National Property Law Conference 2021 - Speaker biographies

National Property Law Conference 2021
          Speaker biographies
           In alphabetical order by first name

Alan Riley, Property Law Consultant, Property PSL Limited

Alan Riley is a solicitor qualified in England & Wales and a property
law consultant who provides training, support, information and
consultancy services on property law matters to various law firms and
in-house lawyers.
Formerly, Alan was a commercial property solicitor in private practice
in Manchester, a senior lecturer at the College (now University) of Law
in Chester, and a property law consultant with large commercial
property firms in the North West of England. For over twenty-five
years, he has presented seminars and lectures at property law
conferences and provided in-house legal training to law firms. He
contributes to legal journals, provides professional support and
consultancy services to law firms and in-house lawyers, produces his
own series of property law webinars, and supplies updating property
law information to lawyers in the form of a subscription newsletter. He
is the Stamp Duty Land Tax and Land Transaction Tax contributor to
the Law Society’s Conveyancing Handbook. He has also co-written
books on "Leasehold Liability - A Guide to the 1995 Act" (Jordans)
and "Commercial Property and Business Leases" (Jordans). In his
spare time, he is training to become a professional duathlon, but time
and ability is against him.

Alison Matthews, Director of Quality & Risk, Shoosmiths LLP

Alison Matthews is the Director of Quality & Risk at Shoosmiths LLP
and one of the UK’s leading experts on money laundering and
professional conduct. Alison has won many awards as the UK’s AML
adviser of the year 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. Alison
chaired the Law Society of England and Wales’ Money Laundering
Taskforce and was a member of the Government’s Money Laundering
Advisory Committee Toolkit and SOCA (now NCA)‘s SARs regime
Committee. Alison wrote the Anti Money Laundering Toolkit (1st and 2nd
Editions) and Data Protection Toolkit (1st and 2nd Editions) (published
by LSEW). She works with all the UK Law Societies and the Law
Society of Jersey. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Legal
Compliance Bulletin (LSEW).

Claire Petricca-Riding, National Head of Planning &
Environmental law, Irwin Mitchell

Claire advises on all aspects of planning and environmental law.
Working with a wide range of clients from across the real estate,
manufacturing, energy, maritime and waste management sectors,
Claire’s practical approach and guidance enables them to successfully
navigate their individual planning and environmental challenges and
ambitions within the evolving regulatory framework.

   "Claire is enormously dedicated to her work and her clients. She is
 well respected, very straight-talking, easy to get on with and forward-
              thinking in her approach." Chambers & Partners, 2021

Eleanor O’Reilly-Joe, Head of Accreditations, the Law Society

Eleanor is the Law Society’s Head of Accreditations and manages a
portfolio of 17 accreditations and services, including the Conveyancing
Quality Scheme (CQS). Previously, Eleanor managed Lexcel England
& Wales and continues to provide ongoing training to Lexcel
assessors and consultants.
Eleanor is a foreign qualified lawyer and has over 10 years’
experience in the legal sector.

Emma Cooke, Policy & Information Manager, National Trading
Standards Estate & Letting Agency Team

Emma is the Policy & Information Manager with The National Trading
Standards Estate & Letting Agency Team. She is a Chartered trading
standards practitioner and is Chair of the Chartered Trading
Standards Institute (CTSI) Welsh Branch. Emma is a national Lead
Officer for CTSI for property and regularly speaks at industry events
and stakeholder forums, including The Home Buying and Selling
Group, The Lettings Industry Council and The Property Ombudsman
Consumer and Industry Forums. Emma has also delivered training for
Propertymark members. Emma is also an Associate member of the
Institute of Leadership & Management.

Emily d’Albuquerque, Deputy Director for Central Legal Services,
HM Land Registry

Emily d’Albuquerque joined HM Land Registry in 2015, having started
her career in the private sector as a solicitor specialising in agricultural
law. Emily has worked as a Land Registrar, making the final legal
decisions on the most complex and contentious applications HM Land
Registry deals with. Earlier this year, she moved into her current role
and now leads a team providing legal advice supporting HM Land
Registry’s development of a digital registration process.

