Legal Business

Life During Law: Sandra Paul

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Life During Law Kingsley Napley

I head up our criminal defence and police investigations team as well as our sexual misconduct in the workplace practice. I am interested in people, and I guess I am a nosey person.

I decided to become a lawyer because I wanted to have my own voice. In my twenties, I was a team leader in a child protection social services team. I would have done an assessment, done the work, known the family, thought I had made good decisions, but then it would get reinterpreted a couple of times for me. The legal department would say ‘this is what you mean’, then the barrister would say ‘this is what the legal department have told me that you mean’. I thought: ‘Actually – maybe I can say what I mean.’ These people were doing a job that I knew was hard, but nowhere near as hard as turning up to these families’ homes and making decisions about their children. So, I decided to do the conversion and see what would happen. I didn’t know if it would be for me, as I am not the usual type of person that becomes a lawyer.

Legal Business

Financials 2022/23: Kingsley Napley sees double-digit revenue growth but PEP tumbles

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Financial results 2022/23 Kingsley Napley

Kingsley Napley has reported an 11% rise in revenue to £61.2m from £55.2m, an all-time high for the firm. However, profit per equity partner (PEP) fell dramatically by 33% to £226,000 from £337,000 last year.

Speaking to Legal Business about the reasons behind the fall in PEP, managing partner Linda Woolley (pictured) said: ‘We brought in eight partners during the year and promoted four to partner internally. This was quite a big investment on our behalf but a planned investment. Also, you do not just recruit a partner, you recruit other people to support them.

‘Combined with this are all the things going on in the world: inflation, increasing interest rates, war, and Truss economics. We, like most firms, were affected by that but we decided to continue with those investments because that is what we need to do for the medium and long term,’ she added.

Over the past year the firm’s partnership has grown by 11%, increasing from 74 to 82 partners. Its real estate, dispute resolution and restructuring & insolvency practices have seen the most growth, expanding by two partners each. Its private client and employment practices have both added two partners.

‘Our other major investment this year was our new Bonhill Street office. With the extra space comes extra costs, and we invested quite heavily in technology to ensure we got the best use out of the building as quickly as we could,’ Woolley added.

Discussing the firm’s strongest-performing practices Woolley said: ‘Our biggest areas of growth were immigration, dispute resolution, and private client. Immigration had quite a tough Covid period, especially at the beginning because every visa centre in the whole world closed down. However, the team has used that period to review the way they do things.’ The revenue for its immigration practice increased 133% from last year and its dispute resolution revenue increased by 126%.

Recent standout mandates for the firm include advising Lord Sugar on the sale of his multi-million-pound stakes in The Apprentice-related investments, as well as advising Elite Emergency Medical Service on the acquisition of assets of Polaris Medical from its administrators Kroll. The firm is also advising The Sun on the investigation of its former executive editor, Dan Wootton.

Despite the fall in PEP, Woolley explained that the firm’s strategy remains the same, and it will continue to build on the investments in people and office space which it has made this year.

‘We will be continuing with the same approach, building on our strengths. What we have done over the years is to stick to our strengths and build up critical mass, then add specialist expertise in adjacent areas,’ Woolley said.

Now the firm’s recruitment push has now subsided, its recruitment strategy will focus on building out existing practices. ‘We’ve got some recruits coming through, but now the strategy is more about consolidation. We won’t be looking to recruit in similar numbers to last year, probably two to three partners,’ she added.

Holly.McKechnie@legalease.co.uk

Legal Business

Life During Law: Linda Woolley

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Profile Kingsley Napley

My mum got me my first job at Essex County Council in PR. The first exam I ever failed was a PR diploma! It wasn’t for me. I’m not a sales person.

I did an A-Level in law to see if I enjoyed it. I did. Keeping my options open, I applied for the CPE at the College of Law and I also applied to be a teacher.

Legal Business

‘A real competitor’: Kingsley Napley strengthens employment practice with Archon Solicitors acquisition

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Legal mergers Kingsley Napley

Kingsley Napley has acquired Archon Solicitors to create a combined employment practice of seven partners and 11 associates.

Corinne Aldridge, managing partner of City employment firm Archon, has been appointed as the new head of Kingsley Napley’s employment team. The Archon team will move into Kingsley Napley’s Farringdon offices on 30 September and will no longer operate under the Archon name.

Joining Aldridge at Kingsley Napley are fellow partners Nick Ralph and Niki Southern, six associates and consultant Rob McCreath. They will work with the existing Kingsley Napley employment team which includes partners Richard Fox, Adrian Crawford, Adam Lambert and Andreas White.

Aldridge told Legal Business: ‘We see this as a good evolution in being able to develop our practice and offer additional resources to our clients. We see this as a very exciting opportunity with a firm with whom we feel we have a very good fit. We will have a big department which will give us an opportunity to be a real competitor within the industry. We have the sort of depth and experience within our team to make a very good offering to clients.

‘Practices within the employment field have come under more scrutiny, for instance the #Me Too campaign. I think for employees it’s given them the confidence to challenge their employers,’ added Aldridge.

The acquisition is part of Kingsley Napley’s plan to enhance the practice significantly following a busy period for the existing employment team.

