Fraud, corruption, money laundering, how do the world’s top lawyers tackle financial crime at the highest level?

This week, I’m joined by David Savage, Partner at HFW and a leading expert in white collar crime and sanctions. David reveals what really happens in high-stakes investigations, the red flags companies ignore and how AI is reshaping compliance and regulation. Plus he shares his journey balancing life as a law firm partner and an LGBTQ+ parent.

If you want insider information on financial crime, compliance and the future of regulation, this episode is unmissable. Go give it a listen now!

So why should you be listening in? 

You can hear Rob and David discussing:

– David’s Journey and How a Lot of it Was Self-Taught

– The Complexity of Sanctions

– Why We Need Technology and Compliance

– Maintaining Authenticity in Your Professional Life

– Diverse Work Experience and Career Advice

Connect with David here – https://uk.linkedin.com/in/davidjohnsavage

Transcript

David Savage  0:00  

So I basically started teaching myself about sanctions, reading EU regulations, which are incredibly challenging to get your head around, something I never thought I’d end up doing, but I managed it. And then started advising our commodities clients, and it quickly turned into a small micro business. It was a bit of a weird journey. I didn’t intend to be a sanctions lawyer, but I have absolutely no regrets about being one, but generally speaking, I’ve had broadly positive experiences of being out and as one gets more senior in one’s career, I think there’s almost a social contract that one has to agree to when one has had a very positive experience, which is to try and create those positive experiences for those around us. I know that a lot of junior lawyers are looking for role models. Are looking for mentors. Are looking for people who are authentic, and that’s why I am the way I am

Robert Hanna  0:46  

on today’s legally speaking podcast I’m delighted to be joined by David savage. David is a partner at hfw in London with a wealth of experience in regulatory and white collar crime matters. David advises on sanctions, fraud, corruption, money laundering, market manipulation, market abuse and insider trading. David is a recognised leader in his field by legal 500 and Chambers as a next generation partner. So a very big, warm welcome to the show.

David Savage  1:11  

David Rob is lovely to be here. Thanks for having me. How you doing? I’m doing very

Robert Hanna  1:16  

well, and the pleasure is all ours to host on the leagues being podcast today, and before we get into what will be undoubtedly a fantastic show. We do have a customary question here on the legally speaking podcast, which is on a scale of one to 1010, being very real, what would you rate the hit TV series suits in terms of its reality of the law? If you’ve seen it,

David Savage  1:36  

I have never seen suits, and I purposely try not to watch any legal shows, because I always get very frustrated when I think that they’re actually completely not linked to what the reality of a law firm is. So I’m going to give it a hot five. Give it a five out of 10.

Robert Hanna  1:52  

There we go, diplomatic five, and with that, we’ll move swiftly on to talk all about you. So to begin with, David, do you mind telling our listeners a bit about your background and career journey,

