Moving in-house to Brookfield in 2016, legal counsel and VP Rose Meller worked her way to a promotion within a year.

One of four lawyers in the investment manager’s property group, she is the only in-houser handling real estate development issues, while also working with the wider team on significant refinancings and acquisitions.

In a particularly busy year for the department, Meller supported on the acquisition of a number of student accommodation assets from Curlew in a big boost to Brookfield’s own portfolio of properties. She also led on the acquisition of Saco’s serviced apartment business at the start of last year and is supporting the group on the subsequent expansion of the portfolio.

Working for Brookfield, Meller is behind the development and refinancing of some of the City’s most prominent landmarks. In 2018, the former Mayer Brown lawyer successfully completed the refinancing of the CityPoint Tower and Amazon’s London HQ, called the Principal Place building.

With her development hat on, Meller is further closely involved in the pre-leasing of 100 Bishopsgate to prospective tenants that include the likes of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Paul Hastings.

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In the five years since becoming Morgan Sindall Group’s general counsel, Helen Mason has built up a high-calibre legal team from scratch across the FTSE 250 construction group.

While her team provides day-to-day legal support across a wide array of construction projects, such as Crossrail and the Lewisham Gateway regeneration scheme, a major focus of Mason’s work in the past two years has been the delivery of regulatory training across the group’s six business units and cultivating a robust compliance culture. Mason personally drafted the content for a set of eight interactive e-learning courses, with subjects ranging from anti-bribery and GDPR to modern slavery and anti-competitive behaviour. She travelled to sites to ensure all the questions were answered and understood.

As a result, in-house lawyers are now involved from an early stage of business decisions, and there is an encouraging rate for internal whistleblowing – key to strong corporate governance and a manifestation of compliance culture.

Another remarkable contribution from Mason saw her cut the group’s list of external advisers from 60 to three. In the process, she significantly reduced the group’s legal spend and brought greater quality control to the advice provided by panel firms.

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Lawyers are by nature risk-averse individuals. When Peter Limbert’s employers were asked in advance of the 2018 play-off final whether promotion to the English Premier League would require an open-top bus parade through the streets, the offer was declined. Who wants to tempt fate like that?

The football club’s promotion was the jewel in Fulham’s crown last year and for Limbert, it preceded a summer that would see him become the first-ever GC at a promoted club to handle more than £100m in transfers. Not only is £100m an enormous figure, it is also a pertinent one as the club’s redevelopment of the Riverside Stand running parallel to the Thames will cost that same figure. The project sees Limbert helping to revolutionise a structure which has stood since 1896, bringing one of English football’s most iconic pieces of architecture into the 21st century.

His work for club owner and Indian businessman Shahid Khan on the proposed acquisition of Wembley Stadium for a reported £600m may still bear fruit, and it demonstrated Limbert’s collaborative approach across Khan’s network, working closely with GCs from other Khan-owned entities, NFL team the Jacksonville Jaguars and Illinois-based automotive business Flex-N-Gate.

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Regarded as an undoubted star in real estate finance lawyering, Katherine Laurenson joined L&G 10 years ago and has seen her work broaden into strategically critical projects.

Heading a legal team of six, she has been central to the transformation of Legal & General Property, leading on fund structuring and restructuring that supports a diversified asset and investor base, and building out the private credit capability.

The past couple of years have seen Laurenson lead on an enormous variety of matters, including aircraft leasing to major infra projects such as London Gateway and Tilbury, regeneration projects in Cardiff and Newcastle and long-term social impact projects. Her appointment in July to lead the LGIM Real Assets Solutions team underscored her value to the business, while her refresh of the legal panel in early 2018 brought in new collaborative models among L&G’s external firms.

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As head of legal for financial stability at the Bank of England, Theresa (Tess) Kelly is one of the lead lawyers right at the heart of Brexit-related challenges. For some, that might not be the most enviable place to be.

For Kelly, as well as the team she has built, the proximity to the historic events currently unfolding in the UK means the frenetic period straddling 2018 and 2019 may well be the inflexion point of her legal career. But then again Kelly, who has been with the Bank for nearly six years, is a renowned team builder and is only just getting started.

She was one of the first two lawyers to work in the Bank’s resolution directorate, the legal function created in the aftermath of the financial crisis to ensure that any distressed financial institution fails in an orderly way. Kelly quickly progressed to heading a much larger, more fungible, division of some 25 lawyers, which oversees not only resolution but also the regulation of the financial markets infrastructure.

