Freshfields leading the league tables Forum

[Evilalterego]

Freshfields looks good on the league tables and seems to be ranked lower on Vault than it should be. Any insight why?

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business- ... first-half

[Sackboy]

Cool your jets turbo. This is one league table, a decent bit of which occurred during a global pandemic. The results look good for Freshfields, but it's not going to see any rise in rankings until it's a noticeable trend, and trends, naturally, take time. Also, rising in Vault will always be difficult when you only have a NY and DC office. Also, despite Vault being very NY corporate centric, people do consider many other firm strengths to decide how they rank firms; if they didn't, Jones Day certainly wouldn't be at #16. Based off Chambers, beyond M&A they do some good antitrust/international arbitration/white collar work, and that's it. Big whoop. They're going to need to expand their capabilities and be good at their expanded capabilities if they want more recognition in Vault. Pull open pretty any highly-rated firm, and they have over a dozen rated practices on Chambers.

[ConfusedNYer]

1) Pretty sure FF has always been pretty high on the global league tables, so this isn't some crazy new thing.

2) As Sackboy said, the firm on the U.S. side has a much more limited set of practice areas and they're not nearly as well regarded in them stateside as many U.S.-based firms.

3) Even compared to other Magic Circle firms they're a bit of a new player. I think they've only had a meaningful U.S. presence for about 2 decades.

4) they sound like a grocery store.

All that being said, they just opened a new Silicon Valley office and have been consistently poaching partners over the last few years. Plus it is legitimately a great firm for international arbitration work if that's your bag. I know a bunch of people there and actually think pretty highly of the firm, but don't expect it to shoot up the vault list.

[Evilalterego]

I see. Thank you both for the explanations.

[Sackboy]

1) Pretty sure FF has always been pretty high on the global league tables, so this isn't some crazy new thing.

Haven't really looked for their name on league tables the past few years, so I've probably been glossing over it. But, I think league tables have shown a limited efficacy in securing a firm a good rank. Look at FF and Shearman. Both firms are pretty consistently in the top 20 of the league tables and sometimes top 10 or 15. At the same time, both firms sit around #50 in Vault (and Shearman has seen a catastrophic decline over the past decade despite still landing some of the biggest public M&A deals).

[ChairmanKaga]

The simple answer to OP's question is Freshfields is a UK firm and Vault is a US publication. A&O, Linklaters, Freshfields, etc, may be V5-equivalents over in the UK and do very well in global league tables, but they don't have the same depth or name recognition here.