Episode 100 – Gary O’Sullivan (Ireland)

This podcast audio has been transcribed by an automatic transcriber.

Fred Rocafort  00:07

Global law and global business go hand in hand, but never seem to keep pace with each other. The importance and the global stage of developing and developed nations waxes and wanes, while consumption and interconnectedness steadily increase all the while laws and regulations change incessantly requiring businesses to stay nimble. But how do we make sense of it all? Welcome to Global Law and Business hosted by Harris Sliwoski International Business attorneys. I’m Fred Rocafort.

 

Jonathan Bench  00:37

And I’m Jonathan Bench. Every week, we take a targeted look at legal and economic developments in locales around the world as we try to decipher global trends in law and business with the help of international experts. We cover continents, countries, regimes, governance, finance, legal developments, and whatever is trending on Twitter. We cover the important, the seemingly unimportant, the relatively simple and the complex.

 

Fred Rocafort  01:02

We hope you enjoyed today’s podcast. please connect with us on social media to comment and suggest future topics and guests.

 

Jonathan Bench  01:21

Gary O’Sullivan is an Irish lawyer and partner in SOS Legal, which he co founded in 2019. Prior to opening the firm, Gary spent seven months traveling through Central and South America. He lives in Cork, Ireland. Gary, welcome to Harris Sliwoski Global Law and Business.

 

Gary O’Sullivan  01:37

Thank you very much Jonathan. Pleasure to be spending some time chatting with you.

 

Jonathan Bench  01:41

I’d love to start out by hearing more about your personal and professional background, including the time you spent traveling through Central and South America. So feel free to start wherever you want to as as early as you’d like with personal, professional goals and in how you ended up where you are now.

 

