Alumni Network - Issue 5

The Charity Challenge This year’s Charity Challenge goes virtual.

12

Alumni Network 6 Where are they now?

We catch up with past members of staff who have moved on to pastures new.

16 Firm fundraising Fundraising activities of the past year.

Issue 5 2020

22 Looking to 2025 Our new strategy puts clients firmly at the centre.

Inside this issue 20

6

12

16

6 Where are they now?

Life after Mills & Reeve.

We catch up with three alumni members to find out more.

18 The numbers Numbers over the last 12 months.

12 The Charity Challenge This year’s Charity Challenge goes virtual.

20 Stephanie Caird interview You can take the girl out of Mills & Reeve, but you can’t take Mills & Reeve out of the girl.

16 Firm fundraising Fundraising activities this year.

24 Building resilience Launching our new thought leadership campaign.

The Alumni Network

2

24

10 33

26

26 CFO appointed An introduction to our new Chief Financial Officer Jennifer Parton.

32 Hatches & matches Hatches and matches since our last issue.

28 News round up All the latest from around the firm.

33 Mills & Reeve lockdown How Mills & Reeve adjusted to lockdown.

30 Promotions

36 Life in retirement Catching up with Bridget Archibald.

28

36 30

The Alumni Network

3

Brian Marshall Head of Alumni Network brian.marshall@mills-reeve.com

Welcome to the fifth issue of our Alumni newsletter We start this issue by reflecting on the huge impact that the coronavirus pandemic has had on 2020 so far.

Our Mills & Reeve culture was really tested and proved just how strong it is – we found new ways to connect on zoom through firm quizzes and zoom-a-ccinos, we put each other’s wellbeing at the heart of our planning and decision making and rearranged our working set ups overnight to accommodate the sudden change.

Alongside this, pre-lockdown 2020 saw another year of fantastic achievements including being crowned RollonFriday firm of the year for the third year in a row, a record-breaking achievement of being named in The Sunday Times’ Best 100 Companies to Work For list for 17th year in a row and being recognised as one of the top 50 most innovative law firms in Europe by the Financial Times.

This is on top of posting a record turnover of £114.1 million – more on that on page 18!

The Alumni Network

4

A lot has changed for us at Mills & Reeve this year but one that was not unexpected is the Manchester office move! Although the plan was to move in September this year, the coronavirus pandemic has delayed this slightly and we are now looking at moving to Circle Square in February 2021.

We love hearing from our alumni and keeping up to date with your news – if you want to get in touch to let us know how you’re doing, or you want to appear in our “where are they now” feature please let us know! Email us at alumni@mills-reeve.com, join our LinkedIn group or follow us on Twitter @Alumni_MR. We’d love to hear from you! And if you know of any other previous Mills & Reeve people who might like to join the network please do point them in our direction!

Mills & Reeve in memory of...

Stuart Knowles

Julie Fry

Stephen Masterson

It is with great sadness that we have to share the news that Stuart Knowles passed away recently. Stuart was a highly regarded health and care lawyer with a particular specialism in inquests who joined us as a partner when we acquired the Lewington Partnership and established our Birmingham office in 1998. He retired as a partner and left the firm in 2004 to train as a BBC journalist.

He then went back as an in house lawyer with the NHS before re-joining us as a consultant in 2008.

We are very sorry to report that Julie Fry an EA in the Employment, Pensions and Immigration NSL in Norwich passed away recently. Our thoughts are with her husband, Barry, at this terrible time.

Stephen Masterson, a senior reprographics officer in the Norwich office, sadly passed away recently and our thoughts are with his partner, Gaelene, at this desperately sad time and also with his close colleagues in the reprographics and wider facilities team in Norwich.

Everyone who met Stuart will have immediately been struck by a larger than life character with boundless energy and enthusiasm. He was also a great radio enthusiast and ran the hospital radio at the Dudley Road Hospital for some time as well as a radio station at the big national NHS Confederation Conference each year.

Julie joined the firm in 1999 and has worked throughout in the Employment team where she was much loved and respected as an ever friendly and helpful colleague.

She was a very hard working, loyal and dedicated team member who always had a smile and for whom nothing was too much trouble.

We shall all miss her but the loss will be particularly strongly felt by her team in Norwich.

Stephen was certainly a larger than life character! He joined us in 2013 and recently, along with others, had been a core part of the team who have been in the office throughout the pandemic and who have been so crucial in keeping the office running and ensuring that important reprographics jobs across the firm could still be done. We shall certainly miss him.

He will be an enormous loss to Mills & Reeve, the Birmingham office and to his colleagues in the Health & Care Sector.

The Alumni Network

5

Where are they now?

Alumni from Mills & Reeve pop up in some of the most unexpected places. This issue we catch up with three past colleagues whose journeys have taken them far and wide...

6

The Alumni Network

Penny Hubbard Position Executive Business Coach, Penny Hubbard Coaching Position while at Mills & Reeve Associate Partner Dates employed by Mills & Reeve 1995 to 2001

Making a mark I am enjoying what others refer to as their ‘Third Act’ by bringing 30 years experience of working in law and business to my Executive Coaching Practice to help women make their mark.

I was a Manchester girl whose parents had left school aged 16 and coming to Cambridge (Newnham College) changed my life. I qualified with City firm Macfarlanes (where, in 1994, I was appointed their first female partner with children – a lonely place to be in those days).

In 1995 I was recruited by Duncan Ogilvy to work flexitime for Mills & Reeve having realised that becoming a partner in a City firm with 3 and 5-year-old daughters was not going to work. Mills & Reeve were ahead of their time in offering flexibility to working mothers and I have never regretted coming back to Cambridge.

