Hm. I'm not sure. my air I think only has 16gb, but I'm able to run Lightroom, Photoshop, IntelliJ, and Insta360's whatever it's called all at the same time. The biggest downside with the airs is that they have no fans so they get hot rather than allowing full use. If I was using it for clients I would definitely go with a Pro. I'm mostly using it for personal use. My work laptop is an M1 Max with 32GB and it just chugs through anything I throw at it, but that's like... $4.5k lol. Not sure I would suggest that. But like, 16gb on a Pro is probably what I would go with if I was going to upgrade my air and needed something beefier. I have 1tb on my pro and I immediately maxed out the storage cause I shoot in raw. I do wish I had gotten 2TB of storage, but it's so expensive. It's honestly the worst balancing act, but macOS is sooooo much better for adobe software (and programming) that it just really isn't worth it for a windows or linux computer with higher specs.

sooo. I'd recommend a Pro, with at least 16gb of ram. That will probably cover all your needs. You might be juggling stuff with your usb drives, but that's kinda a fact of life with lots of assets anyway, so I'm not sure that's a pro or con over other laptops. Get enough that you can hold at least like 3 clients at once on your drive.

I have these two usb m.2 cases:

https://www.dockcase.com/products/dockcase-explorer-edition-m2-nvme-smart-ssd-enclosure-pro-glossy-silver

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08G14NBCS

I actually like the second more. The first is really cool and has an extra output/input for power and 5second power loss capacitor backup and stuff, but it's wayyy bigger and I just don't need that when I already carry too much camera stuff. It's also way cheaper lol, leaving you more money to buy bigger drives.