Heather Crichton, General Manager - Industry Readiness, PEXA

After practising law and holding multiple positions within Australia’s
legal sector, Heather joined PEXA in 2015. Having built an extensive
portfolio of experience, she now serves as General Manager, Industry
Readiness – UK. Heather brings great expertise to the UK – in her
previous role as General Manager – Member Support Services, she
was instrumental in the Australian property industry’s transition to
digital settlements, overseeing PEXA’s member operations, training,
and member experience teams which assisted 9,000+ legal and
conveyancing firms nationwide.

Jane Pritchard, Chief Product Innovation Officer, InfoTrack

Jane has spent her entire career immersed in the digital delivery of
legal services. Practising as a lawyer for 20 years, Jane ran her own
firm, managed others and set up a consultancy business dedicated to
improving efficiencies in law firms through automation of case and
practice management. As Chief Product Innovation Officer at
InfoTrack, Jane has designed and delivered ground breaking software
solutions to empower conveyancers to excel.

Kate Bould, Managing Director of Index West Midlands, Index
Property Information

Kate Bould is Managing Director of Index West Midlands, the regional
operation of the national group Index Property Information, which is
the fastest growing conveyancing search provider in the country.
Index West Midlands (IWM) provides a bespoke conveyancing search
service to solicitors, conveyancers and estate agents.
With over 20 years’ experience in the property and search industry (for
agricultural, commercial and residential properties), including as CEO
of a privately-owned Real Estate company in California. Kate is known
for her in-depth understanding of what today’s conveyancing
professional requires, and her genuine passion for the property sector
and the professions and individuals operating throughout it.

Kerstin Morgan, Head of Practice Transformation, Mishcon

Kerstin Morgan is Head of Practice Transformation in Mishcon de
Reya's Strategy team. She has over ten years of experience in
process improvement, change management, legal tech deployment
and legal project management across the legal and financial services
sector.

Kerstin and her team work closely with fee earners across the firm as
well as legal and business operations teams to identify opportunities
to improve the firm's legal processes and innovate service delivery.

Working closely with MDR LAB and Data Science teams, Kerstin's
team strive to maximise opportunities to automate relevant tasks and
processes and drive the use of legal tech across Mishcon de Reya.

Lubna Shuja, Vice President, the Law Society

Lubna Shuja is the vice president of the Law Society of England and
Wales. She will become the first Asian president in October 2022.

She has been a Law Society Council member since 2013 and is the
chair of the Law Society’s Membership and Communications
Committee as well as a member of the Law Society Board.

Lubna is a solicitor with her own practice, Legal Swan Solicitors, in
Birmingham. She specialises in professional discipline and regulation.
She is also a mediator.

She works with a number of different professional regulators as chair
of their Disciplinary/Fitness to Practise/Investigations/Conduct and
Competence Committees. Lubna was also a deputy clerk at the
Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal for over 13 years.

Lucian Cook, Head of UK Residential Research, Savills

Lucian Cook is one of the country’s most authoritative housing market
commentators, having been a director in Savills much-respected
research team since 2007. As an industry figurehead he regularly
presents on the UK housing markets and frequently appears on radio
and television. Lucian joined Savills in 1993 after completing a degree
in Land Economy at the University of Cambridge. He qualified as a
Chartered Surveyor in 1995. As a practising surveyor he specialised in
the provision of valuation advice for taxation, loan security and dispute
resolution purposes and strategic management advice for a range of
private and institutional clients. Lucian Cook is now one of the UK’s
leading and most quoted commentators on the UK housing market. At
Savills he leads a team of 36 highly respected researchers.
Collectively they cover everything from social housing to the prime
markets of central London and development land to residential
investment. He edits The Residential Property Focus and has written
extensively on the prime housing markets, proposals for the reform of
the taxation of high value property, the demand for private rented
housing and opportunities for institutional investment in the residential
sector.

Mat Oakley, Head European Commercial research, Savills

Mat Oakley is head of UK & European commercial property research
at Savills. His primary areas of expertise relate to office, retail and
leisure real estate, and he regularly advises investors and developers
on opportunities and risks across these and other markets. Mat has
been researching, analysing and occasionally correctly forecasting the
commercial property market since the late 1980’s.

Melanie Leech CBE, Chief Executive, British Property Federation

Melanie joined the British Property Federation as Chief Executive in
January 2015, following nine years as Director General of the Food
and Drink Federation.

Melanie began her working life as a Police Constable in the
Metropolitan Police Service. She joined the civil service (HM
Customs) in 1988 and subsequently held senior roles in the
Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Office of the Rail
Regulator and the Cabinet Office. Her role is to champion UK real
estate and to promote a long-term, sustainable partnership between
governments and the sector to deliver a high quality built environment,
and to create wealth.