Duncan told me that he ‘didn’t want me anywhere near Mills & Reeve’s existing clients’ but wanted me to develop new business. My husband was a property developer and we had introduced various clients to Macfarlanes. A deal was reached whereby those clients followed me to Mills & Reeve. I worked my London networks and we had a lot of fun

doing a wide range of work – from developing a fat refinery site with new offices in Bradford to property insolvency and receivership. I seem to recall that Mills & Reeve had never done a speculative fee till I arrived!

It was exciting to extend Mills & Reeve’s existing expertise (headed by Tony Cowper) and to be responsible for building an area of practice – Laura Holdaway joined and we really enjoyed expanding the property lending and insolvency practice.

Leading my team at Mills & Reeve gave me skills to manage my team at Newnham and taught me how to partner with other experts I also created the ‘Hot Property’ newsletter and ran marketing conferences in London and Cambridge for the firm.

In 2001 I left to do a masters and then returned to Newnham as Development Director.

As a property development lawyer I was often the only woman around the table. It was fascinating to move from a predominantly male working environment into an institution run by women for women. I had 11 happy years at Newnham, raised £32 million and was profiled in the book: The Meaning of Success: Insights from Women in Cambridge.

Leading my team at Mills & Reeve gave me skills to manage my team at Newnham and taught me how to partner with other experts (such as the tax and corporate lawyers). My commitment to collaboration and to ensuring all team members have a voice was sparked from the working environment at Mills & Reeve.

I have many lovely memories but a strong one is going with Stephen Christie to advise the Bursar of St John’s College. We sat in his stunning office in College with the curtains billowing out of the open windows discussing matters as varied as whether the widow of a former porter should be supported through her rent difficulties to a knotty VAT problem on a development site in Yorkshire. I did not dream at that point that one day I would be lucky enough to have a similar office as a fellow in my own Cambridge College.

The Alumni Network

7

Salim Somjee Position Partner at Cripps Pemberton Greenish Position while at Mills & Reeve Trainee solicitor Dates employed by Mills & Reeve From September 1999 to August 2001

Trainee foundations Mills & Reeve is where it all began, as a fresh faced trainee solicitor in the old Norwich office on Redwell Street.

I look back on my time as a trainee fondly; the social life was fantastic and the beauty of being a trainee was that you moved around the firm and got to know most people.

I remember volunteering on many an afternoon in reprographics to help them out when they had tight deadlines and they saved my bacon on more than one occasion. I lived in a flat on Princes Street, just off Tombland, so life was fun and the training I was getting shaped me in to the lawyer I am today.

to him for that. Even though I am half Spanish and prone to the odd “latin” moment, his calmness and commerciality are traits that I have tried to use in my career.

I was very fortunate with the seats and supervisors I had; commercial litigation (Debbie Girling), property litigation (James Falkner), employment (Gillie Scoular), corporate (James Hunter) and commercial property (Robert Hutton). I have a memory of walking down the office corridor and hearing Stephen Christie bellow out “What’s this I hear you don’t want to do a commercial property seat?” I remember stopping, closing my eyes and hoping that wasn’t directed at me and, when I realised it was, I wanted the floor to swallow me up.

Anyway, I enjoyed my seat! James Hunter was the person that inspired me to be a corporate lawyer and I will always (I think) be grateful

I have been very fortunate in my career since training at Mills & Reeve; I started as a NQ at Clarkson Wright & Jakes in Kent (where I am from) which had a small but well regarded corporate team. The work highlight at CWJ was running an IPO at 6 years PQE and partnership followed. I then left CWJ in 2010 (which was slightly punchy during the credit crunch!) to join a niche corporate/M&A firm called Vertex Law and remember that the first M&A deal I completed there had Mills & Reeve on the other side!

Vertex merged with Cripps Harries Hall in 2013 and we became Cripps, though following our merger with Pemberton Greenish in 2018, we are now Cripps Pemberton Greenish.

8

The Alumni Network

I look back on my time as a trainee fondly; the social life was fantastic and the beauty of being a trainee was that you moved around the firm and got to know most people

I am an M&A lawyer of trade and front up the firm’s private equity offering, but a career highlight is doing Chapel Down Group plc’s crowdfunding in 2014, which we were told was the first one carried out by a quoted company. If that’s right, it is great to do a first. If it’s not, please don’t tell me, as I am still dining out on it.

I often think back to my time at Mills & Reeve; I made good friends that I am still in touch with today and feel that my training in the firm laid the foundations for where I am today.

The best way to sum it up is, if I could live my life again, would I want to do my training contract at Mills & Reeve? The answer is very much, yes, though I might have kept my views on commercial property a little closer to my chest!

Every Friday night, a bunch of us from across the firm would go to the Hogshead after work (by the Redwell Street office), go clubbing, have a Bobby Chef and then all head back to mine to watch Austin Powers.

Yes, I am that old!

The Alumni Network

9

John Willis Position Founder & CEO of Power2Inspire Position while at Mills & Reeve Head of Cambridge Property Litigation Team Dates employed by Mills & Reeve From 1995 to1997

The benefits of a legal background

I set up Power2Inspire five years ago to create a society where everyone has the opportunity to participate in sport, regardless of body type, age, disability, religion or ethnicity, and can play sport together. A world where there is “no one left on the bench”. We do this through inclusive and adapted sports days, what we call Power House Games.

