Peerpoint by A&O Shearman

After more than a decade of advising on cross-border M&A, private equity, complex multi-jurisdictional carve-outs and corporate reorganizations at Magic Circle and U.S. law firms, I made the decision to transition into a consultancy role through Peerpoint so I could remain engaged in high-quality corporate work while managing family commitments with my young children.

I currently work as a senior associate consultant within the corporate team at A&O Shearman, advising on big ticket transactions alongside partners across the department. What’s great is that the scope, intensity and complexity of work mirrors that of my previous private practice experience and I still have access to institutional support, know-how and market-leading resources. I love that I get to work with super intelligent people, advise high-end clients and continue to gain valuable experience at a more manageable pace.

Consulting has provided me with a great degree of autonomy over both the type of mandates I take on and how I structure my working day. I typically focus on one or two transactions at a time that I will lead throughout the lifecycle of the deal, with support from the junior lawyers I supervise. This approach enables me to select assignments that align closely with my expertise and on which I can add the greatest value.

Assignments are generally six to twelve months long, allowing me to integrate fully into deal teams and provide consistent, senior-level support across all stages of a transaction. This model offers flexibility without compromising on quality work and provides a more sustainable way of working in corporate law, particularly for those seeking greater work-life balance.

I’m really proud of the work I am doing, developing my technical expertise and transactional experience at the highest level while retaining control over my workload. Consulting with Peerpoint has proven to be the best decision for me and my career (as I get to do interesting work and still make it to my evening hot yoga class), and for my little ones (who now get to enjoy my culinary experiments for dinner!) I look forward to getting stuck in on future mandates and seeing where my Peerpoint journey leads me.

As a dual-qualified lawyer, initially admitted in Germany and more recently in England and Wales, with extensive knowledge and broad experience in commercial real estate transactions, I advise clients on complex cross-border matters, drawing on both civil law and common law expertise to provide practical and strategic legal solutions.

I’ve spent most of my career working in private practice at an international law firm in Frankfurt am Main in Germany. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to go on secondment to the firm’s Abu Dhabi office for six months, working as part of the cross-border real estate team. I thoroughly enjoyed the UAE and the secondment was extended, but when it came to an end, I chose not to return to Germany but to instead take a career break and travel the world. After a year away, I wanted to get back to legal practice. That’s when Peerpoint came in.

With legal consulting, it’s fantastic to be constantly learning and embracing new challenges and opportunities. I’m currently working with an oil and gas company, which is a new field for me, and I have been able to deepen my technical expertise, while broadening my perspective across infrastructure and real estate. I enjoy working with top-tier clients on complex matters alongside highly qualified colleagues, and I appreciate the opportunity to work on such diverse legal projects with lawyers from such a wide range of backgrounds.

Working in the Middle East is exciting – I am learning so much about how to tackle legal challenges from different cultural perspectives and I am constantly expanding my professional horizons.

Working with Peerpoint, it is great to have the resources of A&O Shearman behind me and I know I can reach out for support if I need it. I’m looking forward to building my experience with new clients in other jurisdictions. You have to embrace the variety and be open-minded. Personally, I find it really rewarding, and it always makes me smile.

I started legal life as a shipping law barrister in London before moving to Dubai in 1998 and handling a broad range of corporate and commercial disputes, as well as non-contentious matters in private practice. Since then, I’ve held several General Counsel roles over more than a decade, reporting to CEOs and Board chairs, and have built up broad expertise across offshore energy services, commodities, payment systems and healthcare. Much of that work has been performed in distressed (and almost always stressful) situations.

My last deal as an in-house lawyer was the 2023 sale of a high value, specialised vessel to a state-owned entity that touched the fast-evolving sanctions regimes of seven jurisdictions. The risk of a breach of sanctions was so severe that we couldn’t get a law firm to help and banks were far from keen to be involved. So I was very much left to my own devices playing the roles of sole negotiator, legal counsel and board of directors.

After successfully closing that transaction (involving trips to the Cayman Islands, Tokyo and Istanbul and settling over 150 documents), nothing was going to come close to matching that experience. It was time to recalibrate and look for something new.