Kingsley Napley managing partner Linda Woolley told Legal Business: ‘We particularly focus on doing quite difficult, contentious work often for City professionals, professional services and entrepreneurs. We’ve had a couple of leavers to the team and we felt, unusually for us, that it would be better to get the critical mass into the team and to grow it by a bolt-on rather than our usual organic growth combined with lateral hires. Our strategy a year ago was to try and find an appropriate small bolt-on employment firm and we were very lucky to find Archon very early.’

‘The most important thing for us is to ensure that we embed the Archon people and their clients into the firm. Our goal will be to develop our client base to support Corinne’s team in being able to offer their existing clients more support and advice from within the firm,’ added Woolley.

Woolley also said that issues arising from the #MeToo campaign, such as equal pay, have been very prominent in employment law recently and the addition of Aldridge and Niki Southern ‘can only be a good thing.’

muna.abdi@legalease.co.uk

Legal Business

Sponsored briefing: Regulatory challenges in the year ahead

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Regulatory Kingsley Napley

Ten years ago, very few large law firms needed external legal advice on dealing with their regulator. This was because the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) would normally only take action against an individual within a firm rather than the firm itself. Since then, the SRA has increasingly used its powers to regulate entities and shown a much greater interest in how law firms are run. With that has come the era of big fines for firms that have breached the SRA’s Handbook.

While all large law firms will have experts in-house that deal with regulatory and risk issues, they are unlikely to have had extensive experience of the SRA’s investigation and enforcement procedures. In addition, external advisers can act as a sounding board on difficult issues, such as if, how and when to report a matter to the SRA.

Legal Business

Highly-rated SFO GC to join Kingsley Napley while HFW breaks US duck

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Strategic recruitment HFWKingsley Napley

Serious Fraud Office (SFO) general counsel (GC) Alun Milford (pictured), who was widely tipped as the agency’s successor to former director David Green, is joining Kingsley Napley as a partner from next year.

Milford has a storied career in public prosecution, beginning at the Crown Prosecution Service in 1992. He then joined the Attorney General’s Office in 2004, where he dealt with contempt of court and unduly lenient sentences. Later occupying a role with the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office, Milford subsequently became GC at the SFO in April 2012.

Milford has a strong reputation in white collar circles, with Kingsley Napley’s senior partner Stephen Parkinson earlier this year describing him as ‘the safe bet’ to succeed Green as SFO director. Green, who this month joined Slaughter and May, was ultimately replaced by former FBI deputy GC Lisa Osofsky in June.

Milford will be the firm’s twelfth criminal litigation partner, working on white collar crime, as well as international investigations, sanctions, compliance and enforcement matters. Department head Louise Hodges commented: ‘After a successful career encompassing some of the most senior roles prosecuting crime and fraud in England and Wales, Alun brings with him a unique perspective and experience which will complement the talented partners and lawyers in the team.’

The delay in Milford’s arrival until next year is likely due to regulatory approval, as illustrated by his ex-colleague Green’s protracted move to Slaughters, which was held up for six months by the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments.

Elsewhere, HFW has broken new ground by making its first ever US lateral hire. The firm announced today (24 September) it had appointed energy partner Derek Anchondo from Greenberg Traurig.

Anchondo will join HFW’s Houston office, which now consists of eight partners and 19 lawyers following a fully-integrated transatlantic merger with Legge, Farrow, Kimmitt, McGrath & Brown in January 2017.

He has experience advising public and private energy companies on M&A transactions, joint ventures, financing, upstream exploration and production activities. Anchondo said: ‘My clients will benefit from HFW’s considerable industry expertise and its extensive international network. I am also excited about the opportunity to help build the firm’s corporate and transactional practices in the United States.’

tom.baker@legalease.co.uk

Legal Business

Perspectives: Stephen Parkinson, Kingsley Napley

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Disputes Yearbook 2018 Kingsley Napley

I didn’t intend to become a lawyer. I’m the first of my family; we’ve been teachers and priests. My brother got a place at Oxford to study law. I got unexpectedly good A-Levels – I was meant to be going to Thames Polytechnic to read humanities. Sibling rivalry.

Criminal law was one subject I was good at, at uni. Wasn’t good at much! It’s about people’s behaviour – why they do the unfortunate things they do. Gets me out of bed.

Legal Business

Parkinson stays away from SFO director race to take senior partner role at Kingsley Napley

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Leadership Kingsley Napley

Despite calls for him to succeed David Green as the new director of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), heavyweight white-collar crime specialist Stephen Parkinson will become senior partner of Kingsley Napley on 1 May.

As a result of Parkinson’s elevation, disputes partner Louise Hodges will take over his role as head of the firm’s top-ranked criminal litigation practice.

Parkinson (pictured) will succeed Jane Keir, who has served as senior partner since 2013. Keir, who is Kingsley Napley’s first female senior partner, will return to fee-earning as a family law partner.

Parkinson’s career has seen him represent various corporates and senior business individuals in relation to SFO, HMRC and CPS investigations. Notably, Parkinson represented former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks during the phone-hacking investigations and the Leveson inquiry.