The expansion overseen by Kelly relates to the Bank’s mission of protecting financial stability. In Brexit year, that is likely to be some challenge, but one that Kelly will relish.

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Airbnb’s general counsel for the EMEA region Fiona Dormandy manages more than 20 lawyers in a team spread across seven countries, in one of the world’s most high-profile and rapidly growing disruptive businesses.

The speed of Airbnb’s expansion has brought with it an inevitable, presidential suite-sized suitcase of legal issues, not least a raft of international regulatory challenges that currently include a case in France over whether the company should have a real estate licence, which has been referred to the European Court of Justice.

But Dormandy’s focus is not just on purely legal matters. Succession planning and ensuring healthy career opportunities for her team are issues Dormandy cares passionately about, while Airbnb’s highly diverse customer base means that inclusion issues feature highly on the former Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer associate’s ranking of important matters. Indeed, Dormandy once blocked the appointment of a top-tier law firm after it fielded an all-male, five-partner panel pitch team. Time for some out there to wake up to the new economy and the impact of trailblazers like Dormandy.

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After jointly leading the five-way merger and the bond, bank finance and convertible debt refinancing that created the Ardonagh Group in 2017, last year saw Ardonagh’s dynamic chief counsel Frances Coats lead on one of the group’s acquisitions, two private bond taps, adding additional lenders to the company’s revolving credit facility and a backstop letter of credit to support legacy redress liabilities, which needed to be carefully structured to fold into its existing finance arrangements. Coats also led on the first-in-market receivables securitisation transaction and the public notes offering that formed part of the insurance company’s acquisition of Swinton, a game-changer for the group.

Bringing in multiple additional businesses did not mean extra headcount, so Coats invested what little spare time she had on internal efficiencies. She led the way in creating, testing, honing and finally launching a matter management process, and brought in new ways of working that focused on value to the business and a suite of templates to permit efficient service of the expanded group.

Coats’ leadership was recognised internally when she and two of her reports were rewarded with nominations by business stakeholders for Ardonagh’s annual internal employee recognition award.

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Sabine Chalmers can raise a toast to 2019; the GC at BT has made it through a year of reformation.

Having been out of the country for 23 years, she landed in London in April to take on the GC mantle from Dan Fitz. The climate was somewhat frosty – BT had announced that it was cutting 13,000 jobs and so Chalmers had the task of reshaping the legal function. With a legal line-up of 400 spread across the globe, she has since been asking the refreshed team to identify the areas to prioritise and where investments should be made.

It was also a period of unprecedented transformation across the whole company – in May, BT launched a new strategy and announced a new CEO would be joining in the new year, with Chalmers ensuring it is a smooth transition.

Over the past eight months, Chalmers has been laying the groundwork for what lies ahead; as telecommunication is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the UK and under the spotlight of GDPR, she has been engaging daily with the Government and regulators, and understanding and establishing external stakeholders. Her big areas of focus – telecommunications regulation, competition law and data, privacy and security – are ever-evolving. Chalmers’ chapter is just beginning.

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In the space of only four years – she joined the company as legal adviser in 2012 – Laura Brunker has been elevated to the role of general counsel at McLaren.

She leads a team of six in-house lawyers dealing with McLaren’s legal affairs on a global scale: interaction with governments on supply chain strategy, procurement of vehicle materials and components, research and development partnerships, legal agreements with a network of nearly 90 retailers – all carried out within the company’s legal office in Woking.

In the past two years, Brunker has been instrumental in the creation of McLaren’s Sheffield composite technology centre, which will develop lightweight carbon fibre and composites that will save weight and increase energy efficiency.

As part of the company’s 2025 business plan, she will oversee the delivery of 18 lightest-in-class new models and derivatives, and the expansion of McLaren’s global retail network in Russia and India.

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Amy Brookbanks joined Ocado in 2009 as a commercial solicitor and has been part of a team that has grown both in size and visibility at the online retailer. Over the past couple of years, Ocado has landed key international deals, which has meant that the legal team has had to negotiate the licensing of the company’s proprietary technology to overseas retailers – and the lion’s share of the work for those whose deals were done in-house.

With those ventures bedded in, the task for Ocado’s legal team in 2019 is to invest in operational excellence. As a result, Brookbanks has moved from being co-head of the commercial legal team to become head of operations, spearheading the project of delivering efficient processes and examining Ocado’s resourcing.

