Pure Potential

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer is one of the world's largest and most successful law firms. Clients come to us because they know we can handle their most demanding work. We are instructed by Governments and Corporations around the globe - high profile clients like Tesco, Mars, LVMH, PepsiCo, London Transport, Microsoft, and the Bank of England.

We have 27 offices in 15 countries and in London we have more than 2,000 people - but it still manages to be a very personal place to work. Our trainees, associates and partners come from all over the world and have been educated at an astonishingly wide range of universities. They vary hugely in their life and work experiences - but have a very similar attitude when it comes to the quality of work they want to do and the degree of responsibility they want to have. Our ability to offer diverse skills across international borders ensures that we provide our clients with the very best advice possible.

To ensure our lawyers are able to focus completely on their work, we support them with teams of paralegals, the very best professional and technical training, cutting edge information technology and professionals who specialise in knowledge management, business development and communications.

Our trainees have the opportunity to undertake up to eight 'seats' (or placements) during their training contract. This means that trainees can see all of our eight Practice Groups if they choose - a uniquely flexible training programme which maximises the chances of our new recruits finding which areas of law interest them the most and play best to their strengths.

Our Practice Groups - Corporate; Finance; Dispute Resolution; Anti-Trust Competition & Trade; Employment; Pensions & Benefits; Tax; Intellectual Property/Information Technology; and Real Estate - are global rather than UK based, so that on almost every deal our lawyers work with individuals in our international network and with clients based overseas.

To complement our London based training, we offer an extensive programme of secondments for trainees and qualified lawyers, both to clients and to international offices.

We recruit about 80 vacation visitors (or 'interns') and 90 trainee solicitors each year. We consider both law and non-law graduates - about 30% of our trainees have normally done subjects other than law at university. We need our recruits to have exceptionally good thinking, analytical and problem-solving abilities (our clients pay us to find ways to do things, not reasons why they can't), very strong oral and written skills (lawyers have to express themselves clearly, precisely and concisely at all times), high levels of determination and drive (the demands of our clients and the workload are not for everyone) and excellent team playing and organisational abilities (we are only as good as the weakest person on the team).

We recruit vacation visitors from the second year on at university, and trainee solicitors from the summer before the final year (for law undergraduates) or during the first two terms of the final year or after (for non-law undergraduates). We run open days as well as vacation placements to help people interested in a career here to find out more.

http://www.freshfields.com/