David Savage  2:01  

absolutely so. I’m David. I was born in the 1980s to two parents in the Royal Air Force, and then spent quite a bit of time in my kind of youth, moving around East Anglia with my mum. She did a law degree when I was about 10 years old, which probably had some impact on my career decisions down the line, which I think we’ll maybe talk about later on. She met my dad when I was 10. They got married, and my dad adopted me when I was 11 years old, which was pretty cool. And then they had another couple of kids, my brother and sister, who I’m incredibly close to. We moved to Scotland when I was 12, and I was this little camp boy in a Scottish school, which had his own challenges, but I managed to soldier on. Joined the Air Cadets for a number of years, which was fantastic. Got to the rank of sergeant. Sergeant Savage was my Name, which I thought was perfect. And then when it came to figuring out what I wanted to do, I originally wanted to be a commercial airline pilot, and just as I was figuring out whether I wanted to go to university or to commercial pilot school 911 happened, and I realised that I wouldn’t be able to afford to put myself through commercial pilot training, so second choice law and I applied to a number of Law Degree universities, and Newcastle gave me an unconditional offer, which, to my mind, made my final year of high school much easier. So I took that one and had an absolutely stellar time at Newcastle, reading law, really fantastic city, both to figure out a bit more about who I was, becoming more of an independent person, and exploring my sexuality a bit more, but also just a really good law school too, and it was there that I kind of started thinking more seriously about a career in law. And in my second year, much like many students do, I applied for some vacation schemes. It was incredibly scattergun the approach, but I was fortunate to get vacation schemes in London with Richards Butler, in Leeds with Walker Morris, and in Bristol with Burgess salmon, because I wanted to see what kind of city I wanted to live in, having never lived in London itself, and I came down to London on the train to my first vacation scheme. And I was still 19 years old at the time, and I was just blown away with being in the city. It just felt so freeing. It felt so professional. And I did my my two weeks at Richard’s Butler, and absolutely loved it, and then got my offer of a training contract just before my 20th birthday. So I was pretty young to get that that kind of in the bag. I did the other vacation schemes, but they didn’t quite live up to the heady heights of a London lawyers life, so I accepted that. Went to York for my college of law again, a really fun year. Travelled for six months after that. So did a bit of Asia, did a bit of Australia and New Zealand, and really enjoyed that, and found a lot more my of my kind of independent self. Off there and then started my training contract. Had a really good time. Did four seats, all of them, bar one, were contentious. I went on secondment to MTV because I thought I wanted to be a media lawyer, and promptly discovered that drafting contracts really wasn’t my cup of tea, but got to spend a lot of time with alphabet and the Ting Tings and a little bit of girls allowed as well. So that was my my small claim to fame. They obviously don’t remember me, which is a shame, because I’ve only got free tickets. So I was allowed last year, and then I qualified just as the financial crisis happened, which was stressful, and I qualified into the commodities team, and kind of really got, got into the, get the, guess the depths of being a proper lawyer, much like many lawyers, after a couple of years, I wanted to see what else was out there, so I moved to eversheds again, in the commodities team there, and that’s where I found my kind of real passion in law, which was, which was sanctions and financial crime. And enjoyed six, six or so years there, before deciding to move in house for a couple of years as head of sanctions for a bank, which was really, really fascinating, just to see the operational challenges that comes with fighting the good fight. But I then kind of got the call back to back to private practice that the lure I couldn’t resist this, and I joined Stewart as a partner in the financial crime team there. And then very recently, about a year ago, hfw reached out. They were looking for another sanctions partner. Hfw, as you may know, is a firm with a sectoral focus, so shipping, commodities, aerospace, insurance and reinsurance, construction and company and commercial. And I just felt it married up my kind of passion for sanctions and financial crime with my legacy experience of being a commodities lawyer, and so I happily joined the firm, and it’s been a stellar, stellar year or so. So that’s a very brief overview of who I am and where I’ve come from.

Robert Hanna  6:53  

I think you did that fantastically well, and what a great, great journey. And thank you for being very you know, open with that. It’s always super helpful to understand how people get to these amazing positions that you’re in. Positions that you’re in today and where you started. So let’s focus on the now then hfw, partner in the London office, tell us more about the area of law you specialise in for those who might be less familiar, and maybe just some simple examples of what things might look like for

David Savage  7:16  

you happy to do. So So I focus mainly on international sanctions and export controls. And put simply, these are the various restrictions that the EU, the UK and the USA, as well as other governments, put in place to restrict certain trade and financial activity with regimes which they consider are engaging in activity which may be problematic. So a very good example, very topical at the moment, is Russia. You’ll be aware that over the last three years, following the invasion of Ukraine, there has been a rapid increase in the kind of the level, scope and nature of sanctions against Russia, ultimately designed to restrict flows of funds into Russia and to restrict Russia’s ability to continue its war efforts. And what we do is we advise clients on how to comply with sanctions. We advise clients on when there may be a problem in terms of their compliance, they may have, in fact, breached sanctions, and we basically try and help them through that process. So looking at the kind of life cycle of a sanctions matter, we kind of help with identifying risks at the very beginning. So how do you prevent these problems from from happening, and how do you mitigate those? Those kind of exposures kind of go on to advice in relation to real life transactions as they’re happening. So a vessel is about to take on a cargo. That cargo may have a link to a sanctioned country or a sanctioned company, and we basically analyse whether there is a problem or not, and what the client can or can’t do when things go wrong. We investigate what’s happened, how it happened, is it one individual, or is it a systemic problem with the company? And we try and help them figure out why it happened and then how to resolve it. And if there are major problems, we help them to self report to regulators around the world. So in the UK, the office of financial sanctions implementation or the office of trade sanctions implementation, as well as other regulators, including HMRC and US regulators as well. So the DOJ, the FBI, I’ve worked with in the past, etc, and we also helping those investigations, just trying to make sure our clients, if they have made a mistake and if they have reported or are being investigated by these regulators, have as positive an outcome as possible, because the fines if you do get it wrong can be in the magnitude of multiples of millions. There’s also potential for criminal prosecution as well. So trying to manage that, that kind of dynamic. So it’s a broad church of work, and we work for clients across every sector. So you know, the traditional hfw ones, shipping commodities all the way through to professional services. I’ve got some AI clients that I’m working with. So it’s really fascinating, because you’re kind of advising on an area of law which is quite novel in and of itself, but then you’re getting to approach all these different. Clients and getting to learn about their businesses, which I actually really, really love. So it’s a really fun job. It’s quite, quite heated at the times. There’s a lot of stress that’s involved with it. But I think, you know, for me, I can thrive in that, and it’s very geopolitical, and I’m quite politically minded, so it’s kind of just a joy to kind of help clients navigate these various international challenges.