Mills & Reeve participated in the second “university” version in March. Twelve teams of 6 players played 6 different inclusive games

10

The Alumni Network

with male and female athletes from the Cambridge University’s Cricket Club and students from Comberton Village College, The Perse and Castle Special School. They tried out boccia, new age kurling, goalball and walking football alongside kwik cricket and table cricket. Watching Chris Belcher (partner private client) smashing sixes alongside Ali Dewhurst (CU cricket captain) and disabled students from Castle, will long live in the memory….and yes, there are photos!

Mills & Reeve was a much smaller firm in my day and its Cambridge office in Francis House was dark and dingy – a far cry from the impressive Botanic House they have now. When I left – to lead the redevelopment of Papworth Everard – seeing the sky was a key requirement of my new job! I miss the camaraderie of the Flying Pig, after work drinks with my great friend Guy Hinchley, and a curry in town.

The skills acquired as a lawyer – attention to detail, reading the whole of a document, forming an argument, preparation, translating technical jargon (ie the law!) into comprehensible language – have all stood me in great stead out in the real world. I spent 13 years redeveloping Papworth Everard, then six as a consultant helping NHS entities leave the NHS and establish themselves as Community Interest Companies.

My greatest achievement at Provide CIC was reversing the way they reported ‘profit’ and loss: profit was always shown as a negative in red. I changed it to read as a positive and in black, and losses as red with a minus sign. The effect on the staff was significant especially as they had a say in where the profit could be reinvested.

If you get the chance to volunteer on a board, do take up the opportunity.

You will learn how life is on the outside, how governance works in action, and how important the numbers are, while never losing focus on the big picture: that a charity is there to benefit its beneficiaries.

Do look out for the opportunity to join the next university cricket club Power House Games. Other ways of getting involved include helping at the Super Sensory 1K walk, wheel or run in May, play golf in June or tennis in July, or at the many Power House Games we hold in schools around the county.

The biggest benefit of a legal background has been in establishing a new charity. Power2Inspire, a company limited by guarantee and a charity needed a board establishing from inception, articles, policies, and accounts – pretty much everything that the law teaches you.

The Alumni Network

11

This year’s charity challenge went virtual due to the coronavirus pandemic. With a great firm-wide effort, Mills & Reeve has raised over £9,000.

The Charity Challenge 12

The Alumni Network

Mills & Reeve Virtual Charity Challenge 10 - 19 June 2020

The Alumni Network

13

Rising to the challenge This year’s Charity Challenge had to go virtual after the coronavirus pandemic meant the original planned trip to Derbyshire wasn’t able to go ahead. In a rekindling of the Team Claire v Team Justin rivalry, the whole firm took part in a series of challenges to earn virtual kilometres for their respective teams, in a race round the six offices.

14

The Alumni Network

The first was a ‘Life in Lockdown’ photograph competition, which encouraged entries to be as creative as possible. There were baking triumphs, home schooling fails, working from home set ups, pets, haircuts and even a picture of a Star Wars Storm Trooper! Next up was the race itself. Over the course of two days, people could run, walk or cycle to earn ‘exercise’ kilometres or complete puzzles for ‘brain’ kilometres which meant everyone could take part in the Charity Challenge.

“The participation from everyone at the firm went beyond what we could have hoped for.”

Team Justin reached the finish line first, but the race was allowed to run until the end of Friday to see how far each team could get. Safe to say, expectations were exceeded.

Team Justin accumulated 2,590 km (the equivalent of 61 marathons), but even that was not enough to top Team Claire’s total of 2,613 km, just eclipsing Team Justin and equivalent to over 28,500 football pitches!

This year’s organising committee of Fabian Ashurst, Nancy Joyce, Louise Lister and Lucy Wood said: “We were gutted when the decision was made to cancel the planned trip to Derbyshire.

However, when we were set the challenge of organising a virtual event to replace it, we wanted to make it the most inclusive Charity Challenge yet. The participation from everyone at the firm went beyond what we could have hoped for. There were some amazing photographs posted that kept us extremely entertained, and we were shocked at just how many kilometres each team amassed. It was a great firm-wide effort.

More importantly, we were able to raise money for SafeLives who provide essential support for those suffering from domestic abuse. It was fantastic to be able to support such a worthy cause, particularly during such a difficult time for many.”

If you would like to contribute, please visit our JustGiving page.

In support of SafeLives SafeLives was chosen as the charity for this year’s Charity Challenge; it is dedicated to ending domestic abuse of which cases significantly increased during the height of the coronavirus lockdown.

Last year alone, nearly 11,000 professionals working on the frontline received their training to help over 65,000 adults at risk of serious harm or murder, and more than 85,000 children received help through dedicated multi-agency support designed by SafeLives.

In the last three years, over 1,000 perpetrators have been challenged and supported to change by interventions SafeLives created with partners.

So far, Mills & Reeve has raised over £9,000 including gift aid and these funds will help in keeping survivors of domestic abuse, and their families, safe.

The Alumni Network

15

Firmwide fundraising Our CSR team have been busy over the last few months! We’ve had dress down days, bake sales, bingo, quizzes, auctions and pumpkin carving ...all for a good cause of course.

Amazingly, staff have raised over

£10,000 for deserving charities:

Birmingham Women’s Hospital Charity

Cambridge Cyrenians Yorkshire Air Ambulance KidsOut Tommy’s Charity Norfolk Accident Rescue Service (NARS)

16

The Alumni Network

The numbers

BAME bursary for first-year law student

Despite the challenges that the latter part of our 2019/20 financial year provided, it’s fantastic to report another record-breaking year . Our turnover was £114.1 million, which is a 2.9% increase on last year.

It was brilliant to be able to achieve this and for the firm to reward all staff with a bonus after a particularly difficult few months.

