Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer

We ran a story, and it was about 12 years ago now, but the reason it sticks in my mind was that it went everywhere.

It was a story that Freshfields had stopped using Dear Sirs as part of their correspondence.

OK, and we thought, this is great.

This is great.

He comes from an upper-middle-class professional background.

His father was a senior partner at Freshfields, the Magic Circle city firm, and he, slightly oddly, followed his father into that firm.

I'm not suggesting he had got any sort of preferential treatment, but he was an associate... solicitor there and leading a normal sort of life until and this is I'm taking from the Financial Times because they did a long read on him coincidentally just before the Channel 4 story broke and it says this it's quite dramatic actually it was New Year's Day 2003 on a black run in the mountains above Verbier that James Orr had his religious awakening.

He was 25 years old, a tall flaxen-haired and hungover from a raucous New Year's Eve party the night before.

Although I would say this is more developed in law firm graduate recruitment than I think it is at this time in the senior in-house hiring.

I'm hearing from my partners on the law firm side that at firms like Freshfields and A&O Shearman have tested exercises involving AI prompts, fraud outputs, responsible tool use.

I would say in my searches, in the senior in-house searches, I more commonly see things like case studies, some operating model questions as well, scenarios involving an AI product launch, questions about governance and adoption, I think sometimes requests to describe a workflow improvement, and just probing around the candidate's personal use of AI as well.

I do think that candidates should be extremely precise about their role.

Um, it might be a bit about kind of horizon scanning the economy, but you know, if you, if you, you know, you, you're comparing to the other Magic Circle, kind of.

The other one is Freshfields.

They've got, they've got, they have another one, apprenticeship program that they've, they've, they've dropped down.

It's not as much as by Linklaters, but, um, you've, you've got other sort of firm objectives there of, I think Freshfields are making a push in the, in the US, maybe directing resources slightly.

Um, but yeah, but, but yeah, it'll be interesting to see how the mainstream media, um, report that, that Linklaters-

Yeah

Sorry, Rachel.

Uh, and then briefly became a corporate lawyer at Freshfields, which is one of the magic circle firms.

Mm-hmm.

And then while skiing, challenged God to prove his existence to him, and then didn't die skiing.

And the fact it hasn't, you know, like.

Most law firms will say, well, if 10 years ago, if Freshfields do this, Linkletters will do that.

And now it's like if Latham's do this, or maybe we should do that.

Or if Kirkland do this, maybe we should do that.

Stricter U.S. and Chinese regulatory scrutiny in recent years of big Chinese companies listing in U.S. markets, especially those in strategically important sectors like advanced technologies, has led some Chinese companies to stick closer to home.

Listing overseas typically takes more time compared with doing IPOs in China, said Hou Fan, a capital market partner at the law firm Freshfields.

In Hong Kong, recent public stock listings of Apple supplier Luxshare Precision Industry and Zhongjing Inonelight, which makes optical transceivers used in data centers, were among this year's largest deals and were also a reflection of investor demand for advanced technologies.

The author of the article, Chen Ho Him, is part of the Associated Press.