Gary O’Sullivan  01:56

So I have one older brother, one older sister. And when I was young, my father worked in Germany for a few years. So my mother used to move us all over to Bavaria for the summer holidays. So we have a great time in Germany and traveling around Central Europe. So that was kind of the start of getting used to traveling. From the law kind of side of things, I suppose I thought from an early age that I’d enjoy being a lawyer. I wasn’t really a fan of reading when I was a child and I didn’t really read too many children’s books, like the first book I read fully was The Client by John Grisham. So probably not the usual thing children read. I later did work experience when I was in secondary school, about age 16 in a local firm, and I made up my mind and at that stage, I’d like to study law at university. So I always enjoy languages and history. So I chose to study law, European Studies in the University of Limerick as my undergraduate. So this was a law degree along with history and French with a master’s in criminal justice in University College Cork. I always found criminal law fascinating and really enjoying my time during the masters and following on from there. I did the FE-1 exams, which are eight exams you need to pass to get into law school in Ireland, and I started working in a local general practice in Kinsale. So I did my traineeship there, which is what you have to do qualify while you are in law school. And as a general practice, that firm is I got good exposure to a wide variety of practice areas, advising private clients, I qualified in 2013, as a solicitor, went on to do a diploma in employment law and later trust and estate planning as these were the areas that I was primarily acting in and had enjoyed. I guess I’d always known I wanted to run my own firm one day, so that I could implement my own plans on how work should be done. And a good friend of mine from Glasgow, James Shanahan, was in a similar situation. So we started to talk about the possibility of setting up a firm together. But so I had always wanted to go traveling through central South America. I knew setting up a business would probably delay that for quite a few years. So in 2018 I decided to go travelling first and then set up the firm when I got back. James was patient enough and luckily my girlfriend, Rachel, she’s now my wife was also patient enough to let me go off traveling for for seven months. And I guess the whole thing of Central and South America came from when I was younger reading Motorcycle Diaries by Che Guevara and I think I’d love to travel through South America, Central America. But I guess I knew I’d never survive on a motorbike. So I mainly stuck to public transport throughout my time down there. The trip actually started in San Francisco because my brother was living there at the time. And at the airport in San Francisco, I was flying to Guatemala City. And my legal background actually came in quite useful because I was queuing at the check in and I asked the guy in front of me, plus, it’s to the queue for the Guatemala City flight. So we started chatting, and turns out, he was a judge in Guatemala City. So my Spanish wasn’t, wasn’t great at this point. And there was a connecting flight. So he made sure I knew where everything was, he gave me his phone number. When I got to the airport in Guatemala, he was following me on WhatsApp making sure I knew how to find the bus. And we stayed in contact throughout and he invited me to Guatemala city to visit him and showed me all around the city. And he was a member of the Rotary Club, and they had a big event and a dinner on. And he brought me as the as his guest. And I think they were quite surprised to find an Irish lawyer as a tourist in their city at the time. So that was good fun. And one of my main goals with the traveling was I wanted to learn Spanish and be able to have conversations close to fluent in Spanish. So I started off with five weeks in Spanish school in Quetzaltenango, which is the second city of Guatemala, which locals call Xela. And that was, that was a great time, I was living with a local family there. So I used to have all my meals with them. I was in five hours a day one on one, Spanish lessons. And then we’d have activities as well as in the the afternoon, we do a lot of hiking a lot of visiting local businesses and seeing, you know, seeing how the local community worked. All the people there were really friendly and, and helpful, even in the first week of adolescence, you know, what, beginner’s Spanish? Do you have to do a presentation on a Friday? So it was good to push push you into speaking, you know, a new, like, new language in front of people. And so yeah, I had to do a presentation every Friday, and they actually used to video it and put it up on their Facebook page. So yeah, people and all my family at home could see how bad my Spanish was, but at least I was trying. And after Guatemala, then I traveled through southern Mexico. I was there for Dia de los Muertos, which was certainly an experience. And I continued on South, then from there, back to Guatemala, down all the way to Panama. And Rachel joined me there for for Christmas. And we, we sailed to San Blas Islands, which was a gorgeous place to be for New Years, and definitely different to an Irish Christmas and New Year’s. I love Colombia, and the people are very friendly. One of the things that was a bit of a surprise, as in Bogota, there was there was a bomb while I was here to a police training school, which killed 20 people, which I think was one of the biggest bombs there in a long time. But in fairness, people seem to kind of get on with normal life pretty quickly. It’s certainly something different to us that I’d be used to experiencing hear. And from there I continued on down the down the west coast through Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile. And lastly, Argentina. It was a great experience to see all the different cultures, and the landscapes and a lot of hiking while I was there. And I think it’s just such a benefit of being able to go through all those all those countries was kind of our basic language, like getting getting to a level of Spanish that you could talk to people which you can get to pretty quickly when you do lessons like I did, and it just covers all the Central and South America. So it’s a pretty unique place. I think that you can that you can do that. And so it’s the benefit I got from it. I had a lot of time traveling on buses and in between studies and stuff to listen to podcasts, read books and kind of figure out how I wanted to structure the law firm. I knew I wanted to focus on excellent customer service and a great place to work. The ability to work remotely was very important to allow a life of future travels, which will hopefully start getting a possibility again. So we want to be paperless as well as for environmental reasons, but just allowing us to work remotely. And I also saw the view that businesses should be more than just profit generating machines. I saw a lot of poverty in my travels. And I knew that people in the developed world could do so much more to help the worst off. So this is this is why I wanted to make a public commitment for for our law firm, that we will always contribute a minimum of 5% of our profits to charitable causes. And I had come across the idea of Effective Altruism previously. So I started to read a bit more about how we, we help so many people, if we look for the most effective ways, have a charitable giving, rather than just the most obvious ways. And so that was one of the one of the things I started wanting to bring into the environment and we do that to this day.

 

Jonathan Bench  11:11

That’s excellent background, Gary. And I think I’d heard the short version of it when we talked many months ago and worked on a project together. But it certainly is fun to hear about your your travels, the adventures, I can’t believe about the bomb in Colombia. I mean, what a great story is but also a little harrowing to be in a foreign country when things are going on, that you are not familiar with, especially at that level. I mean, I had when I traveled and lived in China, I had some strange experiences, but nothing to that degree.

