Pinsent Masons has boosted its leadership team after hiring its first chief operating officer (COO) and adding an external member to its global board.
Alastair Mitchell joined as Pinsents’ inaugural COO after spending four years at Holman Fenwick Willan. Prior to this Mitchell had spent 13 years at Linklaters, including five years in which he worked as the magic circle firm’s UK chief COO.
As part of his new role at Pinsents he will sit on the firm’s operations committee.
Pauline Egan has also joined Pinsents’ global board as a non-executive member. While working with the firm Egan will continue her roles as a non-executive at the UK subsidiary of Allied Irish Bank and the governorship of London adult education institution Morley College.
During her career Egan has also worked at the Royal Bank of Canada where she held the roles of head of London and head of strategy and business management for the wealth management division.
Pinsents’ senior partner Richard Foley said: “There’s significant evidence that organisations which have an external viewpoint to test and challenge at board level outperform those that do not, and I welcome Pauline in that capacity.
“Alastair is also a highly impressive individual whose focus will be on the efficient and effective running of our business operations on an international scale.”
The appointments are part of an on-going strategy to modernise Pinsents’ leadership structure. This strategy included appointing Rainer Kreifels and Joanne Ellis to the board in November.
In March Pinsents appointed former Labour MP Douglas Alexander as a strategic adviser to the firm. The former secretary of state for international development who served in Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s cabinets advises Pinsents on client engagement surrounding Britain’s upcoming referendum on whether to remain in the EU.
The firm recently inched closer to reaching its female diversity target after eight of the 18 partners it promoted were female lawyers. This year’s promotions round increased the proportion of women in the partnership up from 22 per cent to 23 per cent. Pinsents plans to increase this figure to 25 per cent by 2018.