Season 3 Premiere: Danny Mutisya

Director and Co-Head, Clifford Chance London

Danny Mutisya

Director and Co-Head, Clifford Chance London

Danny currently leads the emerging market private equity practice at Clifford Chance London today. When he started as an associate, a few weeks into his job, he was tasked with conducting due diligence on a financial institution in an unfamiliar jurisdiction. The firm provided the number of a sector expert, put him on a plane and wished him good luck. Danny completed the project with flying colors. 

In this interview, Danny shares insights on:

How did he end up at the London office of BigLaw after earning his LLM in the U.S.?

What’s it like to practice law at BigLaw’s London office?

How is the networking strategies for setting yourself for success?

What are the crutial qualities lawyers need to possess to build a global legal career?

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It’s really good to be speaking to you, Danny. You received your LLM in 2010. How did you end up at your current position at Clifford Chance London running the emerging market private equity practice after you graduate with your LLM?

It’s lovely to see you after all these years. Just taking a step back, I remember while just before we left Georgetown, and this would have been the same time. The director who ran the LLM program at the time said to many of us that in five years, people's career ambitions would be coming to fruition. I took that to heart. And it turned out to be super accurate and spot on.

So immediately after I left Georgetown, and you'll remember the economy, at least in the US and, and in the West was still reeling from the effects of the global financial crisis. I landed a temporary job initially at a firm in DC. That didn't last very long. I think it was a month or two max. And there wasn't really anything available in U.S. at the time.

So after searching and giving up looking at the time in the US, because there just wasn't anything, I went home to Kenya. And I landed a job at a top-tier law firm in Kenya doing a variety of transactional work from corporate M&A to projects to real estate - a broad diet of transactional work. And I did that for about four years, and really just developed a broad skill set.

And then when the world had recovered, my interest was still going somewhere into a global market where I could see deals from a different perspective, and work on larger transactions. So I started to look again, and the first place I looked was London, and I've been working on deals collaborating with law firms there. So I interviewed with a couple. And Clifford chance was happened to be looking for somebody with my skill set at the time. So it was just the right place right time.

They were looking for someone with experience in the emerging markets, which I had, doing private equity and M&A work in the past few years. And so I interviewed a couple of times, and I got the role. And that was a mid-level associate position. That was about nine years ago.

How did you end up working in London in particular? Is there hiring needs at international firms for internationally trained lawyers to move to these global talent hubs like London?

I always wondered what it would have been like to remain in DC or New York and wanted to do that. So I was looking at any global talent hub like London, Singapore, somewhere of that status. It was always at the back of my mind whilst I was practicing in Kenya that I wanted to go back to that. And it just so happened and when I started to look, my experience and the position were matched at an international level.

Do internationally trained lawyers need an internal referral to get hired at an international firm in these global talent hubs?

It's a good question. I had a couple of contacts that I've worked with at various firms internationally and so I reached out to them. At Clifford chance I had a couple of people who I reached out to and said, Look, what's the hiring situation looking like? What are people hiring? What's the market? What kind of candidates are you looking for? And it just so happened that one of the jobs they were recruiting for at the time was something that matched my skill set.

One of the questions new lawyers frequently ask is how to network. How did you establish the contacts at Clifford Chance?

It’s from previous transactions I worked on, including one particular person I had known from my days at law school. And I reached out, and it just so happened that they were working with various teams at Clifford chance. My CV is a match in the recruitment process. After speaking to different partners within the organization and interviewing, but it was very much to your point, there were existing relationships to leverage on, which were very helpful in finding out about opportunity in the first place. They undoubtedly vouch for me as an individual.  

What is it like to practice law as a multilingual and internationally trained lawyer at BigLaw in London?

It's great to be at the heart of a big international market, doing transactions with global clients, who are all market leaders in their own spheres of influence. Doing the work of this caliber means the world to me. It’s like working with some of the smartest people that you'll ever come across. Some of my colleagues are thought leaders in the things that they are good at. Being in markets like London and New York, and Singapore, and others come with that privilege. And so I feel like it is really a privilege to be practicing law in an environment where you're constantly challenged and surrounded by the very best day in day out.

Do you have any interesting stories in your practice to share with us?

There was one in particular that just showcases the kind of practice that we work in on a day-to-day basis. When I was maybe three weeks into the firm, a client called and said they wanted to acquire financial institution in a particular kind of emerging markets jurisdiction.

I had just worked on a financial institution deal, before joining the firm. So I got called up and told, can you travel at very short notice to this jurisdiction to go and do some due diligence on a financial institution? And I said, okay, but, you know, it's not my jurisdiction, what's the value add to send me? And they said, basically go and find local counsel to help you. You can fly down, go and find them, engage them, they will tell you the jurisdictional specifics, but this is all on you.

Then the firm has a sector expert and others who can offer you a quick call and talk you through what you need to know. And so I quickly jumped on a call with a partner in a different jurisdiction, who then gave me a one hour download over the phone on the sorts of things that I should ideally be looking for.

And I jumped on a plane shortly thereafter and spent a week hiring local counsel, doing very high-level diligence; and starting to negotiate the transaction. To be honest with you, at that point, it was all very scary, because it was kind of super deep work and very quickly thrown in. But at the same time, just having the confidence in the platform of a firm, which had the sector experts who you could jump on the phone with, if you had any questions. That was all really interesting and exciting. Obviously, that doesn't happen on a daily basis. But it illustrates some of what working at a global law firm can throw your way as a pretty junior lawyer. The deal turned out really well. Client was happy. The deal was hugely successful, after months and months of kind of diligence in negotiating. It all started with that very quick, last-minute trip to a far flung jurisdiction for me.

What do you think are the most important skill sets for internationally trained lawyer who want to build a global legal career like yours?

That’s a really interesting, but equally difficult question to answer. As you know, the international practice of law is very sector specific, or practice areas specific. Every lawyer will be different in technical skills that they possess.

What's important is within one's own practice area, so if you're a finance lawyer or corporate lawyer, or disputes that you need to excel at the technical aspects of it. That means being in touch with the latest developments, ensuring that you can talk the talk, but also do the work.

More broadly than just the technical skills, I want to say, just to your point at the beginning of this interview, it's about that global mindset, the people that are the most successful, are the people that demonstrate that global mindset, the ability and the interest and the intellectual curiosity of not just knowing what's pertinent in your market, but also what's pertinent to other markets and other jurisdictions because the world is interconnected. And what happens in one jurisdiction often has ripple effects across multiple other jurisdictions. And so just that global mindset, and that global understanding of issues is really important.

It's also really important to be a kind of relationship builder. A lot of what we do is focused on our clients, and being not just interested in what they're doing, but obsessed in some respects, and what they're doing and, just understanding what their needs are and what they want to achieve. And so that takes a lot of kind of development of our relationship building skills, of our listening skills, which aren't always obvious for us lawyers who tend to talk a bit more than we listen.

Fantastic. I'm so happy to hear. One last little request, just from appearing on the same screen with you, it reminded me that we went to a Halloween party a million years ago, where you were wearing a banana costume. If I find that picture, would you mind that I share it again on LinkedIn?

I don't mind at all. Actually, I think it was French fries, if I remember correctly.