Re-joining a firm after several years can be a strange experience for any legal professional. But for Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer partner Andrew Murphy, his return to the firm was significant in another, more personal, way — when he’d initially left five years earlier, no one had known that he was gay.

Employment and pensions partner Andrew says that when he was deciding to leave the firm in 2007, it “was at a time when it was not very easy to be out, and it certainly wasn’t something that was encouraged”.