 

Gary O’Sullivan  11:39

Yeah, it was a strange experience. And it was only a few kilometers, maybe three or four kilometers away from where I was staying. I did notice increased police activity around the place. But I mean, it really was life continued on as normal. Because I went to a football match, a soccer match there that evening, same day here. And it wasn’t even an important match. It was preseason, so you know what we’d call a friendly but there was police there like there would be normally but the match went ahead with a crowd of whatever, 20,000, 25,000, people in the stadium and the bomb had just gone off, maybe eight or nine hours earlier.

 

Jonathan Bench  12:27

Wow. Unbelievable. Although that shows the dedication of the Latin American communities to their, their football matches, right.

 

Gary O’Sullivan  12:34

Certainly. That is a common theme throughout all the countries. Yeah.

 

Jonathan Bench  12:40

It’s also interesting that you read John Grisham. When I think back to what made me be a lawyer as well, I mostly tell people I went to law school by accident because I ran out of other options. But in reality, I went through a John Grisham kick in early high school for me. So that would have been when I was 14 or 15. I think I read all of the available John Grisham books that were in my school library during that time and, and I thought that being a lawyer sounded like a lot of fun as well. Of course, now the law that you and I do are really nothing like nothing like the experiences of John Grisham as characters, but that’s okay, as well, because we actually get to have lives when we’re when we’re working with clients too. And we get to travel. Right. So it’s not a bad, I think you and I ended up in a pretty good spot.

 

Gary O’Sullivan  13:25

Yeah, I think we, we got the better side of the work life balance, I think. And then the lawyers. John goes from right to left.

 

Jonathan Bench  13:34

Right. So you touched a little bit on this, what SOS Legal does and I love the altruism, very inspiring to hear about that. Can you tell us a little bit more about your services, what your focus is on, what you’re good at, and and ultimately what kind of clients you work with right now?

 

Gary O’Sullivan  13:53

Yeah, well, we have our headquarters in Limerick city, with offices in Dublin, capital Galloway and Kinsale in County Cork, where I’m from. We mainly act for for private clients and small medium enterprises, across property transactions, business sales and purchases, wills and estate planning, litigation and data protection advice. So it’s a broad range of services that that we’re involved in really.

 

Jonathan Bench  14:28

And I know that you do work with international clients because that’s how I got to know you when one of my clients was working on a real estate transaction in Ireland so can you tell a little bit about why international people come to Ireland these people who live or work in Ireland and really how welcoming is Ireland to foreigners? I know that a lot of countries have kind of a love-hate relationship with tourism and immigrants whether those are immigrants more on the poverty stricken end of life or whether they are ones that are very well off and want to relocate on purpose. Can you talk a little bit about that?

 

