Legal News Wales, with the help of our special guests, explore the tools, insight and processes that can help law firms in Wales become more resilient, competitive and operationally efficient - whatever the climate throws at us. From technology, wellbeing, pricing, compliance, marketing and leadership to recruitment and retention, this podcast covers it all and is ideal for SME legal practices - including barristers chambers.
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Emma Waddingham is the Editor & Founder of Legal News. She is a seasoned legal editor and journalist and experienced marketing & events consultant, working almost exclusively with the UK legal sector.
Visit legalnewswales.com
Damon has over 30 years’ experience in building secure systems and implementing best practices, helping companies across the globe to protect their intellectual property and private information.
During that time, Damon has established and grown PureCyber (formerly Wolfberry) to become an expert team of 28 employees headquartered in One Central Square, Cardiff and recently acknowledged as both “Most Innovative Cyber Security Company in the UK” and “Best International Cyber Consultancy Firm in the UK” – as well as co-founding the South Wales cyber security cluster, setting up similar clusters in Dubai and Japan; and advising several boards across education and government, on matters ranging from cyber resilience to educational standards.
For more information, visit the PureCyber website.
Dan trained at Dechert LLP before moving in-house to Network Rail in 2007. From 2016 to 2022 Dan was General Counsel (Regions) at Network Rail leading a team of 20 lawyers. In that time, Dan embedded his ‘people first’ approach to leadership, contributing to his team having the highest engagement scores across the company. In 2019, Dan founded the O Shaped Lawyer, driven by a desire to improve the legal profession for those who use it, are entering it and buy services from it.
Read more about O Shaped here.
David is a Director within the Audit and Business Services department at Azets, based in the firm's Cardiff office.
He is a qualified fellow member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, and has amassed a wealth of experience in working in both practice and Industry since qualifying.
His experience includes:
Ladies of Law was founded in November 2021 by Ella Watts, with the aim of creating an empowering legal platform on social media for women in law. After months of research, it was apparent how equality between the genders are still lacking in the legal field and how women have had to fight harder over the decades for the same opportunities and respect in the world of law. Ella is also a Consultant with the Legal Recruitment specialists, TSR Legal.
The legal platform is also a networking platform, connecting women from all stages of careers and walks of life to interact and support each other through social media, events and podcasts.
Since launching in 2021, Ladies of Law has amassed over 7k followers across social media, with soon to be 90 voluntary brand Ambassadors and a small team, working alongside their own careers to progress the platform.
Connect with Ladies of Law via its website.
Heather is the General Manager – Industry Readiness, at PEXA.
After practising law and holding multiple positions within Australia’s legal sector, Heather joined PEXA in 2015. She played a key role in the success of its domestic business – and now serves as General Manager, Industry Readiness, with the organisation working to streamline the remortgaging and home buying processes internationally in the UK.
In what is PEXA’s first foray abroad, Heather brings significant expertise to the initiative, having been central to the digital transformation of the conveyancing experience in Australia, leading frontline teams who were charged with supporting legal and conveyancing firms as they transitioned to completing property transactions through PEXA’s platform.
Visit the PEXA UK website here.
Iain is a Corporate Tax Partner and Chartered Accountant with Azets, based in its Cardiff and Bristol offices.
He has a wealth of tax experience having worked at a Big 4 firm for over 27 years prior to joining Azets in 2023.
During his career Iain has worked with a range of clients, advising charities, private business, large businesses, housing association and further/higher education institutions, advising in areas such as restructuring, charity tax and gift aid, tax governance, tax disputes as well as tax compliance.
Iain enjoys working closely will clients, developing strong relationships so he can provide the best possible service which aligns to their needs.
As Chief Executive Officer, Ieuan is responsible for the strategic and operational development of Validient. This includes the day-to-day running of the company from a commercial and analytical perspective, development of the team and business, and driving us towards Validient's vision.
Validient is an end-to-end commercial client lifecycle management system tailored for the legal and wider professional services industry. Noticing an industry-wide problem around the lack of technology, we have created Validient to automate the essential client-facing processes such as onboarding, engagement, and integrations.
For more information, visit validient.com
James is CEO of PEXA in the UK, a highly motivated executive leader with extensive experience in transformational change across financial and property sectors in the United Kingdom.
Most recently, James was CEO at JN Bank UK, a cloud-based challenger bank which he set up and obtained a new licence for, and CEO at Teachers Building Society, re-engineering it into a specialist lender.
James has extensive regulatory experience, with over 12 years as a panel member of the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). He is a values-led leader, with a keen eye for embedding strong culture amidst organisational progression.
Visit the PEXA UK website here.