Melanie is a Fellow of the RSA and a Trustee of LandAid, the property
industry charity. In 2015, she was awarded a CBE for services to the
food and drink industry.

Nicholas Kirby, Head of Prop Tech, Mishcon

Nick is a Partner in Mishcon de Reya's Real Estate department. He
specialises in commercial real estate work, dealing with investment
acquisitions and sales for institutional and private clients, development
work, management work and acting for both landlords and tenants.
Nick also has experience acting on real estate focused corporate
acquisitions.

Nick is a mentor for the start-ups taking part in MDR LAB, Mishcon's
incubator programme for tech startups in the legal space, and is one
of Mishcon de Reya's Tech Champions. As part of this role, he has
built technology products which help the Real Estate department
automate various tasks. Nick is also working with a number of clients
to facilitate the automatic exchange of property data.

Nick is responsible for researching new technologies, including
software which utilises machine learning and natural language
processing ("AI") to extract data from documents.

In 2019, Nick was named as one of the top 10 most innovative
lawyers in Europe by the Financial Times, and was commended by
the FT for his role in the digital transfer of residential property with the
Land Registry.

Peter Rodd, consultant, Boys and Maughan Solicitors, Law
Society Council member and member, Property Section
Committee

Peter Rodd is a Consultant at a 17 partner award winning high street
practice based in East Kent.
He is a past Chair of the Law Society Property Section, the Law
Society Council member for the Residential Property, a member of the
Conveyancing and Land Law Committee and the Chief Assessor for
CQS. Peter is a past member of the Society’s Money Laundering
Task Force and Home Information Pack and e-Conveyancing Task
Forces.
Peter has written numerous articles for various legal publications
relating to property matters, mortgage fraud, money laundering and
regulation and is a regular lecturer on these subjects.

Robert Stevens, head of property risk, operations and strategy,
Nationwide

Robert has a 16 year career spanning financial services at Portman
and Nationwide Building Society. Rob’s focus is to challenge the
status quo to improve the customer journey and drive business
success through proactive risk management and innovation.
His key area of interest has always been the mortgage and property
market.
Robert has specialised in mortgage policy, regulation, underwriting,
conveyancing and valuations. In 2013 he founded the Property Risk
department at Nationwide, aiming to provide a sustainable valuation
solution for the future. This work has included the introduction of
PRIM, the insourcing of panel management for Nationwide and TMW.

Russell Hewitson, Associate Professor of Law, Northumbria Law
School and Chair, Law Society’s Conveyancing and Land Law
Committee

Russell has over 30 years’ experience of conveyancing and property
law. He is chair of the Law Society’s Conveyancing and Land Law
Committee. He writes and lectures extensively on conveyancing and
property law related matters. He is author of Conveyancing Searches
and Enquiries (Jordans), Residential Conveyancing Practice (The Law
Society) and the Licensing Law Handbook (The Law Society). He is a
co-author of Conveyancing Checklists (The Law Society). He is
General Editor of Precedents for the Conveyancer, Practical
Conveyancing Precedents and Practical Lease Precedents (Sweet &
Maxwell) and Consultant Editor of the Conveyancing Handbook (The
Law Society).

Professor Sarah Green, Law Commissioner for Commercial and
Common Law, Law Commission of England and Wales

Professor Green was appointed as Law Commissioner for
Commercial and Common law on 01 January 2020. She was
previously Professor of Private Law at the University of Bristol. Prior
to that, she was Professor of the Law of Obligations at the University
of Oxford, having been a lecturer at the University of Birmingham from
2001 – 2010. Before embarking on her academic career, she was a
software consultant at Accenture. Professor Green has written books
and articles on a variety of issues including virtual currencies,
blockchain issues surrounding intermediated securities, smart
contracts, sale of goods law as applicable to digitised assets,
negligence and wage theft.

Siddharth Agarwal, Tax Director, DNS Accountants

   •   ACCA, MBA, MSc Finance and Accounting, DipFA
   •   Final stages of Chartered Tax Advisor qualification.
   •   8+ years of experience working with business owners and
       private clients.
   •   Expertise covers property tax, company reorganisations and
       succession planning.

T – 0333 2422 572, M: 07474157711
E: sid@dnsassociates.co.uk