Gary O’Sullivan  15:05

Yeah, well, for decades, and probably more than a century, I think Irish people left the country to find work primarily in the UK and USA. If this happened again in the years following the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the financial crisis that followed, so it’s a relatively new thing for Ireland to be able to have an inflow of people rather than an outflow. And happily, you know, we’ve seen a lot of Irish people return in the last few years, and a lot of immigration from all over the world, making Ireland a much more diverse society now and Ireland is a famously welcoming country. Tourism is a huge part of, of our economy. So I think Ireland has always been on the side of welcoming as much tourism as possible. And, you know, when it comes to people coming to live here, I think Ireland is very welcoming. Perhaps it’s partly due to the fact that our ancestors had emigrated all over the world. So we should know what it’s like to be migrants. And since the EU expansion in 2004, a lot of Eastern Europeans came to live and work in Ireland, and they’re a big part of the population now and well integrated into communities all over the country. And we do help people from outside the EU buy properties here, you know, anyone who’s in the EU, it’s quite straightforward. So we do tend to have a lot of clients from England, the US, South Africa, it often involves not only buying properties, but doing wills and estate planning, so that you have to work with a number of international advisers. So whether it’s lawyers, or tax advisers in multiple jurisdictions, which is always an enjoyable experience, because you get to talk to colleagues, like yourself and other professionals to see how things work exactly in those jurisdictions and make sure the plan fits together as best as possible for the client. So that that certainly is an enjoyable part of us, in relation to how welcoming is Ireland, for people that aren’t just tourists and want to come in here, the citizens of the European Economic Area, so the EU and Switzerland and the UK, and there’s really no issue at all, coming to Ireland, for US citizens, like yourself. You can certainly come and stay for three months without any visa. So if you want to come on an extended holiday, you’re more than welcome. If you’re coming to work here, you generally need a work permit, and have a job lined up in in Ireland before you come. And generally, the higher your salary, the better, the better chance you have of getting a work permit. What we do tend to see quite a bit of, especially when it comes to the wills and estate planning when people are moving here is people don’t want to retire to Ireland. So the US citizens don’t want to retire here, the rules are a bit stricter, always the best thing to do is try to find an Irish parent or a grandparent so that you can get a an Irish passport. So that’s the quick solution. If you can’t do that, then you need to have pretty substantial resources and an annual income of 50,000 per person, which is I suppose, quite, quite high in in retirement, which would mean 100,000 for a couple that are moving to Ireland. And then there is a scheme that the government brought in in 2012. Looking to increase investment into into Ireland, which was at a time it was at the depths of the recession in Ireland, and it’s called the immigrant investor program. And I know you guys do a lot of work with China. And this is a program that has definitely been spearheaded massively by Chinese nationals. So there has been about 95% of successful applicants in the old scheme are from China. So to give you the figures on it, I would have to say successful applicants 1088 are from China and the next highest is the US with 21. So it’s certainly been been pushed well in China, and it involves high net worth individuals for what a personal wealth of at least 2 million euro. And the scheme requires them to invest 1 million euro for a minimum of three years. And it gives them four investment options being enterprise investment, investment funds, real estate investment trusts, and real estate investment trusts, there’s actually a minimum of 2 million, but they can also make a philanthropic donation of 500,000. And that qualifies as the investment. And if they want to live in Ireland, they do have residency throughout this time. And it’s pretty easy for them to have residency for five years, and then that ties in nicely with an application for citizenship. So if they’ve been living here for five years, they can apply to become Irish citizens through true naturalization. And this scheme has actually been been quite good for a couple of areas so that the money that has been raised has been put largely into social housing projects, and nursing homes, so it’s still continuing to stay and and hopefully, it will continue to raise money for those kinds of funds. So those are the kind of main ways that people can move here long term.

 

Jonathan Bench  21:34

You and I’ve talked previously about Ireland as a good entry point for companies looking to go into the EU. Can you talk a little bit about why that is, and maybe how difficult or easy it is to set up in some kind of enterprise in Ireland as a springboard into the EU?

 