What I love about working with Peerpoint is how it has opened up a new world of opportunities. Being somewhat introverted, I didn’t spend nearly enough time building a client base in private practice nor an extensive professional network while in-house. But fortunately, this is Peerpoint’s strength. They provide support with my marketing and business development and, thanks to their law firm backing, brand me with a highly valued badge of endorsement.

A&O Shearman’s deep connections with great companies mean that the opportunities are fascinating and almost impossible otherwise to access. As the partners have often been providing services for many years, they have great insights to share on the company.

I’d describe myself as a specialist at being a generalist – if my career was an Olympic sport, it would be the decathlon. A consulting practice suits that disposition very well because no two assignments are ever the same.

I’m typically supporting or stepping in for the General Counsel in roles that are as much about project management, leadership and engagement as they are about law with tasks as varied as leading on one of the UAE’s largest business interruption claims arising out of the 2024 Dubai floods to developing playbooks for a very large organisation to recover bad debt. With my seniority, I’m now getting a particular kick from supporting junior members of the teams I work with, setting them up to understand and exceed the GC’s expectations, as much as I get satisfaction from rolling up my sleeves on conventional lawyering.

There are certainly different rules of the road to follow when you become a legal consultant. My advice would be to stay laser-focused on what the client is asking for (ensuring the goals are clear from the outset and reviewed regularly) and stick to the script: for example, unless specifically asked, you are not there to build a relationship with the C-suite which might risk disintermediating the GC or other senior counsel.

At the same time, if you come across a challenging character on the client team, there’s no need to become defensive or burn too many calories trying to get on their right side; you can smile and walk away, knowing that your paths will not be crossing indefinitely.

I was ready for a new opportunity when I became a legal consultant; I have always loved the variety of work a legal practice can bring, and you get no greater variety than not quite knowing where you will be six months from now.

Caleb Raywood was a Peerpoint consultant from 2025 to 2026.

As a U.S. and UK qualified solicitor specializing in cross border M&A and capital markets, I have worked in private practice and in-house in London, Singapore and now Dubai. Wanting to spend more time with my two children, I took a career break and studied international human rights in London. After five years away from law in the not-for-profit sector, I decided to go back to legal work, while retaining the flexibility to spend more time with my family - so I turned to legal consultancy.
 
I was very pleasantly surprised to find myself at the heart of very interesting deals as a legal consultant. With Peerpoint I benefit from high-profile, technically challenging and varied work, with sophisticated clients. I very much enjoyed my recent roles here in Dubai, working directly with GCs advising on a capital markets and M&A issues and corporate restructuring projects.
 
Living in Dubai means lots of opportunities to work for multinational businesses, and I’m grateful for the variety that consultancy offers me. There is a very positive, forward-looking energy in the market here. I also enjoy the melting pot of cultures in Dubai and working in teams with people from all over the world.
 
Peerpoint is the perfect partner, ensuring I can work on assignments that not only match my expertise, but also support how and where I choose to work.

A&O Shearman was formed on 1 May 2024 by the combination of Shearman & Sterling LLP and Allen & Overy LLP and their respective affiliates (the legacy firms). This consultant profile may include reference to roles/assignments generated by one or more of the legacy firms rather than A&O Shearman.

I’m a mid-level private equity lawyer. I made the jump to consulting in 2021, after four years in private practice at the London and New York offices of a leading U.S. law firm. I’d gained valuable experience advising on mergers and acquisitions, large reorganisations, big commercial contracts and more but I started to feel I needed more variety.

I think it’s important to embrace different kinds of legal experience as you progress up the career ladder. That way, you can broaden your capabilities and stay employable. Through legal consulting with Peerpoint, I’m discovering all that is very achievable.

My current placement, for example, is with a global venture capital firm. This is a field I’ve long wanted to explore. The legal team is quite small, so I knew I’d be tasked with quite substantial, senior-level responsibilities that would stretch me – exactly what I was looking for. So far, I’ve worked on some really big projects that involve the firm’s U.S. offices, so there’s also the added attraction of a multinational environment.

