Every so often, the legal profession produces an email screw-up that sends lawyers everywhere back to triple-check the “To” 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 emails with Ethan Klingsberg, co-head of the firm’s U.S. corporate and M&A practice, about spinning Freshfields Lab, the firm’s in-house AI unit, into a separate entity that could bring in outside investors or even IPO. Klingsberg figured a standalone business would be “probably worth billions,” and, because no Biglaw email chain is complete without a little trash talk, declared, “We’re better than Harvey and Legora!”
Big plans. Very hush-hush. Which is why Mason forwarded the whole thread over the weekend to a distribution list called “$Freshfields All.”
The email was quickly recalled. Not quickly enough, of course — 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’t going to read your email anyway.
And the leaked emails came with a bonus. Klingsberg wrote that the firm should pitch “sophisticated investors that are respected by the rest of the investor community for their leadership,” which, he added, “probably” rules out “Middle Eastern sovereign wealth money.”
That’s… 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.
So today, Freshfields went into cleanup mode:
“We 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. … 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.”
So the comment doesn’t 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 “enormous respect” for the “discerning leadership” of those same clients, which is the exact quality Klingsberg said they lacked.
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 “busy doing jack shit” after a two-hour sushi lunch, and instead sent it to the firm’s entire underwriting group, partners included. (He still got the full-time offer — the aughts were a helluva time in Biglaw.) In 2012, a Quinn Emanuel partner told the whole New York office that he admired someone’s “gumption, especially when you’re in a tight dress”, in reply to a temp secretary’s 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, thanks to a reply-all. There was the legendary litigatrix who hit “reply all” on a distribution list that included reporters while thinking she was writing to her co-counsel. There was Abbe Lowell, felled by email auto-fill while forwarding a Senate request. There was the opioid special master who accidentally sent the lawyers his private notes to himself. Freshfields has now added “global managing partner leaks the firm’s IPO dreams and offends key clients in one click” to the canon.
Freshfields Lab may well be better than Harvey and Legora, but turns out the firm’s most disruptive technology is the forward button.
Earlier: Our Favorite Skadden Associate Moves On
An Email Oopsie, By A Legendary Litigatrix
A Quinn Emanuel Partner’s Lecherous ‘Reply All’
Another ‘Reply All’ Screw-Up: Tell Us How You Really Feel
A Brand New Email Screw-Up For Abbe Lowell
Special Master Should Have Kept His ‘Reply All’ In The Drafts
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1