Why corporate law?
As a stubborn child, I was often told I should be a lawyer, so I followed this advice and went to law school in Birmingham. To be completely honest, while there I found the transactional subjects fairly dry, but my training contract with Pinsent Masons in Edinburgh showed me otherwise. As a corporate lawyer, you learn the ins and outs of a business and hear directly from key decision-makers. Helping people who have built up a business passionately from the beginning get to where they want is really satisfying. I enjoy working in a team, being analytical and solving problems – and working for a variety of clients is very interesting.
Why did you decide to move to Addleshaw Goddard?
I really enjoyed training with Pinsent Masons in Edinburgh, but after a few years I decided to relocate. London is a great city for the M&A legal market and after meeting the London corporate team at Addleshaw Goddard, I thought it would be a great fit for me. I joined in 2018 as an associate and was promoted to managing associate last year. I now have more of a leading role on deals. There are around 20 partners across the main corporate team, a similar number of associates and three legal directors.
What sort of deals do you advise on?
I work mostly on private M&A deals, as well as some public M&A and equity capital markets work. My deals are mainly mid-market, ranging from £50m-£500m, with a particular focus on the retail and energy sectors, as well as some financial services work. I can often be working on a number of different deals at the same time, which makes managing timetables pretty important. But that’s the nature of corporate work – there are unavoidable peaks and troughs of activity, so the ability to multitask and work well under pressure is key. Every deal is different, so I know there will always be more to learn.
What are the secondments to industry you undertook?
The companies I’ve been seconded to are all very different businesses and I learned a lot from all of them. My first was to the EDF Energy commercial team when I was a trainee at Pinsent Masons. I put myself forward thinking it would be a helpful learning experience to see the other side of the fence, and it was. The second was with the M&A legal team at RBS in Edinburgh, where I worked mainly on matters regarding its state aid commitments. It was daunting being in a different environment and recently qualified, but I definitely came out with great experience and more confidence in making decisions and in my own ability.
At Addleshaw Goddard, I was seconded to the M&A team at British American Tobacco. It was a particularly good learning experience, possibly because I had more experience going into it and it was involved in a lot of interesting and exciting projects, including setting up a new venture capital arm to invest in small and new businesses.
What did you learn from these?
There was some deal doing, but a lot of the role was strategic – considering what investments might or might not take off, and being involved in the decision-making process around how best to structure an investment. Seeing what issues came up on a daily basis, how they were dealt with and how decisions were made was very helpful and has ultimately made me a better adviser. An external lawyer doesn’t ordinarily hear those initial discussions, so seeing and understanding that process has made me push clients a bit more, knowing the right questions to ask to get a little more information from them to help us provide better advice.
What have you advised on recently?
We acted for Greencoat, a UK investment company and one of Europe’s largest investors in the renewable energy sector. We advised on its £86m investment into a project to build one of the world’s most advanced greenhouses – built using around three times the amount of glass as the Shard. It’s using innovative technology to grow crops sustainably.
I led with a partner preparing the key transaction documents, negotiating with the other side and working out how the project would progress from initial investment. It was a very technical area and we had a big team internally, including corporate, real estate and projects. I find cross-discipline work really interesting, combining the day job of negotiating the transaction documents with a project management role that allows you to learn from other disciplines.