Robert Hanna  10:20  

Yeah, look, it probably leads to my next question quite nicely there, because it sounds varied. So a typical day, I appreciate. Probably no two days the same. But for you again, operating as a partner, what are some of the things you get involved in? Talk us through a typical day in the

David Savage  10:34  

life? Well, you’ve hit the nail on the head. There is no typical day. The most regular part of the day is my morning. I get woken up by a two year old at some point between 430 and 6am I try not to look at my phone for the first half an hour of the day. I like to kind of be kind of quite proactive in that that period, and just focus on my family. Have a coffee, and then if I can, I’ll go for a cycle or go to the gym. I think it’s really good for my my physical health and my mental health, just to get out and do something that kind of is a little bit more active. And then the day begins. And the day normally begins about 830 and I’ll read all the emails that have come in overnight, as I as I said, My practice is broad. It’s pretty much entirely International. And so there’ll be people messaging from Singapore or Hong Kong or America, and they’ll be wanting advice that day, and then you can respond to those, and then you get on with what your what your day actually looks like. So as I said earlier on, I might be doing a voluntary self declaration to HMRC. So drafting that declaration, making sure that it puts the client in the best light that they we’ve explained everything that we’re full and frank in our disclosure, I might then have to deal with a client who has got a sticky issue in relation to the processing of funds, which are linked to Iran. So thinking about what they can and can’t do, the denomination of the currency, where the where the funds are going to, where they’re coming from, looking at swift messages, working with accountants, trying to understand all the kind of financial dynamics. Because, as a typical lawyer, I do not understand finances at all, so I always need to get a get an accountant involved if there’s something like that that’s required, and then there’ll be things like drafting compliance policies, doing training, you name it. You know, it’s a very broad church of work, which, as I said earlier, keeps me excited. But on top of the day job, I’ve also got my gay job, and that’s basically I’m the head of the LGBTQ network at hfw, something I took on quite recently, and that’s been a really, real kind of big joy for me, just to take that network further forwards. We’ve got a lot of work to do as a firm. I think most firms do, but spearheading that and taking it into a kind of a more positive kind of journey, I think it’s quite exciting. And I’m also the DEI partner that stands for diversity, equity and inclusion, partner for the shipping team globally. So that’s not just looking at LGBTQ plus issues, it’s looking at social mobility, women’s women’s issues, religion in in the workplace, mental health and physical health in the workplace, etc. So looking at all those strands and making sure we’re as representative of society as we can be. And I’m also the anti bribery and corruption officer at work as well, so dealing with any kind of potential issues regarding gifts and hospitality. So lots of meetings, lots of relying on my team. Fortunately, I’ve got a really good team around me to help me get things on, get things kind of going on, but it’s again, busy days, but it keeps me out of trouble.

Robert Hanna  13:34  

Yeah, I was going to say busy is probably underestimating what you’re doing. You know, I thought I was busy, but just hearing all of that, you know, kudos to you. And it’s all great, meaningful work and impactful work. And I know you get a lot of fulfilment through what you do in terms of servicing clients, but also the wider roles that are equally as important there. I want to rewind, because you touched on it briefly, back to before joining hfw, you were a group senior sanctions officer at a private bank. What initially sparked that interest in sanctions and financial crime? For you,

