Big plans. Very hush-hush. Which is why Mason forwarded the whole thread<\/a> over the weekend to a distribution list called \u201c$Freshfields All.\u201d<\/p>\n The email was quickly recalled. Not quickly enough, of course \u2014 some recipients had already grabbed screenshots, which is how they ended up with the FT. The recall button, as ever, mostly works on people who weren\u2019t going to read your email anyway.<\/p>\n And the leaked emails came with a bonus. Klingsberg wrote that the firm should pitch \u201csophisticated investors that are respected by the rest of the investor community for their leadership,\u201d which, he added, \u201cprobably\u201d rules out \u201cMiddle Eastern sovereign wealth money.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s\u2026 a choice, for a firm with offices in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain, and a client list that has included the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and the Qatar Investment Authority.<\/p>\n So today<\/a>, Freshfields went into cleanup mode:<\/p>\n \u201cWe apologise unreservedly for a comment made about Middle Eastern sovereign wealth investors . . . the comment does not reflect the position or beliefs of the firm or those participating in that email exchange, and we sincerely regret the offence caused. \u2026 We hold our clients across the Middle East in the highest regard and deeply value the longstanding relationships and trust we have built in the region. We have enormous respect for the discerning leadership and global impact of our clients and remain firmly committed to the region.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n So the comment doesn\u2019t reflect the beliefs of the people who were participating in the exchange, apparently including the guy who wrote it. And notice the firm now says it has \u201cenormous respect\u201d for the \u201cdiscerning leadership\u201d of those same clients, which is the exact quality Klingsberg said they lacked.<\/p>\n Lawyers and email have a long and storied relationship going back decades. The classic of the genre belongs a Skadden summer associate in 2003 meant to tell one friend he was \u201cbusy doing jack shit\u201d<\/a> after a two-hour sushi lunch, and instead sent it to the firm\u2019s entire underwriting group, partners included. (He still got the full-time offer \u2014 the aughts were a helluva time in Biglaw.) In 2012, a Quinn Emanuel partner told the whole New York office that he admired someone\u2019s \u201cgumption, especially when you\u2019re in a tight dress\u201d<\/a>, in reply to a temp secretary\u2019s note offering her help. In 2016, the unofficial listserv for federal law clerks in New York learned exactly how one clerk felt about a colleague<\/a>, thanks to a reply-all. There was the legendary litigatrix who hit \u201creply all\u201d on a distribution list that included reporters<\/a> while thinking she was writing to her co-counsel. There was Abbe Lowell, felled by email auto-fill<\/a> while forwarding a Senate request. There was the opioid special master who accidentally sent the lawyers his private notes to himself<\/a>. Freshfields has now added \u201cglobal managing partner leaks the firm\u2019s IPO dreams and offends key clients in one click\u201d to the canon.<\/p>\n Freshfields Lab may well be better than Harvey and Legora, but turns out the firm\u2019s most disruptive technology is the forward button.<\/p>\n Earlier:<\/strong> Our Favorite Skadden Associate Moves On<\/a> Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The post Freshfields Leader Accidentally Sends Secret AI Spinoff Plan To The Whole Firm, With A Bonus Insult To Some Very Important Clients<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Every so often, the legal profession produces an email screw-up that sends lawyers everywhere back to triple-check the \u201cTo\u201d line. And it stings a little bit extra when the person making the snafu is the guy running the firm.<\/p>\n Last week, the Financial Times reported<\/a> that Freshfields global managing partner Alan Mason had been trading emails with Ethan Klingsberg, co-head of the firm\u2019s U.S. corporate and M&A practice, about spinning Freshfields Lab, the firm\u2019s in-house AI unit, into a separate entity that could bring in outside investors or even IPO. Klingsberg figured a standalone business would be \u201cprobably worth billions,\u201d and, because no Biglaw email chain is complete without a little trash talk, declared, \u201cWe\u2019re better than Harvey and Legora!\u201d<\/p>\n Big plans. Very hush-hush. Which is why Mason forwarded the whole thread<\/a> over the weekend to a distribution list called \u201c$Freshfields All.