The biggest challenge facing Braham and co will be keeping complacency at bay

Good bench, strength in depth, sensible management and flair – you would be forgiven for thinking Deal Week has lapsed into football punditry. But even if it can't match the glamour of the Premier League there's one team that currently gets City lawyers reaching for the sporting superlatives: Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer's on-form corporate practice.

Perhaps the biggest sign of success for a practice that has re-invented itself twice in the past decade – the Bruckhaus merger and a restructuring in 2005 – is that the plaudits come not from the firm's PR machine, but the mouths of its closest rivals.