Practical LawConferences

Alicia Hardy is Director of Professional Support and Counsel at White & Case responsible for leading the Professional Support function worldwide in developing and implementing global, local and practice-specific knowledge management strategies and initiatives.

Alicia has twenty years of experience in law, including as a Corporate transactional lawyers and, for the last thirteen years, in various Professional Support and Training roles.

Carol Aldridge is Head of KM at Burges Salmon LLP. She works with the firm’s KM/Learning & Development Partners, PSLs, Knowledge & Information Services, IT and Marketing teams to ensure knowledge-focused support to meet business objectives. She also works with Client Partners and business services teams to identify value added services to enhance solutions for clients. Carol trained and practised at Herbert Smith before joining Burges Salmon in 2000 as Commercial PSL. She has been Head of KM since 2004.

Burges Salmon’s KM focus is broad and includes knowledge about clients, sectors and markets as well as traditional legal content. The firm invests in systems and processes to support efficiency, effectiveness and innovation. All users are encouraged to think about how knowledge can best be used to enhance the client experience and to keep services competitive. The focus on knowledge sharing behaviours and culture is also reflected in this leading UK firm’s close, collaborative working relationships, partner-led approach and its top tier expertise as recognised in the leading legal and industry award schemes and legal directories.

Trevor Comyn is the Director of Knowledge, Learning & Development at Mills & Reeve. Mills & Reeve is a major UK law firm; more than 890 people work for the firm, including 117 partners and over 400 lawyers. Mills & Reeve is ranked number 1 in the UK for client satisfaction by Legal Week, and has been in The Sunday Times’ 100 Best Companies to Work For list for eleven years. Mills & Reeve was an early adopter of knowledge management; in a 2014 LexisNexis survey 91% of Mills & Reeve lawyers agreed that the firm has a knowledge-sharing culture. Trevor leads a team whose remit includes knowledge management, professional support lawyers, legal process improvement & project management, learning & development, and library & information services. Trevor qualified as a chartered accountant with PwC and worked in two multinationals before returning to professional services where he was Head of People Development at BDO before moving to Mills & Reeve in 2005. Trevor is an accredited executive coach and has (almost) completed an MSc in Organisational Behaviour from Birkbeck, University of London.

Andrew Woolfson, Director of Knowledge Management & Capability at RPC and “Visiting Professor of Professional Services, Research and Enterprise” at Huddersfield University has 30 years of experience working in senior information, IT and knowledge management roles. Previously Andrew has been Global Director for IT & Knowledge at BDO International and BDO UK’s Knowledge Director.

Andrew’s career to date has tracked and to an extent led the rise of KM as a key aspect to the way organisations mobilise their experience, capabilities and knowledge especially within the field of Professional Services.

Olwyn Mitchell has been Manager, Business Information at the Group headquarters of the John Lewis Partnership for the last five years, meeting the challenges of supporting the information needs of a busy and diverse constituency with a small team. Prior to this she was at Linklaters LLP, where she worked for more than ten years in a number of roles, concluding as Head of Cataloguing, and had always worked in law libraries. She also volunteered with BIALL’s Membership Services committee until 2013.