As a result of this strong performance, the firm was able to announce an all staff bonus which worked out as £996 for every full time employee who had been with the firm for at least a year. The bonus is pro-rated so part-time employees also received a bonus as well as staff who had been with the firm for less than a year.

• Law Firm of the Year by the legal industry website RollonFriday

Over the last 12 months, Mills & Reeve has been named:

• 24th in The Sunday Times’ Best 100 Companies to Work For list – appearing for a record 17 years running

First year law student Samira Ahmed has been chosen as the recipient of the Mills & Reeve BAME Development Award.

Samira who is studying at De Montfort University, impressed the judging panel with her resilience, how she responded to life’s challenges and her determination to succeed as a lawyer.

The Award will provide Samira with work experience at Mills & Reeve, financial support and a mentor from the firm.

Partner promotions On 1 June 2020, Mills & Reeve promoted 4 principal associates to partner, boosting the partnership to 133.

Alex Russell and Richard Barker have been made up to partner in the Employment Pensions & Immigration team, Dona Ardeman in the Corporate and Tax team and Jens Henniker Heaton in the Projects and Construction team.

We’re thrilled to be able to share our success with you and look forward to continuing the upward trend in 2021!

18

The Alumni Network

Alex Russell

Dona Ardeman

Jens Henniker Heaton

Richard Barker

The Alumni Network

19

Stephanie Caird Position Principal Associate Positions while at Mills & Reeve Trainee 2010- 2012 Associate 2012 – 2015 Senior Associate 2015-2016 Returned as a Senior Associate in 2019 Now Principal Associate

As the saying goes, you can take the girl out of Mills & Reeve, but you can’t take Mills & Reeve out of the girl, not this one anyway!

Steph joined Mills & Reeve as a Trainee Solicitor back in 2010 and took the opportunity during her training to build on her interest and carve out her niche experience in life sciences. As part of her training contract, she spent a seat on secondment at MedImmune, where her interest in the sector was firmly cemented.

After qualifying into CIPIT in 2012, she went on a further secondment at the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency expanding her knowledge in international research project agreements, public health and stem cells.

In 2016 Steph left us to join Bayer as an in-house lawyer with a split role between the pharma and crop science divisions, building up her expertise in data privacy, EIR/FOI and chemicals regulation as well as ABPI Code compliance. As the world got to grips with GDPR coming into effect, Steph moved to Bayer HQ in Germany to support on global data privacy projects.

Returning to Mills & Reeve in May 2019 to join the fast growing Life Sciences team, Steph has recently been promoted to Principal Associate.

20

The Alumni Network

Why Life Sciences?

My parents are both scientists who worked in the pharmaceuticals industry; I have early memories of my dad working on a clinical trial which involved hospitals in Germany and France. He was really frustrated trying to get the right agreements and I joked to him “don’t worry dad, I’ll sort that out for you when I’m a lawyer!” I wanted to bridge that gap between science and the law.

When I joined Mills & Reeve as a trainee, I threw myself into anything that was science related which led to my first secondment to MedImmune.

In-house versus private practice?

As a lawyer in- house it’s easier to become a trusted advisor and people come to you with everything from commercial, to corporate transactions, to employment and you are closer to the business. In private practice, I have to work much harder to get to know my clients and their business. In private practice, lawyers tend to be brought in to work on more high value transactions (not just monetary but also strategic/ turn-key transactions), whereas in-house colleagues will ask you anything that has a legal “flavour” that they want to pick your brains on.

Having worked on both sides of the fence I am conscious that whatever advice I give to clients, it must be something that is practical that can be implemented by the in-house team – there is no point giving advice on the law without equipping clients to be able to apply it.

2010 – 2020 – Have you noticed any big changes in Mills & Reeve?

I left for Bayer in 2016, which was around the beginning of the new leadership team in Claire Clarke and Justin Ripman. There is now significantly more transparency and openness between the Board and Partners and the rest of the firm than there was before.

A good example are the sessions which are now held to explain the partnership process, which anyone can attend and which help to highlight the career paths available, how to get there and make the whole process less mystical. The openness and culture clearly reflects in the continued recognition in the Sunday Times Top 100 firms to work for and the 97% of staff who would recommend the firm as a good place to work.

Favourite part of your job?

This has to be helping clients achieve what they want in practice, ie what is their main driver? I have seen deals where there is a gap between what the clients think they are getting and what they actually want.

I have to understand the practical reality, what it means in practice and commercially, what it will look like, and then make the legals match up.

Work highlight?

My highlight has been the opportunity to be involved on contracts to deal with multiple pandemics in the course of the last 8 years. Seeing the efforts in the sector which are going on behind the scenes and working on contracts to facilitate sample flows and accelerate research into finding solutions (such as accurate tests or vaccines) has been a privilege.

Any people that have inspired you in your career?

My dad, he’s always been focused on doing the right thing and the science behind the treatments that could improve people’s lives.

I also had 2 very strong female role models at Bayer, both amazingly good at their jobs, acted with incredible integrity and were also good in the personal aspects of their roles and supporting colleagues.

Back at Mills & Reeve our Head of Life Sciences James Fry is now my mentor and supporting me to continue to develop my knowledge and career and constantly challenging me.

Favourite Mills & Reeve Memory

My husband and I married

during my time at Bayer, and my friends and colleagues from Mills & Reeve attended, with Partner Kevin Calder leading the requests on 80’s music egged on by my close friend and fellow Principal Associate Sophie Burton- Jones. Lots of dancing and laughs!