Jonathan Davies is the Head of Wales at the Law Society of England and Wales. The Law Society's Wales office is based in Cardiff. The office represents our views and interests to the Welsh government, Welsh parliament or Senedd Cymru, justice sector stakeholders and at Westminster. Click here for more information.
Karen is a co-founder and Director at TSR Legal, a specialist national legal consultancy providing legal recruitment services since 2004.
At TSR Legal we provide temporary, permanent and locum candidates to the legal profession for some of the most prestigious law firms and niche solicitors in England and Wales. Our clients range from high street practices to the top legal 500 law firms across the UK.
TSR Legal strives to deliver the very best legal opportunities and client services possible. We have a large network of loyal clients and hundreds of successful candidates who have helped TSR Legal become one of the most recognised legal recruitment consultancies in the UK.
Our head office is based in the centre of Cardiff and our Regional Consultants are based at the centre of each Regions legal industry.
Katherine leads the Corporate Finance offering for Azets across the Wales and South West regions, providing the full range of transaction related support to SMEs.
Katherine is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and has more than 20 years experience in providing value added advisory services to clients with her legal background providing a broader view of transaction and funding processes. Katherine was awarded the prestigious Wales Insider Dealmaker of the Year award in 2022.
The corporate finance and wider advisory support provided by Katherine and her team includes deal management services to clients seeking to acquire or exit, raising funding from a wide range of funders and development agencies, strategic reviews including development of integrated financial models, pre-acquisition and pre-lending due diligence and systems benchmarking exercises for private, public and third sector clients.
Laura Hughes is head of the public law team at Browne Jacobson, as well as head of the insurance and public risk department. Laura is an experienced public law expert who advises her clients on their most important and high-profile matters. She acts across the public sector advising clients in government, local government, education, health, audit, sports and natural resources.
Laura’s clients include Welsh Government, National Audit Office, Natural Resources Wales, Sport England, Qualification Wales, Northern Ireland Audit Office, UK Sport, and the Cabinet Office.
Laura is happiest when she is sat around a client’s Board or Executive table helping them through their trickiest issues to a decision which is defendable, lawful and made in the public interest.
Co-Founder & Director
After graduating from Cardiff Law School in 2003 Nicola joined a busy conveyancing firm in South Wales. During the sixteen years at the highly successful firm, Nicola was involved in the implementation and management of a title checking department. This being the first of its kind in the UK.
Throughout this time Nicola has gained extensive knowledge, experience and management expertise in all areas of title investigation.
With a wealth of operational management experience and unrivalled subject matter expertise, Nicola’s tireless work ethic has been central to formation and delivery of ntitle and its market disrupting service. (Click here for more)
Co-Founder & Director
Nicola has worked in the legal industry since graduating from University in 2002 and subsequently completing her CILEx qualifications, for which Nicola is now a graduate member.
Undertaking roles in litigation, commercial & residential property and plot sales before specialising in title investigation from 2012, where Nicola met Nicola (Ashley).
Benefiting from both volume and high street fee earning roles, Nicola very much understands the mechanics, challenges and demands of the conveyancing sector.
With a passion for service excellence and innovation Nicola has relished and excelled in pushing the boundaries in bringing ntitle to market. (Click here for more).
Encouraging businesses to adopt ‘carte blanche to change’
Shaun Jardine, Director of Big Yellow Penguin, is unashamedly and unapologetically a disruptor.
As a solicitor, commercial director, and former law firm CEO of a top 250 law firm, he has a unique insight into what makes law firms tick and how to exploit the good bits and ditch the bad.
Shaun’s mantra is “what you do today, will determine your tomorrow.’ Shaun founded Big Yellow Penguin (BYP) in 2021 with the aim of encouraging and helping lawyers and law firms to move on from the 20th century and adopt practices, including value pricing, which will make their futures more secure, both financially and operationally, and enjoy practising their craft again. To contact Shaun or to read more, visit his website, here.
Tim is a partner at Browne Jacobson, specialising in matters involving assessments of public and administrative law risk, particularly those matters with a Welsh devolution focus. He is also an experienced legislative draftsman. Tim establishes close working relationships with his clients and regularly operates as an extension to in-house legal teams.
He regularly acts for government departments and other public bodies defending judicial review proceedings.
Tim previously worked as an in-house Welsh Government lawyer, as well as previously in Environment Agency Wales (now Natural Resources Wales). His experience has given him a unique understanding of the considerations entailed in, and a complete appreciation of, the process of policy development from inception through to formal decision and implementation through legislation.
Eve Piffaretti is Head of Office in Wales and a Partner in the Blake Morgan Commercial and Charities team. Eve is a specialist Public, Regulatory & Governance lawyer with a broad practice.
Eve is also a member of the Law Society's National Board for Wales - a body of representative solicitors. For her full profile, click here.