As Barclays sifts through the wreckage of King & Wood Mallesons’ European practice and claims of fresh departures swirl around Ashurst, you have to say that the marriage of Herbert Smith and Australian leader Freehills could have gone worse. A lot worse.
Having hooked up in 2012 when Herbert Smith had just opened a Pandora’s Box of strategic issues that had been contained for the preceding 15 years, it was a difficult start. Plenty of City partners, many in the firm’s high-billing City disputes practice, looked on aghast as the storied institution tied its fortunes to the heavily-serviced Australian legal market, even with a suitor as potent as Freehills.
