Dr Nanni Spitzer is a Partner at Osborne Clarke Germany, a member of the German Partnership Council, and head of the firm’s Munich office. With over 15 years of experience in M&A and corporate matters, she now leads the firm's German Private Equity practice. Nanni is co-founder of the Osborne Clarke Fashion and Luxury Law Academy and also heads the international Fashion Law team. In this interview, she discusses negotiation and risk management, the intersection of a commercial approach and law, and her experience and perspectives on modern legal leadership.

Interviewed by Nini Gordadze and Mireia Brunet Villarejo

As a partner at Osborne Clarke, you have over 15 years of experience advising national and international companies on M&A transactions, joint ventures, corporate financing, and restructuring. What is your approach when entering a new negotiation? And what are the early elements of negotiation success that you'll first look out for?

You will see that I enjoy talking – but in negotiations, I make a conscious effort to listen. When I enter a new transaction, my first priority is understanding the client's underlying objectives — not just the deal terms in the letter of intent, but what they truly need to achieve commercially and strategically. I also invest significant time in preparation of negotiations: understanding the counterparty's position, their motivations, their constraints, and the broader market context.

When it comes to the early signs of success, how the parties handle their first disagreement is often a key indicator of how the transaction will ultimately unfold. My approach is always to be firm on substance and flexible on style — protecting my client's legal interests rigorously while keeping the broader commercial goal in sight.

 "Understanding what is at stake for both sides is therefore critical to align interests and avoid unnecessary conflict".

You mentioned the significance of understanding the situation early on, which connects well with another challenge that lawyers often face. Identifying risks is one thing, but making sure clients act on them is another. How do you communicate and work with your clients on critical risks to help them make informed decisions in a timely manner?

Assessing and managing risk is a significant part of a lawyer’s job, particularly in M&A, where we regularly advise buyers conducting due diligence on potential acquisition targets. However, an equally important part of the role is to make sure the client really understands potential legal risks, can consider their commercial impact and act on them.

I come from a family where many work in healthcare and one thing they taught me is that a risk communicated badly can be paralysing for the recipient. As a lawyer, your goal is to empower your client – not simply deliver a list of risks, but offer concrete solutions. For me, that means translating legal risks, which can be quite abstract, into terms that can be understood by the client and make sense from a commercial perspective.

Timing is equally critical, given the significant time pressure we work under. Identifying a risk is valuable, but far less so if it comes too late. When we spot early warning signs, we will raise them openly in the process and, ideally, address the issue before it even materialises.

"As a lawyer, your goal is to empower your client – not simply to deliver a list of risks, but to explain them and offer specific solutions".

Besides your work in M&A, you also lead Osborne Clarke’s International Fashion Team and have co-founded the Fashion and Luxury Law Academy at an early stage of your career. What makes the intersection between fashion and law unique, and how do these two distinct disciplines complement each other?

My involvement in fashion law came quite naturally when I had just started as a lawyer in 2010. When I (re-)joined Osborne Clarke in this position, I had already spent five years with the firm as a paralegal. Shortly before I qualified as a lawyer, my manager at the time said to me: “Why don’t we build expertise in the retail sector for Osborne Clarke in Germany?” That was over 16 years ago.

Said and done: quickly I was advising clients in the retail sector on their day-to-day needs. Over time, I increasingly focused on advising fashion brands from abroad on their international expansion into Germany and across Europe, as well as on M&A transactions and organic growth.

A colleague and I then had the idea of addressing the recurring questions our clients were raising, whether on IP, competition, distribution, e-commerce, or, more recently, sustainability and ESG compliance. We asked ourselves: why not create an academy around these topics and share our expertise? And so, almost nine years ago, we founded the Fashion and Luxury Law Academy, which has gone from strength to strength. Every month, our international fashion and retail experts discuss the issues they encounter in their daily practice as well as new developments in European regulation, and we aim to bring together the creativity of the fashion world with the structure and, admittedly, the demands of law and regulation.

"We aim to bring together the creativity of the fashion world with the structure and the demands of law and regulation".

