
It's been great to be here.
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Thank you.