Why did you become a lawyer? I never considered any other career – I always saw law as an opportunity to be involved in a ‘moral’ profession (although I know thousands would disagree!).

Who has been the biggest influence on your career? Yuriy Maltsev – he used to run Clifford Chance’s Almaty office in Kazakhstan, and I was seconded there for a year at the start of my career in the early 1990s.