Legal Cheek Careers sits down with Baker McKenzie’s Alex Gee
Alex Gee, a partner in Baker McKenzie’s corporate team, is candid about the fact that a legal career was not always his intended path. Early on, he considered training to be a doctor, a route he moved away from after not choosing the right A-levels. It was only through hands-on work experience that a legal career began to appeal. “The most important thing for me was work experience,” he recalls. “I was fortunate enough to do a couple of work experience placements to understand what being a lawyer truly involved, and that was what ultimately confirmed that law was the right path for me.”
Baker McKenzie’s global reach played a central role in Gee’s decision to join the firm. His international upbringing across Asia and the US meant he “wanted to work for the best international firm, and that brought me to Baker McKenzie,” he says. After landing a training contract with the firm, including a stint in Hong Kong, he qualified into the corporate team in London.
Having spent two years in Singapore early in his career, Gee returned to London and soon found himself working on a string of healthcare and life sciences deals. It was a happy coincidence for someone who had “always wanted to be a doctor” when younger. Some years later, Gee has continued to focus on transactions, particularly in the healthcare and life sciences sector, including a nine-month secondment to GSK that gave him valuable in-house experience.
When I ask him what it is about life sciences deals that keeps him coming back, Gee points to the often more complex nature of these transactions. They can be far more intricate than a typical deal. That complexity stems from the understandably heavy regulation that governs the sector, and Gee admits he’s constantly learning. “You never feel like you have learned everything,” he notes, pointing to the constant regulatory developments and deal nuances in this space.
Equally, he enjoys the real-world impact of the work. “I think there is real purpose in supporting companies that are developing pharmaceutical products with the potential to improve lives,” he reflects. “It might sound clichéd, but I like that in some small way my work involves giving back.”
One deal Gee worked on which really captures these complexities was the high-profile demerger of GSK’s consumer healthcare arm into a new company, Haleon. Splitting off a business from a global giant was “immensely interesting and incredibly complex,” he recalls. Baker McKenzie’s multi-practice, cross-border team had to separate a worldwide enterprise. This included disentangling years of shared functions and supply chain operations, as well as setting up transitional arrangements so that both Haleon and GSK could continue operating smoothly. “Those commercial discussions were fascinating,” Gee says. Being a “front page of the FT” deal on top of all that was just the cherry on top.
Big deals aside, Gee is equally focused on the human side of lawyering. Having recently been elevated to partner, he says client relationships are “critically important” and something aspiring solicitors should cultivate from the start. “The temptation is to just focus on the legal work, but you must develop and keep relationships from every transaction and contact,” he advises. It’s natural to spend your early years honing legal skills, he notes, but “as you get more senior, those relationships become increasingly important.”
In practice, that means keeping people in mind long after the closing of a deal, and keeping track of the people you meet and checking in with them from time to time. Even a quick message or email will do. “This can be as simple as dropping a line to say, ‘I saw something in the newspaper and thought about you,’” Gee says. It’s a small gesture but is genuinely effective in the long term. “These touchpoints strengthen professional bonds because, ultimately, the individuals behind the businesses are still people.”
In addition to people skills, Gee has long been a champion of tech innovation in legal practice. As one of Baker McKenzie’s “Reinvent Ambassadors,” he has helped drive the firm’s adoption of legal tech. “We started implementing machine learning and AI tools in our firm in around 2016,” he says, bringing in software to streamline tasks like document review and project management. In the past couple of years, the rise of artificial intelligence has accelerated this trend. “When ChatGPT and other GenAI tools came out, that was the real inflection point,” Gee observes, “and now there is an expectation that all lawyers — and particularly junior lawyers — should be using GenAI on a daily basis.”
Baker McKenzie now employs a multi-layered “pyramid” of tech tools. At the base are general infrastructure platforms, above them sits a productivity layer, with tools like Microsoft’s Copilot, followed by practice area tailored applications, such as eBrevia and Relativity. At the top is an in-house Applied AI team, who focus on client-specific AI solutions. Naturally, this has made a material impact on the typical tasks trainees find themselves doing. “The days of sitting in physical data rooms for weeks on end are gone; AI tools do that work quicker and better,” Gee says. Freed from those tedious tasks, juniors can engage with more substantive work earlier. “This frees juniors up to do more valuable, interesting work at an earlier stage,” he explains, noting that young lawyers now get into the “meat “of transaction documents much sooner than they used to.
Embracing technology is also reshaping the business of law itself. Gee is already seeing an increasing shift towards alternative pricing models and expects that “AI will accelerate that trend”. Demand for alternative fee arrangements, like fixed fees and eventually outcome-based billing, will only grow as clients increasingly demand AI-driven efficiency. And the firm’s tech-forward reputation is becoming a selling point for recruits too, with Baker McKenzie’s prominence in AI and innovation being a real draw for graduates, he notes.
As the discussion draws to a close, Gee offers some final advice for aspiring lawyers. He urges would-be lawyers to be thoughtful and targeted in their approach to applications. “Sit down and really think about what you want out of a firm,” he says. Having spent over 15 years at Bakers, he believes finding a workplace that genuinely fits you is crucial. “For me, that was a truly international firm,” he adds. He also warns against blasting out generic applications, or relying on AI to do so. “Be very cautious with using a scattergun approach,” Gee warns. “and do not use AI to write all your applications and scatter them across hundreds of firms. Be targeted with your applications and demonstrate that you understand that specific firm and match what they are looking for. That was the approach I took.”
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