By any count 36 years is a pretty long time. In personal terms long enough to get married, have children and start sliding into middle age. In law firm terms this is nearly three times longer than Berwin Leighton Paisner has existed in its current form.

And in the case of Gibson Dunn, it is long enough to decide that cracking the London legal market is something it definitely wants to do (even withstanding its current High Court woes over its involvement in the Djibouti case).