OXFORD LAW FACULTY: OXFORD WOMEN IN LAW

 invites you to

Your Career in Law - The Next Step?

Tuesday 19th May at 6.30pm

at Hogan Lovells LLP

50 Holborn Viaduct, London, EC1A 2 FG

Chaired by Claire Pointing

Panellists include: Christina Blacklaws, Angus Coulter, Dana Denis-Smith and Harini Iyengar

Claire Pointing: Organisational Consultant and Executive Coach

Claire Pointing is an organisational consultant and executive coach who draws on over 20 years experience as a senior City lawyer, strategy consultant and senior public sector official. Over her career, Claire has had extensive international experience, living and working in London, Paris, New York and Athens.

Claire’s consulting business focuses on working with organisations and individuals to identify and resolve issues relating to complex or dysfunctional organisational dynamics. In working with clients, she draws on her extensive business experience alongside her training in clinical psychodynamics. One key focus of her work is on issues relating to improving diversity in the professional service industry.

Claire has qualifications from a variety of institutions including Oxford University, INSEAD and London Business School. She held a graduate research fellowship to New York University School of Law from Oxford University and was awarded the Alexander Maxwell Foundation Research Scholarship (major award) in 2000. Claire is admitted as a solicitor in England and Wales.

Christina Blacklaws: Director of Legal Services, Cripps

Christina Blacklaws joined Cripps as Director of Client Services as part of the law firm’s strategy for continued growth.

Christina has 25 years’ experience in legal services including developing and running one of the largest specialist family law firms in the country; building an innovative hybrid (part virtual, part high street) firm and most recently as Director of Policy at the Co-operative Legal Services, where she was responsible for all external relationships.

She also sits on the Law Society Council, representing the Women Lawyers Division, and on the executive of the Family Justice Council.

Angus Coulter: Partner, Hogan Lovells

Angus is a partner at Hogan Lovells, specialising in competition law.  He joined the firm as a trainee in 2000 and qualified in 2002.  He has worked in the firm's London and Brussels offices. He originally studied PPE at Oxford (Brasenose, 1994). 

Angus advises clients on competition law and related regulation, at EU and UK level. He has experience of advising clients involved in litigation and investigations by the European Commission, the UK competition authorities and other regulators.  He also advises on merger clearance and other competition aspects of acquisitions, disposals and joint ventures, and other commercial arrangements.  His clients are drawn from a range of sectors, particularly media, telecoms, financial services and retail. 

Angus manages the firm's London Antitrust, Competition and Economic Regulation team.  He is involved in the firm's graduate recruitment and various strands of the firm's access to law programmes.

Dana Denis-Smith: Obelisk, Founder & CEO

Dana is an entrepreneur, former Linklaters lawyer and international journalist. She founded Obelisk to keep ex-City lawyers working flexibly, around their family or other personal commitments and to provide clients with an affordable and flexible quality legal support solution onshore. In 2014, Obelisk's focus on creating a leading legal business led to it winning the "Best Strategic Leadership" Award at the Managing Partners Forum Awards for Management Excellence. In the same year, she founded the First 100 Years, a 5 year video history project dedicated to the journey of women in law, with the support of the Law Society and the Bar Council, among others. In 2013 she was recognised as a flexible work champion by the Timewise Foundation in their Power Part Time List of 50 leading business people in the UK.

Obelisk was a Stand Out winner in the FT Innovative Lawyers Awards 2013 and highly commended in the 2012 edition of those awards. Dana was one of 10 European lawyers shortlisted in the Individual Legal Innovator category of the 2012 FT awards. In 2010 she was featured in Management Today magazine’s "35 under 35" list of UK female high flyers. The yearly list features a roll call of the most inspirational businesswomen under the age of 35 in the UK. She is a regular commentator, writer and speaker on issues such as the economic value of human capital, innovation in the professions and the legal sector generally.

Harini Iyengar: Barrister, 11KBW

Harini Iyengar was called to the Bar in 1999.  She specialises in the law of Employment, Discrimination and Equality, Education, Partnership, and Procurement.

She combines intelligent advocacy, incisive legal argument and astute litigation strategy with sensitive treatment of witnesses and clients.  Her oral and written advice is clear, down-to-earth and commercially sensible.  Clients describe her advice in conference as “helpful, persuasive and slick”, are impressed by her “meticulous preparation” for trial, have appreciated that she “cross examined like a venus flytrap", and recommend her for "her supreme intellect and accessibility".

Harini recently represented the consultant cardiologist, Dr Kevin Beatt, in his successful NHS whistleblowing claim, and Ms Latifa Bouabdillah in her successful victimisation claim against Commerzbank.

She is an external trustee of Oxford University Student Union, sits on the steering committee of the Temple Women’s Forum, and is a trained interviewer for Inner Temple oral history project.  Harini regularly provides expert legal comment to the media and maintains a popular professional Twitter profile.