The Alumni Network

21

Looking to 2025: Our new strategy puts clients firmly at the centre Mills & Reeve is putting its clients at the heart of its new 2025 strategy with the aim to have 95% of clients recommending us as the firm to work with. Our new strategy reinforces clients at the heart of our business, bringing them into every part of the firm.

The challenge has been understanding what that really means. So we started by asking our clients. At the end of 2019 we interviewed 88 clients across our markets and sectors. The interviews looked at what they wanted from a law firm in the future and what law firms would look like in 2025. This was no quick email survey but an hour+ long sit down session with Mills & Reeve lawyers and business services personnel.

We included over 50 people from across the business so that they could put themselves in the clients’ shoes and get a better understanding of the issues they face. This is a great example of the Mills & Reeve ethos of including people and taking a collaborative approach. It also meant we learnt a great deal more than we would have done through a more ‘run of the mill’ survey.

22

The Alumni Network

Analysing 88 hours of narrative to define themes and really understand what our clients were saying was our next challenge. This is not the sort of thing law firms do, there were very few precedents in the market for what others had done. We worked with Acuigen, an industry leader in client listening and used their CustomServe platform to analyse the interviews and identify key themes. The strategy group then met at the Moller Centre in Cambridge to review and relate the findings to Mills & Reeve.

We defined some clear personas across the client base. This type of segmentation is again unusual in law firms and more akin to consumer marketing. However we are confident that our personas have unique challenges, needs, approaches and motivators and that tailoring our service to address their particular issues can really enhance the experience they receive.

We also looked at the overall experience or journey our clients receive. By looking at the experience from the client’s perspective we identified a number of areas where we can improve, communicate better or be more efficient.

The tools we developed at the Moller Centre are now being rolled out across the firm through a series of Client Experience Workshops. Each session focusses on a particular persona. We’ve brought our personas; Gary, Bianca, Sophie, Richard, Poire and Katie to life through live interviews which challenge attendees to look at each persona’s unique challenges, needs and experiences.

We are creating a culture of fearless feedback, by listening to our staff and clients and really acting on the issues and concerns they raise.

It is a continuous cycle of listening and improvement.

The workshops have multiple purposes. Without a doubt they provide training on the overall strategy and tools available so that teams and individuals can apply the approach to their own clients.

We’ve also pinpointed a number of areas we as a firm need to address and seek ideas from a wide group of people as to how these can be improved. These may be process improvements, technology, structural change or uncovering learning needs. Workshop feedback is being combined with our client feedback from the listening project and is being fed into a number of working groups looking at improvement areas.

More importantly the workshops are available to all staff, recognising that to be successful the strategy needs to be co-created by everyone within the firm and each individual has an impact on client service delivery and are instrumental in improving it. Creating a sense of shared ownership of improvement to become a leader in client experience, this strategy is very much about acting differently and doing things differently. It urges us all to be better and do better, which is both inspiring and empowering.

The Alumni Network

23

Launching our new thought leadership campaign:

Building resilience We are very excited to be launching our new thought leadership campaign focussed on Building Resilience. The report, Building resilience - what clients want from their law firm, looks into a number of findings from the client listening exercise we undertook at the end of 2019; we conducted in-depth interviews with 88 of our clients to understand more about the future of their markets and legal needs.

Whilst the publishing of this report was delayed due to the coronavirus crisis, the findings have never been more relevant.

In fact, recent events have only exacerbated many of the trends we were already seeing.

Clients are evolving their inhouse capabilities, with lawyers increasingly becoming involved in strategic decisions and not just the law. This is a new set of skills, delivering commercial input, responding to opportunities and challenges in an agile manner.

More innovative in-house counsel have grasped this change and are upskilling their teams. Coronavirus has certainly pushed the need to innovate in-house legal teams further and in an increasingly complex world, clients need ready access to specialist knowledge delivered in the context of their business.

Law firms will also find themselves under increasing pressure to demonstrate value over the coming years. This goes beyond an events programme, insights emails and blogs. There will be a need to justify cost to wider stakeholders and better explain what value means.

24

The Alumni Network

“Adding value is critical, as well as knowing that your lawyer is truly on your side of the table.

Lawyers need to be innovative, understand the business and bring solutions that add value�

Tim Butler, Managing Director South Kensington Estates

The pace and complexity of change poses real challenges for clients and is one that they have been dealing with for some time. Clients expect new regulation, laws or politics to invoke the biggest change over the next 5 years. Alongside this there have been a number of big social movements from #MeToo, Black Lives Matters and increasing environmental awareness. Reputations need to be carefully guarded and decisions made ethically.

Lawyers are increasingly placed in a difficult position squeezed by the pace of change and complexity of new regulations versus larger ambitions and objectives.

“[Lawyers] need to… accept that they are going to be under tremendous strain to find legal solutions to aspirations which might just seem impossible.”

Jennifer Foote, Company Secretary and General Council, LTE Group said:

“The profession needs to move on from ‘pink string and sealing wax’ to look at the transactional and the complex.”

Relationships remain at the heart of the legal landscape, this is about supporting lawyers with a routine work to really develop value and provide advice and support. As recent times have shown, when they are making tough decisions, clients want that strategic partner, a peer who can understand, empathise and support them.

Damien Oliver, Aviation Assistant Director, Maritime Coastguard Association

It’s of no surprise that only 4% of clients expect to make no changes to how they run their business over the next five years. In comparison, nearly a third say that they expect to make fundamental changes. There is a challenge to build resilience, which has been developing for some time and coming out of the coronavirus crisis is now the case more than ever before.

