Nigel Spencer is Professor of Education Innovation and Professional Practice at Queen Mary University of London. He has been working closely with the Law School since 2014 and, with Christina Perry and Valsamis Mitsilegas, co-created the School’s innovative Law in Practice programme.
Following an early academic career leading international, inter-disciplinary research projects, Nigel worked in Professional Services Firms for 20 years, initially in a client-facing role at PricewaterhouseCoopers. For 13 years, he then held senior talent development roles at two international law firms, creating a number of award-winning programmes and focusing especially on experiential learning strategies:
Find out more about Professor Nigel Spencer.
Frances, Deputy Director of the Hub for Professional Practice, is the Director of the Queen Mary Legal Advice Centre based within the Department of Law and a practising barrister. In addition to her duties as the Queen Mary Legal Advice Centre Director, Frances teaches two LAC modules; The Practice of Law in a Clinical Environment and StreetLaw which are on the undergraduate degree. Frances is an expert in the current law surrounding the sharing of intimate images, and regularly speaks on this topic.
Prior to joining Queen Mary University of London, Frances was working at the independent criminal bar. She practiced from 15 New Bridge Street Chambers, where she remains an associate tenant. Her work included conducting criminal and quasi-criminal cases – mainly funded through legal aid. Frances also has extensive experience of representing those who have been arrested at the police station.
Frances is also a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Find out more about Frances Ridout.
Peter Alfandary is CEO and Founder of “PRA Cross-Culture & Development”,and has been a regular Guest Lecturer on our Reed Smith Business Skills Masterclass series, run for Queen Mary students since 2015.
Peter brings over 35 years of experience working internationally as a law firm partner, and now acts as a consultant for international professional services firms and corporations in the areas of cross-cultural communication skills, relationship building, networking and presentation skills.
As Senior Vice President of the French Chamber of Commerce in the UK, Peter is highly active in the Franco-British business community, and is bi-lingual in French and English.
Peter is also a senior Guest Lecturer at the leading business school EDHEC where he teaches MBA students. He is a regular public speaker, and his TEDx talk on culture issues has been viewed over 500,000 times.
In 2003, Peter was awarded the Legion of Honour, France’s highest decoration for his services to Franco-British business relations. In 2018, he was promoted from Chevalier to the rank of Officier de la Légion d’Honneur.
Catherine Goodman is a Lead Practice Innovation and Knowledge Counsel at Paul Hastings, supporting the firm’s transactional practice areas in the London office and leading global innovation projects.
Catherine has over 20 years’ legal experience, working as a corporate lawyer, senior business law lecturer and professional support lawyer. In her current role with the Paul Hastings’ Practice Innovation and Legal Solutions department, Catherine runs legal tech projects for all practice groups, optimizing legal processes with innovative technology solutions, and develops and delivers legal tech education sessions and workshops.
Catherine is a proud member of the UK Law Commission Industry Working Group of experts on e-signing. Catherine led a digitalisation project that won The Lawyer Awards 2022, “Most Innovative use of Tech”, was nominated for Legal Week’s Legal Innovation Awards 2022 Outstanding Training Innovation for the Queen Mary University and Paul Hastings Practice Innovation internship, and was a European Women in Legal Tech 2020 nominee.
For the past 25 years, in the role of both senior executive and specialist advisor, Anne has been responsible for growing business units through strategic development initiatives. These have embraced sales effectiveness, cross-border effectiveness, operational effectiveness, sales team and client relationship development and, more recently, digital transformation.
She has worked for market leaders in several industries (Hertz, EY, Cendant, and DBSchenker) and was the Chief Commercial Officer of Damco (the logistics arm of AP Moller Maersk) in North Asia. Anne has built commercial functions including hiring large ‘Business to Business’ (B2B) sales and key account teams, developing processes and tools for commercial excellence and setting up performance measures and systems – and she has contributed to major global wins.
Anne also regularly advises a range of global firms within the professional services sector, combining industry B2B sales best practice with a deep understanding of how to translate and to motivate people who think for a living to shift their mind-set and drive exceptional client growth.
Director and founder of Fractal.Legal, Lisa qualified as a solicitor at DLA Piper in 2006 after studies in Law, European Legal Studies and Mandarin Chinese at the University of Durham as well as the Legal Practice Course at the University of Law. She has subsequently worked as a corporate and social economy solicitor, professional support lawyer, legal technologist and legal operations counsel at organisations including Slaughter and May, Lupton Fawcett LLP, Wrigleys Solicitors LLP, KPMG Law, Diageo plc and The Chancery Lane Project.
Specialising in ESG and data ethics, Lisa advises organisations as a business consultant on projects at the intersection between law, data and technology. She is an Open Data Institute Certified Data Ethics Professional, a member of the UK Legal Technology Association Innovation Sounding Board and of the Society for Computers and Law. Lisa is also a participant in the open source legal collaboration, noslegal.org.
Mike is an Honorary Professor in the Hub for Professional Practice at Queen Mary University of London’s School of Law, and a partner in Professional Service Firms International, the leading European consultancy for professional services firms. He works with the leaders of many law firms and professional service firms to enhance their ability to lead their teams, organisations and themselves. The aim is always to create stronger, sustainable and more profitable businesses. Mike worked with the Hub’s team to create Queen Mary’s digital leadership course “Leadership out of the Box”, available through the global learning platform Coursera.
Since 2014 Mike has been consulting full time with a range of law firms and other professional service firms both in the UK and internationally. His key areas of expertise and interest are at the intersection of strategy, commercial success and the organisation’s people agenda. Mike has over 30 years’ experience in the professional services sector, and for most of the last twenty years he has consulted around the world with partners and leadership teams. Mike has also co-authored the best-selling books “How to Lead Smart People” with Arun Singh in 2019, and “From Work Life to New Life: Re-writing the Rules of Retirement” with Rebecca Hill in 2022.
Find out more about Mike.
Katrina Watson is the Senior Manager in the Learning and Development team at Reed Smith LLP and has been a regular Guest Lecturer on our Reed Smith Business Skills Masterclass series, run for Queen Mary students since 2015.
Katrina has worked in Learning and Development for 20 years in various industries including law, insurance and banking. She is a Chartered Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, and in her current role works on a broad range of Learning and Development initiatives from risk eLearning to the pre-partner development programme for Senior Associates and Counsel. A major focus since 2019 has been the creation and implementation of the innovative and unique Reed Smith Professional SQE – enabling future trainees to “earn while they learn” preparing for the SQE exams alongside part time work within the Business Services, pro-bono or clients teams.