In-house option sees associates spend 12 months working with global outfit’s top advocates
Junior lawyers at Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) will now have an opportunity to hone their advocacy skills thanks to a new in-house secondment.
Legal Cheek can reveal the global outfit has launched a secondment programme, which will see two junior associates each year join the firm’s in-house Advocacy Group. Launched in 2004, the unit is made up of around 160 lawyers across the globe, including a number of top QCs, and forms an integral part of its litigation and arbitration practice.
HSF confirmed it’s starting to take applications from existing associates who have at least two years’ post-qualification experience (PQE), with the first secondee due to take up their spot within the team this September. Secondees will spend one year with the unit before returning to their original team.
“I am proud of what we have achieved with our Global Advocacy Initiative and am excited about the further plans we have for the offering,” Damien Byrne Hill, head of disputes in HSF’s London office, said. “We believe that advocacy is a skill which lies at the heart of everything we do as disputes lawyers. Our ambition is to develop advocacy skills and court craft throughout our disputes division and the underlying raison d’être our Advocacy Group is to help us achieve that.”
Meanwhile, HSF confirmed commercial disputes partner Gary Milner-Moore has moved across to the Advocacy Group. The solicitor advocate qualified at HSF in 1997 and has been a partner since 2004. Milner-Moore will join existing partners Adam Johnson QC, who was appointed as a deputy High Court judge last year, and Tom Leech QC, to lead the firm’s Global Advocacy Group.
