Your work at Freshfields

1. Five of our practice areas offer seats to Hong Kong trainees

Your training contract with us lasts two years. Corporate, finance and dispute resolution are the core of our services to clients, so you’ll spend time in each of these practice groups.

In corporate

You’ll learn about public and private M&A, how to set up joint ventures – often across a number of jurisdictions, and how to structure and advise on securities. Your clients will be private and state-owned Chinese enterprises, international businesses, private equity houses, financial services and investment funds.

In dispute resolution

You’ll cover the whole range of risk management, litigation, arbitration, mediation and other forms of alternative dispute resolution and negotiation. We’re the leading arbitration practice in Asia and our client work includes advising on the most high-profile China-related arbitration ever, the largest Asia treaty arbitration and the largest Asia dispute.

In finance

You’ll learn about bank lending, debt capital markets, restructuring and structured finance. And you’ll see things from the point of view of the financial sponsor – the banks, investors and finance organisations.

You can also choose to do a three-month seat in antitrust, competition and trade, or in intellectual property and information technology.

In antitrust competition and trade

You’ll learn how to structure mergers so that they meet the requirements of competition authorities in any number of jurisdictions. You may well advise on cartel investigations. And you’ll learn about commercial agreements, restrictive practices, compliance programmes, state aid, public procurement and international trade. You may also be a member of a team working on an antitrust litigation. Your team may be composed exclusively of antitrust lawyers, or you may be part of a multi-jurisdictional team offering antitrust advice as part of a bigger transaction or a worldwide investigation.

In intellectual property and information technology

Our team in Hong Kong covers both contentious and non-contentious work. You’ll advise on patent litigation, trade marks, copyright, unfair competition, internet and e-commerce, telecoms regulatory work, and privacy and data protection.

2. US JDs develop the skills of an international lawyer

It’s rare for an assignment to include only one area of law. In China, many of our lawyers are qualified in more than one jurisdiction. We cover Hong Kong law, English, German, Australian, Japanese, Malaysian, Singaporean and, of course, New York law.

Our US-qualified lawyers have worked all over the world and are much in demand. You’ll join their team for the duration of your 12-week JD programme with us as a JD candidate. You’ll learn that clients need our knowledge of how laws and regulations are interpreted and how they work in practice as much as they need our knowledge of the law.

As a multidisciplinary law firm, clients often come to us when what they want to do hasn’t been done before. But our geographic reach also means that much of our work is about advising on complex transactions all over the world. It’s our track record of advising on these types of transactions and our comparative knowledge of how things work all over the world that’s so valuable to clients.

You’ll be based in Hong Kong but will work with colleagues in Beijing and Shanghai. Your work may also involve our lawyers in other parts of Asia: Tokyo, Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and Singapore.

As part of your summer programme you’ll learn the importance of understanding our clients’ commercial goals.

3. Our legal consultants work in our two main practice areas – corporate and ACT

If you join M&A team

Year after year, independent league tables show us as the leading law firm for public and private M&A transactions. Our teams in China do much of this work and our legal consultants support them.

Your clients will be private and state-owned Chinese enterprises and international businesses from every type of industry. We advised on the first investment by a foreign bank in a Chinese financial institution and we advise banks and international businesses on joint ventures and strategic alliances with Chinese counterparties, as well as takeovers and disposals.

If you join our Capital Markets team

Freshfields leads the field in advising underwriters and businesses on IPOs and share offerings on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Our name is linked to many ‘firsts’: the first French-based business to list in Hong Kong, the first Japanese company to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the first ever offering of Hong Kong Depositary Receipts.

If you join our ACT team

You’ll learn how to structure mergers so that they meet the requirements of competition authorities in any number of jurisdictions. You may well advise on cartel investigations. And you’ll learn about commercial agreements, restrictive practices, compliance programmes, state aid, public procurement and international trade. You may also be a member of a team working on an antitrust litigation. Your team may be composed exclusively of antitrust lawyers, or you may be part of a multi-jurisdictional team offering antitrust advice as part of a bigger transaction or a worldwide investigation.

Our client list

Our clients range across a variety of sectors and industries. They also include charities for whom we work on a pro bono basis. Here are just a few:

• Charity: HalfTheSky Foundation, Oxfam, Save the Children, the Red Cross
• Consumer and retail: Ab Inbev, Colgate Palmolive, PepsiCo
• Energy: BHP Billiton, China National Petroleum Corporation, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, INPEX
• Financial: Deutsche Bank, China Life Insurance, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Meiji Yasuda Life, Mizuho Financial Group, Prudential
• Healthcare: AstraZeneca, Novartis, Shanghai Pharma
• Media: Pearson, RELX Group
• Technology: Alibaba, China Telecom, CK Hutchison, HP, Lenovo, Panasonic
• Transport and automotive: CRRC, Toyota, VW