Brookbank’s task of aligning an energetic legal team with best-in-class processes will be crucial to Ocado and its new partners Casino in France, Ica in Sweden, Sobeys in Canada and, most importantly, Kroger in the US. It is a key role at the retailer, which lives and breathes data and responsiveness.

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Long regarded as one of the most talented up and coming in-house leaders, Katherine Bellau’s work at financial services comparison business and consumer champion moneysupermarket.com has attracted some notice. 2019 will be Bellau’s year as she moves into the general counsel and company secretary role and member of the executive team at the fast-growing FTSE-listed company. This year will see her continue to align the legal team with the ambitious strategy set by the new CEO in 2017, and lead the team’s work to underpin the rollout of new digital offerings, as well as taking responsibility for the procurement function.

Over the past year, the company has seen a tech replatforming, further digital developments in which users can personalise their household bills through an app, and the launch of a fintech product that will digitise the mortgage process. The focus of Bellau’s work has also widened from B2C to include B2B in the form of partnering with banks and financial services providers to give them access to digital solutions. Passionate about diversity and inclusion, Bellau has championed flexible working both by example and instituting it into her legal team.

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Though a newcomer to the City, King & Wood Mallesons EUME managing partner Wang Rongkang has demonstrated his leadership skills following his 2017 relocation from Shenzhen to grow the new London KWM offering.

Under his stewardship, the relaunched KWM offices in Europe and the Middle East have got off to a strong start, shaking off the shadow cast by the administration of former verein member SJ Berwin.

In London, its most important base in the region, the firm’s seven-partner office turned over £11.8m in its first 12 months of operation, with a profit margin of 46 per cent.

Wang was also instrumental in sealing a long-term lease for the firm’s new premises in the Walkie Talkie, and for several lateral hires.

He expects the London office to grow to a £12.5m business over 2019.

In his own words, the firm will not compare itself to the magic circle, but aspire to be the “Asian giant” in the City.

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Birmingham-based DLA Piper employment partner Sandra Wallace is destined for great things. From a legal practice perspective, she already has a stellar reputation for representing national and international clients on the full remit of employment law services.

From a management point of view, DLA Piper’s UK managing partner between 2015 and 2018, who led the steering committee on the firm’s London office move, has also just had her joint managing director for Europe remit extended to include the Nordic region, Portugal, France and Ireland.

That’s not all. In December, Wallace was appointed as a social mobility commissioner; an external role in a non-governmental body that will recommend policy changes.

Her employment law background has been instrumental in helping get under the skin of DLA. But despite apparently having had to be “persuaded” to join the executive, Wallace is a prominent voice inside and outside the firm. Next step, global? Surely just a matter of time.

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Sarah Walker-Smith had always planned to go to drama school, but at the last minute ‘bottled it’ and trained as a chartered accountant instead, qualifying with Deloitte and then moving to Coopers & Lybrand (now PwC).

Yet she has managed to play many parts across her career, which has spanned finance roles and change management at Boots, an MBA, then BD head and later COO roles at Midlands stalwart Browne Jacobson.

At Browne Jacobson, where she had responsibility for business strategy, she helped grow the business from £18m to touching £80m. In 2019, Walker-Smith – who writes, produces and directs theatre in her spare time – becomes CEO of Shakespeare Martineau, one of the few female non-lawyer chief executives in the top 50 UK firms. With her track record of growth, expect to see Shakespeares much more visible in the national mid-market over the coming years.

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One of the great unnoticed success stories of the last few years has been the internal financial revolution at DAC Beachcroft spearheaded by managing partner David Pollitt. In the last half-decade, the firm has more than doubled its average profit per equity partner, growing that figure by 103.1 per cent from £250,000 at the end of the 2013/14 financial year to £530,000 by year-end in 2018.

All of that was achieved by adding just 2.7 per cent in overall partner headcount. How? Through strict financial discipline, says Pollitt.

Now that the foundations for financial success are in place, it is imperative to Pollitt that the firm builds on that.

International expansion is high on the firm’s list with openings in Europe and South America planned, though leveraging higher-level work from existing clients across the firm’s core sectors of real estate, health and insurance is a central part of that growth plan.

That plan bore fruit last year, winning a key mandate for Cygnet Health Care. Pollitt has led the internal revolution; now it is time to truly kick on for his firm.