David Savage  14:05  

I was out with a client when I was at evershed. I must have been about three years qualified, and I was, I was doing commodities work, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t sparking as much joy as I would have liked. To use the Marie Kondo terminology, yeah. I asked the client. I said, What? What is coming across your desk at the moment and this, and she worked in a in a kind of trading house, and she said, David, sanctions are going to be the next big thing. And this was just as Iran was kind of on the on the table, and the EU and the US were converging in terms of their sanctions framework to put maximum pressure on Iran. And so I thought, well, let’s give it a shot. And there wasn’t really anyone at evershed who was doing that type of work. So I basically started teaching myself about sanctions, reading EU regulations, which are incredibly challenging to kind of get your head around, and something I never thought I’d end up doing, but I managed it, and then started advising our commodity. Clients, and it quickly turned into a small, micro business. And as I mentioned earlier on, that kind of geopolitical nature of it, this really, really made me kind of interested in the area as a whole. And so I was doing this work, and obviously I came to the attention of the financial crime team at evershed, and they said, Well, David, we’re bringing in a sanctions partner. Would you like to come and be the senior associate to for him in his practice? And I jumped at the chance, because it, from my perspective, aligned much more kind of closely with what I wanted to do. And once I started kind of getting involved in, you know, the large regulatory investigations in relation to foreign foreign exchange manipulation, LIBOR manipulation, you know, financial misstatements, etc. I just realised this is the area for me. And, you know, there’s so many interesting elements. It’s not just the law, it’s not just the politics, but it’s also the people elements. It’s getting under the skin of, you know, why did you do this? Why? What was the kind of the purpose behind doing this particular transaction, or agreeing with this group of people to move rates or whatever, and so that’s how I kind of got into it. It was a bit of a mistake. But once I was there, I was like, this is the area for me. And over my kind of the last 10 or 12 years, I flex a little bit in terms of what I focused on. So sometimes it’s been sanctions, sometimes it’s been more general financial crime issues. And I think I’ve kind of quite nicely settled now at hfw with kind of sanctions, I guess, being my my major, and then other financial crime kind of issues, being my minor. And I work quite a lot with the financial crime team in hfw on various matters, so there’s a nice amount of crossover between us. But for me, it’s just that, again, that geopolitical element of sanctions and the fact that they change so rapidly that always kind of has me hooked. So, yeah, it was a bit of a weird journey. I didn’t intend to be a sanctions lawyer, but I have absolutely no regrets about being one,

Robert Hanna  16:49  

no, and it’s a super fascinating area. I have to say. I’m just, you know, becoming more and more curious and interested learning more about your your journey. Obviously, you’ve worked on a whole host of different complex cases. I want to talk about cross border compliance and investigations to go a bit deeper. Because, given, you know, hsw is global presence, you know, how do you go about approaching that sort of cross border compliance and investigations part, you know, what are some of the key considerations when you’re advising these multinational clients that you know someone operating at your level just absolutely needs to be aware of?

David Savage  17:17  

I mean, I think that the first thing to to understand is, what’s the scope of the investigation? What are you being instructed to look into? Because one of the biggest risks when you’re investigating is having scope creep, where you start off looking at one thing and then suddenly it just becomes this behemoth of an investigation, and sometimes doesn’t actually reach a conclusion. So you’ve got to properly scope it with with the client, make sure that they understand what they want you to do, obviously, check and challenge it be robust with them that once you’ve kind of got that and you understand what you’re investigating, the next thing is to basically think about what your regulatory exposure is. You mentioned international kind of clients. These clients may have exposure to regulators in their jurisdiction. They could also be exposed to regulators in foreign jurisdictions without really knowing it, and here I’m thinking mainly of kind of the UK and the USA and the EU. So ways in which you might be inadvertently exposed is by using US dollars that automatically can make a transaction the client or the customer exposed to US sanctions, if you have a subsidiary in the UK that may make you exposed to UK sanctions or UK restrictions in relation to fraud or whatever. So looking at the regulatory exposure, then you think about what the penalties are, what’s the problem, what’s the potential outcome that then has an impact on where you’re going to go and how you go about doing it. One of the things I always think is quite important that some people forget, is making sure you’ve got document preservation so you’ve everything is kind of retained. You get rid of document retention, kind of restrictions, etc, so everything doesn’t get deleted automatically, because that can create a massive problem for clients if they find, oh, actually, documents more than five years old have suddenly disappear, that can be, that can be a problem. And then thinking about, you know, what is? What is it from an employee perspective that we need to think about here? Because obviously the investigation into the misconduct is one thing, but then the the employee issue, wanting sure that you can represent employees and that they’ve got right the right representation is another thing. So making sure those two things are balanced out, and then doing the investigation, doing it in compliance with what the various regulations require, what the law says on data protection, etc, getting a report drafted, and then thinking about, what do we do with it? And that involves looking at stakeholders throughout the client, making sure they’re all involved in it. And it’s a real task to get everyone swimming in the same direction. And I’ve often found that it requires quite a lot of personal engagement with various different stakeholders just to get them to understand precisely what it is you’re looking to achieve. And you know, you don’t always get the right kind of the the optimum outcome for a client. You know, that’s that we always aim for it. But sometimes, you know, regular. It has a different interpretation to what we have. And so you know that there might be a more negative outcome than we had anticipated. And then you work with a client on that and explain this is, this is why we’ve gone down this path, and we’ve done everything we can to mitigate but this is where we are. And then you have the client learn from their mistakes, and that’s the key thing. So this has happened, it’s been an unpleasant experience. Let’s not do it again. And it’s funny, whenever I see clients, and I think I’m relatively personable, they’re like, they say to me, you’re one of the last lawyers that we actually want to see when it becomes to financial crime or sanctions, because we know something’s gone wrong, which I take as a slight as a compliment. I try not to take it too personally. So a whole raft of things to think about when you’re investigating