\u201d<\/p>\n The email was quickly recalled. Not quickly enough, of course \u2014 some recipients had already grabbed screenshots, which is how they ended up with the FT. The recall button, as ever, mostly works on people who weren\u2019t going to read your email anyway.<\/p>\n And the leaked emails came with a bonus. Klingsberg wrote that the firm should pitch \u201csophisticated investors that are respected by the rest of the investor community for their leadership,\u201d which, he added, \u201cprobably\u201d rules out \u201cMiddle Eastern sovereign wealth money.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s\u2026 a choice, for a firm with offices in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain, and a client list that has included the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and the Qatar Investment Authority.<\/p>\n So today<\/a>, Freshfields went into cleanup mode:<\/p>\n \u201cWe apologise unreservedly for a comment made about Middle Eastern sovereign wealth investors . . . the comment does not reflect the position or beliefs of the firm or those participating in that email exchange, and we sincerely regret the offence caused. \u2026 We hold our clients across the Middle East in the highest regard and deeply value the longstanding relationships and trust we have built in the region. We have enormous respect for the discerning leadership and global impact of our clients and remain firmly committed to the region.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n So the comment doesn\u2019t reflect the beliefs of the people who were participating in the exchange, apparently including the guy who wrote it. And notice the firm now says it has \u201cenormous respect\u201d for the \u201cdiscerning leadership\u201d of those same clients, which is the exact quality Klingsberg said they lacked.<\/p>\n Lawyers and email have a long and storied relationship going back decades. The classic of the genre belongs a Skadden summer associate in 2003 meant to tell one friend he was \u201cbusy doing jack shit\u201d<\/a> after a two-hour sushi lunch, and instead sent it to the firm\u2019s entire underwriting group, partners included. (He still got the full-time offer \u2014 the aughts were a helluva time in Biglaw.) In 2012, a Quinn Emanuel partner told the whole New York office that he admired someone\u2019s \u201cgumption, especially when you\u2019re in a tight dress\u201d<\/a>, in reply to a temp secretary\u2019s note offering her help. In 2016, the unofficial listserv for federal law clerks in New York learned exactly how one clerk felt about a colleague<\/a>, thanks to a reply-all. There was the legendary litigatrix who hit \u201creply all\u201d on a distribution list that included reporters<\/a> while thinking she was writing to her co-counsel. There was Abbe Lowell, felled by email auto-fill<\/a> while forwarding a Senate request. There was the opioid special master who accidentally sent the lawyers his private notes to himself<\/a>. Freshfields has now added \u201cglobal managing partner leaks the firm\u2019s IPO dreams and offends key clients in one click\u201d to the canon.<\/p>\n Freshfields Lab may well be better than Harvey and Legora, but turns out the firm\u2019s most disruptive technology is the forward button.<\/p>\n Earlier:<\/strong> Our Favorite Skadden Associate Moves On<\/a> Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The post Freshfields Leader Accidentally Sends Secret AI Spinoff Plan To The Whole Firm, With A Bonus Insult To Some Very Important Clients<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every so often, the legal profession produces an email screw-up that sends lawyers everywhere back to triple-check the \u201cTo\u201d line. And it stings a little bit extra when the person making the snafu is the guy running the firm. Last week, the Financial Times reported that Freshfields global managing partner Alan Mason had been trading […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":165276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
An Email Oopsie, By A Legendary Litigatrix<\/a>
A Quinn Emanuel Partner\u2019s Lecherous \u2018Reply All\u2019<\/a>
Another \u2018Reply All\u2019 Screw-Up: Tell Us How You Really Feel<\/a>
A Brand New Email Screw-Up For Abbe Lowell<\/a>
Special Master Should Have Kept His \u2018Reply All\u2019 In The Drafts<\/a><\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2021\/06\/IMG_5243-1-scaled-e1623338814705-620x568.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n\n
An Email Oopsie, By A Legendary Litigatrix<\/a>
A Quinn Emanuel Partner\u2019s Lecherous \u2018Reply All\u2019<\/a>
Another \u2018Reply All\u2019 Screw-Up: Tell Us How You Really Feel<\/a>
A Brand New Email Screw-Up For Abbe Lowell<\/a>
Special Master Should Have Kept His \u2018Reply All\u2019 In The Drafts<\/a><\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n