Anyone who says that one Magic Circle firm is the same as any other obviously didn’t train at Freshfields. The flexibility that is offered throughout your training contract makes it very different from the other large City firms.

The option of doing three month seats not only enables you to see more departments if you’re not sure where you want to qualify, but also allows you to gain a broader variety of experience in your chosen area by giving you the option of returning to a seat as you come up to qualification. I’ve just spent six months in a corporate team, where I was involved in a wide range of work – from deals involving pubs, to sofas, to helicopters, no two days were the same. My own contributions on these transactions ranged from producing a due diligence report on a company that our client was proposing to acquire, to liaising with clients to get together the information required to draft a circular to be sent out to shareholders of a FTSE company.

As well as transactional work, I was also involved with advisory matters on points of company law, which would require that I turn my research into a client friendly response that would convey the most straightforward commercial solution to the particular question. The atmosphere in the team was extremely friendly – as well as organised events, people would regularly pop in and out of each other’s offices. The sociable environment, combined with the quality of work, made it a great team in which to start my training contract. The level of support you receive at Freshfields is a key factor in making it a fantastic place to train. Not only are there support staff on hand at all times if you’re having a computer-related nightmare when a deadline is looming, but the ongoing training that you receive enables you to keep on top of the latest legal developments.

It’s not easy to know which firm to go for when you’re studying, but if you want exciting work, interesting and sociable colleagues, and the flexibility to choose the training contract you want, Freshfields is the ideal choice.

It might sound obvious, but working at a firm like Freshfields is a huge change from studying law at university. My professors never phoned me for clarification on what I’d written in an essay, but in my first week here I was already talking clients through the finer points of a document we’d sent over.

That relationship with our clients is at the heart of what we do. You need to understand why they want Freshfields on a project instead of handling it in-house. I spent time on client-side internships while I was studying, so I’ve got an idea of what a legal team will already have done and why they need the extra skills and resources we bring to a project.

I’m currently in a corporate team, where most of our work is in bonds. It’s really relevant at the moment because companies are looking at their financial situation in the prevailing market conditions and consider bond issues as an important means of finance. From the beginning, I was in at the deep end because I was working on the formation of a public company to be used subsequently as an issuer in a very large bond issue. I have also worked on various updates of programmes for issuing bonds on a frequent basis, known as Euro medium-term note programmes. It has been great being part of a team on high-profile transactions for global clients. As well as the client work, I’ve been doing pro bono work for the charity Crisis. It is entering into an alliance with SIFA Fireside to set up a training centre for homeless people in Birmingham. It’s a bit unusual for a trainee to be doing pro bono work so early in the training contract, but it’s something I really wanted to do. Freshfields was very encouraging and it’s great to mix different types of work – especially when the work is this rewarding.