Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer Interview 2021

[BK]

Please state the month/year you interviewed at the firm.
November 2020

Please specify what the interview was for.
Summer Vacation Scheme 2021

Please give an overview of the day with approximate timings.
09:00 Ten-minute welcome from Graduate Recruitment
09:30- 10:30 General Interview (2 interviewers)
10:45- 11:00 Video call with Trainee
11:30 Commercial Article Received
12:00- 13:00 Analytical Interview (2 interviewers)

Please provide a summary of each assessment on the day with approximate timings.
General Interview: Lasted 1 hour and is usually conducted by one Partner and one Associate. The interview was semi-structured with certain questions that the interviewers wanted to cover, but a lot of the interview conversation took off based on my responses. The questions were motivation and competency-based. There is also one compulsory situational judgement question that all interviewers must cover. Most of the follow-ups were based on my responses, asking me to elaborate or asking directly applicable my learnings were to the workplace setting

Analytical Interview: Lasted 1 hour and is also usually conducted by one Partner and one Associate, although I had a Senior Associate and an Associate. The interview is preceded by 30mins of prep time on a commercial article that is emailed to you. The questions are based on general commercial concepts in the context of the article.

What is your best advice for each aspect of the assessment on the day? Please break this down for each assessment. This can include advice for preparation, as well as tips for the day.

General Interview:
1. Be prepared to elaborate on experiences mentioned in your application. Try not to be descriptive only. Providing a reflective response will give depth to the answer and show you as a well-reflected individual.
2. Treat the interview as a conversation, it will automatically ensure you are not too uptight. Use the time at the end of the interview to speak about your interviewers and their work. This was the time that I genuinely felt I connected with the interviewers and could tell they were pleased to talk to me
3. Smile, relax and be yourself! The feedback I received was that the interviewers in both my interviewers enjoyed interviewing me. Being personable and interested in hearing about your interviewers' experiences will go a long way in forming a connection.
4. The situational question may relate to an experience you have not dealt with before. Be prepared to think on your feet. Explain each step of your thinking. Why are you considering a certain option to be the best solution? Why did you discard other options?
5. In answering why Freshfields, try to draw out specific interactions you have had with the firm. For eg: 'During my time at the Spring Scheme/Open Day/ Webinar... ' Prefacing your reasons with an interaction shows proactivity.

Analytical Interview:
1. The interviewers want to see your thought process and the way you reach an answer. It doesn't matter if you do not know all the answers, I certainly didn't. I found acknowledging that I did not know an answer and then offering to take them through my reasoning helpful. Make educated estimates and use your existing commercial knowledge to offer an answer.
2. Pick up on social cues. The interviewers are more than happy to guide you along to the right answer. Think in the direction they are pointing you to
3. The article I received was related to a broader trend of retail stores being on the decline in the UK. Keeping up with big stories and having an opinion can be helpful. The article will not be super niche. Any wider reading you've done can also be cleverly integrated into your answers. For eg:' 'The problem mentioned in the article is not exclusive to xyz alone, a wider market trend can be observed. Recently, [company abc] announced....'

Were you successful?
Yes

 

[BK]

Please state the month/year you interviewed at the firm.
January 2021

Please specify what the interview was for.
Summer vacation scheme 2021

Please give an overview of the day with approximate timings.
9am - 5 minute introduction with graduate recruitment. They explain the process for the day, ease you in, ask if you have any questions and clarify what you should do if there is a tech problem (this was a virtual interview).
9.30am to 11am interview with one Partner and one Associate - general competency interview, discussing your application and some scenario questions at the end.
11am to 11.15 - chat with trainee (non-assessed).
11.15 am to 11.30 - 15 minutes to read commercial article and prepare for the commercial interview.
11.30 to 12.30 - commercial interview with one Partner and one Associate.

Please provide a summary of each assessment on the day with approximate timings.

Written exercise: 1 hour to read the materials and complete a table. This exercise is fairly straightforward, they are just assessing your literary, comprehension, grammar capabilities. You need to identify mistakes in the attached documents and state what you would write instead.

General interview: Freshfields’ interview is very personal and conversational. Be prepared to talk about yourself, your interests, what drives you, your strengths/weaknesses. They also ask one scenario question at the end. They leave 10 minutes at the end for questions.

Commercial interview: the whole interview is based on the article you read. Sometimes the conversation deviates (usually towards the end), but they stick to the topics mentioned. They leave 10/15 minutes at the end for questions, can be longer depending on how quickly you answer the commercial questions.

What is your best advice for each aspect of the assessment on the day? Please break this down for each assessment. This can include advice for preparation, as well as tips for the day.

Written exercise: For the virtual AC this exercise is done a week before the AC. Do remember that Freshfields is looking at your literary/grammar skills, so there is no need to extensively prepare for this beforehand. My biggest advice would be to make sure you plan your time properly and keep an eye on the clock. 60 minutes is more than enough, but don’t get hung up on small details and waste time.

General interview:
- Be personable, Freshfields interview is more conversational so they appreciate someone who is easy to talk to. I definitely feel that making sure you are calm and relaxed is really important, it will ensure that you are yourself during the AC.
- Know your experience/application inside out, they do pick up small points and prod you on them.
- The interviewers asked me 3 differently phrased questions on challenges/difficulties/failures I have faced. They are really big on these type of questions, make sure you have 3 to 4 different examples for each question to ensure you do not repeat yourself.