Robert Hanna  20:41  

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Unknown Speaker  21:56  

I’m gonna steal that. Thank you. Yeah, no

Robert Hanna  21:59  

worries. And just to you’ve touched on a few common, well, mistakes I’d love to know, you know, across sanctions, bribery, corruption, money laundering, because, I mean, you’ve done some incredible work. You know, what are some of the most common mistakes companies make when dealing with these risks? I know you talked about documentation, but yeah, just any other common things, potentially people listening in that are like, Okay, this is really hitting home. Now I need to start thinking about this to avoid this happening.

David Savage  22:20  

I mean, I think the first mistake is letting the mistake happen in the first instance. And I say mistake. Sometimes it’s not a mistake. Sometimes there’s obviously conduct which is nefarious that has caused the problem, which is which is now kind of being investigated. So many companies think because they’ve got their systems and controls, they’ve got their policies, they’ve got their top level commitment, they’ve got their training, which they do online. They’ve got, you know, audits come, you know, auditors coming in, doing their internal audits, etc, that they’re fine and that they don’t have a problem. And it creates a certain amount of overconfidence in relation to your your environment. And what you have to remember with most of these issues is that they’re human issues. When someone is accepting or giving a bribe, when someone is stripping information out of a swift message to remove any kind of reference to Iran, that’s a human factor that you really can’t cater for. You can’t litigate or mitigate that particular risk. So you just have to accept the fact that sometimes, even with the best system in the world, there are going to be people who are trying to take advantage of it. So I think knowing that you’ve kind of got this human factor is really important for clients to remember. And then I think the second mistake is not instructing counsel as soon as they realise something has happened. Because I’ve had so many times when you have investigations, and there’s been an internal investigation, and you’re like, why didn’t you get us involved earlier? Because then half the stuff which we’re now having to deal with, which is costing you money, we wouldn’t have had to deal with it if we’d been involved in the word go. That’s not a that’s not a sell, by the way. It’s just, it’s just a point that I’ve, I’ve identified over time, is that you could, you could get a you could be a lot easier. You could be in a better position if you had instructed lawyers a little bit earlier. Yeah, and

Robert Hanna  24:10  

look, I’m verbose about, you know, my day job on the legal recruiting. I think having that relationship is the best one that can help your overall life. You know, being in a job you love is important. So no absolutely instructing counsel that can help you, that can help you sleep at night, which, again, lots of partners have come on the show is so important. But, I mean, it’s serious stuff that you’re doing. So, you know, in terms of the agencies, how do you approach defending clients in these super high stakes investigations? You know, the FCA, SFO, Serious Fraud, office, us, Department of Justice, you know, office, financial sanctions implementation. This is serious stuff. So you know any sort of tips in terms of your approach?

David Savage  24:46  

I mean, I always try and find out what the agency is looking to achieve in the first instance, and that involves having that open and honest dialogue with them once you know whether your client is a suspect or. Witness, or is someone who maybe they’re looking to flip, then you can figure out what it is that you’re wanting to do and how you’re going to engage and how robustly you’re going to defend your client’s position. If it’s a corporate, you’ll be looking, you know, whether the regulator is really keen to make an example of the client, or if they’re looking to maybe kind of extract a significant fine, and then have that as a something that they can kind of wave in, in the air as a success. So I think understanding as best you can what the regulator is looking for is absolutely key. And then you can finesse your approach to make it kind of work with what the what the regulator is looking for, that that is, for me, is, is the key. Sometimes you can go in there guns blazing, and you’re like, oh, actually, that isn’t quite what we should have done. This isn’t really where the regulator’s going with this. So understanding it asking questions, I always ask lots of very silly questions, because at the end of the day, the more information I have, the better I can represent my clients. So I always ask far more questions than I probably should do, but

Robert Hanna  26:02  

I think that’s great, isn’t it? Being curious. You know, never assuming we know what that means. If you assume in terms of where that leads, and I always say specific is terrific. So when you can actually, you know, understand what it is that they’re really trying to achieve in terms of their goal, you can be a lot more helpful in your council. And you know, it’s more a win win all round, and less time wasted, less money spent, etc, etc. So no, really like that approach. Okay, you touched on it again earlier. But you know, we can’t not have an episode these days where we talk about tech and AI. You know, it is very much here. And even at the day of this recording, whenever it’s released, even on the same morning, it’ll probably be out of date, given the exponential change that’s happening. But in your view, how is technology like AI and automation shaping the future of regulation, compliance and legal investigations, and what are some of the risks and, indeed, benefits? Because we always like to talk about Tech for Good of integrating AI into compliance.

