I spend between one and two weeks of my time each month in London. It's our second largest office after New York. It's a sizeable office but we also have ambitious growth plans for it: it's a gateway for so many geographical regions.

New York and London are going through a tough period because of the financial crisis, but they still occupy a unique position in the global economy. All that talk a few years ago about Frankfurt displacing London never happened. The current climate may actually open up more opportunities. We feel we are a relatively fast-moving and pragmatic organisation and these difficult circumstances may give us more opportunities to grow.

A lot of investment is going to come from the Middle East. We've seen quite a few investments in Italy already and have been working for a number of Middle East clients on property investments in the US.

There were plenty of reasons for merging Dewey Ballantine with LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & McRae. Both firms had identified growth in New York as top priority. We were both way down the ladder in terms of visibility and creating a mega New York office was a major positive.

We needed a much more powerful global platform. Big global law firms these days like the “magic circle” have more than 2,000 or 3,000 lawyers. You need to have a certain size to be truly global. In Europe, we had absolutely no overlap. By putting the two firms together we had a complete European network.

We decided as part of the merger to focus on high-end work coming out of major commercial and financial centres. Our US map is now bound up with these centres. We opened an office in Hartford, Connecticut 20 years ago when it was a leading centre for insurance companies. But then there was major consolidation in the insurance sector. I think the office made sense in the 1980s, but it doesn't mean it's always going to.

There was very little controversy in my appointment as chairman of the merged firm. I am from the LeBoeuf side and we made the decision 14 to 15 years ago to have chairman that was a full time manager and not actively involved in client work. Dewey Ballantine was the opposite. By creating a larger firm it was even more imperative to have someone to make the firm's business the exclusive focus of their time.

As chairman, you have to be prepared to make big decisions. Complacency is fatal. Having said that, you can make decisions in a way that is respectful and treats people with dignity. You can be decisive and also respectful. Sometimes your decisions have an effect on families and communities. You can't make decisions lightly, but I guess these things come with the job.

When I first came to the UK 20 years ago, I had a couple of people asking me if I had played snooker. They told me there was a very well known player called Steve Davis. Apparently he's not so well known now. I guess as chairman of a law firm, you can last a bit longer.

Over the last year this job has been unbelievably intense, a seven day a week job. I studied medieval history at university and still like to read history when I’m travelling. I just read Apples are from Kazakhstan: The Land that Disappeared, by Christopher Robbins. We have an office in Almaty and I can tell you that the Borat movie is absolutely inaccurate. Why do I like military history? You can learn about human nature if you read about wars and the mistakes people made.

I wouldn’t necessarily encourage my children to go into the law. I have three, two at university and one at boarding school. It's an individual decision as to what they want to do with their lives. It's better to allow children to pursue their passion rather than squeeze them into a box.

Steven H. Davis is chairman of Dewey & LeBoeuf and splits his time between New York and London

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