Commercial interview: This is harder to prepare for because you do not know what article you could get. But it is usually always something from the FT or Economist. I would recommend keeping up to date with commercial affairs.

Were you successful?
Yes

 

[Elizabeth K]

Please state the month/year you interviewed at the firm.

January 2021

Please specify what the interview was for.

Summer Vacation Scheme 2021

Please give an overview of the day with approximate timings.

9am - Arrival + talk from Graduate Recruitment (10 Minutes)
9:30am - General Interview with an Associate and Partner (1 Hour)
10:30am - Non-assessed trainee chat (15 Minutes)
11:30am - Article Received (30 minutes, followed by hour-long case study interview with an Associate and Partner)

Please provide a summary of each assessment on the day with approximate timings.

Written Exercise - given 1 week prior (1 hour slot) - consists of spotting mistakes in a document and a redraft exercise.
General Interview - (1 hour) - Competency, motivation, and situation based interview.
Case Study Interview (1 hour) - interview based on an article from the FT or the Economist.

Please list any interview questions you were asked.

Why Law, why Freshfields etc.
Various situational and competency questions.
The Case Study interview was almost strictly commercial.

What is your best advice for each aspect of the assessment on the day? Please break this down for each assessment. This can include advice for preparation, as well as tips for the day.

1. The Written Exercise
I was quite worried about this part – but it is straightforward. It was essentially to review a draft email, based on information derived from a series of emails provided prior. There were no commercial considerations – it is almost exclusively assessing your attention to detail.
I was given four questions to answer (roughly): 1. What mistakes are there? How can you improve them? 2. Is the tone appropriate? 3. Is there anything that the client would dislike? 4. Redraft the final paragraph.

Tips and advice:

• Timing. You are given an hour, and I found this to be a generous amount of time. So long as you keep yourself at a steady pace, you will have time to read things multiple times. I submitted my document within the last 30 seconds – do not do this!
• In the draft document, DOUBT EVERYTHING. I would quite literally go word by word and question whether a mistake has been made.

Things to look out for:

• The boring email information at the top. Is it being sent to the right person? Is the right person sending it? Are the correct people cc’d? Is the subject of the email appropriate?
• How does the email begin and end? Is it too formal or too informal? Is the right person signing it off, and is it addressed to the correct person?
• Simple things – basic punctuation, silly spelling mistakes, capitalisation, so on. Don’t forget about these!
• Question every figure/clause/etc. Any number should be double checked.
• Do the same with names of things, and any references to anything specific outlined in a previous email.
• With the final redraft task – KEEP IT SIMPLE. I think the trick is that you are led to believe that you must write something substantial. Remember, lawyers are succinct. I redrafted a couple of sentences into a handful of words.

2. General Interview
The Associate and Partner were very friendly – as you often hear, it felt more like a conversation.
The standard questions all come up (why law, why Freshfields, …) so do prepare them. What is unique about this interview is that there is a focus on follow-up questions – and this how they will apply pressure on you. The initial questions are simple enough, but anything you say will be up for scrutiny.

Here is an example from my interview: As I am from the Middle East, I mentioned that I am interested in commercial in the region (and potentially doing a secondment/working in the future there). I was asked:

• Why the Middle East?
• What is interesting about commercial affairs in the region?
• Well why don’t you apply to our Dubai office instead of London? (Greater variety of work, arguably more sophisticated clients + I have never worked in the region, but live in London)
• What offices do we have in the region?

The follow-up questions were insightful – it gave plenty of opportunity for me to talk about myself more naturally. Just be conscious of what you say, as they will really hone into any comments that leave room for further questioning.

3. Case Study Interview
I was given an article from the FT about the performance of a company during the pandemic. I had plenty of time to re-read the article various times and make notes.
Here is some advice and my experience:

• The first question is inevitably going to be some sort of presentation. I was asked: Can you give us a 90-second elevator pitch style summary of the article? Really think about why the article was written, and then structure your summary around this. Mine was about the reasons WHY a company was SUCCESSFUL during a period of uncertainty. I therefore prepared 5 points with evidence from the article as to why they were, and 3 points highlighting potential causes of concern. (The quantities do not matter; it was just what I had found).
• You should link these points to what lawyers could do. For instance, this business had been acquiring its competitors and integrating them. So M&A lawyers would have advised on these matters, and could continue to do so in the future.

Commercial Awareness considerations - As a non-law (History) student, all my questions revolved around financial/commercial considerations. Having a basic understanding of concepts was really useful. Here were some questions I was asked:

• So the company had a valuation of £xyz. Do you have any idea how this might have been calculated?
• What is a stock exchange? What is AIM?
• What is a supply chain? Which actors are involved in the supply chain of this business?
• Another consideration was the date of the article. It was written BEFORE a scandal that was front-page news about the business had been reported on. So being able to refer to this showed a strong understanding of commercial affairs.

Final bit of advice – just use your common sense! I know it’s easier said than done, but just remain cool headed. They were not trying to trick me out but were just trying to see how far they could push my logical thinking. I thought the atmosphere was quite laidback, and this was my favourite interview thus far.

Were you successful?

Yes