Ryan, Hareb and Maya

Two weeks passed quickly, but they taught the three of us more than we expected. We came to Freshfields Dubai curious about what sits behind the reputation, and left with a much clearer picture of it. Split between Dispute Resolution in our first week and the Global M&A and Capital (GMAC) team in our second, we came away understanding not just what the firm does, but the discipline, judgment and generosity that its lawyers bring to doing it.

Our time in Dispute Resolution asked more of us than we anticpated. We were trusted with work of genuine consequence, which gave the experience a real sense of purpose, and that trust sharpened our thinking considerably. We learned to sit with a problem that had no easy answer, to build and defend a considered position under real time pressure. Doing this as a team meant dividing the work sensibly, testing each other's reasoning, and arriving at a piece of work that was stronger for having three perspectives behind it.

The second week, with GMAC, called for a different way of thinking altogether. Where the first week trained us to reason like advocates, the second trained us to think like advisers working within a live commercial world — to ask not only what a document provides for, but why a client would actually want it that way, and what follows from getting that judgment wrong. It was our first real encounter with the vocabulary and logic of dealmaking, and it left us with a much better sense of how legal precision and commercial thinking work together.

What has stayed with us most, though, is neither the substance of the work nor its pace, but how openly we were received. No question felt too small to deserve a proper answer, and no one felt too senior to make time for one. That willingness to be interrupted and questioned by three aspiring solicitors said more about the culture of this perfectly, and it's what let us engage as fully as we did.

We leave Freshfields Dubai with sharper reasoning and writing skills, a genuine feel for commercial judgment alongside legal analysis, and real confidence working under pressure as part of a team. More than that, though, we leave grateful — for the trust placed in us, and for the warmth and patience of everyone who took the time to teach us something along the way.