‘We are future-proofing our business to meet a transformative time, protecting what defines us, evolving where we need to and ensuring we remain a destination for our global clients and talent,’ Georgia Dawson tells Legal Business, three months into her second five-year term as Freshfields senior partner.

Even before she became the first female senior partner of a magic circle firm back in 2020, it was clear to Dawson that Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer (as it was then known) needed to change to secure a position in the global elite.

‘We needed to move more quickly, look at new opportunities, and evolve the firm for the future,’ she recalls. ‘The firm is 280 years old, and it’s been successful over a long period of time, but the question became: what are we, as the current generation of partners, going to do to evolve the firm? What should the priorities be? So we developed a strategy around a few different areas.’

Five years on, the change she has already presided over is far-reaching. From a rebrand that saw the firm drop Bruckhaus and Deringer from its name, to ramping up investment in the US, through to her personal involvement in the firm signing an amicus brief supporting firms targeted by US President Donald Trump’s executive orders – a move which set Freshfields apart within the global top 20 – Dawson has been busy.

‘You have to reward and incentivise the whole machine’

Recently, she has been particularly busy driving through a sweeping overhaul of the firm’s partner compensation system that takes Freshfields further away from traditional lockstep than ever before, in a bid to ensure it remains an attractive destination for the best lawyers.

The overhaul ties in with two of the three core planks of Freshfields’ strategic priorities – empowering its people and growth.

‘What has made us successful and will continue to make us successful is having bright, able people who can pivot,’ says Dawson. ‘We need to hire people who can deal with what now feels like the new normal, whether that’s changes in regulation around AI, or unpredictable government behaviour or conflict. We need to make sure that we’re hiring people who don’t have a fixed mindset and can grow and evolve.’

She is transparent that the firm’s ambitions to hire and to keep the very best talent has required changes to its remuneration structure, with profit per equity partner (which stood at around £2.3m for 2024-25) still some way behind the $5m average for the world’s top 10 firms.

The overhaul, voted through by partners in the autumn, is intended to make it easier for Freshfields to compete for the strongest partners at the top end, while also ensuring it doesn’t lose future stars.

‘You need the firm’s infrastructure to support the strategy,’ explains Dawson. ‘If it doesn’t, you’ve got a misalignment, you’re trying to pull in one direction on the strategy, and your machine just doesn’t keep up.

‘Sticking with something that doesn’t support your strategy doesn’t make sense. The key question for us was: did our then existing system allow us to attract and retain the best partners? If not, what were our options?’

‘We’re doing this to attract and retain all of the talent we have’

With nothing off the table at the discussion stage, the overhaul has been wide-reaching. Partners have voted in a new salaried partner tier that is already making it easier to promote and hire in new partners and, crucially, simplifies the process for the newly named ‘compensation committee’ to move pay for individual partners up or down.

Significantly, the overhaul gives the firm what one partner describes as ‘total flexibility’, removing the notion of a top-of-lockstep hard cap on potential earnings for stars in priority areas like the US or particularly competitive practices such as private capital.

Explaining the motivation for the overhaul, Dawson says: ‘We needed more flexibility than we had. We had a partner consultation that was entirely open, transparent and robust, to talk about a range of different options. We debated it all. We’ve tried to come up with something that’s efficient, fair and where partners have a good sense of the rationale behind the overall approach.’

Although she would not be drawn on the detail, partner profit shares will be assessed based on their contributions across collaboration, leadership and clients. ‘We’re doing this to attract and retain all of the talent that we have. Our partners work with and rely upon a massive group of partners and colleagues, and you have to reward and incentivise the whole machine, otherwise nobody can perform at their best.’

‘We’ve designed it to provide more certainty, clarity of pathway and fair compensation relative to that balanced scorecard contribution.’

Since the new remuneration system has been approved, the firm has seen a spate of partner exits, particularly in Europe, but Dawson, like other partners inside the firm, is confident that it provides the flexibility Freshfields needs to compete.

‘The US was where we needed to create scale’

With remuneration dealt with, the firm can return to focusing on evolving the rest of its business around its strategic priorities.

‘We’re focusing on three pillars of growth, empowerment and efficiency,’ she says . ‘The growth piece is the client and client service piece; empowerment is our people proposition; and efficiency is the firm’s infrastructure, data, technology and innovation.’

While Freshfields no longer releases financial results during the summer reporting season, its LLP accounts for 2024-25 show revenue grew by 6% during the year to £2.25bn, while net profit dipped slightly.