Clients are keen for legal innovation, they want space and efficiency to free up lawyer time to focus energy on the big issues. However, this is very much a people-first approach to technology.

The Alumni Network

25

In the news CFO appointed

What was your previous experience before Mills & Reeve?

I was with PwC for 22 years in a combination of client facing and internal finance roles. I started my career as a graduate in the audit practice in the Aberdeen office and as soon as I qualified as a Chartered Accountant I stuck my hand up for a two year secondment to our Sydney office. I arrived in 2001 just a few months after the Olympics and loved it so much I stayed for 15 years!

During that time, I spent a couple of years on secondment in New York and in 2009 I had the opportunity to spend two years in our Port Moresby office in Papua New Guinea. I’d not long met my now husband and I knew he was a keeper when he agreed to resign from his job and travel up there with me. It was a fantastic adventure with too many crazy experiences to mention.

Fast forward a couple of years and we flew back to Sydney in 2011 a married couple and I was 36 weeks pregnant with our son Charlie. My daughter Isla followed a couple years later and when she was 18 months we decided to move back to England for the free babysitting!

26

The Alumni Network

When did you join Mills & Reeve?

September 2019. When we moved back to England in 2015 I took a role in the London office of PwC and led the Global Finance Operations team and was Chief of Staff to PwC’s Global COO. I felt a bit of ‘mid-career crisis’ coming on and sensed that if I didn’t try working for an organisation other than PwC I’d probably regret it, so I popped my head above the parapet to see what was out there, met Claire and Sandy and the rest is history!

From the middle of March onwards life changed pretty dramatically and I stopped travelling up and down the A14 and we started meeting daily as a management team to discuss a whole range of issues related to the pandemic.

Some of the priorities in Finance and CIT changed drastically overnight as we quickly pivoted to make sure we were able to provide the same level of service from home and provide the business with new and different reports and insights needed to operate through this period.

What are the best/ most interesting/ enjoyable projects you’ve been involved in this past year?

Well let’s just say it’s been a game of two halves so far! There’s the period from when I joined in September through to March where I really enjoyed travelling around our six offices getting to know my new finance colleagues, meeting as many of our lawyers and really getting to understand the business.

I live in a lovely little village called Brigstock in Northamptonshire and try to get out for a walk with my dog (Georgie the black lab) every morning before work. I’ve also become a bit hooked on running (well plodding really!) in lockdown so I try to fit in as much of that as possible. My kids (now aged 7 and 9) also keep my husband Rich and I pretty busy.

Then of course COVID-19 hit us and let’s just say I was glad I’d had at least a few months to understand what ‘normal’ was!

What hobbies do you have outside of work?

What are your main responsibilities?

As CFO I lead the finance and CIT teams and I’m also a member of the Board. In any finance role I always think time flies by really quickly – we only seem to finish one month end and another rolls around!

This year has certainly flown by as we were busy right through January and February kicking off the budget and planning cycle, March and April was a bit of a blur as we got used to working from home etc. and before we knew it we were preparing for year end and the annual audit.

In between all of that of course, we’ve been working on the 2025 strategy, continuing to embed our new PMS system and roll out further functionality and improvements.

Writing this is the last thing I need to do before I shut my laptop down for two weeks and head off to Croatia for my long awaited summer break so if you don’t mind, I’ll head off and start packing!

Jennifer shares her top tips for managing your

team and finance 1. Say yes!

I always say that I’ve built an entire career on saying yes to opportunities and figuring out the detail later, so I always encourage my team to get involved in new and different things.

2. Enjoy your work!

My old boss used to say that in recognising there are good days and tough days in any role, you still have to really enjoy your job at least 50% of the time (I’d say more personally!) and again, I really encourage people to find enjoyment in what they do because I think if you enjoy it the passion really shines through.

3. Seek change!

I’m really passionate about continuous improvement – if something isn’t working or doesn’t feel right then hopefully everyone feels empowered to change it – have a go and if it doesn’t work out well at least we tried!

4. Keep the client in mind!

Having spent 15 years at PwC in external client facing roles and the rest in internal client facing finance roles, I’m also really passionate about delivering great client experience so I’m really pleased our 2025 strategy is all about being a leader in client experience.

The Alumni Network

27

Mills & Reeve news Divorce website launch Our new website divorce.co.uk went live in February 2020. Divorce affects all of us in some way, and going through a separation is distressing and disruptive. But we want our clients to know that it doesn’t have to be the end.

The family team are specialists in understanding the issues involved and making the process as simple and painless as possible. The new, mobile responsive website has been completely rebranded to showcase us as a team that deals with complex divorce and separation issues for individuals, business owners and international clients.

The divorce blog went live in April 2020 with lots of content (particularly around the coronavirus outbreak) on separation and divorce, family issues, co-parenting, mediation and wealth protection.

environment and client care best practice. They put together a host of useful, quick to digest content in a range of formats that helped to answer our common BD questions.

Keep up to date with our insights page 28

The Alumni Network

Our Life Questions app, responding to the coronavirus pandemic, was the idea of Chris Belcher whose wife works in the NHS. The free-to-access online tool provides information to help front-line NHS workers put their affairs in order should they themselves become sick or die. This is our first ever client-facing app and was developed in just eight days! A private healthcare provider said about it: “I wanted to simply say how impressed I was when I saw Life Questions. So refreshing for a law firm to be offering a tool like this. Beautifully marketed with compassion at the heart – a fine balance to strike!”

Reach network (race, ethnicity and cultural heritage) network launch

Bitesize BD Lockdown brought a new issue for us which was how to stay connected to clients and let them know we were here without pestering them. To help with this, our business development team launched Bitesize BD, an online LinkedIn community to share ideas, tips and resources on business development, networking in a virtual

Life Questions app

We were really pleased to formally launch our Reach Network in June.

