In our 5 Minutes With… series we speak to journalists on beats across our key client sectors and explore the hot topics they are tracking, what makes a good story, and what makes sources quotable. In our latest edition, we spoke with IFLR's Noemi Distefano. Noemi is a senior reporter at International Financial Law Review (IFLR), where she covers the business of law with a focus on financial and banking regulation, capital markets, M&A, and ESG developments. She joined the publication in 2024 and writes extensively on law firm strategy, partner moves, and trends shaping the global legal market. An award-winning journalist, Noemi previously worked as a reporter at IR Magazine. Earlier in her career, she held reporting roles at Newtrade Media and Shephard Media, covering a broad range of business and industry topics across print, digital, audio, and video formats. How do you structure your working week? I try to structure my working week with a mix of discipline and realism. In journalism, there is no such thing as a perfectly controlled diary – that’s a fantasy. At the end of every week, and even at the end of each day, I have a preliminary schedule which includes interviews, publication deadlines, embargoes, events and the stories that are already moving. Around that, I leave room for the unexpected. The best leads and stories have a habit of arriving precisely when your calendar looks most civilised – most journalists covering the legal space will remember the last two working weeks of December 2025 as a stark example of that. What are the big themes on your radar for the year ahead? What do you want to hear about and what topics do you expect to dominate? The big themes on my radar are how law firms grow and compete with purpose: transatlantic opportunities and offerings, international expansion, lateral recruitment, AI, mergers and the growing role of private equity investment. For each of those things I want to hear the commercial logic behind the fact, what we call “the business of law” angle. Why this market, why this team, why this choice, why now. What makes ‘the perfect story/feature’? What do you look for before you start writing? Sometimes a story is simple and straightforward enough that the fact something has happened is the story. Most of the time, though, what differentiates one report from another is the “so what”: the specific angle that resonates with that publication editorial line, the wider significance for that publication’s readership, who it affects and what it says about the market. Before I start writing, I look for evidence and consequence: is there a wider trend, a strategic shift, a competitive pressure, or a decision that tells us something about where the legal industry, or that player, is heading? Ideally, the reader comes away not just better informed, but better equipped to think about their market, their clients and the opportunities in front of them. What makes ‘the perfect quote’/expert insight? The perfect quote strengthens the reporting around it. It reinforces the point, corroborates the evidence and adds the authority of someone close to the issue. The best quotes are clear without being bland, thoughtful without sounding lawyered into extinction, and memorable without trying too hard to be quotable. Who is your personal or professional hero/idol? My personal heroes are, probably rather unconventionally, painters, sculptors, architects and writers from centuries ago. I grew up in the country of ‘La grande bellezza’ – “the great beauty” in English – which probably explains it. When you grow up surrounded by streets, churches, ruins, books and paintings that constantly remind you what came before, you become quite sensitive to the idea that human beings can leave behind extraordinary things. I think of Botticelli’s grace, Giotto’s humanity, and the way Bernini could make marble feel alive. On the literary side, Foscolo understood memory, exile and the human need to leave a trace; Leopardi turned disillusion into beauty; and Pirandello saw, with extraordinary modernity, how fragile identity can be and how many masks we all learn to wear. Studying Latin and Greek probably made me even more sensitive to all this: the idea that words, ideas and beauty can travel across centuries and persist. There was, once upon a time, an almost bewildering amount of greatness. There is something humbling, and quite comforting, in looking back and thinking: they did that, and it still endures. Professionally, I would find it hard to name just one hero, because the people I admire most all share the same common denominator: they strive, often at real personal risk, to expose the truth.