Mohamed Barakat, managing partner at Barakat, Maher & Partners in association with Clyde & Co: Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a successful member of the community starts their day — and then throws in a couple of random business questions just for fun. Speaking to us this week is Mohamed Barakat (LinkedIn), managing partner at Barakat, Maher & Partners in association with global law firm Clyde & Co.

My name is Mohamed Barakat and I am the managing partner at Barakat, Maher & Partners in association with Clyde & Co. I’m an Egyptian-American who grew up in Egypt, but lived most of his adult and career life in the US. After several years working for Baker McKenzie in the Gulf, primarily Saudi Arabia, I was approached by Clyde & Co to launch an office in Cairo, which we did about a year ago.

We have grown the office to 15 associates after having started with four people that came from my previous firm. Our projections are that by mid-year 2024 we will have an office of 20-25 people, with the aim of having 18 people by the end of 1Q 2024.

Why Egypt? Egypt has the third largest GDP in the Arab world and there’s a lot of crossover between Egypt and the Gulf and Africa. From a global law firm's perspective, Egypt is uniquely positioned to offer not only the ability to grow your practice, expand, and be the gateway into North Africa, but also act as an interchange between Gulf offices as well as African offices.

Of course there are issues in Egypt regarding a dearth of hard currency, but I think a lot of these are temporary. The structural foundation of Egypt’s economy and the macroeconomic aspects of the country have always been strong.

The saying “never waste a good crisis” definitely stands for lawyers in Egypt, and we’ve seen a slew of activity in debt capital markets recently.

Barakat, Maher & Partners stands on two pillars: We’ve got the corporate commercial side, whether that's mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, capital markets, employment, cooperative advisory, or cross border work. The other backbone of our practice is disputes and arbitration, and we do a lot of ins. work, as it is a core service for Clyde & Co.

Management is the focus of my day: A lot of my day-to-day work involves creating a strategic overview of workflow, assessing the appropriate associate to assist on a project, and handing it down. I spend time managing our deliverables, our clients, and their expectations, and then of course the other side is managing the running of our office and the related admin. Plus, many of our clients are US-based firms that do business across the Middle East, so I often work with other offices in these jurisdictions.

Regionally, the legal sector has seen an influx of work into Saudi: There’s been a lot of regional expansion, specifically into Saudi Arabia after the government has changed its policies to enable foreign law firms to directly invest into the kingdom and now requires firms to establish a regional headquarter in the country. I’ve seen a lot more of my clients moving to establish a presence in the kingdom as a regional HQ that will eventually oversee the activities among different Middle East countries.

Law keeps me on my toes: What I enjoy about law in general and about being part of a global firm is the variety — you get to work with different people, countries, mindsets, regulatory regimes, education systems, and methods of writing and thinking. It makes the profession very intriguing and attractive.

My day starts typically between 4:30 am and 6ish, with coffee and water. I probably spend an hour catching up on my emails and seeing what I have to handle in terms of priorities in the day, then from there I hit the gym for cardio and calisthenics. On the way to work, I always speak with each of my three partners to organize our thoughts and find out about new transactions or clients. At the office, I read Enterprise for half an hour and then back to emails.

Saturdays are my only day off in the week. On Fridays, I work because the US and Dubai are working and on Sundays I work because Egypt is. Saturdays are for doing all the stuff that I didn’t do during the week. I spend time with my parents, I try to read, and I buy healthy groceries for the week.

We have a flexible work model at the office: From my perspective, I don’t require that anybody be in the office, so long as the work is done with the quality required for a Clyde & Co law firm, the hours are there, and no balls are dropped. Part of what Covid showed us is that the old concept of brick and mortar offices is not required anymore.

I fast to stay focused: With my role within the practice it’s very important to stay focused. I find intermittent fasting helps me reach ketosis — the metabolic state that occurs when your body burns fat for energy instead of glucose — which makes you quite crisp and sharp.

You’re always “on” in the legal profession, so a work-life balance is very difficult. The silver lining is that if you enjoy what you’re doing, the whole concept of work-life balance really fades away. We (lawyers) enjoy what we do. We enjoy the pressure and seeing a transaction closed. Of course it's tedious at times, but there’s always reward in that.

A book I’ve just finished is Is God a Mathematician by Mario Livio, which philosophically discusses if the pure theory of mathematics is a language of God discovered by humans or if it’s something we invented. Has mathematics been pressed upon the fabric of creation or is it something that Einstein, for example, developed intellectually? It’s a very fascinating book.

Something that I’ve come to realize over my life, is that there are three pillars of success: discipline, persistence, and perseverance. Whether it's in my career, in work outs, a diet, or even learning a new language, these are three characteristics that have propelled me to achieve. Discipline to continue, persistence to achieve the goal, and perseverance to continue on, even if you fail.

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