Chris Barrett

I am the firm's General Counsel, responsible for overseeing our internal governance and our approach to risk and compliance.

I became a partner in 1996, one of only three corporate lawyers in the firm then. In over 20 years as a transactional lawyer I advised on a wide range of corporate transactions - M&A, stock market flotations, public takeovers, JV's and venture capital. I was co-head of the Corporate department for several years and then spent 9 years as an elected non-executive member of our Board where I also sat on our Audit and Remuneration Committees.

In 2015/16 I made the transition away from being a client-facing transactional lawyer to a full-time role as General Counsel, focusing mainly on internal governance, and then assumed responsibility for our risk and compliance functions in 2019.

Corporate transactional work teaches a broad skill-set in governance, negotiation, problem-solving and project management. As such it is an excellent background for a GC role and I derive great satisfaction from applying this to the internal governance affairs of the firm. I am also able to bring the perspective of years at the coal-face to bear in setting our approach to risk and compliance in the firm. It's an increasingly complex and regulated world we work in, but to thrive we must remain at heart an entrepreneurial business. Getting the balance right is one of the great challenges for any GC, never more so than in a law firm.