As a network, their aim is to support BAME staff, raise awareness of BAME issues and have a platform for wider understanding and promotion of diversity and equality issues. They also welcome the support of allies who are integral to their discussions and plans.

Webinars During the pandemic we had to move all of our planned events online which was a huge learning curve for the marketing team!

We are now regularly hosting webinars, September was our busiest month with over 40 webinars taking place.

View on demand webinar recordings and find out upcoming webinars.

Coronavirus hub The coronavirus pandemic is creating uncertainty for everyone and the impact is being felt across the world.

We set up our coronavirus hub to help our clients find all our latest legal insights and practical guidance, helping them through the difficult decisions they may face due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Brexit hub Remember the days when our main concern for businesses was Brexit?

As the transitional period on 31 December gets closer, it is back on our radar. Our Brexit hub is home to our latest insights about its likely impact on our client’s organisation and staff.

The Alumni Network

29

Promotions Partner promotions

Associate promotions

• Alex Russell

Principal

• Dona Ardeman

• Alexandra Murphy

• Jens Henniker Heaton

• Anna Aldous

• Richard Barker

• David Phillips • Graham Collier • Joe French • Laura Johnson • Marie Bernard • Matt Bromilow • Molly Sanghera • Nathalie Jacoby-Danesh • Rose-Marie Drury • Sarah Greenwood • Sarah Rose

Senior • Alison Williams • Andrew Timoney • Ania Tarasiewicz • Danielle Hudson • Emily Cox • Gabrielle Wortley • Jacob Cork • Jonathan Herne • Katharine Watson • Lisa Cham • Louisa Butcher • Naomi Shelton • Natalie Welch • Ryan Williams • Samuel Lindsay • Sarah Pateman • Sebastian Allen-Johnstone • Tiran Gunawardena • Tom Amarnani

30

The Alumni Network

Legal / Business Support promotions • Adrian Fearon - Senior Developer • Al Budrikas - Senior Central Inception Team Assistant • Amber Canning - Senior Administrative Assistant • Andrew Munns - Senior Facilities Assistant (Repro) • Andrew Hipper - Senior Risk & Compliance Solicitor • Becky Dobson - Senior Digital Marketing Assistant • Billie Salter - Senior Hr Assistant • Cassandra Blackburn - Senior Administrative Assistant • Catherine Bridges - Senior Executive Assistant • Claire Nash - Senior Trust & Estate Practitioner • Dalla Ghuman - Business Development Advisor • Dawn Prescod - Senior Executive Assistant • Dave Garlish - Senior Plot Conveyancer • Dereck Gage - Senior Facilities Assistant • Elise Evans - Senior Administrative Assistant • Emma Jackson - Client Innovation Manager • Gail Howarth - Senior Executive Assistant

• Gareth Hall - Senior Finance Operations Team Leader

• Navina Rai - Senior Marketing Assistant

• Georgia Smith - Senior Executive Assistant

• Nicola Crossfield - Senior Hr Business Partner

• Grace Macwilliam - Senior Executive Assistant

• Nicole Harrison - Senior Facilities Assistant

• Jennifer Curtis - Senior Executive Assistant

• Oliver Steel - Senior Hr Assistant

• Jessica Collins - Senior Executive Assistant • Jodie Hinchliffe - Senior Administrative Assistant • Julie Cheesman - Senior Health & Care Client Co-Ordinator • Julie Key - Senior Executive Assistant • Kirstie Brownbridge - Senior Administrative Assistant • Kirsty Bradbrook - Business Systems Architect • Lauren Lucas - Paralegal/Senior Admin Assistant • Leeanne Cox - Senior Executive Assistant • Loren Ellard - Senior Executive Assistant • Manisha Sandhu - Senior Receptionist/Facilities Assistant • Marianne Saunders - Senior Trust Administrator • Milly Duffy - Senior Administrative Assistant

• Rachel Topham - Senior Executive Assistant • Rosa Evans - Central Inception Team Advisor • Ryan Brown - Senior Facilities Assistant • Simon Lawson - Records Manager • Sophie Chapman - Paralegal/Senior Executive Assistant • Stephen Masterson - Senior Reprographics Operator • Sue Scott - Senior Risk & Compliance Solicitor • Tom Livermore - Senior Facilities Assistant (Repro) • Tom Young - Senior Risk & Compliance Paralegal • Vicki Denbigh - Senior Executive Assistant • Vicki Lanceman - Senior Document Production Specialist • Victoria Sears - Senior Innovation Engagement Advisor • Zoe King - Senior Executive Assistant

The Alumni Network

31

Hatches and matches Congratulations to our colleagues who have hatched and matched since the last issue!

Elijah Bell Amy Bell

Aoife Ellie Cartledge Simone Porter

Renz Graham Yasmin Graham

Oliver Michael Gunn Deborah Gunn

Annika Henniker Heaton Jens Henniker Heaton

Evelyn Hesketh Matthew Hesketh

Isobel Jeppesen Louisa Jeppesen

Ada Rose King Jacqui King

Joseph Wilfred Rose Sarah Rose

Edward (AKA Teddy) Smith Daniel Smith

32

The Alumni Network

Mills & Reeve Life in lockdown

On 16 March 2020 the Government told us in no uncertain terms that people should work from home where possible.

The firm had to adjust to homeworking overnight which was an incredible feat from the whole firm including IT and facilities deploying resources to make this possible and from our staff who quickly adapted to working in new environments, often with new distracting coworkers, among other challenges!

