Cathy as Head of Legal Operations in Herbert Smith Freehills’ Client Solutions team, focuses on helping clients address challenges in shaping and running their legal departments. She also helps lead multi-disciplinary teams, alongside HSF lawyers, focused on tackling client’s legal issues in creative ways – using expert facilitation, design skills and operational savvy.
Cathy supports GCs and their Legal Operations teams, helping them make sense of the portfolio of legal services they deliver to their organisations and supporting their legal department transformation projects.
Cathy is part of the leadership team for the Herbert Smith Freehills 80-strong, global Legal Operations & Transformation team with a focus on People & Culture. She has over 25 years’ experience in the legal industry and comes at law as a problem solver with deep empathy, having worn lots of hats.
Before this role, Cathy studied Materials Science at the University of Cambridge, started her career as a Corporate Finance lawyer, did ten years in Knowledge Management, created Streamline – a legal process design consultancy for Berwin Leighton Paisner, grew a Legal Project Management team for Herbert Smith Freehills and led their Process & Automation team – all done from a place she is happiest – with the firm’s clients.
Cathy completed a Global MBA at Warwick Business School in 2016, specialising in process and operations management in service organisations. She holds a Design Thinking certification from the Design Thinkers Academy.