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Elaine Motion is the first female chair of Scottish firm Balfour + Manson, and a well-known name in Scotland for her public law and clinical negligence expertise. However, what put her in the spotlight in 2018 was the year-long legal battle she fought seeking clarity over an important point of public law which could potentially provide an alternative way out from the political turmoil over Brexit.

At the end of 2017, Motion, along with Aidan O’Neill QC and a group of Scottish MPs, launched the legal challenge to take the question of whether the United Kingdom can call off Brexit without the consent of other EU member states to the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

Since then, she has worked alongside a team of barristers in 14 court hearings, with the first 13 before the Court of Session in Scotland and the latest one in the ECJ.

On 10 December, the ECJ ruled that the UK could unilaterally cancel its withdrawal from the EU without needing the consent of the other 27 member states.

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Maggie Moodie began her current three-year stint as Morton Fraser’s firm-wide chair in May 2017 and made changes immediately. Notably, she formalised agile working across the entire firm.

Moodie is adamant that this was not done as a space- or money-saving initiative, but was about treating people as adults and trusting them to get on with the job.

The move is indicative of the litigation partner’s approach to running the Scottish firm’s business. Obtaining the most out of all of Morton Fraser’s lawyers and staff is, for her, critical. The firm’s recent record financial results, which saw it break through the £20m turnover barrier for the first time, suggest it is working.

Indeed, the theme of autonomy permeates the firm, with the partners having unanimously indicated in January 2018 that they intend to remain an independent Scottish firm. It is perhaps appropriate, in Brexit year, that the partners are keen to retain control of their future direction.

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There are few leaders who have had as much of an impact on their firm as DWF’s Andrew Leaitherland. At the end of 2017, he was reappointed as managing partner for a fifth consecutive term. Indeed, he is DWF’s first and only managing partner. Since originally taking on the role, Leaitherland has helped transform DWF from a two-office, £34m turnover business in the North West to a much larger international outfit, with revenue up by 456 per cent over the period to more than £200m and total headcount closing in on 3,000 in 27 locations. This year, even all of this might seem like small fry. In March, DWF is set to become the first-ever law firm to go public on the London Stock Exchange’s main list.

It will be the largest law firm float by some distance and could set the ball rolling on more big-ticket IPOs. The funds raised and momentum generated are likely to see DWF not only continue its rapid expansion, but also scale up significantly in its Connected Services division, which includes a range of complementary specialist solutions, consultative services and products sitting alongside DWF’s core legal offering. Under Leaitherland, DWF is going where no firm has gone before.

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Kerry Glanville, who until last year was the senior partner and head of real estate dispute resolution at London-based property and private client firm Pemberton Greenish, has just taken on a major new role.

Glanville is now head of the Chelsea office at freshly merged Cripps Pemberton Greenish, a firm that can claim to have one of the largest property practices in the market, with some 150 lawyers, including more than 20 in real estate dispute resolution.

The latter is an area near to Glanville’s heart, with the former Slaughter and May lawyer a well-known litigator in the specialist area of leasehold enfranchisement work. Last year, Glanville had two cases in the Court of Appeal, both of which had significant implications for how vast swathes of London real estate are owned, valued and managed.

In January, she led the team that secured success for landlord Sloane Stanley in Mundy v the Trustees of the Sloane Stanley Estate, while later in the year she was back in the Court of Appeal, instructed by the Crown Estate regarding one of its properties, Whitehall Court. The combination of Brexit, a turbulent economy and a significantly enlarged team post-merger suggests that 2019 is unlikely to be any quieter for Glanville.

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Few stories have created as much interest in and around the UK legal market as the trend for law firm IPOs. Indeed, there is enormous interest not only in the businesses that have gone public but also the people driving forward this seismic shift. And none more so than the person behind the era change at Rosenblatt, CEO Nicola Foulston.

The former boss of a hedge fund and Brands Hatch, Foulston already has a distinguished pedigree in business, but last year saw her taking her first-ever steps into the world of law.

Effectively an ‘outsider’, Foulston is not one to mince her words about the opportunities she sees in the legal market, believing strongly that most firms are years behind where they should be in terms of the nuts and bolts of running a business.

This year, Foulston’s willingness to embrace a non-traditional approach to legal services will see her continue to expand Rosenblatt’s services, notably in relation to litigation funding, operational excellence (particularly in terms of innovative pricing and the use of new technology) and strategic expansion. Expect to see collaborations and acquisitions proliferate in 2019. Do not expect to see anything remotely dull.

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