Moving back to your broader practice, you lead Osborne Clarke’s German private equity team, at a time when the global market is facing considerable scrutiny and uncertainty, alongside increased regulatory reforms and ESG compliance demands. How do you lead your team at Osborne Clarke to navigate this complex legal landscape and position the firm as a sector leader?

We are a law firm that is well known for our ESG and regulatory expertise, especially in the energy, technology and life sciences sectors, all of which are increasingly important for private equity investors. For us, it is genuinely exciting to deploy that specialist knowledge for the benefit of our private equity clients, when advising them on their investments and post-acquisition.

While we are not a specialist private equity firm, we offer our clients a full-service approach backed by deep specialist expertise in our flagship sectors: life sciences, healthcare, energy and utilities as well as tech and media. My ambition is to incorporate that specialist knowledge into our deal teams.

In uncertain markets and developing legal landscapes, clients need advisors who can help them make decisions with incomplete information. I believe this requires what I call a culture of “practical courage”: I want my team to tell the client early what issues they are facing, even if they come from a regulatory angle the client may not want to hear. In short, I try to lead my teams around the principle of directness delivered with empathy and clear recommendations.

“ESG” is, admittedly, still something of a buzzword. But two years ago, ESG was mainly a compliance exercise; today it has become a genuine value driver. We are seeing entire transactions in private equity driven by ESG considerations, and funds structured around ESG investments. That is an exciting space to be in, and one where diverse leadership in firms genuinely matters, because it brings different perspectives to the table.

"I try to lead my teams around the principle of directness delivered with empathy and clear recommendations".

Your responsibilities at Osborne Clarke go beyond your own legal practice, since you are also head of the Munich office and a member of the German Partnership Council. How do you balance being a high-performing practitioner with being an effective representative of your firm? And how have these multifaceted roles informed your perspective on the nature of modern legal leadership?

I won’t claim that I have resolved the question of balance. The opposite is the case. If you are a perfectionist who wants to do everything right (and nearly every lawyer is), finding equilibrium across two or three demanding roles is hard.

For me, it is less about distributing your time equally and more about conscious prioritisation in the moment. You need to develop a kind of instinct for what matters most: does the office or matters of the firm need attention right now, or is there a transaction where my colleagues need my direct involvement?

Holding these roles simultaneously requires surprisingly simple capabilities that I had to actively develop over many years: asking for help, saying no, and delegating. I think many women have been conditioned to succeed through self-sufficiency: if something needs doing – just get it done. I had to learn that I cannot do everything at once, and that delegating and asking for help is not a weakness but a real skill. Being a good leader also means stepping back, removing yourself from the centre, allowing people to grow and take ownership of their tasks, to find their own way of doing things – and for you to tolerate, accept and support this.

"Being a good leader sometimes means stepping back, removing yourself from the centre, and allow people to grow".

To finish, between 2022 and 2025, you served as the first-ever female member of Osborne Clarke Germany’s National Management Board. What did this achievement mean to you as a female leader in the legal world? And what can law firms such as Osborne Clarke do to make the path wider for emerging female talent?

I was indeed the first female member of the Board, also still in my thirties and the first not to come from our biggest office in Cologne. The trust placed in me meant a great deal, both for my own personal development and for the career path I had built within the firm.

At the time, I was genuinely afraid of not living up to what the role demanded, but I was super keen for the challenge. I felt that I had to do it for myself and also to set an example. So many of my female colleagues were absolutely excited, whether they were team assistants, junior lawyers, or senior partners.

What law firms can do to support female careers? Clarity and trust are essential. Firms need to create a culture in which women do not face a glass ceiling. I am from Munich; I love spending time in the mountains, and I am perfectly happy to take the rocky path and climb straight up, if I can see where I am going and can trust the person who is walking beside me. It is vital to create visibility and show especially young women, that a variety of career paths are open to them. And it helps enormously to have had women that are or have been in those positions before. It is as simple as that.

Ultimately, I do not believe women need additional coaching or special career support. We simply need the assurance that the conditions are right and that nothing insurmountable stands in our way. And then – we are happy to take the challenge.

"It is vital to show young women that a variety of career paths are open to them. And for that, it helps enormously to have had women in those positions before".