How ALT was a stepping stone for me

When I joined the firm in 2012, it was just one year after the firm’s trailblazing opening in Belfast. The firm’s Belfast office was still quite small at the time at around 50 people and ALT did not exist as a distinct brand or global team. In those early days, the team’s initial focus was disputes work for the firm’s global client base and efforts were directed at embedding new technologies and workflows in order to deliver large-scale document review as efficiently as possible. 

Initially, I worked on large-scale commercial disputes – from commercial litigation and international arbitration to FCA investigations. When the Belfast office expanded into delivering corporate work, in early 2013, I was asked to go on secondment to the in-house legal team at Man Group in London, together with one other solicitor and four legal assistants, whom we supervised. I had no prior investment funds experience and it was my first time doing noncontentious work. I also found myself very much embedded in a client team for the first time – so it was very much learnon- the-job. The project involved drafting, negotiating and updating a large volume of documents across approximately 300 funds domiciled in multiple legal jurisdictions.

This experience really built the foundation of my investment funds knowledge that I still use on a daily basis today. It also was my first time working on regulatory implementation and allowed me to work closely with operational, product strategy and sales teams, and become a business-aligned lawyer. We were supposed to be there for two or three months to do a one-off project, but we ended up working on the project, on and off, for almost two years.

At Macquarie, the effective management of ESG risks and opportunities is also central to our decision-making and investment processes, especially with the influx of new sustainability-related regulation in the UK and beyond.

Joining the HSF Belfast office was instrumental in my career. It was the first and most important stepping stone to everything that came afterwards; without my time at HSF Belfast, I would never have the opportunities that have shaped my life – both professionally and personally – over the last decade. HSF quite literally opened doors for me and my experience there, the excellent training and exposure to interesting work, provided me with an opportunity to step into the world of finance – about which I had always been intellectually curious.

More than that, my time at HSF taught me how to run a project and how to build a good team. I also learned how to interact with corporate clients, how to present effectively and how to influence in the workplace – valuable skills which I still use daily in my working life.

Looking back, I also appreciate the value of being part of an innovative market-leading alternative legal services team at HSF Belfast. Those early days of the HSF Belfast office were very exciting and solutions-focused and I saw first-hand what it meant to push boundaries – using cutting-edge technologies on our legal work and being part of innovative resource models that were being presented to our clients for the first time.