Parkinson told Legal Business that he had run unopposed in the senior partner election, adding: ‘For the last 15 years I have been immersed in my team, but this new role is a chance to step outside and get to know the rest of the firm a bit more. The senior partner role quite unusual, you stand above the fray to an extent but people look to you for leadership. You have to provide that leadership without getting too immersed in the detail.’

On his replacement, Hodges, Parkinson said: ‘She’s an absolutely phenomenal defence lawyer. She’s amazingly experienced and a great manager and a great motivator of people. One of the reasons I felt I could move on from leading the team was because I have total confidence in Louise leading the team very well.’

He added that he will continue his practice in business and financial crime litigation ‘both because I enjoy it and want to maintain my interaction with clients and because I wish to continue to work at the coalface alongside my excellent colleagues.’

Hodges said: ‘It is a great honour to be taking over the leadership of the Kingsley Napley criminal litigation team – in my view the top criminal defence job in the country.’

Last year, Parkinson was cited by white-collar peers as a potential successor to current SFO director David Green, who will stand down from the position in April.

At the time, Parkinson drolly noted: ‘That moment passed 14 years ago when they didn’t select me.’

tom.baker@legalease.co.uk

Legal Business

News UK recruits Kingsley Napley partner McBride as general counsel

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In-house Kingsley NapleyNews UK
legal-business-default

Rupert Murdoch-owned media giant News UK has recruited high-profile Kingsley Napley partner Angus McBride as its general counsel (GC), just months after its decision to re-hire former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks as chief executive.

McBride will join News UK in early April and serve as a member of the executive team. He replaces current GC Emma Moloney who is departing at the end of January for a role yet to be announced.

Cited as ‘first class’ by the Legal 500, McBride successfully defended Brooks for offences arising from a investigation into phone hacking by the News of the World in 2014. Other high profile clients included former army intelligence officers in Lord Stevens’ investigation into collusion in Northern Ireland between loyalist paramilitaries and state security forces, and advising the chief executive of Innospec following an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office into international corruption.

Moloney joined News UK in 2013 and was made GC in May 2015. In her role she oversaw all legal matters relating to editorial, a new compliance structure and the company’s commercial activity. Previous in-house roles included stints at Sky and the National Geographic Channel, where she was GC.

In a statement, Brooks said: ‘When I first spoke to Angus last autumn about joining us in this capacity, he was reluctant to give up the work that he loves. I am thrilled that he has decided to join us as he is always ten steps ahead and has a huge capacity to grasp quickly the full spectrum of issues. I have come to trust him implicitly and believe that News UK will benefit from his legal expertise, wise advice and strategic approach.’

sarah.downey@legalease.co.uk

For more coverage on the hacking scandal, see Shock and Flaw – is Leveson workable?

Legal Business

Promotions round-up: Bond Dickinson and Kingsley Napley promote three as Kennedys makes up female trio in round of four

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Partnership promotions KennedysKingsley NapleyWomble Bond Dickinson
legal-business-default

In the latest round of LB100 firm promotions, Kennedys made a 75% female promotions round as three out of four of its new partners were women while both Bond Dickinson and Kingsley Napley bolstered their practices with a trio of new partners.

Three of Kennedys’ promotions were based in London with insurance liability lawyer Anne-Marie Hodges, insurance specialist Samantha Silver and marine insurance and shipping disputes expert Jonathan Evans all being made up to partner, along with Cambridge-based clinical negligence specialist Amanda Mead.

The firm now has 169 partners with over a quarter female and has made a number of international moves this year, establishing a presence in Moscow, forming a joint law venture in Singapore and opening offices in Scotland.

Kennedys’ senior partner Nick Thomas says: ‘While we continue to welcome talent from outside the firm, nurturing our people and ensuring they have the opportunity to develop their careers at Kennedys is key to the growth of the firm and our future success.’

Meanwhile, national firm Bond Dickinson made up three in its 2015 round across its Bristol and Newcastle offices.

Two joined the firm’s partnership in Bristol with Andrew Harding promoted in real estate and Alastair Mitton promoted to IT Partner in its technology practice. Harding has focused on developing Bond Dickinson’s real estate investment and development offering with a focus on the hospitality and leisure sector, while Mitton’s primary experience has been on large IT and technology projects that have a strong regulatory bias, as well as data protection.

In Newcastle, Kevin Bell was been promoted as a corporate finance partner within the firm’s transport and infrastructure sector team. He advises on heavy and light rail franchise and concession bids, franchise mobilisations plus commercial and regulatory matters for train operating companies.

Also making up three was litigation-focused Kingsley Napley. The firm spread its promotions across practice areas with private client lawyer Simon Hardy, corporate & commercial specialist Anthony Macpherson and family law expert Claire Wood all making the grade.

Hardy specialises in Court of Protection work acting for individuals who lack the capacity to manage their property and affairs, as well as being responsible for Kingsley Napley’s professional Deputyship service. Macpherson’s experience spans a range of corporate transactions including M&A, joint ventures, shareholder agreements, corporate finance and private equity deals while Wood has focused on divorce and separation issues as well as drafting pre and post-nuptial agreements.

michael.west@legalease.co.uk