Credit: Flickr/Tecmark LtdBright Colours, Tech and Ping Pong: A Day at Freshfields' Legal Services Hub in Manchester
Legal Week (and a dedicated photographer) took a tour of the Magic Circle firm's Manchester office to see how it compares with the London HQ.
July 18, 2019 at 04:50 AM
7 minute read
Legal services hubs are all the rage at the moment. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has one in Manchester, Clifford Chance has one in Newcastle, and even Reed Smith has one in Leeds.
But what are they actually like? Legal Week took a trip to Freshfields' global centre at One New Bailey in Manchester to find out.
One New Bailey, Salford
Straddling the border between Salford's new business district and Manchester's bustling Spinningfields development, the centre – a glimmering cube of glass and plastic – looks every bit as functional as the services it houses.
And it tallies with the image the firm is at pains to present – an office that is not some remote money-saving outpost in the sticks, but rather a simple extension of the Fleet Street HQ – albeit some 200 miles away. So keen is the firm to paint a glowing picture of the operation that a dedicated photographer is hired to accompany the Legal Week tour.
The foyer at One New Bailey
Since opening in 2015, the 750-strong operation has helped usher in a new era of north-shoring among law firms, forming a blueprint for similar moves by rivals. It hosts a number of the Magic Circle firm's support teams across accounting, HR and finance. But its big selling point is 'the Hub' – the first of six hub offices, which together employ 150 staff across locations in Frankfurt, Berlin, Hamburg, Duesseldorf and Hong Kong, besides Manchester.
Designed to provide legal support services to the firm's burgeoning global network, the Hub has for the last few years helped the firm's ability to deliver due diligence, document automation and AI-backed services to the firm's globally mobile lawyers.
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