It's been a tough year for Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. In August, Barry O'Brien, the firm’s head of corporate finance, was fined £9,000 plus £50,000 in costs over a conflict of interest arising from Sir Philip Green's attempted takeover of Marks & Spencer in 2004.

Then there was the ugly spectacle of former restructuring head Peter Bloxham's £4.5 million age discrimination claim. An employment tribunal last month found that the firm had acted proportionately in overhauling its pension scheme and threw out Bloxham's case, but not before their name had once again been dragged through the press.

Lawyers fear nothing more than bad publicity, but morale has not suffered, according to Mark Rawlinson, one of the firm's most senior corporate partners. "If the firm wasn't doing well, I think those things could've had quite a destabilising effect," he says. "But the bottom line is the firm is doing well and is in bloody good shape. A lot of firms would like to be where we are."

Rawlinson is as qualified as any to fly the Freshfields flag. He is one of a quartet of mergers and acquisitions partners, along with Ed Braham, Tim Jones and Will Lawes, who came up through the ranks together and are now regarded as among the best in the business. This year, Rawlinson advised on two of the City’s most widely publicised deals, acting for chemical giant ICI in its £8 billion takeover by Azko Nobel and music company EMI in its £3.2 billion buy-out by Terra Firma. (In the process, he lost two of his oldest clients. Other major clients include Wolseley and 3M.)

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Rawlinson is proudly loyal to the firm to which he has belonged, as he puts it, "man and boy". Anthony Salz, a former senior partner, is godfather to his eldest son; O'Brien is godfather to his second (he has three boys). Rawlinson was one of several partners present in a conspicuous show of support for O'Brien at the Marks & Spencer disciplinary hearing. "I'm glad for Barry that it's over," he says. "It was a distraction from what we're trying to do. It happened three years ago."

The Bloxham affair still rankles, however. Rawlinson, 50, was one of the "grey panthers", a group of veteran partners who met to discuss alternatives to the proposed pension reforms, but he says he eventually accepted that management's plan was in the best interests of the firm.

"Would I prefer if the Bloxham case hadn't been litigated?" he asks. "Yeah, for sure. I'm really disappointed that he chose to bring it. He did hugely well as a partner here and he had the benefit of transitional arrangements that a lot of us didn't.

"I was always taught, in a slightly old-fashioned way, that as a partner you take the firm on trust for future generations of partners. You have a duty to deliver it in a better shape than you've found it. I actually believe in that."

Rawlinson slumps in his chair as he talks, his long, slender frame stretched out almost parallel with the floor. He may describe himself as a "grey panther", but he seems young for 50, not least because of his distinctive, somewhat unlawyerly spiky hair. On the meeting table next to his desk is a hardback copy of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. His office is decorated with sporting memorabilia, pictures of his family, laminated newspaper clippings celebrating his most famous deals.

"The firm has always looked after me really well," he continues. "I've always enjoyed being here. I never joined it to make money. I've got mates, lots of mates here. Anthony was godfather to my eldest son. I could never have walked into his office when he was senior partner and said I'm going to make more money at a US firm.

“I could not move to Linklaters, for example. There have been partners who have done that. But you can't move from Manchester United to Chelsea. That's just how I am. I feel very loyal to the firm."

Rawlinson joined Freshfields in 1982 and qualified as a solicitor two years later. Born in Manchester, he was schooled at Manchester Grammar and then Haberdashers in north London after his parents moved there when he was 11. He read history for two years at Cambridge before changing to law, and then, with little idea what to do next, applied to a handful of City law firms on the advice of a guidance counsellor.

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