Banking and finance is a global industry involving major transactions and disputes covering multi-jurisdictional issues. Increasing internationalisation and a wide variety of financial products mean that modern banking is becoming ever more complex.

One result of this complexity is that the scope for banking litigation is increasing. Disputes may involve insolvency proceedings and the enforcement of rights under financing agreements and money-laundering regulations, as well as criminal prosecutions and Department of Trade and Industry inquiries.

George Link has been a partner at Allen & Overy since 1999, joining the magic circle firm directly after completing a degree in jurisprudence at Oxford in the late 1980s. He recalls that the selection process was a little different in those days: "The City was a slightly more clubbable place back then, so when you went to interview all you spoke about were your activities outside the law or non-intellectual things - you'd have a nice chat for an hour and at the end you'd get the offer of a job. When you compare that to now and what we put our trainees through to get a job, it's like night and day, the difference."

He views his training contract at Allen & Overy as a crucial step on his legal journey. It was then that, despite enjoying a number of different seats (and others slightly less), he realised that banking and finance was the sector for him. "I think the training contract was, and remains, a fantastic system," he says. "Much depends on the person with whom you sit; it's an intensely personal relationship. I didn't have any preconceptions about what I wanted to do when I started the training contract and went through the normal gamut of seats you go through. I enjoyed litigation, corporate, banking and finished up in private client. Of all the seats, I probably enjoyed private client the most, because you get the most responsibility as a trainee. But for me, I felt the non-adversarial side and doing deals was what I liked about my training contract - that and the international element of the work led me to banking."

This international element is, George suggests, due not only to the increasingly multinational nature of today's business world, but also to the historical prominence of English finance law. "We are very lucky that English law, along with New York law, is accepted as the main governing law for many financial transactions," he says. "Therefore, as English lawyers you have an ability to get involved in transactions that you have, in reality, no real right to be involved in. You'll quite often find that parties in two very faraway countries will choose English law as the governing law of their contract and therefore will want to get an English lawyer involved to advise on that contract."

Indeed, George is quick to point out that his role in banking transactions is as much about being a facilitator as an expert on the law. "Essentially, it comes down to writing an agreement that involves money and trying to record faithfully what the agreement is between the borrower and the lender," he explains. "Often it will be a syndicate of lenders, so there will be a multiparty agreement, and what's needed is the ability to reflect faithfully what they have agreed. But your role in doing that is only partly law based. In a way, that's a given - that you know the law. What you are guarding against is the potential insolvency of a borrower and trying to maximise the position of the lenders. There will be lots of points when the lenders want to control the borrower and the borrower wants the freedom to run its business without interference from its lenders. So your job is to help in the process of reaching a compromise between the two. In some way you are acting much more like a consultant to the transaction than like a lawyer, because when you become experienced in these matters you are suggesting that in analogous circumstances, this compromise was reached. You will know that such a risk has been assessed previously and people have thought that to be a reasonable place for the different parties to end up."

George's career has spanned several economic cycles, from the last severe recession at the end of the 1980s through the booms associated with the ‘Dash for Gas' and the dotcom bubble, to the waves created by emerging economies, the jumbo financings that accompanied the growth of the multinationals and finally the leveraging deals with which many associate the current crisis. "Who knows what the next few years will bring?" he speculates. "I think what's quite interesting is that although banking is seen as a relatively narrow specialisation, within its church there are some very different types of work. We follow the market to where the work is, and as I said, one of the things we are there for is to help people reach compromises when they are doing these deals. So it is necessary to know the market and know what the compromises are in order to be effective on these transactions."

Market knowledge may be critical, but that's not to say there aren't other skills required to be a successful lawyer in the banking sector. "One thing I would say is that it is quite hard work over quite long hours and often you are doing things in the early hours of the morning. Getting the drafting right at that time is key - being able to concentrate for long periods, even when you are tired. Small mistakes can lead to quite big losses for your clients. That said, being clever or being able to work hard is not enough. You need to be able to sit in a meeting with people and empathise with the other side's position and see why they are holding their point as dearly as they are, and then try to work out a way of dealing with that point while still not giving away too much of your own position."

George's final advice is to understand how international the business world has become and the extent to which an interest in other cultures can be beneficial. "The more rounded you are, the better," he says. "Clearly, you do have to have an ability at law, but there's more to it. Being well read, being aware of international culture and politics: things like that are incredibly important, especially given that the balance of power in the world is changing. I think there is more coming out of India and the Far East, in particular China, so having some experience or having travelled in that area will help a lot. Our clients are more sophisticated, more eclectic and drawn from all sorts of news areas. To know nothing about those areas or have no interest in them means that you are not going to have a great career."