I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be when I was growing up. I went through periods of thinking maybe I’d become an architect. There’s also this amazing magazine in Australia called Gourmet Traveller. It’s about food and travel, and I thought it would be quite nice to be a journalist for them. I still enjoy looking at architecture and I love the built environment, food, and travel.
I had a conversation with the career counsellor at school. She said, if you’re not sure, then law is a great general degree that gives you options for the future. My dad happens to be a lawyer as well, so I had some familiarity with the law. When I started the degree, I still wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do but I really enjoyed it. I loved the problem solving.
I’ve been lucky in my career right from when I started at Freehills in Sydney through to now. One of the benefits of being a litigator is you get such a broad variety of cases. I’ve lived and worked in four different places – Sydney, London, Hong Kong and Singapore. It has provided a wealth of different experiences.
I had to announce to the partnership that we had taken the difficult decision to close the Moscow office. My voice choked up and tears came into my eyes.
When a new case comes in and you’re unpicking the facts and trying to work out the strategy, is still one of my favourite bits of the job.
My management style? I think I am a good listener. Some of the issues facing law firms are increasingly complex and fast moving. I do not, and never will have, all the answers. So, you need to get perspectives from as many different people across the firm as you can. One part of that is making decisions that work for the future generations of the firm. I’d like to think my team would say I’m focused on the success of the firm, that I’m fair and have a decent sense of fun.
I had to announce to the partnership that we had taken the difficult decision to close the Moscow office. My voice choked up and tears came into my eyes. I thought it was incredibly embarrassing in front of all my partners to get emotional but afterwards, the messages that came in made it clear that it wasn’t a weakness, and it wasn’t embarrassing. It was just a human reaction to a really difficult situation that none of us wanted to be in. However, in the moment, I had an idea of what a leader should be like in a tough situation, and I thought that I had embarrassed myself.
To be a great disputes lawyer you have to be curious. If you start making assumptions, you can get off on the wrong track. If you don’t really try to get under the skin of the facts or listen to your witness or probe your witness, then you might not reveal the nuggets that help you or the client and their case. You also need to be reasonably tenacious. The scale of the cases that we work on is often significant and they can run for many years, so you have to have that determination and tenacity to see the matter through.
Sometimes we lose sight of the fact that you can’t always get it right. This idea of perfection through a career or perfection in any aspect of your career is just not realistic. Whether it’s a piece of constructive feedback that in the moment is hard to hear but helps you to get better, or a mistake which you learn from, you do have to keep bouncing back.
In the law, I’ve been spoilt for choice for mentors. From the start of my career, I’ve had fantastic supervisors who taught me everything from how to look after a team and how to be there for people when they really need you, as well as how to handle a client and help them in their cases.
I’ve had access to some of the leading lawyers in the market. It is constantly inspiring, people’s ambition, watching somebody in the moment and observing their thought processes. Seeing how they can bring a perspective to a particular issue that is completely fresh and unique is always inspiring. Some of my partners have been unwell in the last year or two and the way they have dealt with that, and the way my fellow partners have stepped in to support them and help them have the time to look after their health and their families while they get better, has been incredibly inspiring. It is also a reminder of why I love being at a firm like this where people really step in to look after each other.
To be a great disputes lawyer you have to be curious. If you start making assumptions, you can get off on the wrong track.
Outside of the law, I have great friends who do a whole range of different things. Their courage to run their own business or their courage to move countries are all things that can be inspiring. My parents are an inspiration as well. They have always been great supporters and they continue to be great supporters.
I’m conscious of making sure I spend a lot of time trying to get right being a parent. It’s a significant responsibility to try to guide and develop children so that they become good citizens, good siblings to each other, and good parents in the future. Hopefully, I can look back in years to come and see that as an achievement.
The industry is evolving rapidly. Even before the pandemic you could see change coming through the profession. The pandemic has really accelerated that. A lot of firms had invested in technology before the pandemic, but Covid hit, and everyone actually used it. It completely changed the way we work and the speed that we work at. We are a global organisation and meetings are now truly global.
The industry is evolving rapidly. Even before the pandemic you could see change coming through the profession. The pandemic has really accelerated that.
We are now having conversations in the profession about where we could be better. Including having an open and honest assessment about mental health and how this transitions into the workplace in terms of work life balance and agility. The conversation around the need for rapid progress on diversity and inclusion has also really accelerated. We are also looking at our role in the ESG agenda and what we should be doing as an organisation to play our part in the transition to Net Zero.
If you look back at my career, it might seem like a clear, linear pathway. I had a good start at a leading Australian law firm, but I then stepped out of that and went to work on a government project in Vietnam on law reform. This wasn’t necessarily an obvious choice. I did a masters in international relations next, so I stepped away from the law. I came back to it after a few years and joined Freshfields, but I took a job as a knowledge lawyer rather than as an associate. I then went back to being an associate, then senior associate, and then partner. It might appear, at least from the outside, like a very streamlined and clear process, but it’s certainly had a few kinks in the road.
Would I do any of that differently? No, because each of those experiences, whether it’s moving to another country or making yourself work in a different environment or working for different types of clients, makes you a better lawyer. You have to adapt, and you have to think differently. You can’t make assumptions about things being a particular way. You constantly need to be creative and consider the possibility that things in a particular country or in a particular sector are done differently.
I encourage junior lawyers to have the confidence to talk about what they want out of their career. Think about what your aspirations are if you are two or three years qualified. If you haven’t had a particular experience like drafting a pleading or interviewing a witness, go and talk to someone and say: ‘I would like to do this. Can we make it happen?’ Be more directional in how you want your career to go.
Watching the Freshfields machine rise up around the globe to help the client is still incredibly satisfying.
My favourite moments are still when something large and complex comes in. You have that moment of trying to understand what’s involved and what team you need to put together. Watching the Freshfields machine rise up around the globe to help the client is still incredibly satisfying. It could be multi-jurisdictional litigation, or it could be a big fraud investigation, or helping a client with an urgent data breach scenario where very quickly you must work out what expertise you need, what countries you’re working across and what timeframes you have to deliver things in. One of my partners, Jennifer Bethlehem, got the call from UBS to help them with the Credit Suisse transaction and, in a very short space of time, Jennifer harnessed this extraordinary team across the firm and they got that transaction done.
Dark chocolate is a guilty pleasure. I had some just before I came into this interview!
I love to eat, travel, and spend time with my family. I love going outdoors. Recently the kids and I went kayaking up the Thames, which was hard work, but a good experience. I’m also exploring my middle-aged pursuits of things like gardening, which I find a relaxing and enjoyable antidote to office work.
Georgia Dawson is the senior partner of Freshfields.
holly.mckechnie@legalease.co.uk
Portrait: Brendan Lea