Deals on fire 

Freshfields has been respected as one of the top corporate firms in the City for over 200 years – a reputation it has now exported across the world. It has 27 offices and clocked up total revenue of £1.14bn in 2010/11 – over two-thirds of which is generated outside the UK. It has over 100 rankings in Chambers Global – an astonishing number – mostly for its core finance, corporate and dispute resolution practices, but also for tax, IP and international arbitration. You can read more about the firm's current strategy and ambitions in the USA on our website.

Freshfields was historically known as one of the more corporate magic circle firms, but trainees told us: “There isn't an attitude that corporate is the main department. Together, corporate and finance are seen as the core of the business, but not one more than the other.” Looking at the Chambers UK rankings it's possible to say that the firm's reputation for banking and finance is just a smidge behind its stellar record in the corporate field.

But who are we kidding? Freshfields provides an excellent all-round legal service and has done some headline-grabbing work in corporate, finance and litigation: for example, bookmaker Betfred's successful £230m bid to take over government-owned bookie the Tote, the £2.3bn restructuring of subprime lender Cattles and the High Court case in which lawyers obtained six injunctions on behalf of RBS against the owners of Liverpool FC. The firm's finance lawyers advised Russia's largest oil producer, Rosneft, on a £10bn share swap with BP in order to form a global oil-producing alliance. BP itself has been a client, too – corporate partner Mark Rawlinson was their chief outside legal counsel during the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The firm is also providing pro bono legal advice to the London Organising Committee of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

To dislike two looks like carelessness 

Freshfields has a unique and “flexible” seat system. Seats can be either three or six months long. Most trainees will spend six months in their first seat, and final seats are usually spent on client or overseas secondments. Some of our interviewees had just done four seats, some had done as many as six or seven. Certain popular niche seats, including competition and IP/IT, which can be “quite competitive” to get into, only allow for three-month stints. “I really appreciate the system,” one trainee told us. “No one I know missed out on seats they wished they had done.” One trainee found it a good idea to “spend at least six months in the department you want to qualify into,” while another added: “You can't usually do six different specialist niche seats.” Also, bear in mind that “you don't technically have to do corporate and finance, but they are the biggest departments, so it's pretty rare to avoid them.” It would therefore be unwise to join Freshfields without a serious interest in both of these practices.

So what seats are on offer? In rough order of prevalence, there's dispute resolution (DR); corporate (A, B, C and D); structured and asset finance (SAF); banking; tax; antitrust; competition and trade; restructuring and insolvency; real estate, IP/IT; employment, pensions and benefits; and energy and infrastructure. Around three-quarters of seats on offer are in DR, corporate, SAF or banking.

Overseas seats are available in a dozen of the firm's offices – Paris, New York and Hong Kong are the most common destinations. There are also around 30 client secondments, to major financial institutions like the Bank of England, as well as industrial companies like Airbus and ExxonMobil, and some charities. Most trainees do a secondment as their final seat. One trainee commented: “On secondment – both to clients and overseas – you are far more involved in getting things done and there is more a sense that you have direct responsibility and are part of what is being done.” Read more about the overseas seats and secondments on our website.

The A-Team 

In 2010, the corporate department completed 215 M&A transactions with a combined value of $272bn. The department is split into four sub-teams (sensibly named A, B, C and D), which each takes a quarter of trainees. A is regulatory; B is private equity and infrastructure M&A; C is capital markets and other M&A; and D is technology, media and telecoms. The M&A team advised Chinese carmaker Zhejiang Geely on its acquisition of Volvo from Ford, as well as advising E.ON on the sale of its €3.4bn stake in Gazprom to Russia's state-owned VEB bank.

Corporate “doesn't have loads of paralegals,” so trainees are left to do many of the “mundane tasks,” partly because “due diligence is seen as a learning experience.” There's admin work – “putting things in tables and creating indices, form-filling, co-ordinating and managing closures, co-ordinating board meetings and getting parties' signatures” – and plenty of documents to churn through – “proof-reading, inputting changes and suggesting wording of documents,” and “creating bibles.” One associate joked: “Sometimes it's basically like being a human word-processor!” Trainees do get more substantive experience, too, often towards the end of their seat – “helping with first drafts, bits of research” and “liaising with foreign counsel.” Corporate has the most “hugely demanding” hours of any department. “It's not the partners pushing you to stay, but people impose it on themselves to work longer.”

Never knowingly undersold 

The SAF department has been working on lots of refinancing and restructuring recently, like the refinancing of a €375m multi-currency loan for car rental firm Avis. Other clients include many beasts of the financial world: RBS, Barclays, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and even the Bank of England. Freshfields lawyers also advised John Lewis on the issuance of its partnership bond to be sold to John Lewis partners and account holders. Trainees in this team told us their “responsibility builds up quickly.” One said: “I was helping with turning around the documents, attended client meetings, making changes to documents and was drafting board minutes – though I wasn't doing the difficult drafting.” This can all be very demanding. “I was on a big deal that involved very long hours and I got almost no weekends for six weeks in a row.” Besides SAF, there is a separate banking seat. This involves some drafting, too, but is usually, according to one: “50% proof-reading and 50% deal management,” which helps to “improve your organisational skills.”

