Thomas Eggar revamps management as first female head takes the helm
Thomas Eggar partners have elected litigation head Victoria Brackett as the firm’s first-ever female managing partner while also revamping its overall management function.
Vicky Brackett
Brackett, who will take over on 1 May, succeeds Tony Edwards, who has been managing partner for eight years and who will remain at the firm in a senior capacity.
Brackett said: “We want to be recognised within our chosen sectors as one of the leading firms.”
Brackett, a fluent German speaker, trained at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and joined Thomas Eggar as an associate in August 2004, making partner in May 2005. She was voted onto the partnership council in 2007 and became head of commercial dispute resolution in May 2010.
Thomas Eggar currently has a management structure that separates out the practice heads, the operations group and the partner council, which sets strategy.
Under the new structure, the firm will have an executive that will combine the practice heads and operations team. Every quarter, two elected partners will join the executive’s meetings, which will focus exclusively on setting and reviewing strategy.
Tony Edwards
A strategic priority for the firm is to secure a London merger, something that Edwards first mooted two years ago (29 March 2010).
Brackett said: “A London merger is still very much on my radar. We need a bigger critical mass in London and we could try to do that organically, which we may do because culture is very important, or it could be an acquisition.”
She added: “There’s a danger that we overprice commodity work and underprice our quality work. My challenge to the business is to have confidence in pricing at the high end and let’s get the structuring and distribution of commodity work so that we can be competitive.”
She will be replaced as litigation head by partner Robert Kenyon.