David Savage  26:52  

Yeah, I think that’s a really good question. And obviously lawyers are now all jumping onto AI. We’re all using copilot and chat GPT, probably not to the fullest extent possible, but we’re trying to get our heads around it, I think, from a compliance perspective, Tech really AI and tech is really a game changer. I mean, you can use AI to analyse millions of transactions to see where there might be erroneous data or erroneous kind of flows of funds. You can use it to sift through 1000s and 1000s of documents without having to use huge amounts of human capital, which obviously involves a huge amount of expense as well. And there are loads of ways in which AI and tech is going to be used which we can’t even get our heads around yet, and we’re still very much at the beginning of the journey. What I do think, for lawyers is, if you’re not engaging with AI and tech, now, you’re going to be behind the curve. So I recently signed up one of these courses, courses which is all about AI and how to use it and the various different functionalities. And that’s already kind of beginning to pay dividends, just in terms of getting my my day job a little bit more organised, as we’ve talked about. It’s quite frenetic. So the more help I can get with making a little bit more streamlined, the better. I think there is one word of caution with with AI and tech, and that’s the over reliance on it at the end of the day and for the time being, until we get to a, you know, an AI kind of super, super being which takes over the world AI is necessarily requires human input. It requires learning, it requires us to check and challenge what it is that it’s producing for us. And so I think there has to be a kind of a word of caution in our approach, that we can’t just rely on it. And the way I when I tend to look at AI, for example, is you treat it like a very, very junior lawyer, and you basically give it as much information as you can, setting it out in very clear terms, and then you should be able to get something back that you can potentially, you know, use. And that’s not disparaging younger lawyers at all. It’s just about, you know, we all have to learn, and we learn through being taught by people who are more senior. And I think that that’s that’s how we learn, that’s how we teach the AI tech to kind of be as useful as possible for us. So a great a great concept, a great piece of technology, but maybe not the panacea that everyone seems to think. And I also, from from a tech perspective, I always think about what is the opposite of compliance? Is, what are criminals using with with opportunity comes abilities to take advantage of it. And so I’m interested in how tech can be used in ways which are more nefarious, and figuring out, how can I help clients avoid falling into pitfalls which exposes them to that kind of nefarious activity as well?

Robert Hanna  29:39  

Yeah, and I just love that. And I love that you invest in yourself as well. Because, you know, some of these skills we’re all going to have to learn in the new world of work and future of learning work that we have. You know, if it’s meant to be, it’s up to me, and you’re taking that time to go out there. Reskill, retool, understand how to use these new tools to benefit your practice, aid your clients further. Love it. And yeah, we’re not quite I read Reese. Lee that the CEO of SoftBank was saying, obviously, we’ve got AGI artificial general intelligence, but as I artificial super intelligence that they recommend potentially be 10,000 times smarter than any human on the planet. So we’re not quite there yet, but he predicts the next few years we’re getting there. So I think we all need to be thinking about this, staying curious, being open to learning, and love your overall approach. Okay, let’s talk about some trends within sort of your your space. What are some of the things that have most surprised you in terms of sanctions trends in recent years?

David Savage  30:30  

Well, I mean, when I got into sanctions, it was mainly Iran, and as soon as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was agreed between Iran and the US and the EU, which was essentially an agreement that Iran would stop enriching its its water and engaging in nuclear proliferation in return for the relaxant, relaxation of sanctions against it. I just thought sanctions disappear as a concept, which is why I was glad to kind of focus on other aspects of financial crime and upskill there and then, obviously, Russia invaded Ukraine, and that was following the illegal annexation of Crimea, and sanctions have just exploded again. And I was, I was quite surprised at the beginning, at the vigour with which those sanctions were pursued by the EU, the UK and the USA. So what I thought was a dying potential area is now just a blossoming, huge area with loads of work for maybe too much work, for the amount of lawyers who actually do sanctions work. So that was one, one surprise. And I think the other thing is, following the invasion of Ukraine, we’ve now had three years of of, you know, sanctions against Iran, against Russia, sorry, yeah. And I’m still surprised at how little people know about sanctions and how they actually work. And I think part of that is because they’re designed to be complex. They’re designed to be opaque, and that encourages over compliance. But what it also means is that we’re continuing to get loads and loads of questions, loads and loads of investigations and requests for advice from clients. And you think after three years, there would be maybe more of a kind of a general knowledge base, and I think there is, but I just think it is such a confusing area that the instructions just keep coming through. And that’s been a an incredibly pleasant surprise. So those are the two kind of major kind of pieces of observation I have. The other one is now, obviously, with the implementation of tariffs, how that is going to impact on on kind of international trade and business as well. Because, you know, I was reading only a few days ago about, you know, the possibility of Trump responding to our vat with his own tariffs. Now, tariffs aren’t sanctions, but they’re sanctions related. And so kind of, what can we do as sanctions and export control lawyers to help our clients on the tariff side of two? And that’s certainly something that we are now exploring with clients. So there’s always new learning to be undertaken when it comes to sanctions. And again, that’s quite a pleasant surprise for me, because I’m, I’m quite, as I say, I’m quite a curious cat and and that kind of ability to keep on investing in myself with these new kind of areas of practice is, is, again, quite, quite a pleasant surprise.

