Legal Village

Putting the 'Angel stamp' back into Freshfields’ trainee recruitment

Posted 21/02/2008 by Mark Rawlinson

I have been revamping our Interview Panel at the firm to give it a fresher feel, balanced by some experienced hands. Historically, Freshfields has been at the cutting edge of recruitment. We have been incredibly lucky having partners such as Guy Whalley, Tom Head and Ben Staveley, who have made it such a priority over the years.

For example, Guy was the reason why Tim Jones and I joined the firm, rather than any other in the  magic circle. I remember Ben showing me round the office myself when he was a trainee and I was a student, nearly 30 years ago.

As Tom, Ben and others have carried on helping with the interviewing beyond their retirement, it has meant that current partners have not had to give it the priority which it deserves – with some notable exceptions, such as Chris Forsyth, who has been trainee recruitment (TR) partner for the last few years. And this has put an increased strain on our comparatively small but hugely professional recruitment team, led by Deborah Dalgleish.

It was actually Ben, Chris and Deborah who recognised the need to reinvigorate our UK trainee recruitment process. We have always had a very high ratio of acceptances from potential trainees to whom we make offers. This has eroded a little and as a firm we are very keen to improve our competitive position.

Accordingly, shortly before Christmas I was asked to become lead TR partner. I expect to spend something like 500 hours on TR during 2008. Quite a few years ago now, I was part of the Interview Panel and really enjoyed doing the interviews. It will be a fun adjunct to the large amount of client work which I will continue to do. 

The first thing that I have set about doing is revamping the Interview Panel. In addition to myself, I have signed up 14 other partners who are each committed to a minimum of 100 hours of interviewing and university liaison during the next year. It is quite a varied group in terms of age, university education and department.

Eight have become (or in one case, hopefully will become) partners in the last five years - John Blain, Kathleen Healy, Andrew Hutchings, Simon Johnson, Emma Kendall, Flora McLean, Alex Mitchell and Ben Spiers. Four have been partners for less than 10 years - Gillian Eastwood, Chris Forsyth, Claire Wills and Marcus MacKenzie. And there are three old hands, in Raj Parker, Nigel Rawding and myself.

Supplemented by some continuing involvement from Tom and Ben, we should have a good blend of youth and experience, as well as fresh ideas balanced by continuity and preservation of values. Universities represented include Cambridge and Oxford, as you would expect, but Bristol, Liverpool, Nottingham, Sheffield, Southampton and York are also represented.

There are four partners from each of corporate, finance and dispute resolution, with one from each of employment, real estate and IP/IT. All of the partners have busy transactional practices but recognise the importance of trainee recruitment and are willing to commit a chunk of their time to getting the best talent through the Whitefriars doors. They all also have a real feel for the culture of the place - the 'Angel stamp' - which is very important for me.

I am confident that this group will really be able to get across to candidates what makes Freshfields special and different. We are elite and international and integrated. We have all the professional benefits of being in a large firm (the prestige and excitement of the best clients and the best deals) but also the human side of a small organisation (support, enthusiasm, collegiality and humanity).

If you talk to Ted Burke, he will say that 2008 should be Freshfields’ year. The firm is in great shape after our restructuring and we are consistently at the top of the league table rankings. On the softer side, we have just won an award for being CSR firm of the year and our associate engagement programme is beginning to produce some real changes. We should not be shy of getting these positive messages across to candidates.

This new team, together with help from key associates and key trainees, will look at all aspects of the current recruitment process, our vacation placement schemes, liaison with universities and the qualities we look for in trainees. We also involve associates in the interview process, which shows our confidence in their judgement and capabilities as partners-to-be.

Clearly this is a new initiative and it will take a little time for the new team to make an impact.  I think the quality of the panel speaks volumes for the importance current partners place on TR – it is the future of the firm, after all. I envisage that the new team will be very much in evidence by the time of the vacation placements (first at Easter and then in the summer) and be fully operational by the heavy August/September interviewing season.

It will be a huge commitment in terms of current partner time. We receive between 1,500 and 2,000 applications per annum and interview more than 400 people a year. With each interviewee seeing two separate pairs of interviewers, there is something like 2,000 hours of interviewing to cover.

Finally, there are two myths about Freshfields that I would like to lay to rest. The first is that everyone here works ridiculously long hours. True, when I left the disco in Engelberg, Switzerland on our group C ski trip the other weekend, at 2.30 am in the morning, there were a group of trainees who laboured on until daybreak (and woke me up when they got back)! However, the annualised chargeable hours for trainees in London for 2007-08 is 1,484 (having been 1,431 for 2006-07). Clearly there are peaks and troughs but I think that the trainees in my group would say that their quality of life is pretty good! 

Second, at one time we had a reputation for recruiting “Blues and blondes”, almost to the exclusion of others, and this tag - though long bearing no resemblance to reality - has continued to lurk around in people’s memories. We positively welcome both as long as they are good lawyers.

Simon Johnson and I (and Tim Jones) played lots of rugby once upon a time and Claire Wills is blonde. But all of us first and foremost are lawyers with the Freshfields qualities. We are only exclusive in terms of wanting to be the elite.

Over the last few years, around 40 UK universities and many non-UK institutions have sent us trainees; roughly 50% of our intake is expected to be non-Oxbridge. If you look at our intakes each year we are incredibly diverse – our culture is constantly evolving and is far more international than when I started. Then, all the articled clerks would have been English; now we are a veritable league of nations.

At the welcome dinner the other evening I was sitting next to Sarah, who is Australian, and Ria, who was born in Kenya. University-wise, this latest intake includes graduates of Anglia Ruskin, Exeter, Glasgow, Leeds, Leicester, Manchester, Nottingham, Salford, Sheffield, Warwick, Berlin, two universities in Sydney and John Hopkins University in Baltimore, as well as the usual suspects... quite an impressive mix in anybody's book.

We’re really after the strongest legal talent we can find, wherever we can find it – provided the people we recruit share the humanity we’ve always looked for and for which we’re known in the market.