Beating the clock

When I first arrived at a law firm, I used to observe my three or four favourite women associates.

Feminine and almost with a divine aura.

Everything seemed perfect to me, from the Chanel 2.55 handbag resting on the desk to their hair always styled perfectly despite wearing their Vespa helmet.

Then one day, the first (epic) closing I witnessed happened, and at 2 a.m., I was with them, standing next to a desk that seemed to stretch for miles, arranging annexes and attachments to a SPA that kept being modified by someone on the other side of the world.

One of them started saying she had terrible foot pain, and the other, nodding, said that having her hair pulled back so tightly was causing constant migraines.

They went on with relief, like bursting dams, talking about weekends on a boat interrupted by phone calls with no signal and food poisoning, about bank holidays missed because of scheduled due diligence.

I simply said, “We need a pizza, I haven’t had dinner,” and they clicked.

Blessed be the closings because I discovered that behind the title “solicitor” were young women constantly chasing themselves in a profession that often crushes them.

One of them told “once, I arrived 10 minutes late and found a missed call from a partner on the landline: I had missed the request that was then assigned to another associate. I felt defeated—the client was mine, I had been working on it for over two months, and I needed an answer at that moment, and I wasn’t there. All he had to do was call me on my mobile, but he didn’t. Since then, every time I take it just a little bit easier, I feel like I’m risking a potential defeat.”

The next day, they returned to being divine for the rest of the world, but something had changed.

Both for them and for me.

They had the opportunity to show themselves as people, and they seized it.

If you want to beat your FOMO in the high-stakes world of corporate and M&A and overcome this sense of defeat that accompanies you every time you want to take it a bit easier, we should talk!