Robert Hanna  32:57  

Yeah. And I love how you have a real, um, passion for the work that you do as well, we can tell, yeah, and that’s why we want those voices on the show. You know, our tagline is inspiring legal minds, transforming legal futures. And we need these people that are, you know, really invested in trying to do their absolute best for their clients, the profession, and always curious as well, and always learning. And I think that’s what’s gleaned. You know, throughout this conversation, anyone who says they’re an expert in anything, you know, yes, you can have a high level of skill and certainly know your know your stuff, but we all need to be continuously earning and that’s why we’re really keen to to get someone who’s very well known within the sanction space, particularly on to the show, to educate our listeners as well. Because, like you say, I think there isn’t quite the level of kind of understanding that is needed. Okay, let’s go back to last year, yes, and let’s talk about LinkedIn, because it’s a platform that I’m hugely grateful for. I owe a lot to LinkedIn. It’s given me so many opportunities beyond belief, and I’m a huge advocate for it. But obviously, last year, you shared on LinkedIn about taking your little one to the hfw family Christmas party. You’re open about being LGBTQ plus a parent. How important is it for you to show your personal side of life as a lawyer, and how do you balance being a law firm partner with being a parent? Well,

David Savage  34:07  

I mean, I’ve always approached my career and who I am as being essentially linked. So I’ve never had a personal David and a professional David. I’ve always tried to bring my full self to work, and I guess I was very lucky when I did my vacation scheme at Richard’s Butler, I was partnered up with a an out gay partner there, and he has become a lifelong mentor and friend, and I’m sure HR did on purpose, and it gave me that confidence from a very early stage in my career, just to be myself and to be very happily gay. I can I am a gay man, very openly gay, and to do it in a way that felt authentic to me. And I don’t think in the intervening one or two, maybe 17 years, that there has been a moment when I have felt luckily victimised or prejudiced as a. Of my of my sexuality, and I’m not sure every lawyer or every person can say that, and I could be wrong, but generally speaking, I’ve had broadly positive experiences of being out. And as one gets more senior in one’s career, I think there’s almost a social contract that one has to agree to when one has had a very positive experience, which is to try and create those positive experiences for those around us, and I know that a lot of junior lawyers are looking for role models, are looking for mentors, are looking for people who are authentic. And that’s why I am the way I am. That’s why I talk openly about being gay. I talk openly about my husband, and very happily, in the last few years, I’ve talked about my surrogacy journey. My sister was our surrogate, which was just a phenomenal experience, and something I never thought would have happened in a million months of Sundays. And I’ve talked about that. And then I obviously talked about my son, our son, and how proud I am, and I I am genuinely proud. I love being a dad. And you know, all of my friends who are straight, when I was telling them about this, this kind of project to have a child, they were like, well, if we’re going to be getting woken up at 6am we don’t see why you can’t be getting woken up as well. So they were very supportive. Perspective, I see what they mean now, and I just talk about it like that, because I want other people to both straight and LGBTQ plus, to kind of a have it, have that kind of situation normalised only a small percentage of the UK that are LGBTQ plus an even smaller percentage that have kids. So I want that to be normalised, and I want the like the queer community to realise that they can do these things too. Being LGBTQ plus is not a bar to living whatever life you want to live, and so that’s why I talk about it. And just generally speaking, I do. I love being a dad, and it’s hard for me to leave that part at home, so I kind of bring it to work with me. And indeed, in December, actually bought the little one to work for me. And it was, it was a lot of fun, and I felt very privileged to be in an organisation where a, they focused on families like that, and B, where I could come into work with my son as an as an openly gay man, and know that there were going to be no issues, no negative comments, it was all going to be very supportive. So, yeah, that’s, that’s why I do it. It’s, it’s my, it’s my, my joy to be able to be as as open as I am,

