Freshfields Graduate Careers in China
Freshfields Graduate Careers in China
Our culture is important to us, to our clients – and hopefully to you, too.
Strong, long-lasting relationships with clients are important. When we’ve completed a deal, we stay close to our clients and continue to work with them. Our role goes beyond giving legal advice – we offer business advice too. Clients tell us that for a hard-working international law firm, where the pressure to deliver is constant, we’re remarkably relaxed and friendly.
Our culture is important to us, to our clients – and hopefully to you, too
Strong, long-lasting relationships with clients are important. When we’ve completed a deal, we stay close to our clients and continue to work with them. Our role goes beyond giving legal advice – we offer business advice too. Clients tell us that for a hard-working international law firm, where the pressure to deliver is constant, we’re remarkably relaxed and friendly.
We're good at teamwork
It’s rare for just one lawyer to solve the problem or advise on a transaction. It almost always takes a team. It may be just three or four people, or it may need more than a hundred of us. But how we work, and the way we work together, makes all the difference. You need to be generous with your time and ready and willing to help out. And, as you gain experience, happy to share what you know. To clients, much of the value of working with us lies in our ability to work together behind the scenes.
Our strategy in China
Our strategy here is the same as for the rest of the firm. We can sum it up in four phrases:
1. We like the difficult and the international
All law firms have a choice as to the strategy they adopt. Our aim is to go after complex, premium, cross-border work that needs some impressive thinking. We don’t go after the volume, repetitive, commoditised instructions.
2. We’re here when it really matters
This is all about relationships, trust and moving fast. When things are about to go very wrong for a client, who do they phone? Us. When a client has to move quickly, who do they phone? Us. And when what they want to do has never been done before, who do they phone? Again, us.
Our task is always to help clients achieve their objective – sign the deal, solve the problem, negotiate an acceptable outcome.
3. Consistency is crucial to us and to our clients
We put huge effort into making sure that every client receives the same high-quality advice and service wherever they are in the world.
All too often a law firm will open a new office because there is an opportunity for a particular type of transaction or there’s a sudden demand in a new market. But consistency of advice and service is everything. There must be no weak links.
So when we open an office we’re confident that we can serve our clients in the manner that they’re used to across the world.
4. We’re always looking ahead
There’s a big advantage for a law firm if it’s the first to be able to support clients in new markets and the first to spot new ways of accomplishing transactions and solving – or better still, pre-empting – problems.
We’re constantly looking for innovative ways of achieving things. It can be innovative use of technology to speed up or simplify a process, or it can be some smart thinking that finds a way around or through a problem.