Profiles

Linklaters associates get innovative

If you’re a senior litigation lawyer in the City, you may have seen a job ad last year for an innovation role at Linklaters. Since 2018, the magic circle firm has embarked on a programme to connect each of its three key divisions – corporate, finance, and litigation, arbitration and investigations – to its innovation […]

Linklaters

Becoming a partner at Linklaters

With revenue of £1.9bn and profit per equity partner sat at £1.8m, it is easy to see why partnership at Linklaters is considered to be a golden ticket. So what is the likelihood of you making partner at Linklaters? On average, it makes 14 partners in the UK each year, with the past two years […]

Associate under the spotlight: Jonathan Griggs

We’ve just launched Partnerless, a new email specifically for associates. Sign up here for weekly career intelligence and market chatter. After years of waiting on the sidelines, this has been Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton’s year to start picking up the pace on lateral growth. At least since 2020, the US firm has largely stayed out of the […]

The Hot 100 career quiz: Kirkland partner Hannah Crawford

Name: Hannah Crawford Organisation: Kirkland & Ellis Role: Partner Location: London Trained at: Sidley Austin Year qualified: 2015 Read her Hot 100 profile What’s your most vivid memory from being a trainee?  The feeling of starting from a position of no knowledge of a topic to working the answers and solutions out through analysis and discussion –  a skill that set […]

The Hot 100 career quiz: Simpson Thacher’s Geoffrey Bailhache

Name: Geoffrey Bailhache Organisation: Simpson Thacher Role: Partner  Location: London Trained at: SJ Berwin Year qualified: 2005 Read his Hot 100 profile What’s your most vivid memory from being a trainee? I remember being a bundle of nerves! Very excited about starting, but with no idea what I was letting myself in for. Thankfully I […]

Kelly Young, Marie Curie

Marie Curie’s GC on strategy, budgets and working with CMS

For Kelly Young, incumbent general counsel and company secretary at Marie Curie, the charity feels more like a corporation than any other entity. Marie Curie is the largest funder of palliative care in the country, and its business lines include 160 shops, 450 doctors, clinical services and licensing intellectual property from garden supplies to stationery. […]

Smiths to Sonnedix: GC Mel Rowlands’ new role in renewables

Longtime in-houser Mel Rowlands had a knock-out year in 2023, making a juxtaposing career change last July. The former group general counsel of Smiths Group, a 170-year-old diversified industrial conglomerate with 20,000 employees, made the move to 15-years young Sonnedix, a renewable energy producer. Rowlands couldn’t have joined the sustainable power sector at a better […]

Lime’s Sarah Binder: “No GC needs the budget they want”

Fighting referendums and interfacing with nearly 300 cities is all in a day’s work for Sarah Binder. Relocating from London to San Francisco, she joined the legal team at micromobility company Lime in May 2021, which now comprises 20 lawyers and eight paralegals. Since then, Binder has celebrated some major wins. She led Lime in […]

Mitsubishi UFJ’s co-GCs chiefs on why two heads are better than one

Since The Lawyer last interviewed Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group’s co-general counsels James Morgan and Prabhat Kumar in 2020, the globe has witnessed enough significant events to last a few decades. Specifically highlighting Covid-19, the Russia/Ukraine conflict, high inflation and the gilt crisis, the pair have focussed on how they adapt their team to cope with […]

Lloyd Thomas, Brighton and Hove

The Seagulls’ GC on the legal challenges of football

In 1997, Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club was one goal away from collapse. Now, 26 years later and the Seagulls are flying high in the Premier League and have negotiated the group stage of this season’s Europa League, in the first year they’ve ever played European football. Lloyd Thomas joined the club two years […]

BSH’s legal chief on dismantling stigma around Aspergers

Kevin Athow’s first job was making snooker tables in a factory in Lincolnshire. He later worked as a roadie, touring with bands for seven years. His first foray into law was during jury service, which inspired him to qualify as a barrister at 32. As routes in-house go, his is up there with the unconventional. […]

My career story

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My career story: “I left law to become a poet”

Mona Arshi is a prize-winning poet and former human rights lawyer. She recently won the Forward prize for best first collection.  You began your training contract at JR Jones in the same week that Doreen and Neville Lawrence instructed the firm on the murder of their son Stephen. How did that time influence the rest […]

Deborah Grimason

My career story: Travis Perkins general counsel Deborah Grimason

Travis Perkins general counsel Deborah Grimason grew up around business – though she’d be the first to admit that her father’s bakery delivery business in rural Northern Ireland was a far cry from the FTSE 100 company she now guides through legal minefields. Grimason knew two things growing up: that she wanted to enter a profession […]

David Patient

My career story: “I moved into management”

Travers Smith’s David Patient gives his advice for those moving into a management role. Was moving into a management position always a career objective for you? It has certainly not always been a career objective for me, but something that evolved over time. I had the good fortune to have the opportunity to open our […]