Mills & Reeve welcomes ten new experts into its prestigious partnership from June 2023.
Mills & Reeve is proud to promote ten more principal associates to partners this year, boosting the total number of partners in the firm to 158. They will be based in Cambridge, Norwich, Oxford, Manchester, Birmingham and London and cover sectors and markets such as technology, healthcare, education, government, insurance and family. This year also boasts the largest amount of promotions in recent years for one sector with five real estate lawyers being acknowledged.
Claire Clarke, managing partner at Mills & Reeve, said: "It's great to see so much talent coming through into our partnership. I look forward to seeing the positive changes that these new partners will make to the firm including helping us continue to deliver outstanding client service for our clients, exploit opportunities in our sectors and markets and help us continue to grow as a firm.”.
Cambridge
Sophie Burton-Jones
Sophie is a trusted advisor in our commercial team with a focus on technology, health and government sectors. Her expertise is in major health IT projects and inbound and outbound technology licensing for both customers and suppliers. She hopes to further grow the firm’s relationships with technology clients ranging from start-ups to scale-ups, particularly in the Cambridge Market. Sophie has been ranked as a ‘Next Generation Lawyer’ in both Legal 500 and Chambers & Partners for several years.
Poppy Short
Poppy is a corporate education lawyer who sits within the education sector. She will be involved with driving ambitious plans for the growth of the sector as well as the corporate and commercial service line. Poppy specialises in advising higher education institutions, schools, academies, and large charities on a broad range of corporate law, charity law, governance, regulatory and funding issues. Poppy enjoys developing strong client relationships and uses her knowledge and understanding of the sector to help clients meet their strategic objectives. She's an Innovation Champion at Mills & Reeve, which means that she promotes, encourages, and drives innovation across the firm and is focused on developing client service.
Sarah Cooke
Sarah is a real estate partner specialising in large scale investment transactions, commercial development projects and portfolio management for investors across various asset classes, including office, retail and leisure, industrial, logistics and life sciences. Her clients include institutional investors, funds, large family offices and property companies.
Tom Nash
Tom is a real estate lawyer specialising in complex development projects. He acts for a wide range of clients, but particularly for investors with a longer term, patient capital approach to investment and development, including universities, colleges, and landed estates. Tom is listed as a "Next Generation Lawyer" in Legal 500.
Norwich
Rachel McDonnell
Rachel is a dispute resolution lawyer who has been helping clients to resolve their disputes for over 15 years. She has extensive experience in high value corporate and commercial litigation, banking and financial services litigation and alternative dispute resolution, and financial services regulatory and corporate white collar crime investigations. Rachel will be developing a national practice for the firm in contentious financial services given her specialism in the sector.
David Siddall
David acts across a wide breadth of corporate real estate matters with a specific focus on the property aspects associated with large scale corporate and procurement projects. David has three focus areas - corporate support (for merger & acquisition deals), corporate occupiers (advising corporate clients on their premises and operational real estate requirements) and corporate real estate consultancy (working with professional services firms to provide structuring advice and transaction support). As part of the region's leading property team, David receives regular instructions on multi-site acquisitions and disposals and his approach is underpinned by significant experience in advising clients on the commercial risk profile associated with property portfolios.
Birmingham
Jagjit Virdi
Jagjit has over 15 years of defence litigation experience with claims involving personal injury, occupational stress and medical malpractice. He regularly advises clients in a variety of sectors including insurance, healthcare, government, construction and sport. He predominantly advises on complex disputes involving serious or catastrophic injuries. Jagjit also works with clients to help with their risk management and claims prevention strategies. As a partner, Jagjit will continue to grow the firm’s casualty practice and strategically develop the growth of Mills & Reeve’s medmal practice.
Oxford
Tim Whitney
Tim is an experienced family lawyer and mediator who advises on the full range of issues arising out of family and relationship breakdown. This includes financial settlements, children matters, and wealth protection. A year into opening our Oxford office, Tim has established a respected team of experienced family specialists to help clients in the region. Tim has been ranked in Chambers and Partners and Legal 500 since 2019 with interviewees commenting that he is outstanding lawyer and mediator who is incredibly skilled and successful.
London
Victoria Davies
Victoria is a specialist residential real estate solicitor with significant experience in the acquisition, disposal, refinance and development of residential property. Her strengths lie in her ability to develop and maintain strong professional relationships and in providing wide-ranging, pragmatic advice to both commercial and private clients across various industry bases.
Manchester
Jennifer Lewis
Jennifer is a part of the real estate team, specialising in education and healthcare and in particular working in primary care and with universities. Her extensive clients include University of Salford, Rowlands Pharmacy, University of Liverpool, Borough Care, Malling Health and numerous GP practices. In the Legal 500 (2022) Jennifer was praised highly for her “understanding of the market” and “robust advice”.
