We’ve been preparing for the Games since 2003, building the legal foundations for the bid. When we committed to the project, most outsiders saw the whole thing as a crazy pipe dream.
The work we did in 2003 was vital to the successful bid and I’m thrilled we made the decision to get involved back then. Our employees have been able to become intimately involved in this once in a lifetime opportunity. It’s also enabled the firm to demonstrate its close working relationship with clients and breadth of our legal knowledge.
‘We love a challenge. And they don't come much bigger than staging the Olympic and Paralympic Games. So when we were asked, back in 2003, to help with the bid to host the Games in London, we couldn't resist.’
Freshfields Partner Tim Jones
In addition, we are proud to have played a part in producing a legacy for future generations by helping to regenerate a very deprived part of the country.
Legal work
The challenge was to successfully develop an event of this size, duration and complexity in a city that hadn’t previously hosted such a huge event. Even by comparison with the London 1948 Olympic Games, London 2012 is of a different dimension. It will bring together 9 million spectators and 16,500 athletes from 205 nations.
Our first job was one of co-ordination. We took the mass of legal rights and entities needed to stage the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and turned them into a simple, two-body structure.
One body is public, the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) – responsible for developing and building the new venues and infrastructure for the Games and their use after 2012. The other is private, the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) – responsible for actually staging the Games.
Once these were in established decisions could be made more easily.
Official legal services provider
The hard yards started in earnest in 2009, when we were appointed the official legal services provider.
Since then, more than 300 of our employees have been involved from every area of our business. This includes over 30 lawyers on secondment to LOCOG, in Canary Wharf.
So what have we done?
Innovation and collaboration have been the cornerstone of our work. Every day has tested our ingenuity and ability to come up with original solutions to business problems.
We’ve been involved in so many exciting projects across a variety of areas (and dealt with some strange law):
For example, we have run Britain’s first competitive dialogue tender to appoint a consortium as delivery partner. We have drawn on our banking expertise to create a pioneering pricing model for the ‘green’ energy that will supply the low-carbon energy plants on site. And we have come up with streamlined online contracts for 8,000 Torchbearers for the Olympic Torch Relay.
That’s taken outstanding teamwork, and it’s been incredibly rewarding to see how people at every level – partner to trainee – have supported the goal of delivery. We know we’ve got one shot, one chance, to make this event one London will be proud of.
This focus on successful delivery has also helped us develop close working relationships with the other sponsors, who also have teams within LOCOG.
London legacy
London 2012 is about more than staging iconic, 17-day Olympic and 15-day Paralympic, sporting events. It’s about fostering community spirit, inspiring young people and leaving a legacy that will benefit Londoners of future generations.
Our contribution goes way beyond legal work:
- We’re supporting three talented athletes in their quests for gold.
- Hundreds of our staff volunteered to improve local London neighbourhoods in the boroughs hosting London 2012. For example, we completely refurbished the Charlie Chaplin playground in Lambeth.
- We’ve become a Friend of the Cultural Olympiad, and we’ve contributed to Get Set, the education programme that encourages the Olympic values of friendship, excellence and respect in schools and colleges.
- We’ve even brought the Games to schools (Redlands Primary and Haggerston) that we’ve supported for years. To help foster the Olympic values we arranged visits from mascots, athletes and donated a place on the Torch Relay to one lucky pupil.
Our people
This is one of the longest, most complex and fascinating projects we’ve ever worked on. And hands down it’s been the most fun.
Take a look at what we’ve done for London 2012.
