The slightly grudging acceptance of Legal Week‘s primary adviser league table results suggest a couple of conclusions. Either everyone secretly knew Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer should be at the top of the traditional rankings, or everyone knew that Clifford Chance (CC) shouldn’t.

Certainly, most accept that Freshfields has had a particularly strong 2005, in which it took lead corporate roles on almost one in four of the 200 biggest deals in Europe.