Managing Director

• Apr 2018 - Present

Director and Founder of Florit Legal, an executive search and recruitment firm retained by CEOs, FDs & HRDs to recruit people into the roles of General Counsel and Company Secretary, Legal Director, Head of Legal Services, Corporate Counsel or Commercial Solicitors and Legal Managers within in-house legal teams. Typically, I first work with the CEO, CFO/FD, MD, HR Director or Talent Acquisition Manager to hire the company’s first, or principal in-house legal counsel - ie Head of Legal, General Counsel, Legal Director and/or Company Secretary. I and my team then work with the appointee to build teams of highly capable in-house lawyers as those recruitment needs arise. We act for the most ambitious and commercial in-house lawyers, senior legal counsel, general counsel, corporate and commercial solicitors. Whether you are already working as an in-house lawyer, or are looking for your first in-house legal counsel role, as a senior associate lawyer or partner in a law firm, then I can help with the next phase of your career. Successful in-house legal recruitment and headhunting projects have included: • In-house Legal Team recruitment project: UK subsidiary of international FMCG business. • In-house Legal Counsel search project: UK Fund Manager. • Retained executive search project: Group Company Secretary, FTSE 250 retailer • Retained Legal Director and Head of Corporate Governance search, FTSE 250 consumer brand • Recruitment of UK Head of Legal, for NYSE-listed company • Senior Commercial Lawyer recruitment, for AIM UK 50 • European Legal Counsel recruitment assignment, FTSE 100 company • Interim Company Secretary, FTSE SmallCap • Retained General Counsel & Company Secretary search, FTSE Fledgling • Head of Legal & Company Secretary recruitment project, FTSE REIT • Volume legal recruitment project for FTSE 100 international bank (19 in-house lawyers) • First UK In-house Legal Counsel, ASX-listed tech business.

Founder

• Jan 2018 - Present

Director - In-house Legal Recruitment | Co-Founder

• Sep 2007 - Apr 2018

Co-founded Florit Brooke Legal Recruitment in 2007 and undertook both in-house legal recruitment, search / headhunting across the UK. Co-founded Florit Brooke Legal Recruitment in 2007 and undertook both in-house legal recruitment, search / headhunting across the UK.

Legal Recruitment Director | In-house & Senior Legal Recruitment

• Jan 2006 - Aug 2007

I became a Director of the In-house Legal Recruitment Division in 2005, based principally in the Leeds office but recruiting senior lawyers and in-house legal counsel in both the north of England and the Midlands – principally in and around the legal centres of Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle, Sheffield and Nottingham.

In-house Legal Recruitment Manager

• Jan 2004 - Dec 2005

As a Manager, I ran the in-house lawyer recruitment division outside London. The division grew quickly, so the need arose for me to focus exclusively on recruiting for in-house legal counsel positions. My background as a qualified solicitor in two commercial law firms, and the contacts I’d made as a solicitor, resulted in a regular stream of referrals from my previous law firms, when their own clients turned to them for recommendations of the best legal recruiters, when they came to recruit their own in-house legal counsel.I worked with senior management teams, HR Directors, Finance Directors and Talent Acquisition Managers to recruit commercial lawyers at all levels of qualification into established or brand new in-house legal teams.Typical legal search projects included recruiting in-house lawyers to fill: • General Counsel & Company Secretary positions• Head of Legal Services roles• Company Solicitor positions• Legal Counsel, Senior Legal Counsel and Regional Counsel appointments• Legal roles for solicitors specialising in real estate transactions, construction and development projects and project finance• In-house Lawyer roles within Financial Services sector – including Consumer Credit and FCA Regulatory Lawyers specialising in all aspects financial regulation• In the Tech sector, In-house Digital Technology Lawyers or Legal Counsel specialising in Data Protection, Privacy Law and the GDPR.• In-house Employment Law Specialists; and• ICSA-qualified Company Secretary positions.

In-house Legal Recruitment Consultant

• Nov 2000 - Dec 2003

Having been headhunted to join the newly opened SR Group office in Leeds to start the legal recruitment offering for Taylor Root outside London, I took on a two-fold brief – to continue recruiting solicitors for UK law firms, and to deal with a growing number of in-house legal recruitment and headhunting projects. • I quickly developed from a generalist legal recruiter into an in-house legal recruitment and search specialist, at the time focused on in-house legal jobs in regional cities, but principally Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle and Sheffield.• The private practice projects I worked on included recruiting solicitors into some of the largest commercial legal practices in the UK. However, I also recruited for some of the smaller regional commercial solicitors’ practices (which have since grown or merged into national and international firms) needing commercial lawyers with a range of specialist legal skills. • Principally, I spent my time recruiting corporate lawyers, commercial solicitors and technology lawyers, as well as legal professionals with a real estate law and/or a construction law background. These were some of the most frequent legal recruitment needs at the time.

Legal Recruitment Consultant | Commercial Law Firms & In-house Legal Departments

• Sep 1998 - Aug 2000

The first of legal recruitment jobs was as a Recruitment Consultant for QD Legal, undertaking a variety of solicitor recruitment projects across the legal sector, in law firms, commerce and industry in the UK. The first experience of in-house legal recruitment came along purely by chance, since I had originally contacted QD to find an in-house legal job for myself, since they were the market leaders in that field at the time. However, it was quite unusual to find in-house legal jobs geared to my experience as a commercial property lawyer. So, instead of taking me on as a candidate, QD offered me a legal recruitment role as a consultant – somewhat out of the blue! Since there were no in-house legal roles around for me at the time, and since QD was one of the two UK market leaders at in-house legal recruitment at the time, I figured ‘parking’ myself there for a while was a no-brainer… sooner or later a suitable in-house legal role was sure to come along for me. It nearly happened twice – but I was (very sensitively) declined after 2nd interview on each occasion. So whilst my in-house legal counsel career was seemingly destined never to happen, this role gave me a good grounding in in-house legal recruitment from the perspective of a solicitor candidate… and the rest, as they say, is history!

Solicitor

• 1996 - 1998

Solicitor

• Sep 1995 - Nov 1996

Trainee Solicitor

• 1993 - 1995