As news broke late on Friday (19 September) that Fried Frank senior partner Valerie Ford Jacob, was heading to Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer's New York office, any remaining doubts about the magic circle firm's determination to build a meaningful transactions practice in the US should have been erased.

Arguably the star turn in Freshfields' recent US campaign, Jacob's recruitment – as part of a three partner capital markets team from Fried Frank – follows hot on the heels of three other major hires. Two weeks ago, the firm signed Mitchell Presser (ex-Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz) and James Douglas (ex-Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom) to fill the newly created management positions of US M&A head and leveraged finance head respectively. Just one week later former Shearman & Sterling partner Peter Lyons arrived to serve as co-head of the firm's global public M&A group.

All of which looks like a firm on a definite mission to crack the corporate transactional space which has so far remained largely out of reach for UK firms in the US. But attempting to build a team to challenge the Wall Street behemoths and actually pulling it off are two very different things. So how does Freshfields expect to succeed where others have failed?

New York firms enjoy a huge advantage when it comes to remuneration. The top of the equity at Freshfields last financial year was £1.63m ($2.66m), a world away from packages on offer at the likes of Skadden (around $6m (£3.68m)) and Simpson Thacher (around $5m (£3.06m)).

This pay gap suggests Freshfields may have had to break with its pure lockstep model in order to push ahead with its US hiring drive – though admittedly average partner pay at both Shearman and Fried Frank is not so far removed from the UK firm's.

It's a move with a certain amount of history for the firm. In 2012, partners decided to break lockstep in Asia in response to a number of high profile departures to US firms. A partner vote allowed more flexible remuneration packages, faster promotion and the ability to bring associates into the firm above the bottom rung of the firm's equity ladder. It is also understood to have been willing to do the same in the US once before when it talked with a high profile team departing then crumbling Dewey & LeBoeuf in the West Coast.

It is thought that a separate vote would have been required by Freshfields partners in order to break lockstep in the US.

But while pay packets above the firm's standard 17.5-50 point lockstep may help with the hiring strategy, some argue they could be a drawback.

According to one former Freshfields partner, breaking lockstep "puts an enormous burden of expectation on the people you have hired. It's another thing if you were doing it in an inherently profitable area, but I'd be very surprised if Freshfields New York could deliver a level of profitability that equals [the white shoes]."

A London-based partner at a leading New York firm agrees: "I think they should be very reluctant to [break from lockstep]. It's an article of faith. It starts causing trouble in other areas of the practices, with people saying "well if they're getting more money why aren't we?"

Freshfields' main battle lies far away from remuneration though, with the firm having to prove that the hires it is making can grow a solid practice which stands up to those of established New York players with inevitably far larger local practices.

"I am quite surprised they managed to hire some good people, but they do seem quite old," says one ex-Freshfields partner. "I'm sure they're talented, but they're not people who want to be at the top of the market anymore, otherwise they wouldn't have joined an English firm in New York."

Even if the quality is there – and the pedigree of its new hires cannot be doubted – the breadth of the practice is equally important. Speaking to Legal Week, senior partner Will Lawes acknowledged that a New York M&A practice would need extensive support from tax, finance, capital markets and antitrust partners.

"It's extremely difficult for a firm like Freshfields to break into the New York market, but clearly they will pick up some work as a result of this," says the white shoe partner. "But they need to not just have M&A, but financing capacity as well. It's not credible just to say you have some M&A lawyers if you don't have the capability to do all the work that goes along with it."

Freshfields' challenge now is ensuring it follows through on what looks like a promisingly bold attack play.