Robert Hanna  37:12  

yeah, and it’s your life. I know people talk about work, life, balance. It’s just life, you know. And being a parent, being a dad, is part of your life. And it’s, you know, it’s important. And I love that you’re so open and honest about your journey and and what you you have achieved, and how you’re balancing things and in a very authentic human way, which I think we’re all craving, that human connection, particularly from people that you know are doing great things, like yourself in your your areas of law. So I guess before we wrap up, then, what? What advice would you give to those, maybe aspiring lawyers or lawyers that are probably thought about maybe switching lanes, who might be interested in a career in regulation, sanctions, compliance or white collar crime? Anything you would say to that? Yeah,

David Savage  37:49  

I guess I’ve got kind of three pieces of advice. Number one is for those who aren’t already in the profession, so more more junior in their careers, get as much work experience as you can. And that work experience doesn’t have to be you know what I did, which was the vacation schemes. It can be working in a High Street Law Firm. It can be going and shadowing a judge. It can be working in a compliance team in a bank or a corporate or working or going to jail and doing some, you know, some shadowing work in jail, as long as there is a kind of an element of compliance or financial crime or sanctions in it, I think that’s going to stand you in really good stead. But also just getting out and getting work during work, being a normal person and just having a job, I think that kind of skill set is also really valuable. I learned a lot through being a waiter about how to work with people and how to charm people and things like that, which I maybe wouldn’t have been able to do if I hadn’t had that correct that kind of skill set as part of that, that working practice. Secondly, I think, you know, keep reading the news. I read the news all the time. As I mentioned earlier, my job is very geopolitically biassed, and you have to be aware of what’s going on in the world, in the world. And it’s very clear when we have people who apply to do to join hfw as a trainee or a vacation schemer that they, if they if they’ve done their prep and they’ve read the news, because they can talk with knowledge about what’s going on in the world and how that impacts us as a business. And thirdly, and this applies to, I guess, everyone is to look at your career holistically and not to not be afraid to take chances. My career, whilst it might look quite linear, has actually been a little bit more sinusoidal. And I’ve always approached new opportunities with that kind of curious nature that we’ve talked about during this, this kind of half hour. And I thought, well, what’s, what am I going to lose here? And there’s a phrase which is like, what if I fall, and then you go, but what if? What if I fly? And that’s how I always try and approach these things. You know, go and go and explore, explore these new areas. Go into financial crime, go into a bank, being the financial crime team there, oh, go and be a partner, join this new firm. And I’ve always approached it with that kind of gusto and curiosity. And I think if one looks at one’s career holistically, at the end of one’s life, maybe. Least, and not that linear anyway. So don’t be afraid to have those kind of career changes, those step changes, those kind of pivoting of, you know, where you’re focused as well. I think that is what, what we as always, kind of have to do for our clients. So we should also apply it to ourselves and our careers.

Robert Hanna  40:14  

Yeah, I love that. You know, what if you fly and it’s so true, isn’t? It’s mindset. I remember Jack Newton, CEO of Cleo, said, You know, you know, always thinking about, what if it goes wrong? Well, what about what about what is, you know, what is the opportunity ahead of us if we look at that? So absolutely love that, and it’s been a brilliant conversation. As I knew it was going to be super excited to, uh, to make it happen today. So if our listeners, David, want to follow you or learn more about your career, or indeed, hfw, where can they go to find out more? Feel free to share any websites, any social media handles. We’ll also include them in this episode for you, too.

David Savage  40:44  

Thank you very much. I’m on LinkedIn, and my LinkedIn name is David John Savage, so feel free to add me. And we’ve also got the hfw website, which is hfw.com and you can search for David savage or sanctions on there. Unfortunately, I don’t have any other more fun professional social media accounts. So it’s just just my LinkedIn and my my work one

Robert Hanna  41:05  

absolutely well, the largest professional networking site in the world will do for our listeners. That’s Thank you very much. It’s my favourite. So thanks so much. Once again, David, it’s absolute pleasure having you on the show from all of us on the leading stream podcast sponsored by Clio, wishing you lots of continued success with your career and indeed your life as a parent, but for now, over and out. Thank you for listening to this week’s episode. If you like the content here, why not check out our world leading content and Collaboration Hub, the legally speaking club, over on Discord. Go to our website, www, dot legally speaking podcast.com. Has a link to join our community there, over and out.