Over the longer term, however, global revenue has increased by more than 40% between 2021 and 2025, with the US – the geography the firm has prioritised most to compete at the highest level globally – seeing revenue soar by 172% to £473.3m over the same period.

‘The US was the region where we needed to create scale and bring in skills that we didn’t have, so that we could create as strong a platform there as we have everywhere else,’ says Dawson. ‘If you go back six years, we had two locations in the US – New York and Washington DC. Today, we have six, and we’ve almost tripled our headcount.’

The firm opened in Boston last year, having already opened in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, alongside a services centre in North Carolina.

Significantly, for a firm that has faced accusations that European partners may not always have been in complete support of the scale of investment in the US, there is now evidence of some client relationships transferring to Europe. Examples include the firm’s German practice last year advising BASF on the sale of its coatings business to Carlyle.

With the transactional side of the business already significantly enhanced through hires such as the 2024 recruitment of Latham private equity partners Neal Reenan and Ian Bushner, and a host of other hires across its now network of offices, the growth priority across the Atlantic will be on the disputes side going forward as it moves to replicate what it has in London in the US.

‘Will there still be growth? Yes, but will it be at the same pace and scale? Possibly not,’ confirms Dawson. ‘Now it’s about building out the bench in particular areas. There’ll be some additions on the transactional side, but I would definitely expect more on the disputes side. We have a large investigations and disputes practice in London and I’d want us to build something similar in the US.’

Growth is also evident in the practices and sectors the firm has put at the heart of its strategy: TMT, life sciences and, of course, private capital. Over the last five years, revenue from the tech sector is up by 231%, private capital is up 71% and life sciences is up 65%. While the firm is aiming for cross-practice work for these clients, it advised on more than $500bn of transactions across its key sectors in 2024-25.

‘From a practice group perspective, we chose a few areas where there is significant demand from clients for legal services on a global basis – to play to our footprint strength. We’ve tried to really double down on technology; while other focus areas include life sciences, as well as private capital,’ she says.

‘We need to learn new approaches and think differently’

Staying competitive requires more than growth, though, and Dawson is clear that the efficiency part of the strategy is increasingly important for firms wanting to boost profitability and remain relevant.

Freshfields was one of a number of firms to make job cuts last year, with up to 19 Manchester paralegal roles impacted in a business services overhaul that is also seeing the firm investing in new technology including AI.

Dawson says of the efficiency drive: ‘We’ve been looking at our business services. How do we run the firm? What are all the systems that we need? And trying to modernise that to make sure we’re best in class. So it’s been a pretty comprehensive overhaul.’

‘[On the technology front] things are changing so quickly. We’re trying not to be too conservative, so we’ve got a whole bunch of pilots of different technology and AI products. We’ve got a partnership with Google so that we can accelerate our learning and collaborate with them, and we have our lab that continues to produce incredible products.’

‘So we’re looking at, how do we further evolve those products? How do we scale them? How do we use them in a way that’s helpful for clients?’

She acknowledges that the impact of AI on in-house legal teams and future demands for external advice is something firms cannot afford to underestimate. It’s one of the reasons Freshfields is part-way through a large-scale client listening exercise looking at expectations around service delivery and pricing.

‘How do we deliver and price things in a way that leaves clients feeling like it was a positive experience because Freshfields was by their side?’ she asks.

‘The legal industry was ripe for disruption 10 years ago. AI is going to disrupt all businesses, including the legal industry,’ she says. ‘I don’t see that disruption has to be a negative though – it’s about how we respond. We are continuing to work on the business model; we’ve been moving away from the hourly rate towards more alternative fee arrangements and fixed fees for the last five years. We need to learn new approaches and think differently.’

‘It’s about accelerating the pace of change’

Speaking to Dawson earlier this month, it’s clear she is aware that the firm’s ability not only to think differently about the market and itself but to implement the changes needed to evolve will be critical for its future success.

As such, she has no plans to rest on her laurels, and her focus for the next five years is very much to build on the strategy she set out back in 2020,

‘It’s about accelerating the pace of change. In some areas, it’s about polishing and refining what we’re doing and fine-tuning; in others, learning from the successes and the mistakes of the last five years,’ she says. ‘I’m a competitive person, I have reasonably high standards and we’re not where I want us to be yet, so we’re going to be pushing on.’

‘We need to make sure that the firm is resilient, sustainable and that people see this as the best possible platform for them,’ she concludes.