Top 50 law firm Penningtons Manches Cooper has announced its senior promotions for 2023, with six colleagues being appointed to partner and one to associate director as of 1 April.
The newly appointed individuals are:
- Chris Bates – construction and infrastructure
- Sam Davies – commercial real estate
- Amy Fox – family
- Charlotte Hill – commercial dispute resolution
- Ben Law – commercial real estate
- James Lewis – private client
- Laura McCann (associate director) – social housing
As part of the construction and infrastructure team, Chris Bates focuses on handling high value and technically complex disputes. He advises clients on construction and related insurance issues arising from large scale building projects and civil infrastructure schemes. He is currently heavily involved in the firm’s fire safety work, and was consulted by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities over aspects of the Building Safety Act during its passage through Parliament. He is also a member of the firm’s growing international and cross discipline insurance group.
Sam Davies has risen through the ranks at the firm, having joined in 2012 as a trainee, and qualifying into the commercial real estate team in 2014. His practice covers a wide range of non-contentious commercial property matters, and has a broad client base, including developers, landowners, landlords, tenants, sellers and buyers of office, retail and industrial premises. Sam also advises clients on matters related to development, planning, secured lending and the refinancing of commercial premises and property disposals as part of corporate deals.
Amy Fox joined the firm as an Associate in 2008. Amy specialises in all areas of family law, in particular complex financial disputes involving high value, multiple jurisdictional assets. Amy also has significant experience representing parents in private law children disputes and has a particular interest in cases involving the international relocation of children. Her promotion takes the number of partners in the family team to 16 – the largest cohort amongst the top tier firms ranked by the leading legal directories.
Charlotte Hill has extensive experience of commercial litigation, with specialist expertise in advising on digital assets, including cryptocurrencies and NFTs, and blockchain disputes. She recently acted in one of the very few contested cryptocurrency disputes, achieving a successful outcome for her client, and earlier this year was named ‘Woman of the Year – FinTech/Crypto Innovation – UK’ at the Citywealth Powerwomen Awards. Awarded the ‘Rising Star’ rank in The Legal 500 on six occasions, Charlotte has also been named as the chair of EMEA for Multilaw's Young Lawyers Group.
Ben Law is a member of the commercial real estate team who joined the firm in 2018. He has experience acting on the acquisition, disposal, letting and development of traditional asset classes including offices, retail, hotels and logistics through to alternative asset classes including senior living, build to rent and social supported housing. His clients include REITs, listed funds, private-equity real estate firms, overseas investors, family offices and experienced mixed-use developers. He has a particular interest in the use of new technologies, including machine learning and artificial intelligence, for the delivery of streamlined legal services.
James Lewis joined the firm in 2017. He provides high net worth and ultra-high net worth clients with a broad range of private client advice – often with an international dimension – including estate planning and the preparation of wills and trusts, taking into account the needs of family business succession planning, general wealth protection for future generations and tax efficiency. He also has expertise in complex probate estate administration dealing with post-death tax and estate planning opportunities and HMRC tax negotiations and has particular specialism in cross-border estate administration, resolving issues of international conflicts of law and co-ordinating overseas lawyers to administer foreign situated assets and to seek advice as to applicable foreign taxes and assessing its interaction with UK tax.
Laura McCann, who is promoted to associate director, is a highly experienced member of the social housing team acting for housing providers, housing associations and local authorities. She is also a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives. Laura’s expertise spans a range of specialist services that include advising clients on the sale and purchase of affordable and outright home ownership schemes, mixed tenure joint venture schemes, as well as acting for Registered Providers on all after sale matters. Laura is a member of Women in Social Housing and the Chartered Institute of Housing and regularly shares her expertise through training sessions and webinars on home ownership topics.
Penningtons Manches Cooper’s CEO, Helen Drayton (pictured), commented: 'My congratulations on behalf of the firm to our newly appointed partners and associate director promotion, which comes as a direct result of their very hard work, great client service and dedicated contributions to the firm. Developing and mentoring our colleagues who display the potential to become partners and associate directors is key to us being successful with our people strategy. I’m so pleased that Chris, Sam, Amy, Charlotte, Ben, James and Laura have benefitted from that and I can’t wait to see them build further on their achievements to date at PMC.'
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