Claire and Justin quickly set up their important coronavirus daily update, a transparent and informative email that kept us all in the loop.

These ranged from fun lockdown staff photos and good news of the firm’s weekly achievements to information about some of the difficult decisions being made across the business.

information across sectors and services. Our events team turned the difficult task of cancelling 2020 events into a positive by setting up webinars, the most popular one so far bringing in 485 delegates!

And while the majority of staff were working from home, our ‘office warriors’ continued to hold the fort in the very empty and quiet offices. Facilities and executive support services (ESS) were kept busy assisting with important deal deadlines, running court hearings and shipping office equipment to staff working from home with a speedy service that put Amazon Prime to shame!

Important government and regulation update briefings were fired out to carefully curated recipient lists, the BD team helped us increase our LinkedIn efforts to stay connected and our innovation efforts ensured zoom pitches and important meetings went without a glitch.

We adapted quickly to continue providing our clients with the best service possible. Our coronavirus hub was set up, an area on the website dedicated to providing the latest legal insights and practical guidance, and hosted a wealth of

We also came together and looked out for our colleagues - the weekly loop ups set up and run by Natasha have provided a safe space to check in with others and also helped ensure those of us who may have found the pandemic harder than others were getting the support needed.

The Alumni Network

33

Mills & Reeve Life in lockdown continued ...

We set up zoom-a-ccinos and connected over a range of topics including Netflix recommendations, cats and vegan/vegetarian cooking alongside many others! Our annual effort to raise money for important charities went virtual after the cancellation of the planned trip to the Peak District (see more on the virtual Charity Challenge 2020 on page 12). And as if we weren’t taking part in enough zoom quizzes over lockdown, a fun & competitive firm-wide quiz (an impressive feat!) was hosted in July by Justin!

34

The Alumni Network

Our lockdown life was documented in the form of photos sent in for inclusion in the important coronavirus daily updates, a reminder of how life looked during that time is here:

Fast forward!

Fast forward to over six months since that Government announcement, what does the new normal look like? It looks like Zoom isn’t going anywhere and will become a key part of how we do business, hand sanitiser and face masks are now as important as your keys and money when leaving the house and importantly, business resilience is key. This resilience has been shown by Mills & Reeve’s people throughout the pandemic and we continue to explore this key theme in our work following our Building Resilience report (see page 24).

Our focus now is looking after the future of the business – the graduate recruitment team worked tirelessly in preparation for the virtual vacation scheme which was a huge success and for the virtual law fairs to start attracting our next cohort.

And now, a phased return to office life is beginning to make sure our trainees have the best start possible with us.

Let’s see what the next year brings!

The Alumni Network

35

And finally…

I retired at the end of May 2019 after (very) nearly 19 years at Mills & Reeve.

I retired at the end of May 2019 after (very) nearly 19 years at Mills & Reeve. Prior to that I was at Aviva for a period working as an in-house lawyer after starting off in private practice in Norwich in 1983. I worked within the Projects & Construction team in Cambridge and in addition to that, I led the Health and Care Sector for the last ten years which gave me a fantastic insight into the various teams and offices making up the great Mills & Reeve “family”.

I particularly enjoyed learning more about the machinations of the NHS and its partnering with the private sector reflected by the breadth of knowledge and expertise within the Mills & Reeve Health Group ranging across tech and life sciences, patient care and ethics, employment, corporate and commercial and estate development and management.

I miss the people, the professionalism, the collegiality and being part of undeniably one of the best UK legal firms there is.

36

The Alumni Network

Bridget Archibald Position Retired Position while at Mills & Reeve Projects Partner (2003-2019) and Head of Health & Care (2008 – 2018) Dates employed by Mills & Reeve From 2000 to 2019

When seeing the heroic achievements of our NHS organisations to manage the current public health challenges, its interesting for me to contemplate the impact it must have been having.

I know from speaking to Jill Mason who now leads the health and care group that the pandemic will have thrown up many new challenges for those teams that look after the health and care clients.

I was fortunate re timings as when I retired I enjoyed several (!) leaving events at which colleagues displayed great kindness that was endemic of the Mills & Reeve culture. It must have felt tough for colleagues retiring during the lockdown.

So what am I doing now?! I have completed my first year of a distance learning MA in Antiques which has introduced me to specialist areas such as antique wine bottles, Georgian tea caddies, porcelain and the Aesthetic Movement. Next year I start my dissertation which is going to be around changing attitudes to the use of natural world products to create art and antiquities.

Since the lockdown restrictions have been eased (for now at least) I have been able to reopen my antiques shop and support my husband Andrew run the B&B in Shouldham West Norfolk.

When I can, I enjoy taking items to antique and/or Christmas fairs and the photo of me was taken in November 2019 at Glasgow Country Living Fair. I believe that venue is now one of the new temporary hospitals. After many years attending large national NHS conferences it was interesting to be sporting a very different lanyard!

You will see our lovely dogs Barney and Lottie enjoying the Sutherland coastline in the other photo.

I have been asked to say what I miss and what I don’t! I miss the people, the professionalism, the collegiality and being part of undeniably one of the best UK legal firms there is. I don’t miss the travelling, but how different the legal world is now - catapulted into a much more virtual technological world that would have happened at some point but just sooner!

The Alumni Network

37

Get in touch People www.mills-reeve.com/people Careers www.mills-reeve.com/careers Events www.mills-reeve.com/events Remember to let your former colleagues know about the Alumni Network.

Follow us on Twitter: @alumni_MR or Join our LinkedIn Group to get the latest alumni news