Winston Weinberg

They think it's going to be a big M&A year.

It's going to be great.

And they were talking about like how they think about legal fees.

And the way that they thought about legal fees is the reality is like it's going to be a big year.

And whenever we have a big year, we pay more in legal fees.

That's just like how it happens.

Right.

But there are certain things I don't want to pay for anymore.

Like there are certain parts of the deal, et cetera, that I just marking up NDAs, whatever it is.

I don't pay for that anymore.

But there's all these new things that I'm paying law firms for.

AI risk.

Like, should you buy this company?

Is there a problem in XYZ country with an act or something like that that's going to change it?

There's so many new pieces of work for professional services that my gut is that's not what's going to happen.

In fact, I think what's going to happen is the professional services market is going to actually keep growing at the same as GDP.

One way to think about this is most professional services is cyclical.

If you have a really good year, professional services have a really good year.

That's almost always how it works.

Other than bankruptcy and litigation is somewhat counter-cyclical, it depends on the area.