University: University of Oxford
Degree: Jurisprudence (law)
Position: Partner
Year made partner: 2020
Department: Corporate 
Pronouns: She/her

What’s one lesson from early in your career that still guides you today?

One lesson that I learned early on in my career was how to deal with mistakes. I still think this is one of the most important lessons that’s shaped my career and how I approach teaching junior lawyers. If you make a mistake – or think you did – you need to own it! Put your hand up. Don't think, “oh, it's too late now; the advice has gone to the client”.

Often, when you're dealing with clients, colleagues and anybody in your business or your everyday life, it's not about the mistake but how you handle them that really creates an impression on people. If you say, “actually, I think we made a mistake there, this would be a better path” or “this would be a better option”, people really value that. Situations change, you get more information and sometimes working under high pressure means you’ve got to make decisions quickly.

Once you've had the time to reflect, allow yourself to course-correct, own your mistakes and just be up front with people. Clients really appreciate it and so do colleagues.

What did the path to partner look like for you?

The path to partnership for me involved asking myself, “where do I want to get?”, “what do partners do?” and “how can I do it now?”. What I learnt was that you need to act like the role you want before you're at that role. A lot of senior associates are great technicians, but the big step up to partnership involves client care, being the first port of call when clients come to you for matters outside your area of expertise and the business development elements of your role.

If you can start thinking about that as a senior associate and start practising those principles then it’ll really help you get to partnership a bit quicker. Law is a business and it's not what the firm can do for you and how you get to partnership; it's about what you can do for clients in the firm to get there.

Please can you outline your area of expertise?

My area of expertise is cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A), and what that means in simple English is that I help people to buy and sell companies. I might help clients with joint ventures or a company or business reorganisation, which usually involves a cross-border element. I used to work on emerging markets, a lot of Russian and Commonwealth of Independent States work, as well as Middle Eastern work, which helped me to be creative because a lot of the economies and the rules aren’t as set in stone as they are in Western markets.

In my practice today, I work with a lot of US clients coming out into the world. They might be buying a business, investing in a business or disposing of a business in the UK, the EU or the Middle East.

How is technology changing the way you work?

I think technology is really transforming how M&A lawyers work. For a long time, we thought it’s not going to touch what we do, but we're seeing that every single area of my work has tech potential. For an M&A deal, the lifecycle might involve a client signing a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with someone. That can now be automated. You can give clients access to tech where they can just type a few details and the platform will spit out a great NDA.  

When it comes to negotiations, you can spar with AI. With Legora, for example, you can say, “I think this is where we should be pitching this client argument. What do you think?” and it’ll give you the pros, cons, an aggressive, a compromise and so many different options to ensure that you're not limited by what's in your head. In terms of project management, managing a closing for any trainee or junior lawyer can be a nightmare. That's getting so much better because we can now load documents onto a platform and the tech can take care of it.

One other area where tech is critical to our client pitch is when dealing with hyper-acquirers – that is, clients doing five or more acquisitions a year. Their priority is making M&A as frictionless and fast as possible. These clients tend to be early adopters with a high-risk tolerance, so we can experiment and iterate quickly. Technology helps us to analyse where deals bog down – whether in the letter of intent or due diligence – and refine the process. With frequent feedback loops, it becomes part of the team’s M&A memory muscle for smarter and faster execution.

Overall, I'd like to think that tech is enabling us to do a lot more work, much faster and with greater accuracy. The best thing: it's taking a lot of drudgery out of what we do. So, hopefully, junior lawyers will have a much happier training period as they come through law.

What skills/strengths do you need to be a successful partner?

When I realised that what makes me a successful partner was just being me and leaning into that, that's when I really flourished. I look really fancy on paper – Oxford, Brussels, working at a big US law firm – but I'm very informal. One quality I do have is that I'm very direct and I’ve found that clients like that. They like cutting through a lot of the noise and getting to what's important, and I lean into that.

My other skill is probably strategy, and that comes from the only thing I think it takes to be a good partner: being a lifelong learner. This is becoming increasingly important because we're in an era of rapid change. Remembering that and leaning into what makes you special and unique is the key to thriving in law.

What advice do you have for aspiring partners? What are the things that the business will look for when creating partners?

Show that you can bring value to the business – not just for clients, but for colleagues too. For example, you might notice that a partner has an amazing niche and deep expertise, and then identify ways to highlight that. You could co-author content they don’t have time to write or suggest a business development event that connects their team with yours. As a junior lawyer, your focus may be on gaining this experience and exposure to those clients, but as you get more senior the focus shifts on what you can do for the firm. That inflection point – moving from ‘what helps me’ to ‘what helps others’ – is key to becoming a partner.

Where is your dream holiday destination?

The one place I really want to go is Palau, where there’s a magical lake that’s full of non-stinging jellyfish. I love diving and find it helps me to switch off as a lawyer.