I recently had the chance to sit down with Ted Burke, outgoing managing partner of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. I’ve known Ted for years and with the recent announcement that he would be stepping down at Freshfields to join Arclight Capital Partners as COO and general counsel it was time to catch up.
When we sat down, I asked Ted to reflect on his years at Freshfields (head of the firm since 2005). He opened: ‘It’s the oldest great firm in the world.’ Founded in 1743 with the Bank of England as a client, which remains a client today. The firm has been successful over 270 years, Ted observed, but not at all times, and it has had to change repeatedly. ‘No business can last more than a generation without changing.’








