A wobbly week?

A wobbly week, yes.

Well, it's been a wobbly September so far for a while.

And I would say that the key moment when people really have started looking was just over a week ago when Mike Aiello's move to Cravath was reported.

And he's this very big, important corporate partner in New York.

who's taking a team of five other partners with him to Kravath, which is a massive move for them and a massive move for Weil because he's been very important there.

And I think that's sort of, hit home how while Cam potentially lose such a big name and then over in London we had their London co-head David Avery Gee move to Sullivan and Cromwell with another corporate partner called Sarah Flatty and those moves have just sort of highlighted the issues that potentially wow has why has it lost such big names and why might it possibly lose some more I think there's a real degree of uncertainty there at the moment because of this

Is the issue not for a while, though, that they have lost people in this kind of marquee corporate M&A group rather than across different sorts of teams? And the feeling is, as you say, sort of kept the feeling in the market as well, is that it is leaking and vulnerable and struggling as a result.

Rachel, could you give us a recap of what the story is and about the, the issue of female leadership within A&O Sherman?

So the story from this month is about their board elections.

They, they had a number of candidates, uh, for a number of positions on the board because people had served out their terms and, uh, The Lawyer understands that one woman made the cut.

She was actually on it before, so she's been re- reelected onto the board, which is great.

She's called Alice Engelhart, and she's in their disputes team.

Uh, but of the other places that were up for grabs, they did not go to women, even though women did put themselves forward, and we understand that that's led to quite a lot of disappointment among some of the ranks that some of those roles didn't go to senior women who might have been really, really good on the board.

So at the moment, A&O just has one woman out of nine places on the board.

There's gonna, my, my path is gonna be blocked," that is absolutely not the case.