Here’s a question for you: where do you add value as a leader? I often find myself thinking about leadership. It’s not a fixed idea — it keeps evolving with the work I happen to be doing at the time and what’s going on in my life. For example, I see new professionals coming into […]
AI in law (or why the tool isn’t the point)
When AI first began to make its way into our work at Freshfields, I thought the hard part would be the technology itself. Surely the challenge was simple, I thought at first. ‘We find the right tool, plug it in, and it will give us 90–95% of what we need.’ It didn’t work out that […]
What I’ve Learned About Due Diligence (and How We Made It Work Better)
When I first took responsibility for due diligence at Freshfields, the approach was simple: throw as many people at the task as possible. It didn’t work. Together with colleagues, we decided to rethink the whole process. STEP ONE: Build Specialist Teams Instead of everyone doing DD occasionally, we created a pool of trained specialists who […]