Our view...

One of the grandest of the Magic Circle firms, Freshfields seems to have put its recent woes behind it with a staggering performance last year. Turnover for 2007/08 was up 20%. Equity partners make an average of nigh on one and a half million, double what they pulled in a few years ago.

Such success hasn’t been easy. Over the past few years the firm has booted out nearly a hundred partners and has made up far fewer than any of its competitors. But it’s been able to navigate away from its troubles in the last downturn: the increased readiness of clients to move to smaller firms for lower fees, the slowdown in the M&A market and the humiliation of being dropped by Barclays, BT and Royal Bank of Scotland. And it’s finally resolved the problems of its two German mergers, which hit profits and created tensions between the UK and German partnerships. Its German offices are now making proper money, with profitability higher than the firm's average, and the promised increase in gearing should improve things over the next few years.

The firm seems in pretty good shape to weather the downturn too. Associates have loudly complained about Freshfields freezing its salaries and cutting its NQ rate from £66k to £59k. But with the notable exception of five associates in the property department who got their P45s handed to them because of "market conditions" the firm has so far failed to make any redundancies, and at the moment has no plans to do so. Frankly we’d rather be on a couple of grand a year less at Freshfields than be at Linklaters and see one in five of our colleagues shown the door…

The new, slimmed down Freshfields is back to picking up some of the best work around. It recently acted on the £722m acquisition of Deutsche Bank's European property portfolio, and it's reckoned that the firm bagged more than £60m in fees from the Government over the part-privatisation of London Underground. Attempts to ramp up their finance practice achieved some success when it took the lead role in Invensys' £2.7bn re-financing. And whilst the rest of the City was worrying about the collapse of Northern Rock, Freshfields was picking up a fortune acting for it. Even if it did hack off of its oldest client, the Bank Of England, in the process.

There are clear advantages to working at Freshfields as an assistant. You will get experience of work that only a handful of firms can match and none can better. Cash and benefits are some of the best in the City, and whilst the London offices are starting to show their age a little they are at least (in an age when the Magic Circle is deserting to Canary Wharf and Spitalfields) well located. Even if the gym is "like a solitary confinement chamber".

The firm also scores points for recently "genuinely trying really hard to get associated engaged and involved". And partners are praised for being generally very hands on - one assistant mentioned that however late he was in the office, a partner would still be there when he left.

Which is just as well, because you will find yourself working very late very often. There may not be any official targets, but hours are still as tough as at any Magic Circle firm: the only way of getting round billing fewer than 1,800 hours a year is to call the senior partner "dad". Assistants lament a "presenteeism culture" and the "long, long hours" which mean "I don’t even attempt to make weekday plans". "Come here is you like to get beasted and never want to see what the outside world looks like", says one trainee.

Yes, you'll get superb experience. But the up-or-out policy means that if you don't make partnership you'll find yourself without a job. And let's face it, the odds aren't in your favour, particularly if you are female. Although a respectable 25 associates were made up this year, only ten were in London: and only five of the global promotions were women. For all the firm's talk of bringing in alternatives to partnership, for now it's lagging behind pretty much every major firm in the City. Many assistants (especially those outside the core corporate department) feel marginalised and undervalued.

To be fair many of these problems affect every large firm, and grumbles about prospects can be heard throughout the Magic Circle. Freshfields offers excellent training, takes career development seriously and keeps on nearly all its newly qualified lawyers. This, coupled with the lure of good money, superb work and a glittering name on a CV will be enough to ensure that they will always be able to attract the best. As one associate puts it - "Great people, great clients, great work".

For more information on Freshfields click here