Chillin'Competition

The news is out there: Alfonso has been promoted to equity partner, and he will be able to introduce himself as one on 1 January 2019.

I could say that the promotion is deserved several times over (which it is). But it would not really capture how I feel about it. That needs a few more words.

I met Alfonso when he was a 23-year old LLM student. In my mind he was a partner already back then.

Let me be clear: it is not that Alfonso ‘had the potential’ in his early 20s. All the qualities of the best law firm partners were already there, in full bloom, ready to be put to the best use. He could very well have acted as a partner at the time (as I suspect he might occasionally have done and know for sure he has in the past few years).

What I admire in top practising lawyers is that they have to be good across the board – unlike academics, who, so long as they are solid researchers, can afford to be walking failures in pretty much every other aspect.

Alfonso has acquired such fabulous reputation in record time because he is not just skilled in many disparate areas (technical, analytical, managerial and so on); he excels at every single one of them, which is quite unique.

And I mean this in the best possible sense. For instance, it is said that practising lawyers need to be ‘good with people’, which is often taken as code for ‘good at networking’. Alfonso is much more than that. He is good with people in the sense that he is generous, genuinely cares about others, and people like him a lot (in part, but not only, because he is great fun to have around).

I am sure many of our younger readers look up to Alfonso. They should. In fact, I cannot think of a better role model.

I have no doubt you will find the way to join me in congratulating him for this milestone!