Freshfields offers legal tech masters for future trainees plus £20k grant

Freshfields has become the first UK law firm to offer future trainees the chance to complete a dedicated master of laws (LLM) in law and technology, as the global giant doubles down on legal tech.

Details

The partnership with King’s College London will see incoming trainees receive fully funded places on the programme as well as a £20,000 maintenance grant to support them during their studies.

Participants will begin their training contracts after completing their masters, effectively delaying their start dates by a year.

The course is run by King’s Dickson Poon School of Law, one of the UK’s top law schools, and will be open to future trainees from September 2025. It covers a broad range of modules including AI, crypto and blockchain, big data and legal tech innovation - all through a legal lens.

The Lawyer reports that Freshfields hasn’t given an exact number of places available, but is expecting up to half of the 2026 cohort to take up the opportunity.

Tech and AI focus

The new programme comes as Freshfields ramps up its tech ambitions. In April, it joined a growing number of firms accelerating their AI strategies, announcing a collaboration with Google to deploy the tech giant's Gemini chatbot across the business and develop custom agentic tools via Google's Vertex AI platform.

Freshfields has also been a launchpad for legal tech entrepreneurs. Former associates Nnamdi Emelifeonwu and Feargus MacDaeid co-founded Definely, the fast-growing contract drafting and review startup that recently secured a $30 million Series B, while ex-M&A lawyer Richard Mabey is behind Juro, the contract automation platform.

What they said

London managing partner Mark Samson said: "As technology and innovation continues to shape the legal industry, our firm is meeting that opportunity head on by investing in the upskilling of trainees at the very start of their careers. This opportunity allows them to develop valuable skills, turbocharge their professional and personal growth, and align with our strategic direction as a global firm."

Freshfields' training principal, Craig Montgomery, said: "The best-in-class lawyers we are hiring today will be leading our firm through the 2030s and beyond. So this is about super-charging their skills to really understand the technology that is and will be available to us and the opportunities and legal challenges it will present for our clients."