Freshfields’ senior partner, Georgia Dawson, has been elected to serve a second term as senior partner alongside a trimmed-down team of co-managing partners.
Dawson’s second five-year term will begin in January, when Rafique Bachour, one of the firm’s three co-managing partners, will step down, leaving Alan Mason and Rick van Aerssen in post to continue working alongside her.
The election of Dawson, former Asia managing partner, to the senior partner role marked a major milestone as she was the first woman to be appointed to lead a UK Magic Circle firm.
Her tenure has been dominated by the firm’s drive to build a market-leading US practice.
Since 2019, it has hired 50 partners across a range of practice areas, including former Cravath New York-based M&A partners Damien Zoubek and Jenny Hochenberg who earlier this month advised US pharma giant Merck on its $10bn deal to buy UK-based Verona Pharma.
Dawson said: “It’s a privilege to continue serving as senior partner and I’m proud of the progress we have made to date. With strong momentum behind us, we’re refining what works and picking up the pace where we can do more, drawing on the strength of our global, multi-disciplinary platform.”
Other notable moves by the firm during her first term, which began in January 2021, include a rebrand in 2024 that saw it drop Bruckhaus Deringer from its name, a legacy of the three-way merger in 2000 with German firms Bruckhaus Westrick Heller Löber and Deringer Tessin Herrmann & Sedemund.
In 2023, the firm sought to create distance from its global Magic Circle rivals by emulating Slaughter and May’s policy of not officially releasing its financial results during the financial reporting season.
In April this year, it stood out from the vast majority of its rivals by signing an amicus brief in support of Perkins Coie’s legal battle to secure the revocation of an executive order by US president Donald Trump.
However, it is one of several firms, mainly US-based, to have updated marketing about their culture, removing many references to diversity – long criticised by Donald Trump – in favour of the more neutral term ‘inclusion’.
Dawson paid tribute to Bachour, a Brussels-based antitrust specialist who will return to focusing full-time on his practice.
She added: “Alongside Alan and Rick, our ambition remains clear: to be the firm of the future, agile, principled and relentlessly focused on helping our clients succeed. That means continuing to invest in our people, to lead with purpose and deepening our global capabilities for the benefit of our clients.”
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