Freshfields US Partner Pay Cracks $17 Million After Reset

Freshfields’ highest-paid US partners are set to make $17 million or more apiece this year, thanks to changes in the firm’s compensation system.

The transatlantic firm announced new equity points for some of the leading US earners earlier in its fiscal year, according to two people briefed on the changes. The move is designed to retain top talent in New York and other markets where the price tag for some rainmakers has tipped over the $20 million mark.

The recalibrated point system highlights the challenges for elite UK firms as they aggressively look to expand in the US. The changes land after Freshfields revised its UK-US currency exchange rate in a way that would effectively cut pay for partners stateside. A handful of US partners will see their pay increase as a result of the combined moves, which give leaders greater flexibility to move partners up and down the pay scale.

“The issue Freshfields faces specifically, and more transatlantic firms face, is the cultural difference between the London and New York market and selling how the New York market works to the London people,” said Stephanie Ruiter, a Manhattan-based legal recruiter. “They’re not the only firm having to figure out how to stay competitive in the comp game while making sure their homegrowns are happy and taken care of.”

Alan Mason, the firm’s global managing partner, in an interview acknowledged that Freshfields updated its partner pay system for the first time since 2017 but declined to discuss the equity points and currency conversions. Mason confirmed that Freshfields is adopting another popular growth tool among US firms, adding a tier of non-equity partners who will be paid largely by salaries rather than profit shares.

“We looked at what was working with our system and where we needed more flexibility compared to market changes,” Mason said. “We had a conversation about this across the firm, and we decided to do a few things, including introduce non-equity partners and introduce more flexibility in partner compensation.”

US-Style Pay

The changes move farther from the modified lockstep model on which the 280-year-old, London-founded firm long operated. The 40-point system largely rewarded partners based on seniority, with later updates allowing certain high-performers to jump the line. The firm’s highest-paid partners are now allotted 100 points or more, according to two of the people familiar with the situation.

Mason, a London-trained lawyer who moved to the US and passed the California bar exam, was tapped to lead the firm’s expansion efforts. He said Freshfields’ leaders began formulating the plan in the early 2020s, after identifying the world’s biggest legal market as one of the “gaps” in its services platform compared to its “leading positions” in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

The firm’s 2019 hire of Ethan Klingsberg, a prominent Cleary Gottlieb M&A dealmaker who brought Google and other clients with him, was a turning point. Freshfields again made waves by poaching a pair of partners from Wall Street’s Cravath Swaine & Moore—Damien Zoubek and Jenny Hochenberg—who have advised pharma giants Johnson & Johnson and Merck & Co.

Freshfields partner Ethan Klingsberg speaks during the Bloomberg Invest event in New York on June 7, 2023.

Photographer: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg

The firm’s expensive bets in US lateral hiring have also targeted private equity, a lucrative but difficult market to crack. Freshfields in 2024 hired a pair of private equity partners from Latham & Watkins, a dominant force in the space, and last year added another to open a Boston office.

“Compensation is one of a very, very a large number of things that we’re doing to take this firm on a pretty amazing journey,” Mason said. “To turn what we believe is the best law firm in Europe into one of the best law firms in the world, you have to do all of this together.”

Freshfields raked in £2.25 billion ($3 billion) in revenue in its last financial year, which ended in April 2025. The 6% year-over-year increase came as US revenue continued to spike, accounting for about one-fifth of the total, according to UK public filings.

The global legal operation has also climbed the ranks of Big Law’s top M&A dealmakers since embarking on its stateside excursion. Freshfields lawyers steered more than $310 billion in transactions last year, including for Merck, Google owner Alphabet Inc., and British energy behemoth BP.

Currency Change

Freshfields’ point reset followed shortly after its leaders decided to walk back a US-friendly currency exchange rate, which initially was meant to protect partner equity value from volatility in the aftermath of Brexit. The firm moved from $1.60 per British Pound Sterling to the prevailing market rate of approximately $1.30 this year, the people said.

That previous arrangement was intended to be temporary, but became a feature to retain and recruit partners in the states, the people said. Freshfields reallocated a higher number of points for highly-paid US partners so their take-home pay wouldn’t be diminished as a result of the lower trading multiple.

Mason said the firm’s currency exchange rate is “a very narrow aspect of a very broad” strategy to “futureproof” the firm. That includes more flexibility in compensating partners, he said, but it doesn’t mean drastic pay swings year to year.

The firm will continue to pay partners from a global profit pool and take a “long-term approach” that encourages partners focus on what’s best for clients rather than their own pay, according to Mason.

“Compensation systems don’t drive strategy; clients do,” he said.