It's been a big boost to my confidence as a lawyer realising that I can step into a new field, as I have done with this engagement, and make a success of it. Being proactive, adaptable and a quick study definitely helps. What’s also been great is knowing Peerpoint has my back. The team has been super supportive. I know if I have any issues, they will be there for me.

So far, I’ve chosen to engage with Peerpoint through my own legal practice. This way, I feel I can test the waters and experiment with consultancy work patterns while retaining a few other clients at the same time.

Most of all, I’m enjoying the fact that I’m not locked permanently into any one environment and have more control of my working life. That enables me to balance my dedication to clients with other interests. I’m a passionate amateur boxer and marathon runner and keeping fit is a huge part of my life. Working this way means I can accommodate my training routine.

I’m just delighted at how well consulting has worked out so far and look forward to continuing my partnership with Peerpoint.

A&O Shearman was formed on 1 May 2024 by the combination of Shearman & Sterling LLP and Allen & Overy LLP and their respective affiliates (the legacy firms). This consultant profile may include reference to roles/assignments generated by one or more of the legacy firms rather than A&O Shearman.

My switch to legal consulting came relatively early in my career. I had three years’ post-qualified experience gained in leading international law firms in London, with experience advising on cross-border M&A and private equity transactions, as well as complex corporate and financial restructures. I’d reached a point where I felt more technically competent and confident in what I was doing but I also wanted a way to gain more flexibility and control over my working life, without sacrificing quality roles.

So far, consulting is proving a fantastic path to exploring that. The assignments Peerpoint offers are with top-tier firms, so I’ve been able to continue working at a high level as a lawyer but with far greater autonomy in terms of what I take on.

As I’m not locked permanently into any one environment, I’ve been able to gain experience in different sectors and enhance my skillsets as I progress. For example, a recent placement saw me working in-house as part of a data privacy team. I was handling high-value commercial contracts, drafting templates – some from scratch – and working closely with technical experts who valued my legal advice. It was a terrific experience and I learned so much.

Working more flexibly also means I can explore opportunities outside the traditional law firm model. For instance, I’m very interested in ethical artificial intelligence (AI) and want to help ensure that this incredible technology can be used for good. That’s led to me co-founding a technology company. Our software platform offers technical documentation and governance controls that enterprises can apply to their AI systems, helping them manage and minimize any associated risks.

The Peerpoint team has been really helpful. They’re quick to offer support whenever I’ve needed it, including offering me an Allen & Overy partner contact. I’ve also been impressed by how carefully they’ve sought to match me with the right opportunities. They know I’m fascinated by technology, so I’ve been offered quite a few exciting assignments with a tech slant – anything from cryptocurrency to enterprise AI, which is obviously right up my street.

I’d recommend consulting to anyone, it’s allowed me to add more variety to my career while rebalancing my working life. It’s really been a great fit for me at this stage of my career.

A&O Shearman was formed on 1 May 2024 by the combination of Shearman & Sterling LLP and Allen & Overy LLP and their respective affiliates (the legacy firms). This consultant profile may include reference to roles/assignments generated by one or more of the legacy firms rather than A&O Shearman.

I have a rule when it comes to my career: every six months I reassess my top priorities, write them down and commit to them. At the start of my career, the focus was on salary and becoming a partner. Five years after qualifying, I began to re-examine what I wanted to do.

That’s where Peerpoint came in. I read about someone on the panel who is an artist and uses Peerpoint to supplement his artistic work. It really struck a chord with me, so I joined. Having more control gave me the chance to re-visit my childhood dreams: boxing and stage acting. A bigger one though was my interest in business. Peerpoint allowed me to explore that, to the point where I’ve launched my second social impact startup, 30 Minute Chat

Peerpoint hasn’t just enabled me this opportunity, it’s been the perfect partner every step of the way. The team worked very hard to find assignments that match my own criteria to the point where, when I first joined, I received three offers all in line with what I was looking for. That’s what surprised me the most: many of their clients are actively looking for lawyers at an earlier stage in their career, like me.