Gary O’Sullivan  21:51

Yeah, well, setting up companies in Ireland is quite straightforward, can be done in a matter of a week or two, once you have your documents in order, and then you know who directors or secretaries are going to be. You will tend to need an EEA director, so anyone living in the European Economic Area. And I suppose the reasons that Ireland is so attractive for companies looking to get into the EU, there’s many of them, the one you’ll be well familiar with, and perhaps most of the business world will be familiar with is the corporate rate of 12.5%. Now this has changed, recently where Ireland has agreed to the global minimum of 15%, which has been pushed, I think mainly by the Biden administration. But this only applies to companies with revenues over 750 million euros, so maybe over $150 million. So the vast majority of of companies in Ireland wanted to hit that threshold, and they they keep paying corporate or corporation tax at 12.5%. And then on top of this, there’s the 25% Research and Development Credit. So this is very beneficial, that applies to a vast amount of areas of research and development. So you can claim it for software development, engineering, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, even financial services and agriculture. And so it does apply to a lot of industries. And the credit operates by giving you up to 25% of your your r&d expenditure in a tax credit, which essentially you claim against corporation tax and reduce your your tax even farther than the 12.5%. And apart from the numbers and the tax side of things, which is obviously an incentive to come here. We’re now the only English speaking country in the in the Eurozone, which is, you know, quite attractive, I think for companies that are English speaking companies coming from the US or other parts of the world that want to do business in English. We are known traveling pro business policies, our government is certainly known for being pro business. And our agencies such as enterprise, Ireland, and the Industrial Development Agency, have an excellent track record. I think we don’t really realize it too much within Ireland because so much of our work is focused on going into the United States and going to other countries, you know, selling Ireland as a location to do business and they’ve been extremely successful for decades. Another factor, I guess, along with the fact that we’re the only English speaking country is we’re seen as being committed to the EU membership, so if companies come here, then they’re not going to be at risk of being outside. After the European Union, you know, there’s not going to be a vote here to leave the European Union like there was in, in the UK. So that certainly gives these companies comfort in moving here. And we’re a small country and a single jurisdiction. So it’s not that similar to the states where, you know, you have different laws in different states. It’s, it’s one jurisdiction, so we can move quickly enough. And the fact that we’re a small country means suppose we’ve less organizations to be to be dealing with. So it should make it easier for joined up thinking between the different organizations that companies have to deal with. And then the talent that we have here, I suppose is, is a crucial thing, we have the youngest population in the EU. So a target of our population is under 25, we’re one of the fastest growing digital digital economies in Europe. And our our education system is very good and very focused on tech. So there’s, there’s a huge amount of people in university studying STEM subjects. So the talent is there to support a lot of the tech companies that have have come here, and most of the biggest companies in the world are putting their their European headquarters here. You know, so you’ve got Google, Apple, Meta. They’re all here, Amazon. So I suppose other companies can can look at Ireland and say, there’s certainly a track record there. The biggest companies in the world are putting their European headquarters in Ireland, then they must have their research done in there, they’re going there for a reason. So I think that that all going together, you know, makes Ireland a very attractive place for for companies to come here and set up.

 

Jonathan Bench  27:15

That’s all excellent. Can you talk a little bit more from a personal perspective now about what’s going on in Ireland, kind of business news, political news? Anything else that is on everyone’s mind right now? And maybe just kind of what life is like living in Ireland, for those of us who who have great fanciful dreams from reading, maybe some James Joyce, back in back in university studies?

 

