René Peres, Frankfurt Associate

I joined the US team in Frankfurt in the summer of 2006. Before joining Freshfields, I worked in New York City and Rio de Janeiro and soon, I will be moving from Frankfurt to join the rest of the US team in London.

The US Corporate team at Freshfields’ Frankfurt office is small and perfectly formed: we are one partner and three associates. There’s little if any sense of hierarchy and as a result you learn very quickly from very good lawyers.

The deals we work on tend to have a very high profile: for example, I’ve just been involved in the privatisation of the Hamburg seaport which is one of the largest and busiest container ports in Europe. Even more than working on important transactions, I love the opportunity to help clients, solve knotty problems for them and make their lives a little easier. Freshfields’ “client-first” approach to the legal practise gives me plenty of chances to do exactly that. I also get the support of an international network; one that’s full of people who are good at finding sensible, practical solutions and will think harder and go further to find them.