A&O Shearman was formed on 1 May 2024 by the combination of Shearman & Sterling LLP and Allen & Overy LLP and their respective affiliates (the legacy firms). This consultant profile may include reference to roles/assignments generated by one or more of the legacy firms rather than A&O Shearman.

I left Allen & Overy when my family moved abroad, but I was still interested in working. When we moved back to the UK, I was keen to work but I knew I wouldn't be able to work in the same way I used to; the long hours in the office no longer suited me. So, I turned to consultancy.

I wanted quality, high-profile, technically challenging work. With Peerpoint I can make a positive choice to take on an assignment. I support the banking team at A&O, either in the office or from home, around four or five hours a day when the children are at school. When they're on holiday, I am too. Our clients are international – I can work from the office or from home, and still fully support the client.

The London LMA market is well developed and you need to stay on top of the market. What I'm doing now keeps me up to speed. If I want to develop my career further, I still can. At one point I thought I'd have to give up my career; now I can take it from here.

A&O Shearman was formed on 1 May 2024 by the combination of Shearman & Sterling LLP and Allen & Overy LLP and their respective affiliates (the legacy firms). This consultant profile may include reference to roles/assignments generated by one or more of the legacy firms rather than A&O Shearman.

Specializing in M&A, capital markets and debt financing law by day, I’m also at the start of an acting career, which places me in rather a unique position. It was this, in fact, that prompted my joining of the Peerpoint panel in April 2017. 

Peerpoint has a sophisticated set-up and provided a viable way for me not only to take periods of time off between assignments to focus on my acting, but also to pursue both careers simultaneously. Peerpoint is solutions-focused, facilitating the needs of the client assignment, while encouraging the professional and personal ambitions of the consultant. There has been total transparency around my commitments, and I’ve found Peerpoint and the clients to be both receptive of, and interested in, my acting work.

As lawyers we tend to be risk-averse, yet taking the step into consultancy can provide so much freedom and opportunity. It’s exciting working for different clients and learning about their organizations in a way in which you may not within a permanent role. It provides an opportunity to not only expand your business and legal network but also to leverage from Allen & Overy’s contacts and relationships. A&O also has an impressive international network, meaning they are well placed to support foreign lawyers in their relocation plans, or in gaining international exposure.

Peerpoint engenders a huge amount of respect for what lawyers are trying to achieve in their personal and professional lives, and that’s really refreshing to see.

Amrik Tumber was a Peerpoint consultant from 2016 to 2024.

A&O Shearman was formed on 1 May 2024 by the combination of Shearman & Sterling LLP and Allen & Overy LLP and their respective affiliates (the legacy firms). This consultant profile may include reference to roles/assignments generated by one or more of the legacy firms rather than A&O Shearman.

A solicitor specializing in litigation and financial regulation, I trained and worked in private practice in Hong Kong for nine years, before moving in-house to work for an investment bank. While I enjoyed my work as a lawyer, I sought more variety over the type of work I chose to do, and wanted more control over my working hours.

Since joining Peerpoint, I have worked as a professional support lawyer supporting the Allen & Overy Hong Kong litigation team, on contentious financial regulatory investigations within the Hong Kong office, and in the financial crime compliance team of a global investment bank. Peerpoint works with high-caliber, international clients, which gives me access to challenging, top-tier work. It also presents opportunities for me to work outside of litigation and investigations.

Peerpoint offers excellent resources, such as in-house seminars, know-how and events, as well as opportunities to network among the consultants. For me, consulting with Peerpoint has given me a greater work-life balance, and has enabled me to pursue my Japanese language studies. With a more flexible working structure, I have also had more time to travel and explore Japanese culture, which has provided me with a really valuable opportunity that most likely would not have been possible within a permanent role.

A&O Shearman was formed on 1 May 2024 by the combination of Shearman & Sterling LLP and Allen & Overy LLP and their respective affiliates (the legacy firms). This consultant profile may include reference to roles/assignments generated by one or more of the legacy firms rather than A&O Shearman.