Gary O’Sullivan  27:38

Yeah, well, there’s there’s a few things going on, that I think are kind of relevant. So one, that may be happening in every country around the world now, as we hopefully come out at a pandemic is the issue of remote working. So there’s a government bill at the moment that’s receiving a lot of coverage, known as to the right to request remote working bill. So it’s the government trying to say they’re learning lessons from the pandemic, and they want to put it on a formal footing that people can can request remote working. I mean, it is at bill stage at the moment, and it’s has received quite a bit of criticism that it’s not going far enough for workers, it is seen, certainly as favoring employers at this stage, but it is a tricky one to get a balance balance in. So it’s allowing employers to refuse the request to work remotely for a number of grounds. And so things like the burden of additional costs are, if the employer is concerned about confidentiality, or intellectual property. And then one is if there’s excessive distance between the proposed remote location and the on site location, and that’s a bit of a controversial one because the government is pushing remote working and especially for public sector workers. They’re looking to create hubs in towns and villages around the country so that people won’t be so reliant on living in Dublin or commuting into Dublin and there’s discussions about it going on and governments on saying it really means you shouldn’t be in another country that you have to fly back to Ireland to go into the office that kind of thing. But we don’t know how it will end up. I think that option of people heading off to Barbados or whatever for a few months, it may well happen as to if the market is an employee’s market and and they can get the work done. I think a lot of employers will say, you know, we don’t, we don’t care if you’re two minutes away, or whether you’re the other side of the world, as long as the work is getting done when it should be done. So that’s receiving a lot of coverage at the moment. One thing I suppose that’s been going on for quite a few years is to the issue of housing, it’s been one of the major political topics for a number of years. So in Ireland, there’s always been a huge desire for homeownership, far more than a lot of European countries that tend to have a tradition of renting, you’ll generally see most Irish people would, would want to own their own home for their own security reasons, and it’s becoming more difficult for people, and with the lack of housing supply, and rising costs. So I guess all over the world is seeing the supply costs rising for construction, timber, and other supplies. So that’s partly driving costs up, they’ve been going up since maybe 2012. So on a practical side, I guess we see it with a lot of young people buying their first houses later on. And when it comes to mortgages, they tend to need help from1 parents to secure the deposit. And so they have enough to put a deposit down on the house and comply with the lending rules of the of the central bank. So generally, people are allowed to get a mortgage for three and a half times their, their salary, which is a rule brought in following the recession where, where I think lending was a bit better, more freely given out in Ireland. And so that’s where I suppose we’re seeing it and in practice, the cost of renting is also a huge, huge problem in Dublin, certainly, and in the other the other cities and and major towns throughout Ireland, it’s it’s constantly increasing. And there there is a need for more affordable housing schemes that the government are planning to bring in. And, and social housing. So it’s government, the use to build far more affordable houses and social houses. But there’s certainly been an over reliance on private rentals in the last number of years. And that’s certainly kind of been a major political issue that has been going on now for a number of years. And then I guess another thing that’s not happened yet in Ireland but is coming down the line in an area that, that I’d be interested in, is the trends to decision for international data transfers, there’s been a recent decision in Austria, and it’s been followed up in the last week by France, basically saying that Google Analytics is illegal in Europe because of it being transferred to the US. And you know, this follows on from the safe harbor agreement being constructed in 2015, and privacy shield in 2020. So I think this could have a major effect on our business, and Ireland is the European headquarters of all the companies involved in the major things. So you know, Meta has their Facebook Connect platform is in the firing line, as well as Google Analytics. So they’re based here. So it’s going to certainly be a big issue for the data protection commission here in Ireland to deal with, and it’ll be interesting to see how they do deal with it, because websites are not going to, you know, just take down Google Analytics without having to do it, because it’s, it’s a huge part of business, and historically only been increasingly so since more and more businesses have gone online. Since the pandemic started. There may there may well be a new agreement, a new Privacy Shield, I think that the European Commissioner are currently in talks with their US counterparts. And there’s rumors that could be one by May plus, it’s hard to see how they can they can survive. Another challenge. So I think SRAMs tree is probably in the pipeline of another agreement comes in because the main issue is the GDPR rates of Europeans are far and excessive to data protection rights in most of the US. And when the data transfers are coming into the US, like Google Analytics, they’re subject to US surveillance surveillance agencies, because because it’s not US citizens. So that’s the major problem. And it’ll be interesting to see how it is resolved, if it will be resolved, because I think it’ll have a major impact on global business when all these major tech companies subject to decisions that are going to come out pretty soon in Ireland and across Europe.

 

Jonathan Bench  35:47

Fascinating, Gary, thanks for that insight, especially into the data privacy waves that are they’re sweeping all over the world. It’s very, very interesting. It’s been excellent talking to you today. I really enjoyed it getting to know your practice better, your personality better and certainly your work ethic. We always like to end the podcast with recommendations from you, I’ll throw my own on as well. But have you read anything or listen, anything? I’ve watched anything recently that you think would be good for the audience? Or in maybe you have any tourism recommendations for Ireland or anywhere else in your region that we should know about?

 

