What are your areas of risk and compliance specialism?

I specialise in assisting the legal sector with all their compliance needs. This has involved working across the legal industry supporting firms with their risk processes and procedures ensuring they are compliant. With regulation constantly changing it is important that firms are kept abreast regulatory changes as they arise.

Over the past 5 and a half years my work has varied from advising on regulation including the Money Laundering Regulations, Criminal Finances Act, Equality Act, Bribery Act, training staff, completing firmwide strategic risk and compliance analysis of firm’s risk management framework to successfully taking firms through accreditations such as the Lexcel and CQS accreditations. I have also successfully worked with law firms and IT firms to attain the Legal Eye Quality Mark.

What’s your background?

I am a qualified solicitor with over 12 years of experience in the legal sector. I began my career in private practice working in the conveyancing, family and private client departments before specialising in family law. I gained invaluable experience and knowledge in private practice having daily contact with clients, attending court regularly and managing a client case to successful outcome. My background in the legal sector has helped me immensely in my role in risk and compliance.

Relevant qualifications

I am a qualified solicitor.

How would you describe your approach to working with clients?

I have always been an approachable individual where clients have felt comfortable discussing with me any queries that they may have. My working style is to ensure that the client needs are listened to and an appropriate action plan made which suits the clients and the culture of the firm. I feel the most important part of my job is to be able to work with clients in a way which fits in with their work style and fundamentally achieves the best outcome for them.

What’s the most rewarding thing about your work?

The most rewarding part of my job is where I have assisted firms who have had no risk and compliance procedures in place and I have managed to implement new procedures/ processes making them more risk conscious and improving their business as a whole. These firms have achieved great results and gone on to achieve various accreditations such as the Lexcel quality mark. I have loved working with these firms, going through their journey with them often in a highly pressured environment with added time constraints; this has strengthened our working relationship.

If you hadn’t become a risk and compliance expert what would you have done instead?

Forensic scientist.

I spend a lot of my spare time working in the charity sector and would like to travel to third world countries to help them build a better life.