Practical Law In-house Future Forum Steering Committee

Ilja started his legal career in 2010 and worked as a criminal lawyer and a police station representative for six years. He then joined RadcliffesLeBrasseur as a healthcare paralegal where he completed his training contract and qualified in 2019. After qualifying, Ilja joined Citco as a corporate governance lawyer before becoming an in-house lawyer at PayAlly Limited, an electronic money institution. He was promoted to General Counsel, Company Secretary and Data Protection Officer in 2021. Ilja joined Revolut as a Senior Legal Counsel in November 2022 and is part of the Core/Strategic Response Team.

Racheal works as an employment and litigation solicitor at the University of the Arts. She undertook her traineeship through the Legal Education Foundation Fellowship and is an Access to Justice Fellow. She has an avid interest in human rights and has an LLM in International Human Rights Law. Prior to qualifying in January 2022, she was working in the pro bono and legal education field. She most recently completed an LLM in Legal Professional Practice with a focus on employment law.

Emma joined the Bank of England in 2022 as an in-house employment law specialist within the Legal Directorate. She trained at Scottish-headquartered UK firm Shepherd and Wedderburn LLP and qualified into the employment team in 2021. She has experience advising clients on a range of contentious and non-contentious employment law and HR matters across a variety of sectors, including financial services, education and sports. Her keen interest in working closely with clients and building strong working relationships led to her pursuing an in-house role.

Harkirat works as Metro Bank’s first trainee solicitor studying her SQE. She studied LLB Law at City University Law School. She began her career with Metro Bank in store as a cashier and swiftly worked her way up to paralegal within the legal team. She now supports her colleagues in the legal team to help deliver commercially-focused contentious and non-contentious legal advice to various stakeholders across the bank.

Yasmin is a lawyer in CMS's Energy and Climate Change team. She trained in-house at National Grid plc, spending time in its regulated electricity and gas businesses, as well as its electricity interconnector and LNG storage business, before qualifying into the corporate legal team in September 2020, where she advised on a wide range of general corporate, M&A and finance matters.

Zara trained at Stevens & Bolton LLP where she undertook a corporate-focused training contract and qualified in 2020. In her first in-house role, Zara acted as sole counsel gaining experience in a mixture of contentious and non-contentious corporate and commercial work within the financial services sector. Zara has an interest in healthcare, having completed a Masters in medical law at Kings College London. This led her to join the corporate and commercial legal team at Spire Healthcare in May 2022, where she works on a wide range of corporate, commercial and competition law matters.

Jamie joined Meggitt plc in February 2022 as a legal executive (UK & EMEA). He is completing his training contract at Meggitt while studying the LPC MSc part-time at the University of Law. Jamie has a passion for increasing diversity and inclusion across the legal sector and plays an active role in D&I initiatives both within his employment and across the wider community.

Georgina is an associate in the Dispute Resolution team at CMS and has undertaken secondments at both GlaxoSmithKline plc and Amazon during her time with the firm. Georgina has experience of a variety of commercial disputes and corporate crime matters, with a particular focus on the life sciences and technology sectors.