Time in dispute resolution can be in either a general commercial seat or a specialist one such as EU competition or international arbitration. Trainees can also complete a two-week course if they don't want to visit the department. Litigators recently represented Accenture over the implementation of a new billing system by British Gas. They also acted for Russian oligarch Vasily Anisimov in his High Court battle with fellow oligarch Boris Beresovksy. Other clients include AstraZeneca, Ernst & Young and Siemens. The department received mixed reviews from trainees. Some spent their time “predominantly doing doc review” and “bundling.” Others said they “loved it” and got really involved in “legal research, attending conferences with counsel,” and “liaising with overseas clients and sources.”

The smaller departments are often highly coveted. Actually, trainees in the likes of IP/IT, real estate and employment see a similar level of work to their colleagues in the big departments. Experiences as varied as “photocopying and paginating, drafting witness statements” and “research into specific issues” are all par for the course. As one trainee summarised: “You can't get through your training contract without doing the dogsbody work. At some point you will end up sharing a room with a lot of boxes.”

Partnering up 

It's important to note that typically all trainee supervisors are associates rather than partners. Most trainees said they had been “very lucky and had very nice supervisors.” One said: “They take a back seat when they can, but are equally easy to speak to when we need them.” But with nearly 200 trainees and over 200 supervisors, “as with any large organisation, the quality of supervisors varies – and some will just be very busy.” This probably explains the occasional grumble we heard.

Partner contact is very important to trainees. “It is fundamentally the partners, not HR, who make the decision on who goes where on qualification,” they claimed. We were told that “you need to work in front of partners as much as possible, which is easier said than done.” Trainee-partner relations usually build up slowly. Helpfully, “supervisors usually realise it's important to show partners your work. Partners will ask the associates they trust what they think of trainees.”

All seats demand hard work, long hours and commitment. Here's a typical story: “I have had days when it's been quiet and I've left the office at 5.30pm. I generally leave between 8pm and 9pm or, if it gets busier, 10pm or 11pm. But a few nights ago I was in until 3.30am.” At times, work-life balance goes out the window. “At the moment it's 90% work and 10% private life," said one trainee. "You are given a Blackberry and expected to be available 24/7.” Another agreed: “You learn to not make plans during the week.” Trainees need to adapt to other people's schedules and work styles. “Sometimes I have had nothing to do during the day, and then an associate has come to me in the evening with something that needed to be done by 6am.” We were assured that such events were a “rarity” and most sources put a positive spin on their hard labour: “I have had to work a few weekends,” one said, “but I have always been given days off in lieu.”

Citius, altius, fortius 

Freshfields has long been seen as one of the City's more traditional firms, with a penchant for recruiting Oxbridge types. Trainees told us: “There is definitely still an element of 'Blues and blondes' around – the trainee group tends to be quite white and Oxbridge – but they have been making an effort to build up diversity.” The proportion of ethnic minority recruits has jumped from 9% in 2004 to 18% at the time of our calls (and the 2011 intake was set to be 25% non-white). “We don't apologise for recruiting heavily from Oxbridge,” training partner Simon Johnson told us. Generally around 55% of the firm's intake comes from those two institutions – but over 40 universities are represented in total.

Any trainee needs to be able to fit in with the firm's culture – “traditional,” “studious,” “academic,” but “not stuffy” was how sources described it. “There is a certain amount of pride around that we work at Freshfields and that we have a certain traditional style.” That sense of respect and tradition informs the firm's “hierarchical structure,” something many trainees brought up. “There are a lot of unspoken rules. The associates don't mingle with the trainees and the partners don't mingle with the associates. There are departments where partners will walk past you in the corridor and pretend you don't exist.” Having said that most departments are “friendly,” although trainees like to maintain a “professional relationship” with the fee earners and “most people just get on with their work with a quiet determination.” A successful Freshfields trainee is hard-working, bright, resilient, accommodating and “doesn't kick up a fuss.” There's also a touch of “healthy competition” between trainees.

It would be very wrong not to add that there are plenty of activities that “break down the boundaries” of the firm's more traditional air. Dress-down Fridays were recently introduced and there's a ton of socials. “Quite a lot of the trainees go to the Witness Box on Fridays, and some teams have a 'pub of the week' they'll visit. The corporate department is renowned for that and tax is also pretty raucous.” Given its Olympic links, we're not surprised to hear there's a “sporty feel to the place,” with cricket, rugby, football, tennis and golf as favourites. Almost every department has an annual ski-trip, although “whether you ski or not is irrelevant.” The 2011 summer party was Olympics-themed and hunky rower James Cracknell was among the guests of honour.

And finally...

With upwards of 80% of trainees kept on every year throughout the recession, we weren't surprised to hear that 88 out of 95 qualifiers stayed with the firm in 2011.