Gary O’Sullivan  36:25

Yeah, I’m from a tourist town, I’m technically happy to give tourists recommendations for things that I think the audience might be interested in, it might be useful. A book I’d recommend is called Doing Good Better, Effective Altruism, and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference by William MacCaskill. It’s a fascinating book that goes goes into all the ways you can, you know, make the best solution for your philanthropic ideas. And there’s actually also a very good podcast, if you prefer to listen to a podcast, it’s Episode 120, of the Tim Ferriss show so your listeners might have find it easier to listen to the podcast. For all of us in the in the professions, I recently read a book called The Future of the Professions: How Technology will Transform the Work of Human Experts by Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind. They done a lot of research and published a lot on this area over the years. And I think it’s a very useful area. Certainly people starting out in any of the professions to get an idea of what the years ahead are going to have and what you should have in mind as you plan out your career strategy. Because AI is going to have a substantial effect I think on on the legal profession and and all professions. For a bit of Irish art, I would think my favorite Irish movie is intermission, it stars, Colin Farrell, and Killian Murphy. And it’s possibly the funniest Irish movie, there’s multiple layers of Irish humor in us. It’s kind of a dark humor, but the dialogue is, is great. And then definitely well worth to watch if you’re, if you’re looking for a laugh at any stage. And for tourism advice for Ireland, I guess first of all, I’d say think about the weather. So the weather is usually manageable, 12 months of the year, but definitely September is the best time to visit for a bit more sunshine, I would say driving is generally the best way to get around, you know, if you’re sticking just to the city’s public transport is fine. But to get the most out of a visit to Ireland having your own character to get around to all the beautiful spots is certainly the best way to do it. You know, either data or organized tours that will take you to a lot of the best places. And I personally think the west coast of of Ireland is one of the most beautiful places in the world. There’s a well marked out route to drive or cycle if you’re that way inclined. It’s known as the wild Atlantic way. So it begins in the north of the country and the Inishowen Peninsula in County Donegal and goes through highlights like the Aran Islands, cliffs or more and finishes in Kinsale which is where I live and Kinsale is a gorgeous town, I might be a bit biased. But a place that reminds me of it that you might know is the Sausalito. It’s quite similar to Sausalito. And certainly I would recommend visiting Kinsale and the West. And in general, it’s a, it’s a lovely place to travel, especially if there’s a bit of sunshine.

 

Jonathan Bench  40:24

Excellent recommendations. Gary, thank you for those. My recommendation for this week is an article titled Manchester United Legends to Create World’s First Soccer DAO. This is interesting to me on a lot of levels, partly because I’m, you can tell it was written by an American probably because we’re talking soccer instead of football. But I grew up playing soccer. So I love that. But also, we’ve been doing a lot of work at our firm on some of the emerging Web3 areas like NFTs and DAOs, and counseling clients on what’s happening, kind of explaining what’s happening and how these new Web3 protocols and organizations like DAOs are, how they, how they fit within the current legal structure, a lot of them think that they can escape legal structure. But, Gary, as you and I know, no matter where you go in the world, you’re going to be subject to someone’s laws. And so interesting, especially from the international business perspective, when we’re looking at cryptocurrencies, we’re looking at DAOs and of course, new join soccer all together. And ultimately, it’s a really fun exercise to think about, and understand when you join a DAO when you know, when you buy a token or a coin, or you’re somehow part of a some blockchain technology company, you know, what, what do you own and what your rights are, are they enforceable, and so those are the kinds of things that we talked about. And we’ve actually been putting up short YouTube videos on our YouTube channel, talking about some of these things, and Fred and I are gonna sit down later today and talk about NFTs so we’ll have some of those coming out as well. So anyway, this articles gives you a little bit of view into what people are doing with with cryptocurrencies and DAOs. Again, the title is Manchester United Legends to Create World’s First Soccer DAO that’s on the decrypt website. And we’ll provide a link when we post the blog content for this episode. Gary with that, I want to thank you for being with us again, and certainly looking forward to meeting you in person either on your side or my side of the ocean.

 

Gary O’Sullivan  42:28

Thank you very much, Jonathan. And just to let you know you will be safe calling it soccer in Ireland because we do the same because we’ve got Gaelic football over here, so we call it soccer so you’re safe enough when you come to Ireland.

 

Jonathan Bench  42:40

Perfect.

 

Gary O’Sullivan  42:41

Thanks very much Jonathan. Been a pleasure.

 

Jonathan Bench  42:46

We hope you enjoyed this week’s episode. We look forward to connecting with you on social media to continue discussing developments in global law in business. This podcast was produced by Harris Sliwoski music composed by Steven Schmidt. Tune in next week for another episode. We’ll see you then.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai