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.
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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.